Mark Kinet, M.D.
Psychiatry · Psychotherapy · Psychoanalysis
Writing from Brain & Mind to Culture & Art
Mark Kinet is a Belgian psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and author. For more than three decades, his work has moved between clinical practice and writing, with psychoanalysis as a continuing point of departure and neuroscience, philosophy, literature, culture and the arts as widening fields of inquiry. He maintains a private practice in psychoanalytic psychotherapy while continuing to write and publish internationally.
Practice
Mark Kinet has worked as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist since 1988. From 1993 to 2010 he was Medical Director of a psychiatric hospital (PPC Pittem) where he headed the Clinical Psychotherapy Program from 1991-2023. Since 2008, he maintains a private practice in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. His clinical approach is psychodynamic and psychoanalytic, informed by more than three decades of psychiatric and psychotherapeutic experience.
Writing
Writing from Brain & Mind to Culture & Art
Alongside his clinical work, Mark Kinet has written and edited 35+ books and published numerous essays on psychiatry, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, literature, culture and the arts. His work follows a gradually widening trajectory:
Brain → Mind → Clinic → Relationships → Love → Culture → Art
Rather than leaving the clinic behind, this movement extends questions first encountered there. How does experience become thought? How does suffering become story? How does desire become relationship? How does what moves us acquire form?
Latest book
Psychoanalysis and the Struggle for Love. A Kaleidoscopic View
Endorsements
“If you want to understand love, Lacan, sex or psychoanalysis, read Kinet!”
“For Freud, love boiled down to sex, assuming all pleasures arise from a broadly 'sexual' drive. For biologists, sex is important because of reproduction; yet, why do we so frequently obtain sexual pleasures in non-procreative ways? In this book -a moving meditation upon love in all its guises- Mark Kinet re-prioritises the mental side, with profound implications for our understanding of the mind's place in Nature: feelings clearly have intrinsic causal powers.”
“These psychoanalytic essays on love's struggles range from Freud to Solms, from Plato to Žižek, traversing deep chasms and celestial heights, from prehistory to science fiction, and from the womb to AI. Their chemistry might disenchant, but their alchemy deepens mystery. A kaleidoscopic perspective opens the reader's mind, also thanks to a style that lucidly names what emerges from darkness. Must read for professionals and lovers.”
“Psychoanalysis and the Struggle for Love is a sweeping and deeply humane exploration of what it means to love, to desire, and to be recognised. Dr Kinet brings together psychoanalysis, philosophy, and clinical wisdom to illuminate love's generative possibilities and its contradictions. This is a beautifully written, intellectually vibrant book that clinicians and thoughtful readers alike will return to again and again.”
“Do not read this book by Mark Kinet — because it is too beautiful, too compelling, too accurate. Every chapter, every paragraph, every line, every sentence, like a ballerina, makes a leap and lands on its feet where it makes its point — its pointe. Kinet's sentences sharpen our thoughts, honing them until they cut precisely at the place where we believe the matters of love 'settle'.”
“Psychoanalysis and the Struggle for Love is a wide-ranging meditation on love as the central, conflicted force of our lives. Mark Kinet holds together psychoanalytic insight with philosophy, literature, and clinical sensibility in a voice that is lucid and humane. The result is a book that invites readers to think, and rethink, what loving truly means.”
“In Psychoanalysis and the Struggle for Love, Mark Kinet brings together philosophy, psychoanalysis, and literature and, in a brilliant, thought-provoking way, shows how love can passionately push people beyond themselves or drag them into catastrophic depths. This is a marvellous book about the many paradoxes of love and, therefore, about what it means to be human.”
Recent Books
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Psychoanalytic Hip-Hop. From Love to Science Fiction
Psychoanalytische Hiphop. Van Liefde tot Sciencefiction
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Patient Testimonies of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy. Reported and Recorded
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Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in Psychiatric Practice. Premises and Clinical Portraits
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Psychoanalytic Principles in Psychiatric Practice. A Remedy by Truth
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A Psychodynamic Psychiatry. Better through Truth
Een psychodynamische psychiatrie. Beter door waarheid
Audio/Video
Some of Mark Kinet's Lectures or Interviews can be viewed/listened to via YouTube.
Current Psychoanalysis podcasts brings together more than 35 books and other writings by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Mark Kinet. Each episode explores how unconscious meaning, personal history, and the therapeutic relationship illuminate psychiatry, psychotherapy, and culture. Two virtual hosts discuss carefully selected texts, translating complex psychoanalytic ideas into clear, engaging conversations while remaining remarkably faithful to the original work. For clinicians, students, and anyone curious about the human mind.
About
Mark Kinet (1958) is a Belgian psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and author. He worked in institutional psychiatry for more than thirty years and continues to practise psychoanalytic psychotherapy privately.
He was a training supervisor for KU Leuven, Ghent University and Vrije Universiteit Brussel and has held several positions within Belgian and Dutch psychoanalytic organisations. Since 2005 he has been Editor-in-Chief of Psychoanalytisch Actueel↗.
Alongside his clinical work, he has developed an extensive body of writing spanning psychiatry, psychoanalysis, relationships, love, literature, philosophy, culture and the arts.