Psychoanalysis On and Off the Couch

“They changed my analysis, it went from ‘I’m not actually a patient I’m just a lump here, reporting’, to being a patient. I didn’t understand the work until after that conference at the Tavistock... It’s like I could take advantage of the opportunity I was having to speed along. My analyst wrote a paper with two other analysts about their experience of working with three men of color during the Martin Luther King Funeral.”

Description: Steven Rolfe welcomes Dr. Kathleen Pogue White. She is the Principal of Pogue White Consultancy, LLC, and a psychoanalyst who applies the profession's core knowledge and skills in her multi-sectored work in organizational consulting, executive coaching, and leadership development. Her organizational development work is carried out in teams designed to focus on balancing the dynamics experienced in the workplace with awareness and understanding in order to achieve individual, team, and business objectives. Dr. White’s practice is based in New York.

Recently, Dr. White’s consulting career has focused on executive coaching, particularly executive role transitions in several organizations. In this conversation, Dr. White shares her unique approach to diversity and racism and how she goes back and forth from a psychoanalytic frame to a consulting one in her work with organizations.

Key takeaways:

[4:54] Dr. White talks about how she became interested in psychoanalysis.

[8:58] Dr. White’s introduction to psychoanalysis was by going into treatment.

[9:54] Psychoanalysis as protection.

[10:30] Dr. White shares how she wrote the paper Applying Learning from Experience.

[14:44] The question: “Who do you think you are?” led Dr. White to a major realization on how much privilege she actually had.

[20:03] Dr. White realized she was not making any contribution, but just going along with the flow.

[20:45] Realizing she was a natural for consultation work.

[23:47] Changing from an analytic to a consulting frame and then back to an analytic one.

[27:18] When an analyst sees people at work, a lot more is revealed in comparison to what can be seen on the couch. 

[30:02] Dr. White talks about her work Surviving Hating and Being Hated.

[30:58] Dr. White talks about the Black Panthers movement.

[32:56] There is a tendency to support the white status quo.

[35:18] Dr. White talks about her current work in the area of diversity and race.

[38:55] Dr. White engages in conversations with people running organizations and helping them realize the social accountability that exists with regards to how people are treated.

[39:20] Dr. White shares her thoughts about the specific contribution of psychoanalysis to the problem of racism in organizations.

Mentioned in this episode :

IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org

Recommended Readings :

Goldberg et al(1974) "Some Observations on Three Interracial Analyses". International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 55:495-500

——-

White, K.P. (2002). "Surviving Hating and Being Hated": Some Personal Thoughts About Racism from a Psychoanalytic Perspective. Contemp. Psychoanal., 38(3):401-422. [...]

——-

White, K. P. (1997) "Applying Learning from Experience":

The Intersection of Psychoanalysis and Organizational Role Consultation, Gould, LJ, Stapley, LF and Stein, M. (Eds). The Sytems-Psychodynamics of Organizations: Integrating the Group

Relations Approach, Psychoanalytic, and Open Systems Perspectives. London: Karnac. 

——-

Winograd, B. (2014). Black Psychoanalysts Speak. PEP Video Grants, 1(1):1. [...]

"Nuestra propuesta de trabajo a la institución fue la de implementar la puesta en marcha de un espacio de juego y producción individual para los niños y jóvenes llamado Tiempo Especial. Todas las observaciones recogidas por el educador en ese encuadre luego son discutidas en la modalidad de grupo de Discusión de Trabajo, es decir, de aplicación de observaciones en ámbitos institucionales"

"Our proposal to the institution was the implementation of a play space and individual production for children and young people called Special Time. All the observations collected by the educator in that frame are then discussed in the Work Discussion Group modality, that is, the application of observations in institutional settings"

Description: Laura Katz is a psychoanalyst, titular member of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association, and Director of the Community and Culture Area of ​​FEPAL. She welcomes Mónica Cardenal to today’s episode. Mónica is a psychoanalyst of the Buenos Aires Psychoanalytic Association (APdeBA) and has an extensive career as a psychoanalyst, writer, editor and educator in the field of child and adolescence psychoanalysis.

In today's interview, Mónica describes how she carries out her work as a supervisor at the JUCONI Foundation (Together with the Children) located in the city of Puebla, Mexico. Mónica supervises the educators who work with street children on a program that bears the name of Special Time. This project was started in 1990 by Gianna Williams, a member of the British Psychoanalytic Society.

The focus of today’s interview will be on different aspects of the program called Special Time, which works with children and adolescents at risk within the JUCONI Foundation. There are two different times - the first one being the observation in “Special Time.” Later, the group work in a discussion space is after the one-on-one time with the children and adolescents. These two different instances allow for the detection of the pain and the defenses that the mind sets in motion in children and adolescents and the effects that these produce in the bonds and in the institution. This is a project where it is possible to realize how psychoanalysis makes its way to the community and, in turn, makes it possible to build responses to contemporary social problems.

Laura Katz, psicoanalista, miembro titular en función didáctica de la Asociación Psicoanalítica Argentina, Directora del Área de Comunidad y Cultura de FEPAL, recibe en este episodio a Mónica Cardenal, psicoanalista de la Asociación Psicoanalítica de Buenos Aires (APdeBA) quien tiene una extensa trayectoria como psicoanalista, escritora, editora y educadora en el area del psicoanálisis infanto-juvenil..

En la entrevista de hoy, Mónica describe cómo lleva adelante su tarea como supervisora de la Fundación JUCONI (Junto Con los Niños) localizada en la ciudad de Puebla, México. Mónica supervisa a los educadores que trabajan con niñas y niños de la calle en un dispositivo que lleva el nombre de Tiempo Especial. Este proyecto fue iniciado en el año 1990 por Gianna Williams, miembro de la Sociedad Psicoanalítica Británica.

La entrevista de hoy se centrará en poder ampliar diferentes aspectos del programa Tiempo Especial, en donde se trabaja con niños y adolescentes en situación de riesgo dentro de la Fundación JUCONI. La tarea de observación en el tiempo especial y el trabajo grupal en el espacio de discusión que se realiza posteriormente, permite detectar el dolor y las defensas que la mente pone en marcha en los niños y adolescentes y los efectos que dichas marcas producen en los vínculos y en la institución. Esta es una propuesta en donde se puede dar cuenta de cómo el psicoanálisis, se abre camino a la comunidad y, a su vez, posibilita construir acciones de respuesta a problemáticas sociales contemporáneas.

Key takeaways:

[6:34] Mónica Cardenal comparte su experiencia como supervisora de Tiempo Especial.

[7:42] Breve historia de JUCONI.

[9:11] JUCONI en latinoamérica.

[9:55] Lineamientos principales del Método de Observación de bebés de Esther Bick.

[12:36] Tiempo Especial: un lugar en la intersección entre lo comunitario y el psicoanálisis.

[14:28] ¿Qué significa Tiempo Especial? ¿Cuál es el encuadre?

[16:15] Dos tiempos: El trabajo con el niño y los encuentros grupales.

[17:05] El niño es capaz de tener un registro del tiempo de sus encuentros.

[17:35] El espacio de supervisión de los educadores.

[18:51] Todos aquellos que tienen contacto con los niños forman parte del espacio de supervisión.

[19:25] El foco central es detectar las ansiedades de separación y perdida.

[20:15] La importancia de la transferencia en poner en evidencia el mundo emocional del niño.

[22:30] Cursos teóricos presenciales que transmiten la teoría directamente ligada a la observación.

[23:40] Mónica comparte un ejemplo del trabajo a Tiempo Especial.

[27:56] Mónica habla de la particularidad del tiempo grupal y sus efectos sobre los niños.

[31:28] La relación entre el psicoanálisis y el trabajo comunitario.

[34:57] ¿Podría el psicoanálisis ser una disciplina pertinente para accionar respuestas sociales contemporáneas?

Mentioned in this episode:

IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org

"Historians have had to learn to explore their own subjectivity in dealing with the past. They can only see what they are prepared to see and they have frequently blocked out, scotomized, what they really don’t want to see. This is part of the current struggle in the history profession"

Description: Dr. Harvey Schwartz welcomes Dr. Peter Loewenberg, who is a retired professor of History and Political Psychology at UCLA where he received numerous awards including from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller and Fulbright Foundations. He is a training and supervising analyst and former Dean of the New Center for Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. He chaired the committee that passed the California Research Psychoanalysis Law in 1977, enabling academics to be trained in and practice psychoanalysis. He Chaired the IPA China Committee, and he served on the IPA Board representing North America. He is the author of many publications, including Decoding the Past: The Psychohistorical Approach and Fantasy and Reality in History. He is Editor of 100 Years of the IPA.

In today’s episode, Dr. Loewenberg shares his passion for the academic and psychoanalytic worlds and his ability to relate these two fields to each other. As a historian, Dr. Loewenberg informs psychoanalysis and underlines how vital it is to appreciate and listen for the past, and he brings from psychoanalysis to history the importance of listening to oneself in observing the present and the past.

Key takeaways:

[5:44] Dr. Loewenberg shares how psychoanalysis and history can understand the methods of each other to the advantage of both, and how this informed his discovery and immersion in Psychohistory.

[7:03] Dr. Loewenberg talks about how historians took the contributions of psychoanalysis to history.

[9:45] Trauma experienced by a psychoanalyst influences his practice, giving a three dimensional perspective to his understanding of his patient’s trauma.

[11:12] Dr. Loewenberg talks about psychohistory and how the past impacts the present in meaningful ways.

[13:06] How the Deutsche Mark became one of the strongest currencies in Europe.

[16:24] Dr. Loewenberg shares his beginnings as a psychoanalyst.

[21:59] Dr. Loewenberg talks about how the first cases were like for him.

[27:38] The appreciation of the exchanges between analyst and analysand.

[29:10] Historians’ appreciation for the past is often very subjective.

[31:10] Dr. Loewenberg shares how life is now for him and his family during the pandemic.

Mentioned in this episode:

IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org

Recommended Readings:

100 Years of the IPA: The Centenary History of the International Psychoanalytical Association 1910 - 2010: Evolution and Change Ed. and introduced (with Nellie L. Thompson); (London: International Psychoanalytical Association, 2011).

Decoding the Past: The Psychohistorical Approach (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983); (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985); (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1996, paperback edition with a new introduction,).

Fantasy and Reality in History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

Walther Rathenau and Henry Kissinger: The Jew as Modern Statesman in Two Political Cultures (New York: Leo Baeck Institute, 1980).

"The Psychohistorical Origins of the Nazi Youth Cohort," American Historical Review 76: 5 (December 1971), 1457-1502.

"The Unsuccessful Adolescence of Heinrich Himmler," American Historical Review 76- 3 (June 1971), pp. 612-641.

"The schools of thought differed very strongly. The Calcutta school primarily belonged to the classical Freudian school of thought whereas Bombay worked from a very structured Tavistock model which they have been following for a very long time. In Dehli we find the Ericksonian model. These cites developed these models as a result of their connection to different parts of the world."

Description: Dr.Harvey Schwartz welcomes Dr. Jhuma Basak, who is a training and supervising psychoanalyst at the Indian Psychoanalytic Society in Calcutta where she lives and works. Dr. Basak is an active member of the IPA’s Committee on Women and Psychoanalysis and is a consulting member of the IPA’s humanitarian committee. Her areas of interest in psychoanalysis are culture, women, and gender. Dr. Basak has widely published and has been translated into many languages.

In today’s episode Dr. Basak describes two transformations, one that is cultural and another that is internal - both are related to changing from an authoritative position that uses certainty and morality to deal with conflict, to one that attends to the inner ambiguous life both of the analysand as well as that of the analyst.

Key takeaways:

[4:40] Life before and after COVID in Calcutta.

[8:33] The lockdown in Calcutta is contradictory at times.

[9:58] Dr. Basak talks about psychoanalytic life in Calcutta.

[15:08] Dr. Basak explains how the psychoanalytic field in India shifted from being mostly dominated by men in its origins, to recent times where women have gained interest and expertise in the Indian psychoanalytic community.

[19:26] Clinical work has been shifted gradually to women.

[20:37] A critical and challenging position for female Indian Psychoanalysts.

[21:31] Dr. Basak shares some clinical material.

[26:58] Dr. Basak talks about her perspective regarding countertransference.

[28:00] Dr. Basak shares her experience as a spokesperson and the vulnerability that comes along with this role.

[29:46] “We are too comfortable in authoritarian positions, they give us certainty.”

Mentioned in this episode:

IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org

"I don't think you derive technical rules or interpretive strategies from theory. I think that what we do instead is to try to be open-minded, available and resonant with what’s happening in the world of the patient and try to maintain a rich world of associational potentials in the back of our mind"

Description: Dr. Harvey Schwartz welcomes Dr. Robert Michels to today’s episode. Dr. Michels has been a training and supervising psychoanalyst at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research in New York. Dr. Michels was the Dean of Cornell University Medical College, Provost for Medical Affairs of Cornell University and was a long-standing Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Cornell.

Dr. Michels has been a leader in psychoanalysis and psychiatry - he is the past President of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, past President of the American College of Psychiatrists and past President of the American Association of Chairs of Departments of Psychiatrist. In addition to authoring over 350 professional articles, Dr. Michels has also been an active editor - he is a former Deputy Editor of the American Journal of Psychiatry, former Joint Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, and he has served on the editorial boards of the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Psychoanalytic Quarterly among others.

Dr. Michels shares in this episode his exquisite attunement to what takes place in the psychoanalytic dyad, from both the analysand’s and analyst’s perspectives, and how this can be best understood for the benefit and growth of the patient.

Key takeaways:

[5:31] How does psychoanalysis interface with psychiatry and academic medicine?

[11:45] Every discipline has unique characteristics that cannot be understood by other disciplines.

[13:50] Dr. Michels shares his experiences and perspective of the field of psychoanalysis during the past half-century.

[16:45] There is a change in the notion of what we do as psychoanalysts.

[17:35] Dr. Michel talks about not being concerned about being logically inconsistent with a patient.

[19:56] The associative immersion.

[21:01] How to test an intervention.

[22:18] Dr. Michels shares some clinical examples that demonstrate the change in his thinking.

[28:03] Dr.Schwartz shares an example of psychoanalysts working at the beginning of the COVID crisis.

[30:15] Dr. Michels talks about the meaning of a patient’s way to start a session by asking “How are you?” to the therapist in times of pandemic.

[31:36] What is life like for Dr. Michels being at risk in COVID times?

Mentioned in this episode:

IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org

“I went back looking at one of the qualities of leadership we need particularly now during a pandemic, I went back to Thucydides and Athens and I found Pericles’ funeral narration made during the destructive pandemic that hit Athens.”

Description: In times when we are all facing a crisis of unprecedented proportion, we are going change the focus of the podcast: we will now be interviewing psychoanalysts from all corners of the globe to discuss how their local communities are coping with this situation, how their clinical work has been affected by the situation, and how the internal worlds of both the analysts and the patients have been impacted by this virus as it touches both our real and imaginary fears. This is an opportunity to gain great wisdom, empathy, and hope.

Dr. Steven Rolfe welcomes Dr. Michael Maccoby. Dr Maccoby is a psychoanalyst and anthropologist and is globally recognized as an expert on leadership for his research, writing, and work to improve organizations and the workplace environment. He has authored or co-authored fourteen books and consulted to companies, governments, the World Bank, unions, research and development centers and laboratories, universities, and orphanages, and taught in 36 countries. Dr. Maccoby has taught leadership at Oxford and directed the Program on Technology, Public Policy, and Human Development at the Kennedy School from 1970-90. He worked consulting on leadership for 13 years at the State Department. In 2008 he received the Swedish honor of Commander of the Royal Order of the Polar Star for his work in Sweden and, in 2017, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Washington School of Psychiatry.

Key takeaways:

[4:21] Dr. Maccoby talks about how he first became interested in psychoanalysis.

[9:21] Dr. Maccoby was in analysis with Eric Fromm for 8 years while working with him.

[10:56] Dr. Maccoby talks about his work with organizations from early times in his career.

[11:55] Humanizing the workplace.

[14:10] The beginning of Dr. Maccobi’s studies in leadership.

[14:33] Dr. Maccobi shares how Eric Fromm influenced his career.

[17:43] Dr. Maccobi talks about his book. Narcissistic Leaders: Who Succeeds and Who Fails. and the reaction it caused in Donald Trump.

[18:03] The productive and destructive aspects of narcissism.

[20:22] Dr. Maccobi updated Fromm’s personality types with her own set of ideas.

[23:48] Dr. Maccobi talks about Donald Trumps’ personality type as a Marketing Personality.

[25:50] Dr. Maccobi shares what motivated him to write Psychoanalytic and Historical Perspectives on the Leadership of Donald Trump: Narcissism and Marketing in an Age of Anxiety and Distrust.

[27:56] The kind of president the USA needs: Pericles’ principles for a leader applied to America’s greatest presidents.

[31:03] The role of aggression in the marketing personality type.

[33:45] The transition between the clinical work and the consulting one in the organizational field.

Mentioned in this episode:

IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org

Recommended Readings:

Maccoby, Michael. The Gamesman: The New Corporate Leaders. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976.

Maccoby, Michael. Narcissistic Leaders: Who Succeeds and Who Fails. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2007.

Maccoby, Michael. The Leaders We Need: And What Makes Us Follow. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2007.

Maccoby, Michael and Clifford L. Norman, Jane Norman, and Richard Margolies. Transforming Health Care Leadership: A Systems Guide to Improve Patient Care, Decrease Costs, and Improve Population Health. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass, 2013.

Maccoby, Michael. Strategic Intelligence: Conceptual Tools for Leading Change. Oxford University Press, 2015.

Maccoby Michael and Ken Fuchsman, editors. Psychoanalytic and Historical Perspectives on the Leadership of Donald Trump: Narcissism and Marketing in an Age of Anxiety and Distrust. Routledge, 2020.

“Once we put things together and express them to somebody, something happens. We become more alive - because we are expressing what we are expressing in terms of what is real and what is real is not static. What is real is continuously moving and what is real is the experience of everything moving and everything changing from minute to minute.”

Description: Dr. Harvey Schwartz welcomes Dr. Melvin Bornstein, who is a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. He is also the editor of the journal Psychoanalytic Inquiry. Dr. Bornstein is one of the elders in psychoanalysis. In today´s episode, he describes with passionate detail his experiences over the past many decades of practice. He also shares with us what this current period of uncertainty is like for him and he expresses the leitmotif of his work and his life in what he calls the “love of life”.

Key takeaways:

[5:10] What this period of life has been like for Dr. Bornstein?

[8:27] Dr. Bornstein discuses Albert Camus’ The Plague.

[10:41] The power of talking to one another and sharing each one’s suffering, pain, and fear.

[12:53] The psychoanalytic process allows us to do something about what is happening that otherwise wouldn’t be possible.

[14:01] Dr. Bornstein shares his experience free-associating every morning while exercising on his stationary bike.

[17:00] Dr. Bornstein talks about his path and where he comes from.

[18:56] What is real is not static, is continuously moving.

[20:33] Dr. Bornstein describes the most difficult experience from his childhood.

[22:58] Dr. Bornstein shares an early clinical situation.

[29:32] The immersion of Dr. Bornstein in the psychoanalytic work.

[31:52] The driving element is the love of life.

[35:33] The difficulty of some patients in owning their love.

Mentioned in this episode:

IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org

"Some patients are quite happy being in their internal world - maybe the government is too, they’re in one world and people can be in the other. The patients live in one world and what is happening outside doesn’t bother them very much. It is about the avoidance of contact, the avoidance of the other "

Description: Dr. Harvey Schwartz welcomes Dr. Lola Komarova, who is a psychoanalyst in Moscow and served as the President of the Moscow Group of Psychoanalysts, where she currently is the Director of Training. In addition to her private practice in Moscow, Dr. Komarova teaches applied psychoanalysis for psychology students.

In this episode Dr. Komarova shares her vision of history, with the embedded notion that the past lives in the present. This refers not only to the childhood experiences that live in the present for all of us but also about how the political and historical pasts show themselves in our present circumstances.

Key takeaways:

[5:31] Dr. Komarova talks about life in Moscow right now.

[9:28] The smallpox epidemic in Moscow.

[9:57] The relation between the community and the government during the current epidemic.

[14:40] People realized they had to survive by themselves.

[15:42] Dr. Komarova talks about the history of psychoanalysis in Moscow.

[21:40] How do the multiple theoretical points of view come together in Dr. Komarova’s practice?

[25:07] The pandemic and its impact on some patients who became disturbed and paranoid and, on the contrary, some other patients who managed to ignore the pandemic.

[27:58] A specific form of denial.

[31:15] People show no interest in reality but become immersed in their internal world.

[32:07] Dr. Komarova shares how she is sustaining herself during this crisis.

[36:05] Dealing with an unpredictable future.

Mentioned in this episode:

IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org

“In Western countries there was a certain reduction in the importance of the father. I think there is a confusion here between the importance of the father or at least the father function with the authoritarian father, the patriarchal father, that figure that arouses so much suspicion and reactions against.”

Description: Dr. Harvey Schwartz welcomes Dr. Claudio Laks Eizirik who is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Porto Alegre Psychoanalytic Society in Brazil. He is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, former president of the IPA and the recipient of The Sigourney Award in 2011. Currently, he is chair of the IPA’s International New Groups Committee. His main areas of interest are psychoanalytic training and practice, the process of aging, and the relation of psychoanalysis and culture.

In today’s episode, Dr. Eizirik dives deep into the meaning of the fathering function, which exists in our minds and later emerges in our analysis, and also exists in the political sphere, both in our national politics and in the capacity of our leaders. Dr. Eizirik evidences a life built upon the richness of this fathering function.

Key takeaways:

[6:14] Dr. Eizirik talks about the health and the political health currently in Brazil.

[9:05] The reaction of the psychoanalytic community in Brazil to the pandemic and the current political situation.

[10:56] Psychoanalysis is seen as a living force in the Brazilian current scene.

[12:29] The fathering function in the office and how it applies politically.

[15:24] The role of the father has been neglected by psychoanalysis due to the emphasis in the relationship between mother and baby.

[16:15] The confusion between the father principle with the authoritarian father.

[18:25] Winnicott’s meaning for the word “democracy”.

[19:40] We are seeing in many countries the presence of leaders who don´t understand the role of a father, someone who inspires, leads, shows empathy and compassion, and instead take an authoritarian stance.

[21:44] How does the father function live in the minds of daughters and sons?

[24:26] Dr. Eizirik shares disguised clinical material.

[29:55] How is Dr.Eizirik sustains himself during this crisis.

Mentioned in this episode:

IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org

Recommended Readings:

Eizirik, CL ( 2020) Uma vez mais, ‘ O OVO da Serpente” ? ( Once again, “The serpent`s egg “?) Observatório Psicanalítico, Federação Brasileira de Psicanálise.

Eizirik, CL, Foresti, G. ( 2019) Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry: Partners and Competitors in the Mental Health Field,IPA/ Routledge, London and New York

Eizirik, CL ( 2018) Contemporary developments and challenges of analytic training and practice. In Tylim, I and Harris, A ( editors) Reconsidering the Moveable Frame in Psychoanalysis, Routledge, London and New York

Eizirik, CL, Falcão, L. and Libermann, Z. ( 2018 )The death drive and the work of the negative in André Green´s work: metapsychology, clinical practice, and culture. In Reed, G. and Levine, H. André Green Revisited.IPA/ Routledge, London and New York.

Eizirik, CL ( 2015) The Father, the Father Function, the Father Principle: Some Contemporary Psychoanalytic Developments, The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, volume LXXXIV, n 2:335-350

“One can actually teach development using literature by Dr. Seuss, Beverly Cleary, Maurice Sendak, Margaret Wise Brown - all of these great authors of children’s literature. What I have done is created a course where these are paired with case reports from the child psychoanalytic literature, so one hears directly the experience, the words, the play of children of every age and their proximate developmental sequence.”

Description: Dr. Steven Rolfe welcomes Dr. Lawrence Blum who is a teacher and supervisor at the Anthropology and Psychiatry departments of the University of Pennsylvania where he is co-director of the undergraduate minor in Psychoanalytic Studies. He’s received many teaching awards including the Edith Sabshin Award of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Dr. Blum has written articles on the application of psychoanalytic ideas to a variety of topics in psychiatry, society, and culture, where psychoanalytic ideas are useful and have been underutilized. In addition to publications in professional journals, Dr. Blum’s articles use psychoanalytic ideas to explore social and cultural phenomena such as guns and violence, voter behavior and even the federal budget. They have appeared in Clinical Psychiatry News, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Psychiatric Times. His most recent work is centered on his teaching Freud and Psychoanalysis to college students and to professionals which is the subject of today’s podcast.

Key takeaways:

[5:05] Dr. Blum shares how his passion for teaching developed.

[6:55] Differences between teaching candidates and undergraduates.

[11:50] Dr. Blum talks about how he developed the program at the University of Pennsylvania.

[15:50] How are different developmental phases experienced in other parts of the world?

[18:28] Changing the focus of psychoanalytic teaching.

[20:46] The advantages of using children’s literature and paired it with case reports from the child’s psychoanalytic literature.

[22:55] Dr. Blum talks about the blog: Psyche on Campus.

[24:10] Dr. Blum explains how he introduces Freud to the undergraduates.

[28:50] Dr. Blum talks about his publications in American Imago.

[30:33] How do students react in general to Freud, psychoanalysis, and psychoanalytic ideas and how they handle the idea of introspection.

[34:23] How has COVID-19 affected the teaching-learning experience?

[37:11] DSM can be used to teach psychoanalytic ideas.

[39:11] Why kids like dinosaurs can only be answered using psychoanalytic ideas.

Mentioned in this episode:

IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org

Recommended Readings:

Teaching Freud, Teaching Psychoanalysis: From College Students to Professionals (2018). American Imago, Vol. 75, No. 2.

DSM Fantasies, Psychiatric Times, XXX, No. 4, April 2013. Also available here:

Physicians' Goodness and Guilt – Emotional Challenges of Medical Practice. JAMA Internal Medicine, 179:5, 2019. Published online April 8, 2019. DOI:10.1001/jamainternmed.2019.0428

Doctors and Guilt, Psychology Today, Lawrence D. Blum M.D.

See also http://www.psycheoncampus.org/ a blog about teaching psychoanalysis to college students

Addresses to Dr. Blum's blog and web site, which have a number of articles oriented to presenting psychoanalytic ideas to non-analyst, are here: http://lawrenceblum.com/publications.html and here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/beyond-freud.