Reviews of Varieties of Hope
“But as Campbell’s winning and understated title suggests, hope comes in many forms, and the impoverished forms of hope we find in psychoanalysis may be saying more about psychoanalysis as traditionally conceived than about the varieties of hope. Freud may have as she puts it, ‘also hated hope’ but she can also love Freud’s pessimism and love hope, and this makes Campbell’s version of psychoanalysis the more ample thing it is too often shying away from being. That you can love hope and pessimism is the point of and the pleasure of Campbell’s expansive book, expansiveness not being the thing we tend to associate with psychoanalytical writing. We have not been encouraged to think of psychoanalysts as the ‘visionary company’ that they might be.”
Adam Phillips, writer and psychoanalyst
“Radical, Political and Clinical this is a book for our time, exploring the very theme that eludes us most today. Campbell’s work helps keep hope alive”
Pamela Howard, C Psychol, UKCP reg psychoanalytic psychotherapist
“One of the best compliments it is possible to pay a writer, or therapist for that matter, is “Well I never thought about it that way before”…. It is a common place to say that this book is timely- though this one undoubtedly is. Some varieties of hope, after all, are simply better and more pressing than others. “
Roger Lippen psychoanalytic psychotherapist and supervisor (UKCP registered) M.Sc. C.Q.S.W.