A Psychoanalytic Approach to Smoking Cessation

“In this serious, scholarly and highly original book, Fung Ko argues a compelling case on cigarette addiction. Her ingenious integration of psychoanalytic theories, especially Winnicott’s, make a plea for further research on human self-destructivity. This book is more than a book. It is a manifesto for the world health authorities to look beyond the biochemical when tackling the horrors of toxic addiction.” Jan Abram, Author of The Surviving Object: psychoanalytic essays on psychic survival-of-the- object New Library of Psychoanalysis, Routledge

“What a pleasant surprise that this book is such an easy and engaging read. I wish I had met it 20 years sooner. With those below-the-surface insights, I would have had a very different perspective in the many hundred focus groups I had moderated for ‘pleasure food’ consumers.”

Angela P. K. Leung’s consumer research career in the commercial sector spanned from 1980s to 2010s, in Survey Research/Nielsen, AGB McNair, Frank Small, AMI/Synovate. Her last role was Chief Operating Officer of Synovate, Asia Pacific.

“Cigarette, beyond the symbol, the flare, the flame, the heat, the pleasure, and the pain, is ultimately, an object. Dr. Fung Ko added another remark: a transitional one. Beautifully woven among words and ideas of Sigmund Freud, Ernest Dichter, Donald Winnicott, and various smokers, this book is about transitional phenomena. This is: phenomenal.”

Dr. Wai Fu, Associate Professor, Hong Kong Shue Yan University

Fung Ko holds a PhD in Psychoanalytic Studies from the University of Essex, UK. She has 30 years of experience in multinational consumer goods companies marketing ‘pleasure food’. Her psychoanalytic research focuses on Winnicott’s concept of the transitional object to give understanding to tobacco addiction.