This report on the proceedings of the "Rank Horror" symposium, convened in May 2024 to reconsider Otto Rank's life, work, and enduring contributions to psychoanalytic theory and practice, includes a brief historical surv...This report on the proceedings of the "Rank Horror" symposium, convened in May 2024 to reconsider Otto Rank's life, work, and enduring contributions to psychoanalytic theory and practice, includes a brief historical survey of Rank's relationship to Sigmund Freud and other original members of the International Psychoanalytic Association's Central Committee, and an account of the symposium's wider intellectual and political context. It outlines the reasons for returning to Rank now, and a summary of the papers presented. Particular focus is afforded to Rank's 1924 book,
Between 1913 and 1917, published several studies that argued for a distinct Black psyche. They were edited by the journal's co-founder, William Alanson White, and conducted by the staff at Saint Elizabeths Hospital in W...Between 1913 and 1917, published several studies that argued for a distinct Black psyche. They were edited by the journal's co-founder, William Alanson White, and conducted by the staff at Saint Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, DC, where White served as superintendent. This article provides a brief historical context for better understanding of why and how paid attention to the comparative study of race.
This article examines five contributions published in the early volumes (1913-1917) of , written by John E. Lind and Arrah B. Evarts. It reflects on how they address the topic of race and its relation to psychoanalytic t...This article examines five contributions published in the early volumes (1913-1917) of , written by John E. Lind and Arrah B. Evarts. It reflects on how they address the topic of race and its relation to psychoanalytic theory, highlighting the ways of purported neutrality of empirical research and how it serves a fantasy through which racism is enacted and sustained.
This contribution considers a monthly seminar, Literature and Psychoanalysis, that has been taking place at Sofia University (Sofia, Bulgaria) since 2017. Three of the seminar's founders reflect on the transferences betw...This contribution considers a monthly seminar, Literature and Psychoanalysis, that has been taking place at Sofia University (Sofia, Bulgaria) since 2017. Three of the seminar's founders reflect on the transferences between literature and psychoanalysis, and on the ways in which literature and psychoanalysis can meaningfully converse. The exchange also touches on the fate of Freud's textual legacy in communist and post-communist Bulgaria.
"Free association" and the "fundamental rule" are bedrock for psychoanalytic therapy and apply to what both patient and analyst should experience in the process. The article traces Sigmund Freud's revolutionary recogniti..."Free association" and the "fundamental rule" are bedrock for psychoanalytic therapy and apply to what both patient and analyst should experience in the process. The article traces Sigmund Freud's revolutionary recognition of the importance of free association that began with his tribute to the works of Ludwig Börne and Friedrich Schiller. The author invokes other proposals akin to free association made by artists and scientists, including John Keats, Charles Dickens, Robert Frost, Thomas S. Kuhn, Arthur Koestler, and Albert Einstein. While emphasizing the importance and the liberatory potential of free association as it relates to effective treatment and discovery, the author contends that there is a "moral press" for both the patient and the analyst to permit free associative thoughts, particularly to question assumptions about how things are supposed to be.
Through the personal reflection on chronic pain, the author engages the question of how clinicians and their patients manage various forms of loss within the clinical encounter. The notion of is introduced as a stepping...Through the personal reflection on chronic pain, the author engages the question of how clinicians and their patients manage various forms of loss within the clinical encounter. The notion of is introduced as a stepping-stone from phallicism to genitality, whereby the capacity to grieve and thus tolerate limitedness enables growth. Hannah Arendt's concept of is offered as a hopeful corrective to the resistance to accepting limitations.
Psychoanalysis is often viewed as a practice relevant only to educated people of means. This article describes a project that matches psychoanalytically trained clinicians with unhoused and formerly unhoused adults in a...Psychoanalysis is often viewed as a practice relevant only to educated people of means. This article describes a project that matches psychoanalytically trained clinicians with unhoused and formerly unhoused adults in a large urban community. D. W. Winnicott's ideas about impingement, the holding environment, fear of breakdown, and careful monitoring of the analyst's interiority have proven to be most valuable theoretical and clinical tools. A decade-long case example demonstrates the challenges and healing potentials of the work.
As an introduction to the panel on "Aging, Dying, and the Analytic Process," and to the Focus of this issue of , this article offers personal comments linked to affective neuropsychoanalytic theory, and advocates an abil...As an introduction to the panel on "Aging, Dying, and the Analytic Process," and to the Focus of this issue of , this article offers personal comments linked to affective neuropsychoanalytic theory, and advocates an ability to think about illness and death as an integral part of lived experience.
By revisiting the last years of a long psychoanalytic treatment of a female patient, a psychoanalyst reflects on her own development as a clinician and on the changes in her experience of psychoanalytic generativity. An...By revisiting the last years of a long psychoanalytic treatment of a female patient, a psychoanalyst reflects on her own development as a clinician and on the changes in her experience of psychoanalytic generativity. An increasing ability to understand patient's shifts between creativity and destructiveness brings about a different understanding of the process of mourning, while the shared aging of the analytic dyad highlights the difficulty of ending an analysis that has become a way of life.
Attention to the manifestations of death anxiety in the clinical context is often absent in the discourse of psychoanalytic training. This exchange addresses some of the causes of such an absence: a fraught relation betw...Attention to the manifestations of death anxiety in the clinical context is often absent in the discourse of psychoanalytic training. This exchange addresses some of the causes of such an absence: a fraught relation between privacy and secrecy, primacy of psychic reality and interpretation, and cultural underpinnings of sanitization of death.
Offering a personal example, the author argues for the protocols of respectful, confidential, and responsible institutional support as a corrective to an individual clinician's lack of optimal judgment when facing diffic...Offering a personal example, the author argues for the protocols of respectful, confidential, and responsible institutional support as a corrective to an individual clinician's lack of optimal judgment when facing difficult clinical challenges or personal crises.
This reflection on the initial stages of treatment of a latency girl whose previous analyst died offers some insights into inner workings of mourning in children. The mourning process intersects in complex ways with a de...This reflection on the initial stages of treatment of a latency girl whose previous analyst died offers some insights into inner workings of mourning in children. The mourning process intersects in complex ways with a developmental stage, object constancy, unconscious phantasies, and conscious ideas about life and death. Clinical material illustrates some challenges that emerge in the transference-countertransference matrix when working with a child who lost both her primary object (the mother) and her transference object (the analyst). The reality of the analyst's death emphasizes that for a child patient the analyst is always a transference object and a real object at once.
The panel discussion presented at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute's 1066th Scientific Meeting held on June 8, 2023, takes up aging and dying of an analyst and their impact on patients and on the nature...The panel discussion presented at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute's 1066th Scientific Meeting held on June 8, 2023, takes up aging and dying of an analyst and their impact on patients and on the nature of analytic process. Participants reflect on conflicts and challenges arising with more analysts and patients living to an advanced age, on the unregulated nature of analysts' retirement, and on multilayered meanings of analysts' ethical commitment to their work.
This appreciation of the work of Alan Roland reviews his pioneering contributions to the field of cross-cultural psychoanalysis based on the clinical experience with patients from non-Western cultures, most notably India...This appreciation of the work of Alan Roland reviews his pioneering contributions to the field of cross-cultural psychoanalysis based on the clinical experience with patients from non-Western cultures, most notably India and Japan.