Into the Loop

Samuele Collu is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at McGill University.

Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. Seeing Yourself Being Seen 15 2. Atmospheric Crisis 47 3. Compulsive Repetitions 79 4. Oscillations 111 Outro 133 Notes 135 Bibliography 177 Index 187

"Into the Loop is a compelling reflection on the intricacies of subjectivity and relationality in contemporary psychotherapy. Collu delves into the psychologically and interpersonally intense scenes of engagement between systems-based therapists and their clients. With this outstanding and fully realized work, Collu offers an innovative approach to anthropological research and ethnographic writing."-Robert Desjarlais, author of The Visual Afterlife of Abdelkader Bennahar "Collu effectively and consistently opens a channel between the ordinary and the metaphysical without at all being pedantic or preachy. By moving fluidly between ethnographic scenes and his own life experience, he invites the reader into a sensory if not existential complicity. Beautifully written and never less than engaging, reading Into the Loop is like being strapped to a dragonfly: ducking and diving, flitting and flickering, charming and provoking."-William T. S. Mazzarella, Professor of Anthropology and of Social Science, University of Chicago "[Into the Loop] offers a rich resource for rethinking how we inhabit the training clinic, the supervision room, and the therapy session itself, and invites the systemic community to reconsider . . . how our own gazes, bodies, and screens are always already part of the loops we hope to transform."-Nathan Smith, International Journal of Systemic Therapy "Collu's overall approach as a well-placed refusal to fall into the loop of being too prescriptive or preachy. In the end, I'm struck by how Collu manages to balance a rare kind of vulnerability on the page, standing right alongside the reader as we gaze into the collective mirror."-Danielle Douez, Montreal Review of Books