Psychoanalysis On and Off the Couch

"The ability to play means we can indulge in a kind of illusion, not delusion, and make a distinction. It always amazes me that when the patient arrives, they like the routine of an analysis; nobody breaks that, it's an illusion; it is a piece of theater every time. We open the door to our patients and they lie on the couch, and yet there is something enormously gratifying as the patient works out their sense of reality from that illusory field. I think it is exactly what the mother is able to bring to the infant - this capacity to play and this capacity to continue to evolve beyond the analysis as an internalization of that experience of being listened to and being with someone. The details of that is related to an intrapsychic surviving and non- surviving object in the analyst who continues to think and feel and be with the patient in the consulting room."

Episode Description: Joel begins his conversation with Jan around Winnicott's conceptualization of aggression in development and in the analytic encounter. She noted that he had a very sophisticated developmental theory of aggression which culminated with the role that the destruction of the object plays in constituting reality. Jan explains that she has elaborated Winnicott's late theory of aggression with her notion of the 'surviving object'. She distinguishes the 'surviving object' from the 'good object', especially as it stands apart from a moralizing position. She considers its internalization as an essential condition for healthy development. They discussed the role that insight continued to play for Winnicott after he emphasized the importance of the patient's experience in the analytic process. They also consider the 'fear of woman' as a root of misogyny. After discussing the uniqueness of the analytic setting to facilitate play, fantasy, and "magic which is not psychosis," Jan concludes by emphasizing the importance of in-person treatment in order to have an in vivo experience of the non-retaliatory analyst.

Linked Episode:

Episode 144: Why Winnicott? Joel Whitebook, PhD

Our Interviewer and Guest:

Joel Whitebook, PhD is a philosopher and psychoanalyst. He is on the Faculty of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and was the founding Director of the University's Psychoanalytic Studies Program. In addition to many articles on psychoanalysis, philosophy, and critical theory, Dr. Whitebook is also the author of Perversion and Utopia (MIT) and Freud: An Intellectual Biography (Cambridge).

Jan Abram, PhD is a training and supervising analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society and in private practice in London. She is a Visiting Professor of the Psychoanalysis Unit at University College London and is currently Vice President of the European Psychoanalytic Federation for the Annual Conferences. She is President-Elect for the EPF to start her term in March 2024. She is a Visiting Lecturer and supervisor at the Tavistock Clinic in London. In 2016, she was a Visiting Professor at the University of Kyoto, Japan, where she resided for a writing sabbatical. Jan Abram has published several books and articles notably The Language of Winnicott, Donald Winnicott Today (2013), The Clinical Paradigms of Melanie Klein and Donald Winnicott: Comparisons and Dialogues (co-authored with R.D. Hinshelwood 2018); The Surviving Object: psychoanalytic clinical essays on psychic survival-of-the-object (2022) and her second book with R.D. Hinshelwood: The Clinical Paradigms of Donald Winnicott and Wilfred Bion: Comparisons and Dialogues (2023).

Recommended Readings:

ben

Abram, J. (2022) The Surviving Object: Psychoanalytic Clinical Essays on Psychic survival-of-the-object New Library of Psychoanalysis Routledge

Abram, J. (2023) Holding and Containing: on the specificity of Winnicott's object relations theory Holding und Containing: Zur spezifischen Natur der Objektbeziehungen bei Winnicott. Psyche - Z Psychoanal 77 (9), 768-796 DOI 10.21706/ps-77-9-768

"I was speaking to the tendency of the popular media to perceive narratives of Indian women's sexuality via the lens of oppression. Now, of course, sexual violence against women is an important concern in India, as it is worldwide. But telling the story of violence against women misses the story of how women desire, which is what I wanted to highlight. What struck me from reading the responses from these psychoanalytic interviews that I did was just how much women adapted their Eros to their circumstances. Particularly the older women that were interviewed, those who were older than 35, didn't feel very oppressed, even as they narrated experiences and circumstances that sounded oppressive to me. Of course, if these were patients instead of the psychoanalytic interviewees that they were, one might wait for a kind of realization of oppression, but I wanted to see how psychoanalysis could be useful in mapping how Eros leaks within a framework where oppression is internalized, as it was for many of my interviewees. What I found very interesting was some of the imaginative ways that women found to satisfy their sexual desires while still maintaining community belonging. Viewed from the outside, this can look like oppressive forms of hypocrisy or enactments. But within the frame of these women's lives, it seems like they had found some creative ways of making Eros central and also of having Eros and breathing it at the same time in order to move forward."

Episode Description: Amrita focuses our attention on the presence of women's active sexual desire which often gets obscured by society's tendency to see women as simply victims of violence and oppression. In her book, Women's Sexuality and Modern India - In a Rapture of Distress, she shares with us the results of in-depth interviews as well as latent clinical data from educated and financially comfortable Indian women. We discuss the erotic aspects of modesty; the differences between Indian and International feminisms; the role of the protective parent to foster girlish excitement, i.e. to offer a helping hand to their daughter; and the importance of the involved father to enable an identification for comfortable aggression. We close with a description of an unusual culturally imbued sexual practice that invites Amrita's deep attunement to multiple levels of meaning.

Our Guest: Amrita Narayanan, PsyD, is a Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalyst and the author of Women's Sexuality and Modern India: In a Rapture of Distress. She has a longstanding interest in how a civilization's culture shapes its sexuality and its psychoanalysis. She is an essayist in The Parrots of Desire: 3000 Years of Erotica in India and in Pha(bu)llus: a cultural history of the Phallus. She also writes a monthly column, Sexual Politics, for a newspaper, The Deccan Herald, Bengaluru. Aside from her clinical practice, Amrita is a Visiting Professor of English at Ashoka University, New Delhi, where she teaches psychoanalysis at the undergraduate and Masters level.

Recommended Readings:

Narayanan, A. (2023) Women's Sexuality and Modern India: In a Rapture of Distress (Oxford University Press, 2023)

Kakar, S. (1990) Intimate Relations: Exploring Indian Sexuality. Penguin Books: New Delhi.

Menon, M. (2019). Infinite Variety: A History of Desire in India. Speaking Tiger Books: New Delhi.

Narayanan, A and Kakar, S. (2023) The Capacious Freud In Busch, F and Delgado, N. The Ego and Id: 100 Years Later. Contemporary Freud, Turning Points and Critical Issues Series. Routledge: UK.

Narayanan, A. (2018). When the Enthralled Mother Dreams: a clinical and cultural composition. IN Kumar, M. Mishra, A., and Dhar, A. (Eds). Psychoanalysis in the Indian Terroir: Emerging Themes in Culture, Family and Childhood. Lexington Books: USA.

Narayanan. A. (2013). Ambivalent Subjects: Psychoanalysis, Women's Sexuality in India and the writings of Sudhir Kakar. Psychodynamic Practice. 20-3. 213-227

"The genetic asymmetry [with sperm donorship] will create issues and complications - it puts a strain on the relationship, i.e. who is excluded; who has more rights to this product? In other words, if the sperm donor is from a stranger, the father feels 'am I really adequately or sufficiently related that I could claim fatherhood'?"

Episode Description: We begin by acknowledging the erroneous assumption that unconscious conflicts over becoming a parent are etiologic for what had been called 'psychogenic infertility.' Correlation is not causality. We review the widespread use of assisted reproductive technologies, with up to 750,000 babies born per year through these methods. Mali presents a composite case of a 48-year-old woman who went through many arduous IVF cycles before appreciating the degree of omnipotence and denial that characterized her approach to this problem, as it had toward many other issues in her life. She shares with us the common experience of infertility representing a sense of defectiveness and guilt. We consider the many challenges of sperm and egg donorship, including who one chooses as a donor as well as when one should tell children of their biological origins. We close with Mali sharing with us her recommendations to rejuvenate the field of child analysis.

Our Guest:

Mali Mann, M.D, is a Training and Supervising psychoanalyst and Child Supervisor at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. She is a clinical professor Adjunct at Stanford University School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science. Some of her published papers include, "Immigrant Parents and their Emigrant Adolescents: The Tension of Inner and Outer Worlds;" "Shame Veiled and Unveiled," "Aggression in Children: Origins, Manifestation, and Management through Play," Adolescent Psychoanalysis book chapter. "The Formation and Development of Ethnic Identity." Her edited book, Psychoanalytic Aspects of Assisted Reproductive Technology, won three awards: 1) Pinnacle Book Award, 2) International Book Awards in Family and "Parenting and Family" category in 2016, 3) Finalist for Book Vana Award in 2016. She has published two books of poetry: Whisper, Forget Me Not, and A Path with No Name. Her latest book, My Pony, Keran, is a semi-autobiographical children's book. She has been a member of Flying Doctors for nearly three decades (Los Medicos Voladores). She and her late husband, Dr. William James Stover, traveled to the Orphanages in South America and Mexico to offer medical help to children and their families. In her spare time, she paints abstract expressionism and figurative; her art has been exhibited in US galleries and won several awards.

Recommended Readings:

Allison. G. H. (1997). Motherhood, motherliness, and psychogenic infertility. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 66: 1-17

Ludden, J. (2011) A. F. (1961). A new openness for donor kids about their biology. NPR:

Making Babies: 21st Century Families.(17 September).

Bibring, G. L.' Dwyer, T. F., Huntington, D.S., & Valenstein, A. F. (1961). A Study of Psychological Process in pregnancy and the earliest mother and child relationship. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 16: 9-72

Ehrensaft, D. (2008), When baby makes three or four or more, Psychanal. Study Child, 63:3-23.

Freud, S. (1914). Remembering, repeating, and working through. (Further recommendations on the technique of psycho-analysis II.) S.E., 12.

Inderbitzin, L. B & Levy, S. (1998). Repetition Compulsion revisited: Implication for Technique, Psychoanalytic Quarterly. 67:32-53

Lester, E. P. & Notman, M. (1986). Pregnancy, developmental crisis, and object relations: Psychoanalytic considerations. Int. J. Psychoanal., 62: 357-366

Notman, M. & Lester, E. P. (1988). Pregnancy: theoretical considerations. Psychoanl. Inq., 8: 139-160

Pines, D. (1982). Relevance of early development to pregnancy and abortion. Int. J. Psychoanal., 61: 311-318

Zallusky, S. (1999). Infertility in The Age of Technology, Journal of American Psychoanalytic Association, 48: 1541-1562

"As I elaborate in the book, there was no physical contact or romantic engagement. The reason why I chose the 'lover' as the [psychoanalytic] analogy is, in the real world outside of psychoanalytic practice, where else do you have an interpersonal encounter that is so intensely engaging, attentive, respectful, and caring? That would be in the first six weeks or six months of a romantic relationship. If we eliminate the romantic/sexual part and just stay with 'wow, this other party is paying such attention to me' - reminds me of Lacan's idea that what we really seek in the other is their desire for us, which by the way, I don't completely agree with because I think it goes both ways - I would say that that is the analogy from the world of lovers that I would map onto psychoanalytic work at least on the part of the psychoanalyst - he or she ideally pays that kind of intense attention, care, respect and attunement, that you would find between lovers."

Episode Description: We begin with discussing the various ways that we can shape our psychoanalytic frame to enable a deepening of the clinical encounter. This is in contrast to frames that have gone awry. In his book Lover - Exorcist - Critic Alan describes a composite patient where he became over-involved to the detriment of the work that was eventually repaired. We reference a problematic frame in his earlier training analysis that perhaps set the stage for this difficulty. He shares with us his concept that "by enlightening subjectivity, by raising consciousness, depth psychotherapy liberates." We discuss in some detail the forces in him, his patient, and their relationship that led him to greater enactments than were useful. He shares with us the challenges he faced in remedying his emotional imbalance with her and the intense rage it awakened in her, deriving from various periods in her life. We both emphasized the vital role of the consultant at such times. We close with Alan describing his co-founding and leadership in the Rose City Center - a low fee clinic providing dynamic psychotherapy to individuals who would never otherwise see the inside of an analyst's office.

Our Guest: Alan Michael Karbelnig, PhD is a psychoanalyst, writer, teacher, and forensic psychologist and practices in Pasadena, California. He is a supervising and training psychoanalyst at the New Center for Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. He lectures nationally and internationally, including in China, India, Thailand, and Israel. He writes a weekly Substack newsletter titled Journeys to the Unconscious Mind. Alan has published 20 scholarly articles and five book chapters in addition to his book Lover, Exorcist, and Critic. He considers his 2004 founding of Rose City Center—a nonprofit clinic providing psychoanalytic psychotherapy for economically disadvantaged persons throughout California—his proudest professional accomplishment.

Recommended Readings:

Bellow, H. (1962). Herzog. New York: Viking.

Bromberg, P. (1996). The multiplicity of self and the psychoanalytic relationship. Standing in the spaces: Essays on clinical process, trauma & dissociation. London: The Analytic Press.

Greenberg, J. and Mitchell, S. (1983) Object relations in psychoanalytic theory. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, MA.

Karbelnig, A. M. (2022). Chasing Infinity: Why clinical psychoanalysis' future lies in pluralism. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 103(1):5-25.

McEwan, I. (2019). Machines Like Me. New York: Anchor.

Strenger, C. (1989). The classic and romantic visions in psychoanalysis. International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 70:593-610

"What's the spiritual room? For me, it does tend to be a connection to something greater than just me; it is a contemplative space; it is getting to the core of who I am, allowing in some ways for the best of me to come to the fore; to have space for grace. I am humbled by what people bring to tell me. I take what I'm doing in the office very seriously because it is really like sacred work in terms of people being able to work, love, and play. I mean that is for them to find their real callings rather than the false selves that they may experience; it's a similar call for finding one's true self, and that is really important work."

Episode Description: We begin by considering the presence of religion as part of the cultural heritage which patients bring to the clinical encounter. Ginta shares with us her upbringing in the Lithuanian Catholic church and its presence in her life, in her journey to medical school and to her psychiatric and analytic training. She speaks of the relationship between her sense of spirituality and God, the importance of Jesus' human/divine amalgam, and how prayer provides her access to her interiority. We consider the similarities and differences between speaking freely to God and speaking freely to one's analyst. We discuss the narthex, the church antechamber, and its association with the analytic waiting room and how the structure of the Mass has similarities with the structure of the analytic session. We also consider her reflections on abortion - including a quote from Freud on the topic. Ginta closes by sharing with us her sense of the sacredness of our work.

Our Guest: Ginta Remeikis, MD, is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst practicing in Rockville, MD. Having graduated from Northwestern University Medical School, she completed her psychiatric residency at Georgetown and Chestnut Lodge Hospital, where she then served on the medical staff and psychoanalytic training at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute. Most recently, she has presented at meetings of the APCS (Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society) and AABS (Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies) on intergenerational transmission of trauma; diaspora experiences; the psychic role of language, especially bilingualism; the use of literature for processing trauma; and psychodynamics around disability. In 2003 she organized the New Directions weekend conference, "The Future of Religion in the Psychoanalytic World: Revisiting the Mind/Soul Dilemma" and for several years presented on issues of psychiatry and religion to Georgetown's psychiatry residents. Besides enjoying reading, she has published poetry in Lithuanian in several collections and journals.

Recommended Readings:

Corcoran, Paul, "Seamus Heaney lost his Catholic faith. But his poetry still sought transcendence." in America; The Jesuit Review, Sept. 15, 2023.

Epstein, Mark, Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective, Basic Books, 1995.

Greeley, Andrew M., The Catholic Myth: The Behavior and Beliefs of American Catholics, Charles Scribner's Sons, NY, 1990.

Merton, Thomas, New Seeds of Contemplation, New Directions, NY, 1961.

Rizzuto, Ana-Maria, Why did Freud Reject God?: A Psychodynamic Interpretation, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1998.

Smith, Joseph H. and Susan A Handelman, editors, Psychoanalysis and Religion, Psychiatry and the Humanities, vol. 11, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1990.

Trinkūnas, Jonas, editor, Of Gods & Holidays; The Baltic Heritage, Tvermė, 1999.

"My analysis not only allowed me to grieve [my mother], with my analyst patiently pushing me in the direction of my feelings, but it radically transformed my life. I wouldn't have had kids if I hadn't had my analysis because I thought 'I'm an ambitious person, I want a career, you can't do everything'. I didn't know any models of women who had a career and enjoyed motherhood. In my analysis I learned just through analyzing my own dreams and free associations, that this was all a rationalization. I was a very maternal person and I had the unconscious belief that if you become a mother you die. Once that was conscious, I talked to my husband who was excited about the idea about having kids. We had our two daughters, and so my life is in very concrete ways radically enriched by my psychoanalysis. So I went into the field with a deep conviction of how therapeutic this process is and it's been kind of a straight line from there."

Episode Description: We begin by describing the arc of learning that characterizes our psychoanalytic life journey. The oral tradition starts with our first supervisors and extends from there to study groups and to becoming a supervisor oneself. Nancy shares with us her professional trajectory from being an eager college student first encountering Freud to becoming a best-selling psychoanalytic author. She relates the transformative experience of her own analysis, the steps of maturation in her clinical work, and how she has faced the traumas of older age. We discuss the role that students have in relating to their more experienced colleagues and we close with her sharing her hope for our field's future.

Our Guest: Nancy McWilliams, PhD is Visiting Professor Emerita at Rutgers Graduate School of Applied & Professional Psychology and has a private practice in Lambertville, NJ. She is author of four textbooks (on psychoanalytic diagnosis, case formulation, therapy, and supervision) and is co-editor of both editions of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual. A former president of the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy of the American Psychological Association, she is a member of the Austen Riggs Center Board of Trustees. Her books are available in 20 languages and she has taught in 30 countries.

Recommended Readings:

McWilliams, N. (2022). Credo: Psychoanalysis as a wisdom tradition. In J. Salberg (Ed.), Psychoanalytic credos: Personal and professional journeys of psychoanalysts (pp. 70-77). New York: Routledge.

McWilliams, N. (2021). Psychoanalytic supervision. New York: Guilford Press.

Lingiardi, V., & McWilliams, N. (Eds.) (2019) Special Issue: The PDM-2 and clinical and research Issues in psychoanalytic diagnosis. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 35.

McWilliams, N. (2017). Psychoanalytic reflections on mortality: Aging, dying, generativity, and renewal. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 34, 50-57. Also in C. Masur (2018), Flirting with death: Psychoanalysts consider mortality (pp. 25-40). New York: Routledge.

McWilliams, N. (2011). Psychoanalytic diagnosis: Understanding personality in the clinical process, rev. ed. New York: Guilford Press

McWilliams, N. (2004). Psychoanalytic psychotherapy: A practitioner's guide. New York: Guilford Press.

"The fact that music is so important for our constitution - that music is almost how we move in the world, that our own bodies are played through by musical forms, that the way we relate to our own way of being in the world is sort of mediated by music - this is powerful stuff. But it's not always very fitting to us. We hear a lot of music in our lives, we don't always choose what we hear. We don't choose our analyst's musicality, we don't first check what kind of musicality an analyst has. We are bombarded by music; music can be imposed upon us, it can make us feel within ourselves in a way that doesn't feel right to us. There is a lot of complexity here as we think about this matter of music being so central to us. But we can find the music that works for us, but we don't create the music. It belongs to the realm of collective cultural life. There is a lot of struggle in music, and in the analytic setting there is a lot of struggle - because for many patients a lot of the work rests on whether there can be any shared sensory experience or not."

Episode Description: We begin with recognizing that the process of human musicalization begins in utero and forms the basis of much of psycho-somatic-social life. Peter, Michael and Adam's written collaboration, Here I'm Alive - The Spirit of Music in Psychoanalysis is intended to be a musical book about psychoanalysis - a representation of how music binds us to the individual and cultural domains of life. We discuss rhythmizing consciousness, atavistic vs enhancing music, and the blues as a companion soundtrack for loss and tribulation. We take up the relationship between Freud's dream book and his joke book, how present analytic melodies contain aspects of the past, and how dissociation requires a remusicalization of the psychoanalytic situation. We close with Adam reading a paragraph which includes "The capacity of the sexual drive to propel the body back into musical movement and transmute the seizure of trauma into conducted energy to ground the current."

Our Guests:

Peter Goldberg, Ph.D., is a Personal and Supervising Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, Chair of Faculty at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, and on the faculty of the Wright Institute in Berkeley. He has presented widely and written on a range of clinical and theoretical topics, including the evolution of clinical theory in psychoanalysis, sensory experience in analysis, the concept of the analytic frame, the theory and treatment of dissociative states, non-representational states; and the impact of social trauma on individual psychology. He is in private practice in Albany, CA.

Michael Levin, Psy.D. is a Training Analyst and Faculty Member at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. He has taught and presented on topics including the work of Laplanche, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis, and the place of psychoanalysis in cultural and intellectual history. He is in private practice in San Francisco.

Adam Blum, Psy.D. is an Adjunct Faculty Member at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. He has written and presented on psychoanalysis and the music of Björk, Kendrick Lamar, Frank Ocean, Stephen Sondheim, Aretha Franklin, and Michael Jackson. He is in private practice in San Francisco.

Recommended Readings and Videos:

Nicholas Spice, "Winnicott and Music" (2001), in The Elusive Child, ed. Lesley Caldwell (London: Karnac, 2002).

Peter Sloterdijk, "Where Are We When We Hear Music?" (2014), in The Aesthetic Imperative: Writings on Art (London: Polity, 2018).

Francis Grier, "Musicality in the Consulting Room," International Journal of Psychoanalysis 100:827–51.

Sondheim Teaches "My Friends" from Sweeney Todd (video) .

Byung-Chul Han, The Scent of Time: A Philosophical Essay on the Art of Lingering (London: Wiley, 2017).

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge, 1962)

The Late Late Show with James Corden, "Paul McCartney Carpool Karaoke" (video).

Harmut Rosa, Resonance (Cambridge: Polity, 2019).

Meshell Ndegeocello, The Omnichord Real Book (2023) (album), Blue Note Records.

"Discrimination is something that is needed for the child to create himself as a person. You need to be discriminated from the other, and the other is useful for you, as Freud said, as a model, as a rival, as an enemy. There are different kinds of relationships with the other - you need the other, and we are persons connected with the other. If you discriminate you from the other, this is benign. But if you are doing it from a power position, saying: 'These people are not like me' - this is malignant othering. It is malignant because when you are marking these people as different, as the Nazis did with the Jewish people, then it is very easy for these people to become the target for any kind of attack when there will be social or economic problems. Malignant because you are doing it from a position of power and because these people that you are discriminating from you may become targets for possible attacks for different reasons in the community."

Episode Description: We begin with Abel reading a statement from the Prejudices, Discrimination and Racism Committee which is included below. He shares with us his personal and family story that led him to be interested in racism and to chair this committee. We discuss the differences between benign otherness and malignant othering. He emphasizes the presence of negation in all of us, tempting us to ignore the dangers from discrimination. He speaks of the future of psychoanalysis and how he feels it depends upon its application in settings off the couch. We consider the risks of dilution of the training experience and also the great benefit to the many who will receive treatment from analytically oriented care. He warns us of the dangers of making the perfect the enemy of the good.

Statement from the IPA Prejudices, Discrimination, Racism Committee:

The rise of antisemitism in the wake of the Hamas barbaric attack

We strongly condemn the murder, maiming, and abduction of hundreds of Israeli civilians and soldiers during an unprovoked attack by Hamas terrorists. The scale of this terrorist attack is unprecedented in recent history. It can only be viewed as a pogrom, and we express our deep solidarity with the victims. Hamas is a terrorist organization, and Palestinians are also their victims. We feel sorrow for all civilians who are killed or suffering in this war, including so many in Gaza.

In its founding document, the Hamas Charter, Hamas states that it is committed to waging Jihad, or holy war, in order "to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine". Its stated goal is to eliminate the Jewish state and kill Jews. It must be made clear that the terror against Israel is not motivated by economic, geographic, or political conflicts: all of Israel is considered a holy land that must not be defiled by the presence of "infidels", whether Christians or Jews. The statement of freeing Palestine from occupation, "From the River to the Sea", reveals a clear intent to eliminate the State of Israel. A fight against Hamas is a fight of light against darkness, of liberalism against the forces of oppression.

We, as psychoanalysts, can identify the dehumanization of the Jewish population that was displayed by the horrific massacre on the 7th of October. In addition to the suffering of Israel´s population, antisemitic manifestations and attacks have increased exponentially all over the world. As the Prejudices Discrimination and Racism Committee we are alert to antisemitism and the dangerous consequences of its negation. We hope that in due course, it will be possible to find strong leaders who will have the courage to meet and negotiate peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Abel Fainstein (Chair) Argentine Psychoanalytical Association (APA)

Paula Kliger. Michigan Psychoanalytic Society (MPS)

Rosine Perelberg. British Psychoanalytical Society ( BPS)

Leonie Sullivan. Australian Psychoanalytical Society (AP

Raya Zonana. Brazilian Society of Psychoanalysis of Sao Paulo. (SBPSP)

Mira Erlich-Ginor (Ex officio) Israel Psychoanalytic Society (IPS)

Our Guest: Abel Fainstein, MD is a Psychiatrist, Master in Psychoanalysis,

Full Member and former President of the Argentine Psychoanalytical Association (APA) and the Psychoanalytic Federation of Latin America (FEPAL). He is a former member of the IPA Board and Ex Com ,Current Chair of the Prejudice, Discrimination, Racism Committee of the IPA, current advisor of the IRED Interregional Encyclopedic Dictionary in Psychoanalysis by the IPA, and of the Revista Uruguaya de Psicoanálisis by APU. He is a judge for the first IPA Tyresias Award on Sexual and Gender Diversity, 2021. He was awarded the KONEX Award in Psychoanalysis, 2016.

Recommended Readings:

Busch, F. ( 2023) Psychoanalysis at the Crossroad. An international perspective. Routledge. NY.

Cabral. A.C ; Fainstein A.M ( 2019 ) On training analysis .Debates. APAEditorial. Buenos Aires

Sandler,P. ; Pacheco Costa G. (2019 ) On Freud's "The Question of Lay Analysis." Turning Points and Critical Issues (The International Psychoanalytical Association ... Turning Points and Critical Issues Series) Routledge. London.

Powell, J.A, Menendian, S. (2016) The Problem of Othering. Othering and Belonging. Expanding the Circle of Human Concern.

Othering & Belonging is published by the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at the University of California, Berkeley.

Winer,R; Malawista,K (2017 ) Who is behind the couch. Karnac. London

"The situation was that I went with my husband Danny, who is also a clinical psychologist, and we were on the team that came and told people when family members were identified and that they had been murdered. There was one time when we went to two kids, telling them that their parents were murdered. We were with them in the room with an aunt and another family member. All of a sudden, I said, "Danny's father and my father were in the Holocaust, and they also lost their parents. And you know they became happy people and good fathers for us. And here we are with you now." It was like my telling a lullaby - I knew that they hear us and they don't hear us, but I believed that the unconscious can hear me. That's how my personal transgenerational story helped me to help them to believe that a life can become after this disaster." M.R.

"And the music in your saying whatever you said was part of what worked there, both the liveliness and something that has a real connection to experiences one can survive from. This is a very unusual kind of intervention for psychoanalysts, and also that it may not fit everyone. There is a match between how can one make use of oneself and go out of one's skin and one's routines, i.e. the way I always do whatever I do. Instead,to do something different that is echoing the needs of the person with whom you are in contact." M.E-G.

Episode Description: We begin by tracing the recent history of those organizations that are dedicated to the premeditated butchery of civilians. Both Merav and Mira share with us their experiences when the sirens went off on Saturday morning October 7th. We follow them as they attend to those who physically survived the mutilation, murder and kidnapping of their family members. Merav, building from her personal family Holocaust history, created a series of guidelines with which to engage those who were overwhelmed. It became a sort of proactive psychoanalytic manual to give structure to and help regain the alpha function of those who are suffering while also recognizing the presence of past traumas in their lives. They share with us their personal experiences, the crucial importance of President Biden's speech and visit, and the vital assistance that all the Israeli psychoanalytic organizations are providing. Central to their personal and professional message is We have survived traumas in the past, and we will survive again this time.

Our Guests: Merav Roth, Ph.D. and Mira Erlich-Ginor, Ph.D., are both members of the Israeli Psychoanalytic Society.

Linked Episodes:

Episode 110: PCCA (Partners in Confronting Collective Atrocities) and Working with Ukrainian Current Atrocities with Mira Erlich-Ginor

Episode 96: Why Do We Read Books? Literature and Psychoanalysis with Merav Roth, Ph.D.

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"The gift of the [traditional] healer that he shares with those of us who do psychoanalytic work is that we are given an idea of the human mind as being always in a process of mediating the real world and the drives of sex and aggression - which if not moderated can lead to terrible things. We're in there, and that's what our training helps us to do."

Episode Description: We begin with Martha describing her social work background and how it informed her approach to working with overwhelmed children in New York. She recounts her efforts in El Salvador and her understanding that children who were violent were actually children who were over-exposed to violence. She also functioned as one who accompanied those clinicians who themselves were at risk of being overwhelmed by the violence in their work. We take up her engagement in Angola and their cultural model of the individual as "the self that exists for the purpose of social participation." We consider the case of a child soldier who was treated by traditional healers for multiple symptoms related to his involvement in atrocities. We note the similarity with Bion's Knowing and Love as it is lived between the individual, the healer and the community. We close with recognizing the importance of the 'moral third' and the centrality of reparation in both African and American cultures.

Our Guest: Martha Bragin, Ph.D., is jointly appointed Professor at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College and the Ph.D. Program in Social Welfare at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She joined the faculty after 30 years of experience supporting United Nations agencies, governments, nongovernmental and people's organizations to address the effects of violence and disaster on children, youth, families, and the communities in which we live. Dr Bragin is a Fellow of the Research Training Program of the IPA and the editorial board of the International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies. She serves as a member of Inter-Agency Standing Committee (UN-IFRC-NGO) Reference Group on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings, a globally representative body that sets and monitors standards for psychosocial interventions in emergencies. Dr Bragin is recipient of the International Psychoanalytic Association's Tyson Prize as well as the Hayman Prize for published work on traumatized children and adults in 2011 and 2021. She is the author of numerous peer-reviewed publications and is in private practice in New York City.

Recommended Readings:

Bragin, M. (2003). The effect of extreme violence on the capacity for symbol formation: Case studies from Afghanistan and New York. In J. Cancelmo, J. Hoffenberg, & H.

Myers (Eds.), Terror and the psychoanalytic space: International perspectives from Ground Zero (pp. 59–67). New York, NY: Pace University.

Bragin, M. (2004). The uses of aggression: Healing the wounds of war and violence in a

community context. In B. Sklarew, S. Twemlow, & S. Wilkinson (Eds.), Analysts in the trenches: Streets, schools and war zones (pp. 169–194). Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.

Bragin, M. (2005). Pedrito: The blood of the ancestors. Journal of Infant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 4(1), 1–20.

Bragin, M. (2007). Knowing terrible things: Engaging survivors of extreme violence in treatment. Clinical Social Work Journal, 35(4), 229 – 236.

Bragin, M. (2010). Can anyone here know who I am? Creating meaningful narratives among returning combat veterans, their families, and the communities in which we all live. Clinical Social Work Journal, 38(3), 316–326.

Bragin, M., & Bragin, G. (2010). Making meaning together: Helping survivors of violence and loss to learn at school. Journal of Infant Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy, 9(2), 47-67.

Bragin, M. (2012). So that our dreams will not escape us: Learning to think together in time of war. Psychoanalytic Inquiry: A Topical Journal for Mental Health Professionals, 32 (2), 115–135.

Bragin, M. (2019) Pour a libation for us: Restoring the sense of a moral universe to children affected by violence. Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy 18 (3), 201- 2011.