My first review

I've been lucky to get some good endorsements for my work, and got my first review a few months ago.

I was surprised by it. It was angry and seemed to purposely misstate what the book was about.

The reviewer, Alexandros Chatziagorakis, didn't even state or give a review of the interpretative process at all.

It is a review without a review, or just an angry view.

He begins his plaints with : "In my opinion, this book appears to have been written without the reader in mind."

"Nor am I clear what the purpose of this book is: to provide a new methodology, to build on psychoanalytic theory, or to analyze a particular film?"

"When constructing a new methodology... This process should begin with a clearly defined aim and objectives that would explain why there is a need for a new methodology and what purpose it will serve." 

Regarding all these, the answer is on page one of the book: 

"In film there is a living unconscious. The subtleties of a disordered personality can be captured, and the conflicts between characters can be enhanced by cinematography to create a felt sense for how powerful or seductive the pain in our relationships can be. Despite the value of articulating this, the aim of this book is to show how a return to Freudian psychoanalysis is capable of giving us much, much more. As one critic of psychoanalytic criticism puts it:

Psychoanalytic readings purport to show the meaning behind the text that is concealed by its manifest content, but it is not clear that this is what psychoanalytic readings of Hollywood cinema achieve . . . [A]rguably, far from providing an objective code to unlock the real (hidden) meaning of the text, psychoanalytic criticism quite frequently describes what is going on at the surface of it . . . However, if this is the case, the psychoanalytic critic posing as theorist erroneously claims for himself the insight that rightly belongs to the text itself.

(Allen, 1999, p. 142)

Allen is skeptical about how much insight psychoanalytic critics bring to a text, as opposed to using the insight on the surface of the text to illustrate one of their theories. Others are not as kind. If literary critics do not dispute the status of psychoanalysis as a coherent model of understanding, many dismiss the applications of it as boring. One sees a character attach a lot of importance to a non-human object and calls it a transitional object; one sees a woman seductively portrayed and calls it the masculine gaze; one finds a triangle with two men and a woman and labels it oedipal. Others search for images or references to penises or feces, and still others do wordplay with the names and places of the text—lending to the impression that psychoanalysis is a silly game for the vulgar or overly erudite." 

The methodology is an answer to Allen's criticism. As I say on page 2 

"I would side with Allen in suggesting that the mere description of surface phenomena in the text is simply a game of matching, and that this game leaves the text’s valuable latent content unearthed. However, while Allen takes aim at predominately Lacanian based criticism (Metz, 1982; Mulvey, 1989; Doane, 1991; Žižek, 1992), he does not acknowledge a parallel tradition that does build latent content of psychological significance: the psychoanalytic criticism of the double. Plots of the double, trafficking as they do in repressed psychological content actively represented through double figurations, bypasses what has long been perceived as a failing of the Lacanian analysis of film." 

The book takes the criticism of the existing psychoanalytic criticism to heart and then counters that the tradition of the literary double does offer the "objective code to unlock the real (hidden) meaning of the text." 

So, after an introductory chapter that seeks to offer up the "psychoanalytic orientation" and introduces the clinical technique that I will use in the clinical vignettes in order to back up the theory, I go on to review the former criticism that made use of the double. 

The reviewer states, "the book not only lacks a clear aim and focus, but, ironically, there’s not a clear narrative either"

I state the problem with psychoanalytic criticism as pronounced by a prominent critic, and I then go on to review the existing double criticism in order to show how 'the symptom reading' differs and expands upon it, and then I offer up the process of how the film 'The Lost Boys'   inspired the reading, and then I outline the process of applying the reading to other films. 

I think this is a pretty linear narrative.

Of course there are moments in which I explain psychoanalytic theory that break this up, but I state very clearly my intention and who my reader is

"My main interest, along with building on the model of mind in The Economics of Libido (2015), is to attract the reader who may have been repelled by psychoanalytic criticism in the past."

I want to give a coherent model of mind, which has been a major complaint against psychoanalysis, and give a more sophisticated reading to answer the criticism against psychoanalytic criticism. What's difficult about this? 

Again, rather than actually explaining my interpretative procedure or analysis of the film, at all, the reviewer suddenly launches into complaining about what I don't do:

"Moreover, I think that the analysis of ‘The Lost Boys’ could have been more multi-dimensional and sophisticated. By focusing only on what’s happening in the film, Pederson doesn’t take account of the wider social, historical and political context, the time and place where the film was released, and how it challenged or criticized the prevailing societal norms and rules."  

I am careful to make a disclaimer:

"First, the latent meaning the symptom reading produces is in no way exhaustive, nor does it claim exclusivity. Just as there are several ways to interpret or utilize dreams, a narrative can be interpreted in several ways." 

  

I am giving a psychoanalytic methodology and doing a lot of work to spell out psychoanalytic theory so that someone could use the methodology for another film. It's not my aim or interest to approach films in a sociological way. 

The only thing that appeared positive in the review was about the clinical vignettes. However,  instead of stating my intentions to offer up the psychoanalytic model of mind as a framework for others to both understand its coherence, novelty, and efficaciousness as well as use it for doing their own film readings, the reviewer only complains. 

"With regards to the clinical vignettes, I found them very interesting (considering that the author employs an unfamiliar (to me) clinical method where he combines his psychoanalytic training with EMDR); however, I am not sure how these clinical examples fit with the film analysis and the proposed methodology."

So, while I don't do enough to give a non-psychoanalytic context and interpretation to a film, I'm also in trouble for giving psychoanalytic theory that isn't directly relevant to the film. Nice. 

Interestingly, the reviewer seems to show a little bad conscience at the end.

He lets the reader know that he read the title of the book and was hoping for another kind of book, and then actually alludes to the narrative of the book when he had previously complained that there wasn't one:

"When I came across the title of Pederson’s latest book, I (wrongly) expected him to discuss films using a psychoanalytic interpretative approach. So, perhaps my disappointment was driven by my mistaken assumptions and the fact that my expectations were not met... As a reader, I got the impression that this book is about the “double” in psychoanalytic theory, clinical practice, and in film (with ‘The Lost Boys’ used as the sole example). If this indeed was the author’s intention, it has to be made more explicit, and the title of the book should reflect this too."

The book is precisely about how double interpretations are an answer to Allen's criticism of psychoanalytic criticism, and places my extension of it in this context. Moreover, it builds a model of mind and uses clinical vignettes to show how and why this is possible. It was initially problematic to me to offer a methodology with just a single film (as opposed to the three in my initial proposal), but I warmed to the publisher's requirement that I split it up into several books. Giving this foundation for future work seemed valuable. 

If the reviewer had ever published a book before he might know that the company chooses a title to maximize search results for it. My first book had a number of searchable terms in the title while the title I wanted for this one did not. But, I think the title of the book is more dull than misleading in this case. There's nothing in it that would make one expect something so very different than what was delivered.

Ultimately, one would hope that a reviewer would engage with the interpretative framework or the model of mind that are introduced (i.e. the aim of the book and the two things of substance). 

Instead, these glaring omissions, along with the omission of Allen's criticism of the field as the beginning of the book's narrative, give the impression that some people want my book to be ignored. If I had to guess, I would say that they want to continue their traditional form of psychoanalytic interpretation and psychoanalytic theory without having a troubled mind.  

What a disappointment that this is my first review.