Psychoanalysis On and Off the Couch

"My dad also revealed a lot of himself in his writing which made it difficult for me, because I also had the sense that I was looking into a private space that was his own. I wasn´t sure I really wanted to see it because it wasn´t always very nice and it wasn´t always very wholesome - most of the time it was very complicated.” (SM)

 

“I grew up with a very keen interest in my father as a result of the position he held as a writer and as a psychoanalyst, while my mother also was a psychoanalyst. It made me very attentive to learning as much as I could about this very powerful man who had tremendous amounts of influence often without saying anything." (JW)

 

Description: Dr. Harvey Schwartz welcomes Susan Mailer and Dr. Joan Wheelis to today’s episode. They are both psychoanalysts who wrote memoirs which are organized around their relationships with their famous fathers, Susan being the daughter of Norman Mailer and Joan’s father being Allan Wheelis, a well known psychoanalyst and writer.

 

Susan and Joan speak about the meaning of memory, as they acknowledge that what they have written is a construction of their lives. Both recognize that writing helped as a piece of their self-analysis, to evolve their personal narrative and their internal relationships with their family members.

 

Susan Mailer was born in 1949 and is Norman Mailer’s firstborn. She grew up between Mexico City and New York, between her mother and her father. She graduated from Barnard College in 1971 and then moved to Santiago with her Chilean husband, where she became a psychoanalyst in the early ’90s. Since then she has been very active in the Chilean Psychoanalytic Organization. She has written on a variety of topics published in Latin American psychoanalytic journals where she teaches, supervises, and has a private practice in Santiago. Her book was published in 2019 and is called In Another Place: With and Without My Father Norman Mailer.

 

Dr. Joan Wheelis is a psychiatrist and a Training and Supervising psychoanalysts at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society & Institute. She is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and is on the clinical faculty of the combined MGH/McLean Adult Psychiatry Residency Training Program. Joan is the founder and the director of an outpatient treatment facility called Two Brattle Center and has a private practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her memoir, published in 2019, is called The Known, The Secret, The Forgotten: A Memoir.

 

Key takeaways:

[8:22] The similarities in Joan’s and Susan’s childhoods.

[9:01] Joan talks about her early years growing with both of her parents being psychoanalysts.

[10:58] Joan confesses not having a keen interest in what her father did while she was young but rather felt resentment.

[13:21] Joan shares how she received a sort of “oppressive” attention from her parents which resulted in her feeling watched all the time.

[14:23] Joan and Susan talk about their fathers’ relationships with fame and public speaking.

[15:00] Susan and Joan talk about their career choice.

[17:09] Joan and Susan share about dealing with the doubts about opening-up while writing their memoirs.

[19:33] The memoirs Joan and Susan wrote are not literally accurate since they don’t know for sure what happened while they were young.

[20:45] Memory is a reconstruction of stories and images.

[22:28] Joan shares her view about what the role of psychoanalysis is.

[23:07] Susan talks about how she struggled writing the memoir since she never considered herself a writer.

[24:23] Susan shares her experience of growing up around writers and artists.

[27:00] Susan discloses the catalyst for her to start writing.

[28:55] Joan talks about the piece she wrote for her father’s memorial.

[30:58] Joan and Susan talk about the reactions of their colleagues.

[33:54] It is not so common for psychoanalysts to share so much about themselves.

[35:02] Did writing a memoir changed their practices?

[36:20] Is writing a self-analysis?

[41:49] Joan talks about the relief of moving away from her parents.

 

Mentioned in this episode:

IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org

 

Recommended Readings:

In Another Place: With and Without My Father Norman Mailer, Susan Mailer

 

The Known, The Secret, The Forgotten: A Memoir. John Wheelis, MD

 

“There is a history of psychoanalysis and its relationship with political thought and even political action. There is clearly quite a strong historical tradition of a sort of rebelliousness on the part of psychoanalysis or at least a challenge to social mores, which I see as beginning right from the start and certainly as early as Freud’s 1908 paper on ‘Civilized’ Sexual Morality. He has the words ‘civilized’ in inverted commas because what he’s using psychoanalysis for there is to say something deeply hypocritical about the sexual mores of his day and that this is causing trouble.”

 

Description: Dr. Harvey Schwartz welcomes Professor Stephen Frosh. Stephen Frosh is a Professor in the Department of Psychosocial Studies (which he founded) at Birkbeck, University of London. He was Pro-Vice-Master of Birkbeck from 2003 to 2017, a senior management position in which he was responsible at various times for teaching and learning, research and internationalisation in the university. Stephen’s background is in academic and clinical psychology, and he was a consultant clinical psychologist at the Tavistock Clinic. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Academic Associate at the British Psychoanalytical Society, a founding member of the Association of Psycho-social studies, and an Honorary Member of the Institute of Group Analysis.

 

As you will hear in today’s conversation Stephen is remarkably well versed in the psychoanalytic literature. We discuss Stephen´s contention that the “unconscious is barbaric,” that Freud’s famous fort-da observation may be meaningfully applied to the place of psychoanalysis in our culture and that Steven Reich’s musical piece “Different Trains” serves as a profound commentary on the witnessing of trauma.

 

Key takeaways:

[9:15] Stephen explains the meaning of his quote “The unconscious of psychoanalysis is barbaric.”

[12:30] Stephen shares his view on Freud as a democrat.

[15:34] Stephen talks about the political tension that psychoanalysts went through in South America.

[16:45] Stephen comments on the alliance between Blacks and Jews, who were both characterized by the colonials as barbaric.

[19:16] The relationship between psychoanalysis and social movements.

[20:05] Stephen talks about the structure of traditional Freudian psychoanalysis and how powerful it was for its time.

[22:54] Freud’s aspiration was to bring into reason that which was unreasonable and could cause damage, not to destroy it but, on the contrary, to put it to good use.

[24:22] Stephen talks about  fort-da as an example of how psychoanalysis works in relation to culture.

[28:02] Stephen discusses how Freud talked about and experienced the human tendency of repeating disturbing and even traumatic events.

[32:37] The repetition compulsion : Even when you think a piece of work is done it finds some way to come back.

[34:20] Stephen talks about the question of witnessing.

[36:05] The history of trauma.

[38:15] Stephen shares the impact of being listened to but not heard on a victim of trauma.

[42:12] Stephen shares his reflections on a particular piece of music as they relate to the meaning of witnessing and trauma that is included in his most recent book: Those who come after.

[48:06] Stephen talks about himself and what brought him to the point where he is today.

[53:55] Where we are today in regards to COVID according to Stephen.

 

Mentioned in this episode:

IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org 

 

Recommended Readings:

Frosh, S. (2019) Those who come after. London: Palgrave.

 

Frosh, S. (2020) Psychoanalysis as Decolonial Judaism. Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society, 25(2), 174-193.

 

Frosh, S. (2018) Psychoanalysis, Politics, and Society: What Remains Radical in Psychoanalysis? In R. Gipps and M. Lacewing (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

Butler, J. (2020) The Force of Nonviolence. London: Verso.

 

Khanna, R. (2004) Dark Continents: Psychoanalysis and Colonialism. Durham: Duke University Press.

 

Zaretsky, E. (2015) Political Freud. New York: Columbia University Press.

“There is a musicality at the core of our emotional or affective life. It really goes back to early mother-infant communications or innate musicality, or what’s called ‘communicative musicality’ – the to-and-fro of the dynamic between mother and baby as really the core, the scaffolding of our emotional life.” 

 

Description: Dr.Harvey Schwartz welcomes Dr. Roger Kennedy to today’s episode. Dr. Kennedy is a training and supervising analyst and past President of the British Psychoanalytical Society. He is also a child and adolescent psychiatrist and is now the Medical Director of the Child and Family Practice in London, which is a private multidisciplinary clinic where he and his staff work with children, families, and parents, specializing in children with complex needs.  

 

Dr. Kennedy has written 14 books and today the focus is on his latest, which is called The Power of Music: Psychoanalytic Explorations. Dr. Kennedy’s breadth of interests is remarkable. He has written on psychoanalysis and history, on tolerating strangers in intolerant times, short stories based on his work with analysands, and he has also written on psychotherapists as expert witnesses in working with people with a history of childhood abuse. 

 

In today’s conversation, Dr. Kennedy elaborates the similarities and differences in listening to music and listening to analytic material. He provides a clinical example where he enabled a patient to hear the way she sounded which became a vital part of her growing self-awareness and with that, she accessed the freedom to sound different and to tune in to more authentic aspects of herself. 

  

Key takeaways: 

[8:34] Dr. Kennedy explains how the musical and the psychoanalytic world inform each other. 

[10:45] Is listening to music a narcissistic experience for the listener? 

[12:57] Dr. Kennedy dives deep into the meaning of the listening experience. 

[14:45] When you hear what the patient has to say, you can hear the rhythms, and what lays between the lines. 

[16:37] Sounds bring people together. 

[18:14] Dr. Kennedy shares the reason why he often closes his eyes while listening to patients. 

[18:52] Dr. Kennedy’s listening style has changed over the years. 

[20:01] Dr. Kennedy describes the art of improvisation. 

[21:22] Dr. Kennedy shares a clinical example. 

[26:09] Dr. Kennedy talks about how he developed a passion for music. 

[31:36] The unique experience of treating musicians. 

[33:45] The delicate balance between destructiveness and creativeness. 

[34:55] Dr. Schwartz shares a paragraph from Dr. Kennedy’s writings.  

 

Mentioned in this episode: 

IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org   

 

Recommended Readings: 

Graf, M. (1947), From Beethoven to Shostakovich: The Psychology of the Composing Process New York: Greenwood, 1969. 

 

Kennedy, R. (2014), The Psychic Home: Psychoanalysis, Consciousness and the Human Soul London and New York: Routledge. 

 

Lombardi, R. (2008), Time, Music, and Reverie. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 56:1191-1211. 

 

Nagel, J. (2013), Melodies of the Mind: Connections Between Psychoanalysis and Music London and New York: Routledge. 

 

Wigglesworth, M. (2018), The Silent Musician: Why Conducting Matters London: Faber and Faber. 

“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

"One of Freud’s letters to Ferenczi is a letter dated October 1918, just before the truce that ended World War I. And in this letter, Freud was responding to Ferenczi’s lament over the demise and disintegration of the monarchy, and his advice to Ferenczi went like this: “Withdraw your libido from your fatherland in a timely fashion and shelter it in psychoanalysis or else you will have to feel uncomfortable."

 

Description: Dr. Steven Rolfe welcomes Dr. Eran Rolnik to today’s podcast. Dr. Rolnik is a training and supervising analyst at the Israel Psychoanalytic Society. A psychiatrist and historian, Dr. Rolnik is on the faculty at Tel-Aviv University, faculty of Humanities and Tel-Aviv University School of Post-graduate Training in Psychotherapy at the Faculty of Medicine. He is on the faculty of the Max Eitingon Institute for Psychoanalysis. He has authored, edited, coedited, and translated more than twenty books and has over seventy peer-review journal papers. He recently edited and translated from German a volume of Freud’s letters; a non-fiction best seller in Israel.

 

In this episode, Dr. Rolnik shares how Freud’s theory achieved its greatest development during times of crisis and suggests how Freud’s teachings and letters can help us analyze our current reality during a pandemic.

 

Key takeaways:

[4:43] Dr. Eran Rolnik talks about the current situation in Israel.

[9:55] Dr. Rolnik shares his recent publication of Freud’s letters.

[12:20] Psychoanalysis was viewed as an antidote to the discontent with modern political life.

[15:18] We often fail to take notice of the impact of identification regarding our personal analytic thinking and the functioning of our institutions.

[18:45] Dr. Rolnik shares how patients are currently adapting to treatment in Israel.

[20:56] Dr. Rolnik shares an example of the underlying meaning of the pandemic to a patient

[28:20] Does reality ever determine it is time to stop seeing patients?

[32:25] Psychoanalysis is not just a profession, it is a confession.

[34:07] In our currently reality it is tempting to focus on the real and neglect the symbolic.

[35:01] How did Freud handle times of extreme anxiety and fear and how has this affected theory?

[39:48] Freud was concerned with the survival of psychoanalysis rather than with his personal survival.

 

Mentioned in this episode:

IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org

 

Recommended Readings:

Rolnik, Eran J. 2020. Epistolary Epiphanies: Freud as a Letter Writer In: Freud, Berggasse 19 The Origin of Psychoanalysis. Pessler, M.& Finzi D. Eds. pp. 242-249 (Hatje Cantz, Berlin)

 

Rolnik, Eran J. (2019) Sigmund Freud's Letters (Heb.) Modan Publishers.

 

Rolnik, E.J. (2015). Before Babel: Reflections on Reading and Translating Freud. Psychoanal Q., 84(2):307-330.

 

Rolnik, Eran, J. (2012). Freud in Zion: Psychoanalysis and the Making of Modern Jewish Identity (Karnac London).

 

Rolnik, E.J. (2008). “Why is it that I See Everything Differently?” Reading a 1933 Letter from Paula Heimann to Theodor Reik. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 56(2):409-430.

 

Rolnik, E.J. (2001). Between Memory and Desire: From History to Psychoanalysis and Back. Psychoanal. Hist., 3(2):129-151

"There are things that arise in later life that have to do with the conflict of cultures that arises when you’re dealing with someone who either is an immigrant or is the child of immigrants. This is also the case with someone who comes from a family in the U.S. which is deeply conservative and religious and later breaks with that and subscribes to what is called a more cosmopolitan culture. These are things that arise in later life - these are conflicts with their own cultural background and with the people who matter most to them"

 

Description: Dr. Harvey Schwartz welcomes Dr. Robert Paul to today’s episode. Dr. Paul is well known for having three careers; he has been Dean at Emory College, he is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Anthropology and Interdisciplinary Studies at Emory, and is also a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the Emory University Psychoanalytic Institute. He is also a prolific writer and has served on multiple editorial boards.

 

In today’s episode, Dr. Paul discusses how these three careers have been integrated for him. As Dean, Dr. Paul saw his analytic patients early in the morning which grounded him. It deepened his ability to bring his analytic mindset to the challenging administrative work that he faced the rest of the day. As an anthropologist, Dr. Paul has been able to bring his study of cultures to his analytic listening and has given him an added capacity to work with people from foreign cultures as they approach the analytic task.

 

This conversation reveals the power of introducing new experiences for mentees, faculty, students and patients. Dr. Paul describes his mentor and how he introduced him to the opportunity to move forward in his life. In turn, Dr. Paul describes how he mentored others and inspired them to also move forward in their various careers and interests.

 

Key takeaways:

[7:25] Dr. Schwartz talks about the intersection between anthropology and psychoanalysis.

[9:16] Dr. Paul shares his experience being a dean and a psychoanalyst.

[14:10] Dr. Paul builds bridges between anthropology and psychoanalysis.

[16:10] How does Dr. Paul’s work as an anthropologist interface with his work as an analyst?

[19:38] Dr. Paul talks about the similarities and differences between the Buddhist and the analytic method.

[24:07] How being an anthropologist adds to Dr. Paul’s clinical listening.

[26:00] Dr. Paul dives deep into the conflict of cultures.

[29:28] Dr. Paul shares a clinical example.

[32:18] The difference between not being able to say certain things and believing you cannot think about them.

[33:25] Dr. Paul shares how he integrates his several different passions and the role his mentor had on his career choices.

[39:04] The impact analysts have on the world.

 

Mentioned in this episode:

IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org

 

Recommended Readings:

 

On 'The Optimal Structure for Psychoanalytic Education': Commentary of Wallerstein. JAPA 55(3): 991 – 997. 2007. Paul, Robert A.

 

Is the Nature of Psychoanalytic Thinking and Practice (e.g.) in regard to Sexuality Determined by Extra-Analytic, Social and Cultural Development: Sexuality: Biological Fact or Cultural Construction? The View from Dual Inheritance Theory. IJP 97(3): 823 – 837.2016. Paul Robert A.

 

Anthropology. In Salman Akhtar and Stuart Twemlow, Eds., Textbook of Applied Psychoanalysis, London and New York: Routledge., pp. 3 – 12. 2018. Paul, Robert A.

.

Changing Attitudes About Sex. In Vaia Tsolas and Christine Anzieu-Premmereur, On the Body: A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body in Today's World. London and New York, Routledge, pp. 28 – 41. 2018. Paul, Robert A.

 

Personal Feeling: Psychoanalysis, Anthropology, and 'Individuology'; Book Review Essay. JAPA 68(4). Currently available on-line, forthcoming soon in print. 2020. Paul, Robert A.

"The goal is to find magic which is not psychotic, to find a form of magic which isn’t simply the denial of reality. The nonpsychotic form of magic is play. The analyst and the patient have to learn to be able to play together in that transitional realm."

 

Description: Dr. Harvey Schwartz welcomes Dr. Joel Whitebook. Dr. Whitebook is a philosopher and a psychoanalyst and is on the faculty of the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research where he was the Director of the University’s Psychoanalytic Studies Program. Dr. Whitebook’s research centers on the attempt to integrate psychoanalysis and critical theory in the tradition of the Frankfurt School. Dr. Whitebook is  widely published but is mostly known for his masterwork, Freud: An Intellectual Biography. In this work he brings together his philosophical and psychoanalytic ear and insightfulness to provide an overview and a deep understanding of Freud’s development.

 

In today’s conversation, Drs. Whitebook and Schwartz speak about magic in the history of psychoanalysis, and as it relates to religion, transference, play, and the healing process in general. Enjoy this simply fascinating talk.

 

Key takeaways:

[9:44] Dr. Whitebook talks about what he learned about magic.

[10:28] Enlightenment, magic, and disenchantment.

[14:05] Dr. Whitebook talks about the often denied origins of psychoanalysis.

[15:48] Dr. Whitebook explains the way in which psychoanalysis emerged out of hypnosis.

[17:03] Hypnosis is an example of transference.

[18:15] Psychoanalysis was born because of the way it repudiated suggestion.

[19:55] Drs. Whitebook and Schwartz explore the concept of analytic magic/transference/love.

[21:50] Transference and countertransference as vehicles for insight.

[23:05] Enactment as a way of producing the material that then can be analyzed to achieve  insight.

[25:01] Dr. Winnicott’s criticism of Freud’s notion of illusion.

[28:09] The two principles of mental functioning.

[29:48] Embracing external reality while respecting the forces of enchantment.

[33:16] The desecularization of the world.

[34:10] Dr. Whitebook talks about how magic is and has been immersed in his work.

[36:20] Dr. Whitebook shares how he tried to untangle Freud’s objections to religions.

[38:25] Freedom of speech occupies a central role in psychoanalysis.

[39:43] Freud, Judaism, and psychoanalysis.

 

Mentioned in this episode:

IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org 

Learn more about Dr. Joel Whitebook

 

Recommended Readings:

Perversion and Utopia: Studies in Psychoanalysis and Critical Thinking, (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought), Joel Whitebook

 

Freud: An Intellectual Biography, , Chapters, 8, 9, 11 & 13. Joel Whitebook

 

Slow Magic: Psychoanalysis and the Disenchantment of the World.  Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 50, no. 4 (2002): 1197-1217. Joel Whitebook

 

Jacob's Ambivalent Legacy. .American Imago (2010): 139-155. Joel Whitebook

 

Freud on Religion, (Acumen, 2104), Chapt, 4. Marsha Alleen Hewitt

 

Psychoanalysis and Magic: Then and now. American Imago (2009): 471-489. Mikita Brottman

 

Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Federick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment, (Harper: 2016). James Gaines (This is a marvelous book that explores the fate of Bach's enchanted world of music when it encountered the Enlightenment.)

“I think that the analyst has to be in touch with his anxiety in order to be able to understand the patient's anxiety. But he has to not be drowned in such anxiety in order to be able to be the helpful object.”

 

Description: Dr. Harvey Schwartz welcomes Ilany Kogan, who is a Training and Supervisory Analyst at the Israel Psychoanalytic Society. She is one of the founders of the Psychotherapy Centre for the Child and Adolescent in Bucharest, Romania.  She worked as a supervisor of the IPA study work in Istanbul and she currently supervises throughout Germany and in Rumania.

 

Ilany Kogan worked for many years with Holocaust survivors and she has published extensively in this area. She was awarded the Elise M. Hayman Award for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide (2005) and the Sigourney Award (2016) for her lifetime work. She is the author of many books, most recently in 2020: Narcissistic Fantasies in Film and Fiction: Masters of the Universe, prior to that Canvas of Change: Analysis Through the Prism of Creativity, The Struggle Against Mourning, Escape from Selfhood: Breaking Boundaries and Craving for Oneness and others.

 

In today’s episode, you will hear about Ilany´s devotion to her patients and the ways she identifies their life forces. She dives deep into the essence of hope and creativity since many of her patients, as we all do as humans, struggle with locating the good objects inside us.  Ilany is devoted to freeing up the positive, hopeful, and creative energies in individuals. This is especially vital when we are limited by neurotic distortions, families that have struggled with the effects of the Holocaust, and for all of us now since we are struggling with terrible uncertainties in the midst of this pandemic.

 

Key takeaways:

[7:45] Ilany Kogan shares what her clinical and theoretical work has taught her about the vital role of creativity in life and especially in critical times.

[9:35] Resistance is the best way the person knows how to deal with conflicts at a particular moment which deserves respect.

[12:31] What is the meaning for the dyad when both analyst and analysand share the same danger?

[13:55] Analysts have to work through their own anxieties in order to be able to help the patient dealing with his own anxiety.

[15:46] Ilany Kogan talks about the concept of death anxieties.

[18:05] She believes that the creativity of the analyst is dealing with the changes imposed by the pandemic.

[19:32] Interpretation can be difficult to use during a period of stress.

[20:58] Ilany Kogan talks about the challenges that some analysts encounter in metabolizing the anxieties of the patient and returning it to them in tolerable form.

[21:43] Ilany Kogan shares a clinical example.

[29:14] Through analytic work the past can be left in the past.

[29:50] What sustains her during these difficult times?

 

Mentioned in this episode:

IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org 

 

Recommended Readings:

Narcissistic Fantasies in Film and Fiction: Masters of the Universe, Ilany Kogan

 

Canvas of Change: Analysis Through the Prism of Creativity, Ilany Kogan

 

The Struggle Against Mourning, Ilany Kogan

 

Escape from Selfhood: Breaking Boundaries and Craving for Oneness, Ilany Kogan

“It’s a big job to accept the otherness of the other. This places demands on the psychological processing of each individual to tolerate the otherness of the other. Therefore we often see regressive solutions when the other person’s otherness cannot be endured. Then ideal narcissistic states of purity and homogeneity are longed for.”

 

Description: Dr. Harvey Schwartz welcomes Dr. Werner Bohleber who is a Training and Supervising Analyst in Frankfurt, Germany, where he lives and practices. He is a former President of the German Psychoanalytic Association (DPV) and has served as a member of the Board of the IPA, and the chair of several IPA committees. For twenty years, Dr. Bohleber was the editor in chief of the German psychoanalytic Journal, Psyche. In 2007 he received the Sigourney Award for distinguished contributions to the field of psychoanalysis.

 

In today’s episode, you will hear Dr. Bohleber’s devotion to his clinical, social, and academic work which has been focused in the area of otherness, as it is expressed in hyper nationalism and antisemitism. He has devoted special attention to the Nazi period, the Holocaust, and the impact of the Second World War on the survivors and the generations that followed. Most recently he devoted himself to the study of trauma in. Dr. Bohleber shares the reasons that brought him to this work. He recounts how when he was an adolescent he saw the movie Night and Fog which visually documents the atrocities that took place in Auschwitz. He dedicated his career to studying what happened inside the minds of the individuals involved in this tragic time in history and also what happened inside the culture that led to these kinds of atrocities.

 

Key takeaways:

[7:51] Dr. Bohleber discusses the otherness the he studies in his work.

[11:55] One of the aims of the psychoanalytic treatment is to help the patient to accept the ambivalence of life.

[13:45] Libidinization is not in contrast with separateness.

[14:30] Dr. Bohleber talks about the interplay between unconscious fantasies and political tensions.

[17:10] Dr. Bohleber talks about what it seems to be a helpless rebellion against the loss of a familiar world and against the changes that go along with it.

[19:10] The idea of an ethnic homogenous nation-state is celebrated not only in Germany but also in other states of Europe.

[21:15] Dr. Bohleber talks about the role of an analyst in a multicultural society that struggles to integrate.

[23:20] Psychoanalysts should not retreat into the comfort of their offices.

[24:46] How does Germany’s Nazi past influence the culture’s thinking when faced with the struggles over otherness?

[29:11] Dr. Bohleber talks about the psychoanalytic studies of antisemitism and how usually antisemitic people do not engage in psychoanalytic treatments.

[30:50] Dr. Bohleber shares what motivated his passion to study antisemitism and fundamentalisms of all sorts.

 

Mentioned in this episode:

IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org

 

Recommended Readings:

Bohleber, W.: Destructiveness, Intersubjectivity, and Trauma. The Identity Crisis of Modern Psychoanalysis. London (Karnac) 2010.

 

Bohleber, W.: Remembrance, Trauma, and Collective Memory. The Battle for Memory in Psychoanalysis. Int J Psychoanal 2007, 88, 329-352.

 

Bohleber, W.: Problems in German Remembrance. In: Brenner, I. (Ed.): The handbook of psychoanalytic Holocaust studies. International perspectives. London/New York: Routledge 2020, 129 – 142.

"I hope that out of these tragedies there is an opportunity not only to express the intensity of our reactions but to get back down to the detailed business of understanding and unpacking the nature and contributions to the problems. We also can revisit and learn new solutions and achieve greater mastery. This is as much about the work that we do in our psychoanalytic consulting rooms as it is about the work that we attempt to do in the community.”

 

Description: Dr. Harvey Schwartz welcomes Dr. Steven Marans, a psychoanalyst who has devoted his career to understanding police departments, the community, and the interface between both with a psychoanalytic perspective.

 

Dr. Marans is a child and adult psychoanalyst and is the Harris Professor of Child Psychiatry and Professor of Psychiatry at the Child Study Center and Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine. He is the director of the National Center for Children Exposed to Violence and the founder of the Child Development-Community Policing Program.

 

Dr. Marans is also co-developer with Dr. Steve Berkowitz of the Child and Family Traumatic Stress Intervention, a brief, early treatment that has proven effective in reducing post-traumatic disorders in children exposed to traumatic events. Under the auspices of a SAMHSA grant, this intervention is being rolled out nationally through the National Child Traumatic Stress Network.

 

Over the past 20 years, Dr. Marans has worked closely with the White House, U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Department of Educations, and members of Congress on issues related to responding to the trauma associated with violence in homes and communities, on terrorism and natural disasters and has served on national advisory groups and commissions regarding these issues.

 

Dr. Marans also continues to see children, adolescents, and adults for clinical consultations, psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis. He teaches and supervises child psychiatry, psychology, and social work fellows in psychodynamic evaluation and treatment.

 

Key takeaways:

[9:05] Dr. Marans talks about the clinical phenomenon in times of crisis.

[12:05] Dr. Marans shares what goes through his mind when hearing the news about police violence.

[15:52] The police see aspects of our community that civilians don´t see.

[17:55] The challenges of entering the professional role of someone else.

[18:55] Narrowness of thinking prevents us from understanding what it is like to be a community member who is afraid of the police, as well as it obstructs our ability to appreciate what is like to be policemen and women involved in dangerous situations.

[19:50] Our thinking becomes oversimplified when we are most upset.

[21:55] Dr. Marans explores the implications of the idea of “us vs them”.

[25:55] The way in which the community perceives the police has shifted.

[29:31] Dr, Marans explains what happens when reality confirms the negative pre-conceptions of others.

[33:31] Vulnerability, anxiety and stress can narrow the sense of options and responses on both ends.

[36:02] “The best way to begin the job is to meet as many people as you can.”

[40:30] When we are at our most overwhelmed, we have the least amount of resources available to bring the level of distress under control.

 

Mentioned in this episode:

IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org

Childhood Violent Trauma Center, Yale School of Medicine

 

Recommended Readings:

Phenomena of Childhood Trauma and Expanding Approaches to Early Intervention. International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies 10(3): 247-266 (2013)

 

Listening to Fear: Helping Kids Cope from Nightmares to the Nightly News. NY: Henry Holt and Co. (2005)

 

Psychoanalysis on the Beat: Children, Police, and Urban trauma. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, Vol 51: 522-541 (1996)