“We all have misattunements - but when we are present together, sometimes we can have a misattunement with our words or our tone of voice, but we may not have a misattunement of our bodies, so we’re missing that one element when we are remote.”

 

Description: Dr. Harvey Schwartz welcomes Dr. Cindi Palman to the podcast. Dr. Palman completed her medical education at the University of Pennsylvania and her psychiatric residency training at Yale University. She had always maintained the dream of becoming a psychoanalyst. After her residency she moved to the west coast. There, life challenges and sudden tragedy interfered with her professional plans. It was later in life with the encouragement of a mentor that she finally pursued her goal of becoming a psychoanalyst. As we will hear in today’s conversation, her personal growth has enabled her to contribute to her professional community and to her patients.

 

In today’s episode Dr. Palman discusses the impact of working remotely on her psychoanalytic training and clinical work.

 

Key takeaways:

[6:58] Dr. Palman shares her current experience as a psychoanalytic candidate.

[9:02] Dr. Palman talks about what losing her office, her classmates, and the whole in-person experience has meant to her.

[11:23] How can psychoanalysts create a therapeutic space without physical presence?

[12:13] Dr. Palman talks about the candidate class she belongs to and how COVID has affected her as well as her classmates.

[15:00] Can you have unconscious communication over the internet?

[16:14] Dr. Palman discusses the pervasive experience of mourning that affects herself and her patients.

[18:31] Dr. Palman shares a clinical example.

[20:36] Dr. Palman shares the difference between the work with her on-going cases and a new case that started remotely during the pandemic.

[24.58] The concern of the analysand about the analyst's wellbeing.

[27:13] In some ways, remote work allows more denial of outside reality.

[28:02] Dr. Palman talks about her professional trajectory.

 

Mentioned in this episode:

IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org