Afleveringen
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âAll of this together shaped how I began to think about mind, not as something to be mastered, but as a landscape of the unspoken whether it was ghosts or griefs or desires that were hard to relinquish. I saw that the ghost was not always an âotherâ. It was often intimate, tied to lost ones, sometimes to unmet desires, to unbearable longings, but in some ways possession was an attempt to keep close what was slipping away. The ghost doesn't just haunt, it feels as if it wants something, and we just have to learn to develop ears to listen to what it wants.â
Episode Description: We acknowledge Loewald's concept of 'ghosts becoming ancestors' and consider the similarities and differences with those who hold 'ghosts' to be literal. Shalini shares with us her journey to open herself to the uncertainty and ambiguity of these externalized entities while appreciating both their cultural and intrapsychic sources. We learn of her family's involvement with exorcisms, especially her grandmother's "fearless warmth" and "empathy that saw beyond the terror of the ghosts." She considers the many facets of mind that are represented by 'ghosts' and the essential value of approaching them as guides to the "landscape of the unspoken." Shalini describes a long term engagement that she had with an individual who "taught me to receive the inchoate and horrific...to contain the brokenness and not interpret it away.. and to appreciate the glimpses of beauty in the most grotesque parts of self."
Our Guest: Shalini Masih, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and writer, grew up in India amidst priests and healers, witnessing spirit possession and exorcism. Now based in Worcestershire, UK, she holds a Masterâs degree in Psychoanalytic Studies from Tavistock & Portman, London, and a PhD from the University of Delhi. Mentored by psychoanalysts Michael Eigen and Sudhir Kakar, sheâs an award-winning scholar of the American Psychological Association. She has taught and supervised psychoanalytic psychotherapists in Ambedkar University, Delhi and in Birkbeck, University of London. Her acclaimed paper, 'Devil! Sing me the Blues', was nominated for Gradiva Awards in 2020. Her debut book is Psychoanalytic Conversations with States of Spirit Possession: Beauty in Brokenness.
Recommended Readings:
Kakar, Sudhir. Shamans, mystics, and doctors: A psychological inquiry into India and its healing traditions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Kakar, Sudhir. Mad and Divine. India: Penguin Books India, 2008.
Eigen, Michael. âOn Demonized Aspects of the Selfâ In The Electrified Tightrope. Routledge. 2018.
Kumar, Mansi, Dhar Anup & Mishra, Anurag. Psychoanalysis from the Indian Terroir: Emerging Themes in Culture, Family, and Childhood. New York:Lexington Books, 2018.
Meltzer, Donald, and Williams, Meg H. The apprehension of beauty: The role of aesthetic conflict in development, art and violence. Karnac, London: The Harris Meltzer Trust, 2008.
Obeyesekere, Gananath. Medusaâs Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
Ogden, Thomas. This Art of PsychoanalysisâDreaming Undreamt Dreams and Interrupted Cries. East Sussex: Routledge, 2005
Botella, Cesar, and Botella, Sara. The Work of Psychic Figurability: Mental States without Representation. Brunner-Routledge. Taylor and Francis Group: Hove and New York. 2005.
Winnicott. Donald W. âTransitional objects and transitional phenomena.â International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 34, (1953): 89â97
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âThe theme that I found with IPSO [International Psychoanalytical Studies Organization] was that there was a common theme [in psychoanalytic training]. There was an initial phase full of terror and excitement, and then a middle phase of maybe some lethargy or apathy or disillusionment. In that middle phase, many candidates found IPSO, or IPSO found them, where they found refuge. They found solace. They found community, not just at their local institutes, but at this kind of world market. Many of the candidates talk about what a timely and wonderful experience it was to be seen, to be validated by fellow candidates in a way that only fellow candidates can do. At least a couple of the authors have written about how they were delighted to see that more than anything else we are similar as human beings, no matter where we're from.â
Episode Description: We begin with recognizing the deep attachment that many analytic candidates have about their training experiences, which includes affections and resentments. Himanshu outlines the process of reaching out to candidates globally, inviting them to share their reflections on their journeys. We read from a sampling of their essays that eloquently describe their idealizations and de-idealizations, their delights and their burdens, their profound regard for the mysteries of the mind and the appreciation of the power of psychoanalysis to engage with it. We discuss the importance of IPSO, the difficulties associated with Covid and the relevance of our field's traumatic origins. Himanshu closes with sharing his story of encountering an insightful analytic supervisor during his residency and declaring "I want to be like him."
Linked Episode:Episode 89: Wisdom and Enthusiasm for Todayâs Candidates with Fred Busch, PhD
Our Guest: Himanshu Agrawal, MD is an adult and child psychiatrist and recently completed psychoanalytic training through the Minnesota Psychoanalytic Institute. He is an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee where he sees patients, conducts research, and teaches. He recently completed his term as the president of the candidatesâ council of the American Psychoanalytic Association
Recommended Readings:
Busch F (Ed), Dear candidate. Routledge, 2020
Agrawal H, Trials and Tribulations of being a candidate. The American Psychoanalyst, winter 2022
Kernberg O, Thirty methods to destroy the creativity of psychoanalytic candidates. International Journal of psychoanalysis, 77, 1031- 1040
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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âWhen we reconstruct [in a patient] a possible lacking object or role or function, we see that if the analyst himself has been able and the patient allowing him to be able to enter to a deep level the objective reality of the internal world of the patient, it can happen that some new function or position can be achieved. This is something that could be rare but it happens. This is one more reason for not blaming the length of some analytic treatments, because time is needed for entering that internal deep area where the analytic relation can create something new. Transformation is also one of the words that in our analytic world became more and more common and utilized because we have achieved the certainty that there can be a transformation. Not only an understanding or a clarification, but also a transformation of the quality of the objective world and of the relation with it.â
Episode Description: We begin by describing the differences in psychoanalytic approaches today as compared to past generations. This shift has occurred alongside changes in patients' concerns; currently, individuals are disproportionately preoccupied with how they perceive themselves through others' eyes, rather than grappling with internal conflicts related to guilt. Stefano posits that this increased narcissistic investment stems from alterations in family structures and premature disruptions in "the physiological fusionality" with the early maternal caretaker. We discuss how this sense of distrust in the availability and reliability of caretakers affects the manner in which one introduces a patient into analysis, as well as the broader cultural emphasis on superficial bodily care - what he terms the aperitif experience. We consider the fundamental importance of the depth of object relations in understanding sexual diversities. Stefano concludes by reading the final paragraph from his book, which acknowledges the invaluable lessons learned from his analyst. We reflect on the enduring presence within him of this profoundly personal connection.
Linked Episodes: Episode 140: Are Patients Different Today? with Stefano Bolognini, MD (Bologna)
https://youtu.be/rjzpA8QZrWk?si=Srf_Tuxt0zTpsKNK
Our Guest: Stefano Bolognini, MD, is a psychiatrist and training and supervising analyst of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society (SPI), where he served as president (2009-2013). He also was an IPA Board member (2002-2012) and was IPA president from 2013-2017. He was a member of the European Editorial Board of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and a founder of the IPA Inter-Regional Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. He has published over 280 psychoanalytic papers, and his books on empathy and on the inter-psychic dimension have been translated into several languages.
Recommended Readings:
Bolognini, Stefano -
Secret Passages. The Theory and Technique of the Interpsychic Relations. IPA New Library, Routledge, London, 2010
https://www.amazon.com/Vital-Between-Non-Self-Library-Psychoanalysis/dp/1032132973, Routledge, London, 2022
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21387998/ Psychoanal. Quart., vol. LXXX, 1, 33-54, 2012.
Enchantments and disenchantments in the formation and use of psychoanalytic theories about psychic reality. The Italian Psychoanalytic Annual, 13, 11-24, July 2019.
New forms of psychopathology in a changing world: a challenge for psychoanalysis in the twenty-first century. The Italian Psychoanalytic Annual, 2020.
Reflections on the institutional Family of the Analyst and proposing a âfourth Pillarâ for Education. Opportunities and problems of transferal dynamics in the training pathwayâ. In Living and containing Psychoanalysis in Institutions. Psychoanalysts Working Together, edited by Gabriele Junkers, 89-104, Taylor & Francis, 2022.
From What to How : A Conversational with Stefano Bolognini on Emotional Attunement by Luca Nicoli & Stefano Bolognini. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 91 : 3, 443-477, 2022.
The Interpsychic, the Interpersonal, and the Intersubjective: Response to Steven H. Goldbergâs Discussion. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 91:3, 489-494, 2022.
Hidden unconscious, buried unconscious, implicit unconscious. The Italian Psychoanalytic Annual, 16, 87-102, 2022.
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âThe original papers that were written about the analystâs unconscious being attuned to the patient's unconscious by Hyman and Racker, in both cases they talk about this phenomenon. But both of them utter a caution, which is that one always has to take into account one's own âmishegasâ. Essentially, what they're saying is, the unconscious is pretty individualistic and we have our own things, and we have to consider that possibly it's our own difficulties, our own unconscious, that is playing a bigger role in our countertransference reaction to the patient's unconscious.â
Episode Description: We begin by discussing the meaning of the many italics throughout the book and my sense of their being an expression of Fred's wish to be carefully understood. This is part of our conversation where we examine how internal reactions are used to comprehend another person's mind. There are a number of themes to this work, and to Fred's contributions over the years, which focus on helping individuals understand the way their mind works, as distinct from the particular contents of their mind. One of the gifts of psychoanalysis is to facilitate patient's discovery of the freedom to think which allows for a post-termination capacity for self-analysis. We discuss how self-criticism can serve as an unconscious lifeline, the importance of attending to the need for silence as distinct from what is not being said and the seductiveness of gossip, to name but a few of the topics in the book that we cover. Fred closes by describing "The wonderful thing about being a psychoanalyst is there are always things to learn and ways to grow."
Our Guest: Fred Busch, Ph.D. is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. He has published eight books, and over 80 articles on psychoanalytic technique, along with many book reviews and chapters in books. His work has been translated into many languages, and he has been invited to present over 180 papers and clinical workshops nationally and internationally. His last six books are: Creating a Psychoanalytic Mind (2014); The Analystâs Reveries: Explorations in Bionâs Enigmatic Concept (2019); Dear Candidate: Analyst From Around the World Offer Personal Reflections on Psychoanalytic Training, Education, and the Profession (2020); A Fresh Look at Psychoanalytic Technique (2021), Psychoanalysis at the Crossroads: An International Perspective (2023).The Ego and Id: 100 years later (2023), How Does Analysis Cure? (2024).
Recommended Readings:
Busch, F. (2014). Creating a Psychoanalytic Mind: A Psychoanalytic
Method and Theory. London: Routledge.
Busch, F. (2019). The Analystâs Reveries: Explorations in Bionâs
Enigmatic Concept. London: Routledge.
Busch, F. (2021). A Fresh Look at Psychoanalytic Technique: Selected
papers on Psychoanalysis. Routledge: London.
Busch, F. (2023) The Significance of the Ego in âThe Ego
and the Idâ and its Unfulfilled Promise. International Journal of
Psychoanalysis 104:1077-1090.
Busch, F. (2000). What is a deep interpretation? J. Amer. Psychoanal.Assn., 48:238-254.
Busch, F. (2005). Conflict Theory/Trauma Theory. Psychoanal.Q., 74: 27-46.
Busch, F. (2006). A shadow concept. Int.J.Psychoanal.,87: 1471-1485. Also appearing as Un oncerto ombra, Psycoanalisi, 11:5-26.
Busch, F. (2015). Our Vital Profession*. Int. J. Psycho-Anal.,
96(3):553-568. Reprinted in Busch, F. (2015). La nostra
professione vitale. Rivista Psicoanal., 61(2):435-456; Busch, F. (2015). Nuestra profesiĂłn vital*. Int. J. Psycho-Anal. Es., 1(3):605-627; Busch, F. (2015). Nuestra profesiĂłn vital1. Rev. PsicoanĂĄl. Asoc. Psico. Madrid, 75:131-153.
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âThe idea of analytic neutrality, which was more or less a cliche truth when I was training back in the 1980s, is clearly getting at something very important, which is that we mustn't try to pre-conceive where the patient's development is going to take him or her. But that doesn't mean that the development is not in a direction. Aristotle famously said that the human being is a âzoon politikonâ, a creature who belongs in a somewhat structured society. Healthy development is in that sort of direction as we become more integrated, as our âghosts become more like ancestorsâ, to use that famous metaphor. We become more aware of the reality of other people and their real as opposed to their fantasy importance in the ecosystem of which we are all part. And this makes possible the sort of ethical realization that Levinas was talking about. We recognize the reality of the other. We discover that we are interconnected. We are part of something that is hugely greater than ourselves and that goes beyond our knowing. But of course, that doesn't mean that we are not also selfish and unique selves. It's that we are under pressure, so to speak, from both quarters.â
Episode Description: We begin with David's description of Freud's view of religion as offering "compellingly attractive" illusions in the face of the helplessness we face by life's and death's unpredictability. Alternatively, David suggests that religions provide 'objects', ie Gods, that are importantly allegorical and offer an âethical seriousnessâ over time. We discuss the ability of these allegories to offer possibilities of 'transcendence' in a world that he sees as often limited to the material. He presents Levinas' view of the responsibility we all have when encountering "the face of the other" - a responsibility that is not chosen but "slipped into my consciousness like a thief." We consider the ethical differences between oneâs superego and one's conscience. We close with David sharing with us the vicissitudes of his early life that, as for us all, form a context for our later interests.
Our Guest: David Black studied philosophy and Eastern religions before training in London, first as a pastoral counsellor and later as a psychoanalyst. He is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society, now retired, who has written widely on psychoanalysis in relation to matters of ethics and religion. In 2006 he edited Psychoanalysis and Religion in the Twenty-first Century. He has published two collections of his own psychoanalytic papers, most recently Psychoanalysis and Ethics: the Necessity of Perspective. He is also a poet and translator, whose translation of Danteâs Purgatorio was published in 2021 in the New York Review of Books Classics series. (It was later the winner of the annual American National Translation Award in Poetry.) Visit David Blackâs website at: https://www.dmblack.net.
Recommended Readings:
Black, D.M. Psychoanalysis and Ethics: The Necessity of Perspective. (2024: Routledge New Library of Psychoanalysis.)
Chetrit-Vatine, V. Primal Seduction, Matricial Space, and Asymmetry in the Psychoanalytic Encounter. (2004: International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 85: 4.
Lear, J. Wisdom Won from Illness. (2017: Harvard University Press.)
Lemma, A. First Principles: Applied Ethics for Psychoanalytic Practice. (2023: Oxford University Press.)
Levinas, E. Ethics as First Philosophy. In The Levinas Reader, ed. Sean Hand. (1989: Blackwell Publishing.)
Loewald, H. Papers on Psychoanalysis. (1980: Yale University Press.)
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âThere are very specific fears that people have that are specifically related to their own childhood, and I'd like to give an example. A mom with twins had a kidnapping fear. She was afraid every time she saw a car drive by her house that her twins would be kidnapped. Now this mother was herself adopted when she was a newborn, but her adoption did not become final until she was one year old. Her twins were approaching one year. I was struck by the anniversary of her fear of kidnapping, and when I asked her who she thought was driving the car that drove by her house, she blurted out, 'my biological mother - adoption was never an issue for me, I have the best parents,' she said, but her fears about her babies being kidnapped were rooted in her own guilty feelings. She said, 'I get to keep my biological babies and my biological mother did not. I can have biological babies and my adoptive mother could not.' Carrieâs fantasy that her biological mother was threatening to kidnap her babies represented both her fears of retaliation for her aggressive victories over both her biological mother and her adoptive mother, and the repair of her disavowed feeling of loss by a reunion with her biological mother. This meaning of the memory, this understanding of the memory, resolved her kidnapping fear. It dissolved.â
Episode Description: We begin with an overview of the importance of mothers' childhood memories in their experience of their own children. These memories are of the conscious sort and also the not-so conscious. They are of the loving as well as the misattuned versions. "The challenge for mothers is to understand the complexity of their own childhood memories and to help their babies and toddlers adapt to the everyday ups and downs of life, as well as to the exceptional ones." We discuss typical fears, sleep problems, 'mutually-regulated patterns', naming body parts, nakedness, weaning and screen time. Ilene ran mother-baby-toddler groups for 35 years and shares with us her relentless curiosity for what we all bring to the parenting experience.
Our Guest: In 1982, Ilene Lefcourt established the Sackler Lefcourt Center for Child Development - programs for parents and their children from birth to three years. She was the Director, led the Mother-Baby-Toddler Groups, and provided Developmental Consultation to parents for over 35 years. She saw over 1,000 families and taught Child Psychiatry Residents and Parent-Infant Psychotherapy Trainees about her work. She has been a faculty member at the Columbia Psychoanalytic Center since 1995. Ms. Lefcourt is currently in private practice in New York City. She is the author of When Mothers Talk, Parenting and Childhood Memories, and Mother-Baby-Toddler Group Guide. Her forthcoming book is, Mothers and Daughters: The First Three Years. Visit Ileneâs website: http://ilenelefcourt.com/.
Recommended Readings:
1975, Fraiberg S. Adelson E., Shapiro V., Ghosts in the Nursery, Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 14, 387-421
1975, Mahler, M., F. and Bergman, A. The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant, Basic Books
1985, Main, M. Kaplan, N. Cassidy, J. Security in Infancy, Childhood, and Adulthood: A move to the Level of Representation. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development
1991, Fonagy, P., Steele, M., Steele,H., Moran, G. S . The Capacity for Understanding Mental States. Infant Mental Health Journal, 12(3) 201-218
1992, Bretherton, I. The Origins of Attachment Theory. Developmental Psychology, 28(5) 759-775
1993, Lieberman, A ., The Emotional Life of the Toddler, Simon and Schuster
1995, Stern, D. The Motherhood Constellation, Basic Books
1998, Stern, D., Brushwweiler-Stern, N. The Birth of a Mother. Basic Books
2005, Lieberman, A., Angels in The Nursery, Infant Mental Health Journal. Vol. 26(6)
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âThe amount of guilt and the sense of alienation that people feel when they fall in love with someone who is âoutsideâ, and the struggle that they have to undergo to explain that choice which they fully don't understand themselves, is a very deep conflict that my work tries to capture. The title of my book is âIntimacy in Alienationâ, and alienation is something that is really very pregnant in the identities of these individuals who feel like aliens to their own community because their community cannot imagine why are they seeing the other as something positive but not as how the community wants them to see. So there's a big gap that often gets deeper and it widens and it really forecloses any conversation and imagination.â
Episode Description: We begin with considering the nature of 'malignant othering' that Ashis describes in parts of the Hindu-Muslim interface in India. His thesis is that transcending the binary into a 'third' is essential in the "quest for newer foundations defining Hindu and Muslim identities that are freed from historically entrenched definitions." He describes the challenges faced by each community that lacks the imagination of what is positive in the other. We discuss the importance of family support for interfaith couples and how often that is lacking. He describes 'love-jihad' where the autonomous agency of the partners is, through the eyes of fundamentalism, reduced to stereotypes of oppressor-oppressed. Ashis describes his research methodology which borrows from the psychoanalytic method in its recognition of transference and repetition. He closes by sharing with us the impact on him of the riots of 2002 and behind that the latent presence of the atrocities of the 1947 Partition. He bemoans "the erosion of the narratives of harmony" and sees his work as his effort at healing.
Our Guest: Ashis Roy (PhD) is a Psychoanalyst at the Delhi Chapter of the Indian Psychoanalytic Society ( IPA London). He works with adults and couples. For more than a decade he was on the Faculty at the Centre of Psychotherapy and Clinical Research, Ambedkar University, where he participated in institution building, taught psychoanalysis, and trained students to become Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists. He is a faculty at CAPA (China-American Psychoanalytic Alliance) and is interested in exploring Asian and South Asian cultures using psychoanalysis. He hosts podcasts on the New Books Network and works with psychoanalysts across the globe. His book, Intimate Hindu-Muslim Relationships: A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Self and the Other (2024) has been published by Yoda Press.
Recommended Readings:
Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity, youth, and crisis. New York: W.W. Norton.
Kakar, S. (1996). The colors of violence: Cultural identities, religion, and conflict. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wahab. G (2021) Born a Muslim: Some truths about Islam in India. Aleph Book Company.
Altman, N. (2005). The Analyst in the Inner City. Relational Perspective Book Series
Davids, M. F. (2009) The Impact of Islamophobia. Psychoanalysis and History 11:175-191
Green, A., & Kohon, G. (2005). Love and its vicissitudes. London: Routledge.
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âI belong to the race that in the Middle Ages was blamed for all the plagues and such experiences have a sobering effect, and they do not arouse the tendency to believe in illusions. Much of my life has been devoted to trying to shed illusions. But if there is an illusion worth believing in, at least partially, this is the illusion: that we learn how to divert the impulse of destruction from our own kind, how to stop hating each other because of trivial differences, and stop killing each other for profits. That we stop taking advantage of the achievements of progress to control the forces of nature in a way that will lead to our destruction. Without this illusion, what future awaits us?â
Sigmund Freud, Letter to Romain Rolland, 1923
âI found [this letter] in the collection that Eran Rolnik translated into Hebrew. I met it in the Hebrew version, and when I got back to the German, something else happened. In the Hebrew translation it was talking about the âhopeâ. But then the people in Vienna told me in German this is not âhopeâ, this is âillusionâ. I thought it is even more powerful that he speaks about the power of illusion, the needed illusion. It also brought me back to the beginning of my journey when a friend said the main purpose of the film is to have Freud telling us something like the âbig fatherâ, how should we live today? A tip and insight from Freud. So this is an insight from Freud, a message from Freud over time to us now. I'm not sure it's prophetic. I think there's no prophecies, but it speaks to us now. It speaks to us now.â
Episode Description: We begin with an opening quote from Freud that characterized his sense of being an 'outsider'. Yair then shares with us his own personal journey of discovering Freud as distinct from his father. Having some analytic exposure awakened in him the capacity to, like Freud, ignite his creativity and discover Freud anew. Unique among the many Freud documentaries, Yair utilizes 3D animation techniques as well as dreamlike imagery, newly uncovered archival film and evocative music to invite the viewer to regressively experience the possibilities of the unconscious. We go through four periods of Freud's life which include his struggles with Viennese antisemitism, his discovery of the role of childhood sexuality, his illness and the deaths of his father, daughter, granddaughter and mother and his exile to London. We conclude with his 1923 letter to Romain Rolland where he pleads "that we stop taking advantage of the achievements of progress to control the forces of nature in a way that will lead to our destruction.â
Our Guest: Yair Qedar is an Israeli documentary filmmaker, social activist and former journalist. In his project "the Hebrews", he had been chronicling the lives of Jewish and Israeli figures of the modern Hebrew literary canon. Qedar's 19 feature length documentaries have all premiered at film festivals and have won the director over 30 prizes. Also, Qedar is a leading LGBTQ activist and created the first Israeli LGBTQ newspaper.
To View the Film: This documentary was first shown at the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna on January 9th, 2025. It is currently being screened at film festivals worldwide. To arrange a viewing, please contact Yair Qedar at [email protected]
Website and Trailer: https://ivrim.co.il/en/films/outsider-freud/
Recommended Readings:
Adam Phillips (2014): Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst. Yale University Press.
Ernest Jones (1953): The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud. Basic Books.
Sigmund Freud (1926): The Ego and the Id. Standard Edition, Vol. XIX, Hogarth Press.
Sigmund Freud (1937): Letter from Sigmund Freud to Marie Bonaparte
Sigmund Freud (1929): Letter to Romain Rolland
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âI've had the experience of having some wonderful supervisees, many of whom have done quite fine work and where it has not been an issue of any kind of great concerns. And allowing the candidate to see what's written and also discussing it with them, obviously makes it quite easy for them to get both positive input, but also at times, input that will help them evolve and deepen their work even more.â
Episode Description: We begin by exploring the critical role of case writing in psychoanalytic training, discussing Stephenâs concept of "a fourth pillar of analytic training." Stephen introduces the dynamic interplay between writing and self-reflection, arguing that the act of writing illuminates resistances, countertransference, and areas of growth that might elude the analyst in supervision or personal analysis. He shares his innovative "three-minute chess match" technique for identifying the heart of a case narrative and reflects on his journeyâfrom his motherâs poetry to his current work mentoring candidates in the art of case writing.
We explore Stephenâs insights on the 're-immersion anxiety' that can inhibit case writing, and how addressing these resistances transforms the writing process and deepens clinical work. We conclude with a discussion of how the process of writing fosters an enduring capacity for self-supervision and analytic insight.
Our Guest: Dr. Stephen Bernstein, MD is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and has chaired a discussion group on writing about analytic cases for over 30 years. He is a prolific author, including his recent paper, The Process of Case Writing: A Fourth Pillar of Analytic Training, published in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Dr. Bernsteinâs work highlights the centrality of case writing as an essential tool for self-reflection and professional development. Beyond his focus on writing, he has contributed to the field with early research demonstrating the compatibility of preparatory psychotherapy with psychoanalysis and continues to mentor candidates, fostering their growth as analysts and writers.
Recommended Readings:
Bernstein, S. (2023). The Process of Case Writing: A Fourth Pillar of Analytic Training. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association.
Gabbard, G. O. (2000). Disguise or Consent? Problems and Recommendations Concerning the Publication and Presentation of Clinical Material. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 81, 1071-1086.
Kantrowitz, J. L. (2004). Writing About Patients: I. Ways of Protecting Confidentiality and Analysts' Conflicts Over Choice of Method. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 52, 69-99.
Stimmel, B. (2013). The Conundrum of Confidentiality. Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis, 21(1), 84-106.
Stein, M. H. (1988). Writing About Psychoanalysis: II. Analysts Who Write, Patients Who Read. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 36, 393-408.
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âI feel so strongly about this [collective commemorative ritual]. I think that early psychoanalytic writing overemphasized the value of separation-individuation and pathologized the opposite. It's been through personal experience that I have come to see that in a different way with regard to Jewish commemorative ritual which takes place a couple of times a year. But also some experiences that I have had outside the realm of religion. The one that pops to mind was what President Biden did about a year after the first onslaught of the Covid epidemic. He had candles put all around the reflecting pool in Washington, one candle for every number of people who had died, and this was broadcast on television. I sat there and I wept over thousands of deaths, and then I began to think about the power of the experience of mourning with others. Despite the fact that we didn't all lose the same person, we had all lost somebody to this virus that was not as yet being managed. There was something incredibly powerful about that - in the same way for those who lost someone on 9/11 who go down to the Twin Towers and read the list of names every year. But we analysts have not theorized this stuff and I think it's time that we did.â
Episode Description: We begin with Joyce sharing with us her evolution from being a young analyst who was essentially ever available to her struggling patients to now being "more aware of the problematic edge to a kind of responsiveness that once felt simply necessary." We discuss what she calls analyst's 'secret delinquencies' - when the clinician intentionally withdraws from the patient into personal matters "so that the analyst becomes the single subject in the room." We consider post-treatment friendships between analyst and analysand and the nature of the evolution of the transference. Joyce shares with us her reflections on growing older and the mixed blessings it provides in terms of greater experience and clinical wisdom as well as a tempting "disengagement from an earlier sense of therapeutic discipline." We close with her suggestion that we consider the "dynamic function of commemorative ritual" not as a mere enactment but as a fulsome experience for "reworking old connections."
Our Guest:Joyce Slochower Ph.D., ABPP, is Professor Emerita of Psychology at Hunter College & the Graduate Center, CUNY; faculty, NYU Postdoctoral Program, Steven Mitchell Center, National Training Program of NIP, Philadelphia Center for Relational Studies & and PINC in San Francisco. She is the author of Holding and Psychoanalysis: A Relational Perspective (1996; & 2014) and Psychoanalytic Collisions (2006 & 2014), and co-Editor, with Lew Aron and Sue Grand, of âDe-idealizing relational theory: a Critique from Withinâ and âDecentering Relational Theory: a Comparative Critiqueâ (2018). Her new book, Psychoanalysis and the Unspoken, was released by Routledge in June 2024. She is in private practice in New York City.
Recommended Readings:
2024 Psychoanalysis and the Unspoken. NY, London: Routledge.
2024 Factions are Back. Journal of the American Psychoanal. Assn., 72(4): 561-582.
2018 Deidealizing Relational Theory: A Critique from Within. L. Aron, S. Grand, & J. Slochower, Eds. London: Routledge.
2017 Donât tell anyone. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 34: 195-200.
2014 Holding and Psychoanalysis: A Relational Perspective (2nd Edition). New York: Routledge.
2014 Psychoanalytic Collisions: (2nd Edition), New York: Routledge.
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"What Freud may have missed here is that the investment in the lost object is a much more reconstructive and integrative process. Itâs one where we remember all the stories that we have heard from the lost object - the repetitive stories about the childhood of the person or how they met significant others and all these stories are within us and revived, and we have questions. We think: âToo bad I never asked about this or thatâ and in activating these memories we also experience joy and we have a slow process of integration which is not necessarily about loss but about how continuous this person lives in our mind and that is a little bit the focus of this novel. It's in that sense a portrait of the mind and the process of mourning."
Episode Description: We begin with recognizing Cordelia's contributions to clinical and theoretical psychoanalysis in addition to her fiction writing. Her latest novel, Memento, has been described as "a journey through the labyrinth of the dream world" and invites the reader into the experiences of ambiguity, timelessness, and the absurd. On a theoretical level, Cordelia introduces the usefulness of the term lethe - the river in the underworld of Hades that causes people to forget their past when they drink from it. We discuss the distinction between libido and lethe and how they manifest themselves in the analytic setting. She emphasizes the importance of understanding aggression not as a stand-alone but as a container of further meaning. We close with her sharing her childhood story of wanting to please her father with her detailed knowledge - a sublimation that she continues to gain pleasure from to this day.
Our Guest: Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau, Ph.D., is a Training and Supervising Analyst and on the Faculty of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute as well as of the Swiss Psychoanalytic Society. Her area of expertise is metapsychology, in particular drive theory and its clinical applications. An updated version of her monograph of Freud's metapsychology, Life Drive & Death Drive, Libido & Lethe, is just being published by International Psychoanalytic Books. Her psychoanalytic books and articles have been published in many languages. She has also published three novels and edited a Freud Reader, an Essay Book, and three collections of Short Stories. She is the Chair of the IPA in Culture Committee and works in private practice in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Recommended Readings:
Freud, S (1917) Morning and Melancholia. In Freud, S. Standard Edition, Vol IVX, 239 258
Schmidt-Hellerau, C. (2018) Driven to Survive. Selected Papers Psychoanalysis. New York: International, Psychoanalytic Books.
Schmidt-Hellerau, C. (2020) Memoryâs Eyes. A New-York Oedipus Novel. Queens, NY: International Psychoanalytic Books.
Schmidt-Hellerau, C. (2023) Memento. A Novel in Dreams, Thoughts, and Images. New York: International Psychoanalytic Books.
Schmidt-Hellerau, C. (2024) Life Drive & Death Drive, Libido & Lethe. A clear road through Freud's metapsychology leading to helpful findings and new concepts. New York: International Psychoanalytic Books.
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"A number of art schools in the early 60s said: âClearly, it is the relationship of the painter to the medium that is the essence of painting - the painter must be emotionally present, and this is what we should instill in our students.â So they started to take away traditional training in art schools of representational drawing, of color theory, of figurative drawing, and what they ended up with was a generation of artists who were passionately throwing paint at canvases but unable to make art. The relationship between the fundamentals and intuition is very complicated. Nobody seemed to make the point that the great abstract expressionists were all trained for decades in traditional art schools. Thatâs what they came out of, and we see this in our analytic colleagues. Many of them are writing wonderfully at the moment, but they were trained as Kleinians or trained as ego psychologists, and they have that in their bone marrow. The kind of representational work with Apple [painting of his dog] that I am talking about when I say: I draw and I draw and I draw until I can put that aside, in analytic work I go to something basic in my training. For me it happens to be something that's close to Paul Gray, it's not where I'm going to stop, but I can use Paul Gray because that's what I was trained in - I will look for transference, I'll look for defense, I'll look for resistance and I'll go back and look for the derivatives of certain affects that are enacted in the relationship. I go over it and over it until I can relinquish it like I did with the painting of Apple, and then the intuitive comes in, but the intuitive is the reward at the end of decades of hard work."
Episode Description: We begin with Jon's mother's encouragement to paint by finding the bird's vitality through "becoming the bird." This leads us to consider the relationship between intuitive seeing and the "images which I might desire to produce." We discuss his notion of the aesthetic matrix which applies both to the analytic encounter as it does to the painter's relationship to his creative process. Jon shares with us his conviction that basic technique, whether artistic or analytic, must first become part of one's inner make-up before intuition can enlighten an obscure moment. He walks us through his creative process in the face of a blank canvas on the wall in front of him. He discusses the different uses of watercolor and oil paint and how their unique properties parallel his spontaneous engagement at various periods of an analysis. He presents a clinical encounter and how he was able to unpack a countertransference impasse through working on a painting. He closes with sharing an experience he had in his native South Africa which leads him to feel that "it's a blessing to be able to work in America."
Linked Paper and Websites:
The Aesthetic Matrix: A Conversation Between a Painter and a Psychoanalyst
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"The Holocaust seems to me to be the paradigmatic case of the acting out of unconscious fears, fantasies and projections onto another group that has ever occurred. It is the place therefore for psychoanalytic concepts in understanding anti-Semitism and racism more generally. Particularly in this context and thinking about Nazism and Nazi perpetrators is crucial, especially given what for me is so interesting about this is not just thinking as a historian and how can I borrow psychoanalytic ideas to enrich the thing I am interested in explaining. Also, because the history of psychoanalysis is bound up with this history. Itâs why I cited Fenichel and Loewenstein - the idea of psychoanalysis as this âJewish scienceâ, of the emigrates all persecuted by Nazism and how they restarted their lives in the US or elsewhere, the grappling with the German psychoanalysts after the war, the conflicts in the International Psychoanalytic Association after the war - these are all part of the history of the Holocaust. For me, this combination of the history of psychoanalysis as an endeavor, plus the usefulness of psychoanalytic concepts in trying to explain this phenomenon in the first place is a hugely enriching conversation.â
Episode Description: We begin with outlining the tension within the 'complemental series' where external events and intrapsychic registration of those events are both contributors to psychic difficulties. This applies to early as well as later life traumas. Dan's book invites us to additionally consider the conflicting psychoanalytic contributions to the question of what enables survival. All research points to the essential dimension of luck in enabling survival in concentration camps. As a historian he fleshes out the contrasting viewpoints of analysts Eddy de Wind and Viktor Frankl as they each describe what they felt were the essential psychological qualities that contributed to survival. De Wind and others point to a state of stupor, also characterized as estrangement or dissociation, as an essential state of mind to facilitate surviving in overwhelming circumstances. He shares with us why he as a historian feels that an analytic way of thinking is essential as "history without psychoanalysis cannot access aspects of the human experience that elude rational thought - and there are sadly many."
Our Guest: Dan Stone, PhD, is Professor of Modern History and director of the Holocaust Research Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London, where he has taught since 1999. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including, most recently: The Holocaust: An Unfinished History; Fate Unknown: Tracing the Missing after World War II and the Holocaust; and Psychoanalysis, Historiography and the Nazi Camps: Accounting for Survival. He is also the co-editor, with Mark Roseman, of volume I of the Cambridge History of the Holocaust. Dan chaired the academic advisory committee for the Imperial War Museum Londonâs redesigned Holocaust Galleries (opened in 2021) and is a member of the UKâs Advisory Group on Spoliation Matters.
Recommended Readings:
Martin S. Bergmann and Milton E. Jucovy (eds.), Generations of the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982)
Werner Bohleber, Destructiveness, Intersubjectivity, and Trauma: The Identity Crisis of Modern Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge, 2018)
Matt Ffytche and Daniel Pick (eds.), Psychoanalysis in the Age of Totalitarianism (London: Routledge, 2016)
Dagmar Herzog, Cold War Freud: Psychoanalysis in an Age of Catastrophes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017)
Emily A. Kuriloff, Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Legacy of the Third Reich: History, Memory, Tradition (New York: Routledge, 2014)
Dori Laub and Andreas Hamburger (eds.), Psychoanalysis and Holocaust Testimony: Unwanted Memories of Social Trauma (London: Routledge, 2017)
Steven A. Luel and Paul Marcus (eds.), Psychoanalytic Reflections on the Holocaust: Selected Essays (New York: Ktav, 1984)
Dan Stone, Psychologists in Auschwitz: Accounting for Survival (lecture at the German Historical Institute,( London, 11 July 2024):
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âThe historian [of the vineyard] gave us regular feedback on what she was finding, and she also brought in oral historians to take our own life histories. There's also a psychoanalytical point to be made here - you can take refuge in this scholarly exercise, going into archives and finding out things that happened hundreds of years ago, you can all too easily remove yourself from that: âThis is what happened long, long agoâ. But all of us on this farm, we had all lived through Apartheid. The oral historians who wanted to participate, we met over many sessions in my living room and the oral historians asked each of us who volunteered to participate to tell our stories of our lives and it was a real revelation to me. Despite my abstract awareness, the actual concrete listening to people who I was getting to know as individuals, to hear one after another account of the grinding poverty of what it actually is like to be a poor black farm worker in South Africa under Apartheid."
Episode Description: Mark shares with us his original intent to make a "citizen-sized contribution to the reconstruction" of South Africa through redressing the inequalities that formed a basis of his family's vineyard. He describes going through a painful process of enlightenment where good intentions themselves were insufficient to honor the historical processes that lived inside the owner and the tenant farmers who have been on the land for generations. Psychoanalytically informed, he consulted a historian and archeologist to, along with the farmers, dig into both the land and the lives of all involved. This led to a rebalancing of the pride/shame dynamic that had existed in the owner/workers. When faced with the inevitable question, "Must I give the farm back?" Mark discusses what he felt was the difference between âself-interestâ and âselfish-interestâ. He shares with us the efforts he took to enable the workers to become landowners, to become educated and also to become discoverers and messengers of their historically rich cuisine and music. He also details the ânot so happy ending; of these efforts as his farm has struggled financially under the burden of these considerable costs and government corruption. Things have turned around of late and there is reason to be optimistic for the long-term flourishing of his vineyard and his âcitizen sizedâ contribution to the well-being of those with whom he works.
Our Guest: Mark Solms, PhD is a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society and the American and South African Psychoanalytic Associations. He is Director of Neuropsychology at the Neuroscience Institute of the University of Cape Town. He is an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists. He has received numerous honors and awards, including the Sigourney Prize. He has published 350 scientific papers, and eight books, the latest being The Hidden Spring (Norton, 2021). He is the authorized editor and translator of the Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (24 volumes) and the forthcoming Complete Neuroscientific Works of Sigmund Freud (4 volumes).
Recommended Reading:
Solms, M. (2015) Psychoanalysis in Pursuit of Truth and Reconciliation on a South African Farm: Commentary on Gobodo-Madikizela. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 63:1147-1158
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"I think it is very interesting to open a debate and talk about this impact of the culture, this epoch, in the subjectivity and never losing the internal work within psychoanalysis, within our consulting room. So when I quote the Lacanian way of saying the âdeclination of the father's nameâ, I am talking about these times, this epoch, in which the reference and the subjectivity fails in respecting what we can call âthe authorityâ. But âthe authorityâ means not authoritarian systems - it is the law, it is the possibility of symbolization, and it's the way of being free too, because without some limits you cannot be creative, you cannot be open to symbolization. We are talking about how the âotherâ is working in this new social environment and how this evanescence of the fatherâs name is part of a situation that leaves open to the death drive."
Episode Description: We begin with recognizing the aspects of chaos that surround us in the real-world. Gabriela takes us from there into the chaos that often lives internally. She then addresses the clinical space which allows for its emergence through the dyad. She speaks of the evanescence of the father's name, authority vs authoritarianism, the 'halo of metaphors' and the nature of the analyst's 'open form' of clinical engagement. Gabriela describes analytic cure as "step by step, so that love and not revenge for pain predominate." She shares with us her early life involving her child analysis, her study of architecture and her now working as an analyst and a painter.
Linked Website: Gabriela Goldstein
Our Guest: Gabriela Goldstein, Ph.D. Past President of APA (2020-2023). Training analyst of Argentina Psychoanalytical Association (APA), and the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) and FEPAL. Doctor Ph.D in Psychology (Universidad del Salvador). Books include The Aesthetic Experience, Writings on Art and Psychoanalysis, and Art in Psychoanalysis. Co-author, among others, of the APA book Dreams and Perception APA Editorial and the book Dear Candidate Fred Busch edit. She has won the Mom-Baranger prize for best monograph in Psychoanalysis with The Aesthetics of Memory, Freud at the Acropolis and won the A. Storni prize for conceptual contributions in Psychoanalysis with Transience, or the Time of Beauty. She has served on many IPA and APA committees including the IPA and Culture Committee since 2007.
In addition, Gabriela is both an architect and a painter. Since 1985 she has taken part in solo painting exhibitions in Argentina as well as collective exhibitions in museums, art galleries, and cultural centers in Italy, France and Germany. She lives and works in Buenos Aires.
Recommended Readings:
Baranger, W. y M. (2012). La situaciĂłn analĂtica como campo dinĂĄmico. Revista de PsicoanĂĄlisis. 69(23), pp. 311-352
Bush, F. (editor) (2021) Dear Candidate: Analysts from Around the World Offer Personal Reflections on Psychoanalytic Training, Education and the Profession. Routledge. London and New York.
Freud, S. (1919) âThe Uncannyâ The Standard Edition of complete psychological works of S. Freud, V 17
Goldstein, G (2013) Art in Psychoanalysis, A Contemporary Approach to Creativity and Analytic Practice, Karnak-IPA
Goldstein G. (2022): âLa no respuesta del Otro: algunas cuestiones sobre la curaâ Revista de PsicoanĂĄlisis de la AsociaciĂłn PsicoanalĂtica Argentina, LXXIX-3-4
Goldstein, G (2022): âLos misterios de la creaciĂłn: Entre cuerpo y culturaâ, Revista Uruguaya de PsicoanĂĄlisis ( on -line 135)
Mc Dougall, Andre, J., De MÂŽUzan, Et all,(2010) El artista y el Psicoanalista Ed. Nueva Vision
Winnicott, D.W. (1978). Winnicott, D.W., Green. A, Mannoni, O, Pontalis; J-B y otros
Winnicott, D. W. (1974): âFear of breakdownâ Int. Rev. of Psychoanalysis. (1974) l, 103
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âI was very interested in the unspoken thoughts and feelings of the patient because I think one of the things about free association is that in the beginning most of what's going on with the patient is unsaid. As the analysis evolves more and more of the unspoken becomes spoken and more of it becomes at the center of the analytic space. I wanted to show the evolution of the unsaid. At the beginning of the book, the unsaid is more than the said, and then it evolves as the analysis goes on.â
Episode Description: We begin discussing Robertaâs first career as a sociologist which she described as an effort to disengage from her self-focused ruminations. She pursued psychoanalytic training after receiving her PhD in sociology. She also continued as a writer of both fiction and non-fiction. Both genres represented her personal as well as other-oriented reflections. Her book Our Time is Up is likewise a combined memoir and novel â she both is and isnât the young woman 'Rose' whose analysis with âJoanâ forms the essence of this work. She reads sections from the book that describe her first meeting with her analyst as well as when the analystâs illness is introduced into their treatment. The book concludes with 'Rose' saying, âFrida Kahlo said about Diego Rivera, âHe took me shattered and returned me in one piece, whole.â I could say the same thing about Joan.â
Our Guest: Roberta Satow is a practicing psychoanalyst in Washington, CT; a senior member of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis and Professor Emerita of Sociology at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. In addition to her non-fiction books Gender and Social Life and Doing the Right Thing: Taking Care of Your Elderly Parents Even if They Didnât Take Care of You, she has written two novels, Two Sisters of Coyoacan and Our Time is Up. Dr. Satow also writes blogs on Psychology Today and psychology.net.
Recommended Readings:
Roberta Satow, Our Time is Up, IPBooks, 2024.
Roberta Satow, Two Sisters of Coyoacan, 2017.
Roberta Satow, Doing the Right Thing: Taking Care of Your Elderly Parents Even if They Didnât Take Care of You (Tarcher/Penguin 2006).
Roberta Satow, Psychology Today Blog.
Roberta Satow, Psychotherapy Blog
Roberta Satow, A Case of Severe Penis Envy: The Convergence of Cultural and Individual Intra-Psychic Factors, Journal of the American Acad. of Psychoan. October 1983. -
âThere was a lot of dilemma, and I wasn't able to definitely deal with the sudden knowledge of my cancer and to be able to impart that information in a more containing and structured manner so that my patients can be held even in that situation. But the consciousness was there about how to go about it. Whenever I was asked by the patient directly, or if the necessity arose where the hospital needed to impart the information, I did agree later that they can let them know about the cancer situation, and the patient can connect to me directly. When I was in a better stage, I knew how to deal with it, but that was months later. I found that the honest submission was more helpful for me and for the patient because when certain larger than life events happen, it probably connects us in a more humble way to the community - that the analyst as healer is not supreme above all of this, and who can also be affected with such aspects of life."
Episode Description: We begin with honoring the clinical difference between fantasies of physical vulnerability from real life mortal danger. Jhuma shares with us her medical journey that entailed suddenly receiving a diagnosis of cancer. She was immediately hospitalized and faced with, among other challenges, the question of how to inform her patients. She describes her fragility and uncertainty and the various engagements she was able to arrange. We discuss the meanings of "honest submission," patient's curiosity, and their aggression and tenderness towards her. She elaborates on the presence of the Hindu notion of an afterlife and her post-hospital awareness that âthe clinical becomes vast" - this refers to the importance of bringing analytic sensibilities to the many venues that are 'off the couch'. We close with her sharing clinical vignettes demonstrating how even real-life current trauma can meaningfully awaken a patient's awareness of their forgotten painful past.
Our Guest: Jhuma Basak is a Training & Supervising Psychoanalyst of the Indian Psychoanalytical Society and member of the International Psychoanalytical Association. She holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from the Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan. She has specific interest in culture & gender in psychoanalysis. She has publications in Japanese, Italian, French and Spanish. Over the past 20 years, she has presented at various IPA Congresses, along with the Keynote for the 53rd IPA Congress in Cartagena in 2023. Other presentations were at the Washington Baltimore Centre for Psychoanalysis, Hakuoh University, and Kyushu University. She is the co-editor of the book Psychoanalytic & Socio-Cultural Perspectives on Women in India and editor of Sculpting Psychoanalysis in India â Sudhir Kakar. Jhuma has been the past Co-Chair of the Asia Committee on Women & Psychoanalysis and continues to be its consultant.
Reading List:
Bernstein, Stephen (2024): The Making of the IPA Podcast: Psychoanalysis On & Off the Couch. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, Vol.44. No.2, 166-177.
Fajardo, B (2001): Life-Threatening Illness in the Analyst. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. 49:569-586.
Feinsilver, David (1998): The Therapist as a Person Facing Death: The Hardest of External Realities and Therapeutic Action. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 79: 1131-1150
Fieldsteel, N. D. (1989): Analysts' expressed attitudes toward dealing with death and illness. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 25 (3): 427-432 o
Halpert, Eugene (1982): When the Analyst is Chronically Ill or Dying. Psychoanal. Q., (51):372-389.
Kitayama, O. (1998) Transience: Its Beauty and Danger. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 79:937-942.
Masur, Corinne (ed) (2018): Flirting with Death: Psychoanalysts Consider Mortality. Routledge.
Rosner, Stanley (1986): The Seriously Ill or Dying Analyst & the Limits of Neutrality. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 5(4), 357-371
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"In my own two analyses, I had observed such transformations for me in a very impressive way. I started my own analysis after the traumatic death of my sister when I was 22 years old. At that time, I had a breakdown, and I suffered from severe depressive and psychosomatic symptoms and sleep disorders but also from terrible nightmares that haunted me almost every night. Fortunately, my two analyses did change my depressive and psychosomatic symptoms, but what was at least as important for me, subjectively, was the change in my dreams, including the manifest dream content. The nightmares became less frequent; I was hardly in the position of an observer anymore but actively involved in the dream event. I was less alone in the dream but accompanied by people close to me and was more often able to solve the problems and conflicts which arose in the dream. In addition, the dreams were no longer predominantly characterized by fear and death anxiety but a whole range of emotions emerged. Towards the end of my second analysis, I will never forget that I had the only dream of my life from which I woke up because I was laughing out loud."
Episode Description: We begin with acknowledging the ambivalence that many analysts have towards research. It is seen as distant from the sharing of subjectivities that draw many to our field. Marianne honors the unique transference reliving and then remembering that is central to the analytic encounter and from that position suggests ways that it can be researched. She presents a patient whose manifest dreams were studied over the course of treatment along with his sleep laboratory data. She notes how the stability of the analyst's presence is essential but not sufficient to maximize therapeutic benefit. We discuss the role of theory, the controversy over approaching the veridical past and the seductions of simplified treatments. Marianne closes by sharing her deep respect for the unconscious and how psychoanalysts are living in "rich times of pluralism."
Linked Episode:
https://ipaoffthecouch.org/2019/07/13/episode-10-refugees-germany-psychoanalysis/
Our Guest: Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber, Prof. Dr. phil, director of the Sigmund-Freud-Institut in Frankfurt Germany (2001-2016), professor for psychoanalysis at the University of Kassel, Senior Research Fellow at the University Medicine in Mainz. She is a training analyst of the German Psychoanalytical Association (DPV) and the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). She has served as the Chair of the Research Subcommittees for Clinical, Conceptual, Epistemological and Historical Research of the IPA (2001-2009), Vice Chair for Europe of the Research Board der IPA (2010-2021); Chair of the IPA Subcommittee for Migration and Refugees 2018/19 and since then member of the committee. She received the Mary Sigourney Award 2016, the Haskell Norman Prize for Excellence in Psychoanalysis 2017, the Robert S. Wallerstein Fellowship (2022-2027) and the IPAâs Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award, 2023. Her research fields are clinical and extra-clinical research in psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic developmental research, prevention studies, interdisciplinary dialogue between psychoanalysis and literature, educational sciences and the neurosciences.
Recommended Readings:
Leuzinger-Bohleber, M. (2008): Biographical truths and their clinical consequences: Understanding âembodied memoriesâ in a third psychoanalysis with a traumatized patient recovered from serve poliomyelitis. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 89: 1165-1187.
Leuzinger-Bohleber, M. (2015): Working with severely traumatized, chronically depressed analysands. In: The International Journal of Psychoanalysis Volume 96, Issue 3, June 2015, Pages: 611-636.
Bohleber, W., Leuzinger-Bohleber, M. (2016): The Special Problem of Interpretation in the Treatment of Traumatized Patients. In: Psychoanalytic Inquiry 36: 60-76, 2016.
Fischmann, T., Ambresin, G., Leuzinger-Bohleber, M. (2021): Manifest dreams in psychoanalytic treatment. A psychoanalytic outcome measure. Frontiers in Psychology, doi: 10,3389/fpsyg, 2021.678440.
Leuzinger-Bohleber, M., Donié, M., Wichelmann, J., Ambresin, G., & Fischmann, T. (2023). Changes in dreams - the development of a dream-transformation scale in psychoanalysis with chronically depressed, early traumatized patients. The Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review, 46:1-2, 82-93. doi:10.1080/01062301.2023.2297116
Fischmann, T., and Leuzinger-Bohleber, M.: Dreams, Memories, and TraumaâA search for transformations in psychoanalysis (in press).
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"I don't know what to do about this because we do have to use clinical material. It's the best tried and true method in which to inculcate analytic thinking in our students and supervises. On the other hand, we are so indebted to our patients and their trust in us and our responsibilities as ethical practitioners not to divulge their privacy. Principles are what we're trying to teach, we're not trying to teach people, we are not trying to teach that person, the case is not what we are teaching, but the principles in the case."
Episode Description: We begin by acknowledging the tension between our commitment to patient confidentiality and our need to learn, teach and advance our field through the sharing of intimate information. We discuss the difference between using clinical examples to reveal particular individuals as opposed to illustrating principles in psychoanalysis. Barbara describes the well-known case of a famous author whose analyst revealed identifiable details of his analysis in a publication. She shares why she feels that co-writing with one's analyst about one's treatment is problematic - "it stretches the concept of co-construction to a clinical breaking point." We consider how presenting a patient publicly impacts the analyst's interiority and lives on in the treatment. We close with recognizing the challenge of confidentiality and appreciating "the insuperable predicament posed by the mutually exclusive imperatives of protecting patient privacy and educating the next generation, as well as ourselves. Remembering that ego ideals are only approximations is our most effective balm."
Our Guest: Barbara Stimmel, PhD, is an adult and child psychoanalyst in New York city where she has practiced for the past several decades. She teaches and supervises widely and has contributed to psychoanalytic journals as well as editing and contributing chapters in several books. She has also presented papers, discussion groups and workshops in the wide world of psychoanalysis. She has held offices in psychoanalytic institutions on the local, national, and international level. Barbara is involved at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York, where she sits on committees, has taught residents, and serves on the Palliative Care team. She is on the Presidentâs Council of Sanctuary for Families, an organization devoted to women and families surviving domestic violence and trafficking. She also sits on the Shakespeare Council of The Public Theatre in New York. This diversity of interests is reflected in the variety of topics within psychoanalysis and psychotherapy about which she has written, presented, and taught. In some sense, confidentiality is part and parcel of any clinical topic, regardless of theory and patient population.
Recommended Readings:
Crastnopol, M. (1999). The analyst's professional self as a third influence on the dyad: When the analyst writes about the treatment. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 9, 445-470.
Gabbard, G. O. (1997). Case histories and ««confidentiality»». International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 78, 820-821.
Gabbard, G. O. (2000). Disguise or consent? Problems and recommendations concerning the publication and presentation of clinical material. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 81, 1071-1086.
Kantrowitz, J. L. (2004a). Writing about patients: I. Ways of protecting ««confidentiality»» and analysts' conflicts over choice of method. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 52, 69-99.
Kanwal, G. (2024) To Reveal or not to Reveal, That is the Wrong Question: Thoughts about Clinical Writing in Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Quarterly 93:135-156.
Stein, M. H. (1988b). Writing about psychoanalysis: II. Analysts who write, patients who read. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 36, 393-408.
Stimmel, B. (2013). The Conundrum of Confidentiality. Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis,21(1):84-106
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"During the whole course of your [psychoanalytic] training, you are laying on the couch and have your personal analysis and beforehand you don't know where it will lead you. You start to discover corners of your unconscious psyche which you don't want, which you are not so eager to explore. This accompanies you during the whole course of training, always confronted with your own psyche and with not-yet-discovered areas of your internal world - this is really an adventurous journey. And you do the same with your patients. It is not that you treat diseases with certain symptoms, but you delve deeply into their souls and this is a shared enterprise. Doing psychoanalysis you are confronted with your own psyche, you are confronted with the psyche of the patient too. This confronts you with surprises, sometimes deep anxieties and terrors that youâve never known beforehand. So I think the comparison of psychoanalytic training of starting a journey with a sailing ship into the vast areas of the ocean, itâs a good example, you will never know exactly what will be the next day or what you will be confronted with."
Episode Description: We begin with recognizing two aspects of psychoanalytic training - the adventurous and the immersive. These aspects, in addition to the many challenges in the training, can offer the unique opportunity to come to know the depths of the human experience. We discuss the various theoretical models currently available and how they can both enrich and distract from the core competencies that allow for a depth treatment. We consider whether different types of patients need different types of interventions, the centrality of neutrality, and the value and impossibility of free association. Eike addresses the unfortunate conflation of abstinence and unfriendliness, and we consider the clinical moment of receiving a gift from a patient. We close with his sharing his psychoanalytic journey that began in mathematics and then to medicine and then to psychoanalysis.
Our Guest:
Dr. Eike Hinze is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in Berlin. He did his psychoanalytic training at the Berlin Karl-Abraham-Institute and works in his private practice. At present he is chair of training in the institute. One of his main areas of interest is the psychoanalytic treatment of elderly patients. For decades he has been active in the training of future psychoanalysts. For more than 15 years, he has been working in the Board of the Psychoanalytic Institute for Eastern Europe the objective of which was the development and furthering of psychoanalysis in Eastern Europe. He is co-author of a recently published book studying commonalities and differences between different styles of performing psychoanalysis.
Recommended Readings:
Ch. Brenner (1982) The Mind in Conflict. International Universities Press. New York.
F. Bush (editor) (2021) Dear Candidate: Analysts from Around the World Offer Personal Reflections on Psychoanalytic Training, Education and the Profession. Routledge. London and New York.
Ferro (2002) In the Analystâs Consulting Room. Taylor & Francis. New York.
E. Hinze (2015) What do we learn in psychoanalytic training? Int J Psychoanal 96:755-771.
J.-M. Quinodoz (1993) The Taming of Solitude. Routledge, London and New York.
J.-M. Quinodoz (2004) Reading Freud. A Chronological Exploration of Freudâs Writings. Routledge. London and New York.
D. Tuckett, E. Allison, O. Bonard, G. Bruns, A. Christopoulos, M. Diercks. E. Hinze, M. Linardos, M. Sebek (2024) Knowing What Psychoanalysts Do and Doing What Psychoanalysts Know. Rowman & Littlefield. Lanham. Boulder. New York. London.
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