Anna Fishzon, "The Impossible Return - Psychoanalytic Reflections on Breast Cancer, Loss, and Mourning" (Routledge, 2025)

About this episode

Anna Fishzon discusses her book exploring the intersections of breast cancer, mourning, and psychoanalytic theory.

Today I spoke with Anna Fishzon about her new book The Impossible Return - Psychoanalytic Reflections on Breast Cancer, Loss, and Mourning ( Routledge, 2025). The Impossible Return is a hybrid work of cancer memoir, psychoanalytic theory, and Soviet history that explores the author's experience with breast cancer through the lens of mourning, loss, and identity. Fishzon weaves together her personal narrative of mastectomy and reconstruction with psychoanalytic concepts—particularly the uncanny, shame, and the impossibility of fully mourning what has been lost—while drawing connections to her late Soviet Ukrainian childhood and her deep engagement with opera. The book examines how the reconstructed breast becomes an uncanny double, how the prosthetic oscillates between absence and presence, and how cancer survivorship involves living with "scanxiety" and perpetual waiting. Through this autotheoretical approach, Fishzon explores broader questions about memory as scar tissue, the relationship between voice and embodiment, and what she calls the "terribly obscure utopian" work of psychoanalysis—asking the impossible of both analyst and patient, much like perestroika's call for…

People in this episode

Host: Marshall Poe

Guest: Anna Fishzon

Topics covered

• breast cancer
• mourning
• psychoanalysis
• identity
• loss
• cancer survivorship

Keywords

• breast cancer
• psychoanalysis
• mourning
• identity
• Soviet history
• cancer memoir
• scanxiety

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Routledge

Books & works: The Impossible Return - Psychoanalytic Reflections on Breast Cancer, Loss, and Mourning

Places: Soviet Ukraine

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