Episodios

  • Affects, Curiosity, and Corporal Punishment with Paul Holinger, MD, MPH (Chicago)

    Affects, Curiosity, and Corporal Punishment with Paul Holinger, MD, MPH (Chicago)
    Jun 15 2025
    “Now's the time to tell that wonderful story of the little boy. He was about two or three years old, and he went in the icebox to get some milk, and he managed to get this big carton and spill it all over the floor. Now, needless to say, there'd be a lot of parents that would react very negatively and frustrated - this mother happened to be a scientist. So she came in, she saw the bottle of milk, and what had happened. She went and got some paper towels, put them on the milk, and said, ‘Look at this. Look how the milk starts creeping up these fibers of the towel. Isn't that cool?’ And then she said, ‘Look, if you have something heavy you need to get out of the refrigerator, feel free to call me. But how neat is this that the milk is being absorbed by the towel?’ Well, she was a scientist, and he became a world-class scientist. She understood his interest and she didn’t bring a fear and shame-inducing reaction, and all the negative effects that could have resulted if she had handled it differently. Instead, she put a sense of joy and interest in being intrigued with his interests, and turned the whole thing around.” Episode Description: Paul starts our conversation about affects by referencing Tomkins’ work, which identified 6 negative and 2 positive affects/feeling states, all of which are represented by different facial expressions in infancy. He reports on clinical work that is enhanced by locating the patient's affective surface, which enables meaningful contact within the dyad. We focus on the affect of interest and how essential it is in establishing a sense of self in the world. He also shares the many ways that this interest can be undermined by the child's environment. He describes research on the capacities of 18-month-olds and how they differ from 14-month-olds regarding the awareness of self and other. Paul also emphasizes how destructive corporal punishment is in the lives of children and in society at large. We end with the final sentence from his book, a quote from Abraham Lincoln, "We can succeed only by concert. It is not 'Can any of us imagine better?' but 'Can we all do better?' Object whatsoever is possible, still the question recurs, 'Can we do better?' Our Guest: Paul Holinger, MD, MPH, is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Faculty and Former Dean at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute, Training/Supervising and Child/Adolescent Supervising Analyst. He is Professor of Psychiatry (Retired) at Rush University Medical Center, Chicago. His most recent books include Affects, Cognition, and Language as Foundations of Human Development and What Babies Say Before They Can Talk: The Nine Signals Infants Use to Express Their Feelings. Recommended Readings: Holinger PC: Violent Deaths in the United States: An Epidemiologic Study of Suicide, Homicide, and Accidents. New York: The Guilford Press, 1987. Holinger PC: Offer D; Barter JT: Bell CC: Suicide and Homicide Among Adolescents. The Guilford Press, 1994. Holinger PC: What Babies Say Before They Can Talk: The Nine Signals Infants Use to Express Their Feelings. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003. (Several Translations) Holinger PC: Affects, Cognition, and Language as Foundations of Human Development. New York/London: Routledge, 2024. Holinger PC: Violent deaths as a leading cause of mortality: An epidemiologic study of suicide, homicide, and accidents. Amer J Psychiatry 137: 472-476, 1980. Holinger PC: A developmental perspective on psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Amer J Psychiatry 146: 1404-1412, 1989. Holinger PC: Noninterpretive interventions in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy: A developmental perspective. Psychoanalytic Psychology 16: 233-253, 1999. Holinger PC: Further issues in the psychology of affect and motivation: A developmental perspective. Psychoanalytic Psychology 25: 425-442, 2008. Holinger PC: Further considerations of theory, technique, and affect in child analysis: Two prelatency cases. International J Psychoanalysis 97: 1279-1297, 2016. Holinger PC: The problem of physical punishment and its persistence: The potential roles of psychoanalysis. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 73:1-9, 2020.
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    53 m
  • The 'Necessary Foreignness' of Psychoanalysis with Mariano Horenstein, PhD (Cordoba, Argentina)

    The 'Necessary Foreignness' of Psychoanalysis with Mariano Horenstein, PhD (Cordoba, Argentina)
    Jun 1 2025

    “In the analysis, the place where you face the experience of otherness, of foreignness, of the unconscious that goes through you, it doesn't appear as knowledge. Of course, in an analysis, you get a lot of knowledge, but it's not an important aspect of an analysis. I think that in the analysis, and that's the idea of using that word ‘transmission’ instead of ‘teaching’, what you receive is something that the analyst doesn't have. When you receive some knowledge from a teacher, you receive the knowledge the teacher has. When you transmit something, or when you receive something that has been transmitted by the analyst or by the psychoanalytical setting, is something that the other doesn't have. It's a kind of void. It's a kind of fire. It's like the baton that every runner passes to others in a relay race. It is something more difficult to be grasped with words, is something elusive to words, but it does exist.”

    Episode Description: We begin with describing the 'necessary foreignness' of psychoanalysis, "It is from both a foreign perspective and foreign listening that makes it possible to notice the concealed underpinnings, to discover the new, and to express the unexpressed." We consider the clinical asymmetry that allows for the patient's unbridled freedom to think and speak the unspeakable. Educationally, Mariano discusses the essential transmission of analytic experience as contrasted with the teaching of knowledge - a distinction between science and mystery. He shares his thoughts on eclectisism, hypothesis testing and risk. We close with recognizing that the "anachronistic method of psychoanalytic listening is the most authentic way of being contemporary."

    Our Guest: Mariano Horenstein, PhD is a training and supervising analyst who belongs to the IPA, FEPAL (Latin American Psychoanalytical Federation), and the international research group "Geographies of Psychoanalysis". He is an IPA Board member and a former chief editor of Calibán, the official Journal of FEPAL. Former Training Director of APC (Argentina). His articles have been translated into Portuguese, English, Farsi, French, Russian, Italian, Portuguese and German. Author of four books :Psychoanalysis in Minor Language, The Compass and the Couch. Psychoanalysis and its Necessary Foreignness, Funambulistas. Travesía adolescente y riesgo and Artists, Writers and Philosophers on Psychoanalysis. From the Couch. He has received international awards as M. Bergwerk (about the clinic forms of Evil), Lucien Freud (about Psychoanalysis and Culture); Elise Hayman Award for the study of Holocaust and Genocide (given by the IPA); A. Garma (given by the Spanish Association of Neuropsychiatry); the FEPAL Award and Carolina Zamora Award (given by Madrid Psychoanalytical Association).

    http://www.marianohorenstein.com/

    Recommended Readings:

    Horenstein, Mariano, The compass and the couch. Psychoanalysis and its necessary foreignness, Mimesis, Milan, 2018.

    Horenstein, Mariano, Artists, writers and philosophers on Psychoanalysis. From the couch, Routledge, London, 2024.

    Horenstein, Mariano, Psicoanálisis en lengua menor, Viento de Fondo, Córdoba, 2015.

    Preta, Lorena (ed), Dislocated subject, Mimesis, Milan, 2018.

    Preta, Lorena (ed), Geographies of Psychoanalysis, Mimesis, Milan, 2015.

    Preta, Lorena, The brutality of things. Psychic transformations of reality, Mimesis, Milan, 2019.

    Wohlfarth, I., Hombres del extranjero. Walter Benjamin y el Parnaso judeoalemán, Taurus, CDMX, 2014.
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    1 h y 5 m
  • Care of a Former Analysand with Dementia with Maxine Anderson, MD (Seattle, Washington)

    Care of a Former Analysand with Dementia with Maxine Anderson, MD (Seattle, Washington)
    May 18 2025
    “I think that my analytic awareness of denial and projection and the concreteness of psychic reality when executive function wanes, that I could help the other caretakers to understand some of what was going on - to give them a way to understand that relieves their sense of frustration and uncertainty. I think that the analytic awareness of denial, of projection, that these things are not generally recognized by many caretakers, but it does reorient and make the caretaking function much more tolerable. It expands the understanding of what goes on in the waning personality. I also think that analytic work fosters the capacity to tolerate ambiguity, uncertainty, pain and frustration and in that way may allow us, the analytic mind, to tolerate some of the intense affect - as sort of the phrase I love from an Italian analyst, as “writings waiting to be completed” - by the analytic mind. We can hold and metabolize the difficulty and offer that kind of function rather than unpleasantness just to be rid of. These are some of the things that I felt are useful as a psychoanalyst.” Episode Description: We begin with describing how dementia is a cloud over our field both for individuals and for institutes. Maxine then introduces us to 'Sally' who was her analysand 40 years prior to recontacting her to care for her cognitive decline. Maxine mentions that just hearing her former patient's voice instantly brought alive her past experiences with her. We discuss how she approached the issue of caring for her and her neurological condition. We consider the at times overlap between psychogenic and organic symptoms and she shares with us her countertransference experiences of herself losing her memory. Maxine also shares her approach to answering Sally’s questions about the possibility of recovering. We close with her describing how she feels that being an analyst aided her care of Sally and what she learned from that experience that she brought to her other patients -"to face the pain of difficult truths." Our Guest: Maxine Anderson, MD, is a training and supervising analyst at the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, the Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute and Society and the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society. Originally trained in psychiatry, she pursued psychoanalytic training in Seattle in the early 1970s and then pursued post-graduate work at the British Psychoanalytical Society for 8 years, returning to Seattle in 1992. Thereafter, she became a Founding Member of the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. Maxine has published several articles, and chapters and 3 books, the most recent being The Hardest Passage: a psychoanalyst accompanies her patient’s journey into dementia (Karnac, 2025). Feeling herself now to be an Elder in life and in her field, Maxine hopes to continue to think and write about this phase of personal and professional life. Recommended Readings: Balfour, A. (2007). Facts, phenomenology, and psychoanalytic contributions to dementia care. In: R. Davenhill (Ed.) Looking into Later Life: a psychoanalytic approach to depression and dementia in Old Age. (pp. 222–247). London: Routledge, 2007. Davenhill, R. (Ed.) (2007) Looking into Later Life. A Psychoanalytic approach to Depression and Dementia in Old Age. London: Karnac. Davenhill, R. (2007). No truce with the furies: issues of containment in the provision of care for people with dementia and those who care for them. In: R. Davenhill ( Ed.), Looking into later life: a psychoanalytic approach to dementia and depression in old age. (pp. 201-221). London: Routledge. Evans, S. (2008). “Beyond forgetfulness”: How psychoanalytic ideas can help us to understand the experience of patients with dementia”. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, 22(3):155–176. Kitwood, T. (1997). Dementia Reconsidered: The Person Comes First. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Malloy, L (2009). Thinking about dementia – a psychodynamic understanding of links between early infantile experience and dementia. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, 23(2): 109–120. Plotkin, D. (2014). Older adults and psychoanalytic treatment: It’s about time. Psychodynamic Psychiatry, 42(1): 23–60. Sherwood, J. (2019). Dementia: childhood and loss. In White, K. Cotter, A. & Leventhal, H. (Eds.), Dementia: An Attachment Approach. London: Routledge.
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    56 m
  • Before 'Ghosts' become 'Ancestors' with Shalini Masih, PhD (Worcestershire, UK)

    Before 'Ghosts' become 'Ancestors' with Shalini Masih, PhD (Worcestershire, UK)
    May 4 2025

    “All of this together shaped how I began to think about mind, not as something to be mastered, but as a landscape of the unspoken whether it was ghosts or griefs or desires that were hard to relinquish. I saw that the ghost was not always an ‘other’. It was often intimate, tied to lost ones, sometimes to unmet desires, to unbearable longings, but in some ways possession was an attempt to keep close what was slipping away. The ghost doesn't just haunt, it feels as if it wants something, and we just have to learn to develop ears to listen to what it wants.”

    Episode Description: We acknowledge Loewald's concept of 'ghosts becoming ancestors' and consider the similarities and differences with those who hold 'ghosts' to be literal. Shalini shares with us her journey to open herself to the uncertainty and ambiguity of these externalized entities while appreciating both their cultural and intrapsychic sources. We learn of her family's involvement with exorcisms, especially her grandmother's "fearless warmth" and "empathy that saw beyond the terror of the ghosts." She considers the many facets of mind that are represented by 'ghosts' and the essential value of approaching them as guides to the "landscape of the unspoken." Shalini describes a long term engagement that she had with an individual who "taught me to receive the inchoate and horrific...to contain the brokenness and not interpret it away.. and to appreciate the glimpses of beauty in the most grotesque parts of self."

    Our Guest: Shalini Masih, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and writer, grew up in India amidst priests and healers, witnessing spirit possession and exorcism. Now based in Worcestershire, UK, she holds a Master’s degree in Psychoanalytic Studies from Tavistock & Portman, London, and a PhD from the University of Delhi. Mentored by psychoanalysts Michael Eigen and Sudhir Kakar, she’s an award-winning scholar of the American Psychological Association. She has taught and supervised psychoanalytic psychotherapists in Ambedkar University, Delhi and in Birkbeck, University of London. Her acclaimed paper, 'Devil! Sing me the Blues', was nominated for Gradiva Awards in 2020. Her debut book is Psychoanalytic Conversations with States of Spirit Possession: Beauty in Brokenness.

    Recommended Readings:

    Kakar, Sudhir. Shamans, mystics, and doctors: A psychological inquiry into India and its healing traditions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991.

    Kakar, Sudhir. Mad and Divine. India: Penguin Books India, 2008.

    Eigen, Michael. “On Demonized Aspects of the Self” In The Electrified Tightrope. Routledge. 2018.

    Kumar, Mansi, Dhar Anup & Mishra, Anurag. Psychoanalysis from the Indian Terroir: Emerging Themes in Culture, Family, and Childhood. New York:Lexington Books, 2018.

    Meltzer, Donald, and Williams, Meg H. The apprehension of beauty: The role of aesthetic conflict in development, art and violence. Karnac, London: The Harris Meltzer Trust, 2008.

    Obeyesekere, Gananath. Medusa’s Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1981.

    Ogden, Thomas. This Art of Psychoanalysis—Dreaming Undreamt Dreams and Interrupted Cries. East Sussex: Routledge, 2005

    Botella, Cesar, and Botella, Sara. The Work of Psychic Figurability: Mental States without Representation. Brunner-Routledge. Taylor and Francis Group: Hove and New York. 2005.

    Winnicott. Donald W. “Transitional objects and transitional phenomena.” International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 34, (1953): 89–97
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    59 m
  • Candidates' Reflections on their Psychoanalytic Training with Himanshu Agrawal, MD (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)

    Candidates' Reflections on their Psychoanalytic Training with Himanshu Agrawal, MD (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)
    Apr 20 2025

    “The theme that I found with IPSO [International Psychoanalytical Studies Organization] was that there was a common theme [in psychoanalytic training]. There was an initial phase full of terror and excitement, and then a middle phase of maybe some lethargy or apathy or disillusionment. In that middle phase, many candidates found IPSO, or IPSO found them, where they found refuge. They found solace. They found community, not just at their local institutes, but at this kind of world market. Many of the candidates talk about what a timely and wonderful experience it was to be seen, to be validated by fellow candidates in a way that only fellow candidates can do. At least a couple of the authors have written about how they were delighted to see that more than anything else we are similar as human beings, no matter where we're from.”

    Episode Description: We begin with recognizing the deep attachment that many analytic candidates have about their training experiences, which includes affections and resentments. Himanshu outlines the process of reaching out to candidates globally, inviting them to share their reflections on their journeys. We read from a sampling of their essays that eloquently describe their idealizations and de-idealizations, their delights and their burdens, their profound regard for the mysteries of the mind and the appreciation of the power of psychoanalysis to engage with it. We discuss the importance of IPSO, the difficulties associated with Covid and the relevance of our field's traumatic origins. Himanshu closes with sharing his story of encountering an insightful analytic supervisor during his residency and declaring "I want to be like him."

    Linked Episode:Episode 89: Wisdom and Enthusiasm for Today’s Candidates with Fred Busch, PhD

    Our Guest: Himanshu Agrawal, MD is an adult and child psychiatrist and recently completed psychoanalytic training through the Minnesota Psychoanalytic Institute. He is an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee where he sees patients, conducts research, and teaches. He recently completed his term as the president of the candidates’ council of the American Psychoanalytic Association

    Recommended Readings:

    Busch F (Ed), Dear candidate. Routledge, 2020

    Agrawal H, Trials and Tribulations of being a candidate. The American Psychoanalyst, winter 2022

    Kernberg O, Thirty methods to destroy the creativity of psychoanalytic candidates. International Journal of psychoanalysis, 77, 1031- 1040
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    49 m
  • Reflections on Our Changing Field with Stefano Bolognini, MD (Bologna)

    Reflections on Our Changing Field with Stefano Bolognini, MD (Bologna)
    Apr 6 2025
    “When we reconstruct [in a patient] a possible lacking object or role or function, we see that if the analyst himself has been able and the patient allowing him to be able to enter to a deep level the objective reality of the internal world of the patient, it can happen that some new function or position can be achieved. This is something that could be rare but it happens. This is one more reason for not blaming the length of some analytic treatments, because time is needed for entering that internal deep area where the analytic relation can create something new. Transformation is also one of the words that in our analytic world became more and more common and utilized because we have achieved the certainty that there can be a transformation. Not only an understanding or a clarification, but also a transformation of the quality of the objective world and of the relation with it.” Episode Description: We begin by describing the differences in psychoanalytic approaches today as compared to past generations. This shift has occurred alongside changes in patients' concerns; currently, individuals are disproportionately preoccupied with how they perceive themselves through others' eyes, rather than grappling with internal conflicts related to guilt. Stefano posits that this increased narcissistic investment stems from alterations in family structures and premature disruptions in "the physiological fusionality" with the early maternal caretaker. We discuss how this sense of distrust in the availability and reliability of caretakers affects the manner in which one introduces a patient into analysis, as well as the broader cultural emphasis on superficial bodily care - what he terms the aperitif experience. We consider the fundamental importance of the depth of object relations in understanding sexual diversities. Stefano concludes by reading the final paragraph from his book, which acknowledges the invaluable lessons learned from his analyst. We reflect on the enduring presence within him of this profoundly personal connection. Linked Episodes: Episode 140: Are Patients Different Today? with Stefano Bolognini, MD (Bologna) https://youtu.be/rjzpA8QZrWk?si=Srf_Tuxt0zTpsKNK Our Guest: Stefano Bolognini, MD, is a psychiatrist and training and supervising analyst of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society (SPI), where he served as president (2009-2013). He also was an IPA Board member (2002-2012) and was IPA president from 2013-2017. He was a member of the European Editorial Board of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and a founder of the IPA Inter-Regional Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. He has published over 280 psychoanalytic papers, and his books on empathy and on the inter-psychic dimension have been translated into several languages. Recommended Readings: Bolognini, Stefano - Secret Passages. The Theory and Technique of the Interpsychic Relations. IPA New Library, Routledge, London, 2010 https://www.amazon.com/Vital-Between-Non-Self-Library-Psychoanalysis/dp/1032132973, Routledge, London, 2022 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21387998/ Psychoanal. Quart., vol. LXXX, 1, 33-54, 2012. Enchantments and disenchantments in the formation and use of psychoanalytic theories about psychic reality. The Italian Psychoanalytic Annual, 13, 11-24, July 2019. New forms of psychopathology in a changing world: a challenge for psychoanalysis in the twenty-first century. The Italian Psychoanalytic Annual, 2020. Reflections on the institutional Family of the Analyst and proposing a “fourth Pillar” for Education. Opportunities and problems of transferal dynamics in the training pathway“. In Living and containing Psychoanalysis in Institutions. Psychoanalysts Working Together, edited by Gabriele Junkers, 89-104, Taylor & Francis, 2022. From What to How : A Conversational with Stefano Bolognini on Emotional Attunement by Luca Nicoli & Stefano Bolognini. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 91 : 3, 443-477, 2022. The Interpsychic, the Interpersonal, and the Intersubjective: Response to Steven H. Goldberg’s Discussion. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 91:3, 489-494, 2022. Hidden unconscious, buried unconscious, implicit unconscious. The Italian Psychoanalytic Annual, 16, 87-102, 2022.
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    1 h y 3 m
  • Discovering the Process of One's Mind with Fred Busch, PhD (Chestnut Hill, Mass.)

    Discovering the Process of One's Mind with Fred Busch, PhD (Chestnut Hill, Mass.)
    Mar 23 2025
    “The original papers that were written about the analyst’s unconscious being attuned to the patient's unconscious by Hyman and Racker, in both cases they talk about this phenomenon. But both of them utter a caution, which is that one always has to take into account one's own ‘mishegas’. Essentially, what they're saying is, the unconscious is pretty individualistic and we have our own things, and we have to consider that possibly it's our own difficulties, our own unconscious, that is playing a bigger role in our countertransference reaction to the patient's unconscious.” Episode Description: We begin by discussing the meaning of the many italics throughout the book and my sense of their being an expression of Fred's wish to be carefully understood. This is part of our conversation where we examine how internal reactions are used to comprehend another person's mind. There are a number of themes to this work, and to Fred's contributions over the years, which focus on helping individuals understand the way their mind works, as distinct from the particular contents of their mind. One of the gifts of psychoanalysis is to facilitate patient's discovery of the freedom to think which allows for a post-termination capacity for self-analysis. We discuss how self-criticism can serve as an unconscious lifeline, the importance of attending to the need for silence as distinct from what is not being said and the seductiveness of gossip, to name but a few of the topics in the book that we cover. Fred closes by describing "The wonderful thing about being a psychoanalyst is there are always things to learn and ways to grow." Our Guest: Fred Busch, Ph.D. is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. He has published eight books, and over 80 articles on psychoanalytic technique, along with many book reviews and chapters in books. His work has been translated into many languages, and he has been invited to present over 180 papers and clinical workshops nationally and internationally. His last six books are: Creating a Psychoanalytic Mind (2014); The Analyst’s Reveries: Explorations in Bion’s Enigmatic Concept (2019); Dear Candidate: Analyst From Around the World Offer Personal Reflections on Psychoanalytic Training, Education, and the Profession (2020); A Fresh Look at Psychoanalytic Technique (2021), Psychoanalysis at the Crossroads: An International Perspective (2023).The Ego and Id: 100 years later (2023), How Does Analysis Cure? (2024). Recommended Readings: Busch, F. (2014). Creating a Psychoanalytic Mind: A Psychoanalytic Method and Theory. London: Routledge. Busch, F. (2019). The Analyst’s Reveries: Explorations in Bion’s Enigmatic Concept. London: Routledge. Busch, F. (2021). A Fresh Look at Psychoanalytic Technique: Selected papers on Psychoanalysis. Routledge: London. Busch, F. (2023) The Significance of the Ego in “The Ego and the Id” and its Unfulfilled Promise. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 104:1077-1090. Busch, F. (2000). What is a deep interpretation? J. Amer. Psychoanal.Assn., 48:238-254. Busch, F. (2005). Conflict Theory/Trauma Theory. Psychoanal.Q., 74: 27-46. Busch, F. (2006). A shadow concept. Int.J.Psychoanal.,87: 1471-1485. Also appearing as Un oncerto ombra, Psycoanalisi, 11:5-26. Busch, F. (2015). Our Vital Profession*. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 96(3):553-568. Reprinted in Busch, F. (2015). La nostra professione vitale. Rivista Psicoanal., 61(2):435-456; Busch, F. (2015). Nuestra profesión vital*. Int. J. Psycho-Anal. Es., 1(3):605-627; Busch, F. (2015). Nuestra profesión vital1. Rev. Psicoanál. Asoc. Psico. Madrid, 75:131-153.
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    59 m
  • Religion, 'Allegorical Objects' and Levinas with David Black, PhD (London)

    Religion, 'Allegorical Objects' and Levinas with David Black, PhD (London)
    Mar 9 2025

    “The idea of analytic neutrality, which was more or less a cliche truth when I was training back in the 1980s, is clearly getting at something very important, which is that we mustn't try to pre-conceive where the patient's development is going to take him or her. But that doesn't mean that the development is not in a direction. Aristotle famously said that the human being is a ‘zoon politikon’, a creature who belongs in a somewhat structured society. Healthy development is in that sort of direction as we become more integrated, as our ‘ghosts become more like ancestors’, to use that famous metaphor. We become more aware of the reality of other people and their real as opposed to their fantasy importance in the ecosystem of which we are all part. And this makes possible the sort of ethical realization that Levinas was talking about. We recognize the reality of the other. We discover that we are interconnected. We are part of something that is hugely greater than ourselves and that goes beyond our knowing. But of course, that doesn't mean that we are not also selfish and unique selves. It's that we are under pressure, so to speak, from both quarters.”

    Episode Description: We begin with David's description of Freud's view of religion as offering "compellingly attractive" illusions in the face of the helplessness we face by life's and death's unpredictability. Alternatively, David suggests that religions provide 'objects', ie Gods, that are importantly allegorical and offer an ‘ethical seriousness’ over time. We discuss the ability of these allegories to offer possibilities of 'transcendence' in a world that he sees as often limited to the material. He presents Levinas' view of the responsibility we all have when encountering "the face of the other" - a responsibility that is not chosen but "slipped into my consciousness like a thief." We consider the ethical differences between one’s superego and one's conscience. We close with David sharing with us the vicissitudes of his early life that, as for us all, form a context for our later interests.

    Our Guest: David Black studied philosophy and Eastern religions before training in London, first as a pastoral counsellor and later as a psychoanalyst. He is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society, now retired, who has written widely on psychoanalysis in relation to matters of ethics and religion. In 2006 he edited Psychoanalysis and Religion in the Twenty-first Century. He has published two collections of his own psychoanalytic papers, most recently Psychoanalysis and Ethics: the Necessity of Perspective. He is also a poet and translator, whose translation of Dante’s Purgatorio was published in 2021 in the New York Review of Books Classics series. (It was later the winner of the annual American National Translation Award in Poetry.) Visit David Black’s website at: https://www.dmblack.net.



    Recommended Readings:

    Black, D.M. Psychoanalysis and Ethics: The Necessity of Perspective. (2024: Routledge New Library of Psychoanalysis.)

    Chetrit-Vatine, V. Primal Seduction, Matricial Space, and Asymmetry in the Psychoanalytic Encounter. (2004: International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 85: 4.

    Lear, J. Wisdom Won from Illness. (2017: Harvard University Press.)

    Lemma, A. First Principles: Applied Ethics for Psychoanalytic Practice. (2023: Oxford University Press.)

    Levinas, E. Ethics as First Philosophy. In The Levinas Reader, ed. Sean Hand. (1989: Blackwell Publishing.)

    Loewald, H. Papers on Psychoanalysis. (1980: Yale University Press.)
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    56 m
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