ASSOCIATIONS Newsletter of the Western New England Psychoanalytic Society

July 2018

Editor’s Note national and international communities of Put off reading this issue until after the swim psychoanalysis. He had just recently closed his where you spied the blue-green depths of the private practice. We remember now also his lake; or until you return from walking in the loved wife and our colleague Johanna woods where sounds of living Bodenstab, who passed things accentuate the quiet. away in 2015. And we Give yourself time when you extend our condolences to are less harried—between his first wife, Dalia, who one task and the next, one many of us fondly email and the next—to enjoy remember, and his these articles of reflection children Miri and Avi and and remembrance. their families. Included in this issue, Paul Schwaber looks back on I first met Dr. Laub, a a life guided by twin loves of loved colleague and fellow literature and psychiatrist, when, in the psychoanalysis. Gretchen late 1970s he was Hermes contemplates initiating Freud’s early explorations of Survivors Film Project in his “Project” in light of New Haven, -- contemporary understanding today the Fortunoff Video of neuronal processes. And Archive for Holocaust Rosemary Balsam reminds Testimonies at Yale us of Dori Laub’s great work, University. I was fresh his legacy, and his presence from growing up in amongst us. So put this off Northern Ireland -- a place for a quiet moment, when with its own problems and you have the leisure to read political violence: vivid of our friends and the stories of the “troubles,” community we have. where my mother’s family were burned out of their Photo courtesy of Lauri Robertson, MD In Memory of Dori Laub, MD house near Dublin in the 1920s; the By Rosemary Balsam, MD devastation of the male population during WW1 We received on June 24th 2018, the very sad where my father had survived the Battle of the news of Dori’s death. Just a few weeks before, I Somme -- but talked about it movingly and had written a letter in support of his nomination eloquently and was thus preserved as full of for a Sigourney Award, and I will share an life, (an important resilience I grasped only in excerpt from it below. His will be a great loss retrospect from hearing Dori’s work with severe not only to his family and to WNE, but to the trauma and the resultant personality and

Table of Contents Continuing Education…….7 Scientific Meetings………….…14 In Memory of Dori Laub…..1 Pleasures of Mind: Schwaber….8 Candidates Column: Hermes.…4 Peregrinations……..13

WNEPS • July • 2018 • 1 ASSOCIATIONS intergenerational damage associated with For this child survivor of the Holocaust in ensuing and enduring silence); the blitz of WWII , subsequent multiple immigrations when my worried parents daily hovered over and first-hand encounters with casualty survivor the crackling radio, plotting maps of the Allies’ soldiers in ’s own battles for survival, the defeats and victories. I remember without formation of this ambitious Archive was an understanding, their aghast reactions to the incredibly brave and elaboratively creative act phrases “the Warsaw ghetto,” and “the fate of to bring to fruition. Dori had importantly the help the in .” of Laurel Vlock, an American Jew who grew up Here, in New acutely aware Haven Connecticut, of wartime now an adult miseries and psychiatrist and one anti-Semitism of the interviewers in around her, these early phases of and who Dori’s project, in became a empty basements of television churches with a few journalist. lights and an Dori’s energy amateur movie- for the project camera trained on attracted the subject with a help, money primitive tape and co- recorder, I had first- operation. He hand exposure to the was quiet, stories of American determined, Jewish immigrants, deeply kind, people struggling understanding, ambivalently to recall their harrowing with a rueful humor, and yet unsentimental, a experiences in their original homelands. Dori man of few words who developed tremendous instructed us to be in the background. He rapport with and emotional knowledge of the wanted psychotherapists to conduct these survivors. My husband and I joked that he was interviews, because they knew how to be as passionate in his purpose, as staunchly patient, be quiet and not interfere, and yet reliable and as toughly persistent as a fire recognize when to stop the taping, or to hydrant! This form of recording the horror of the moderate the truly overwhelming moments. lost past of these European families was, as Previously silent people who now were able to you may appreciate, the first undertaking of its come to be debriefed were often pained but kind, thirty years after the events. Similar desperate to be recorded for their progeny. projects now exist in the and They pushed themselves to remember, newly abroad, including the famous Survivors of the keen for other human beings “to witness” their Shoah Visual History Foundation, established experiences -- that verb that Dori subsequently by . Such was and is the became famous for, and from which he helped world-wide and historical influence of Dori Laub develop a whole aspect of psychoanalytic in this field. theory to go to the heart of shattering traumata His CV will inform those who want to take in and the dimensions of its psychic effects. Even the full national and international compass of a grainy film of their likenesses, and the timbre his psychological research and psychoanalytic of their voices would prove to descendants that dedication to his task. Dori Laub’s studies are they had not only survived the vile the quintessential form of the very best of circumstances but had defied Hitler. I saw also applied psychoanalysis. He has had many the empowerment they experienced from being awards, including The International heard. So much had been annihilated in those Psychoanalytic Association’s Elise M. Hayman lives still present: yet what prevailed was Award for the Study of the Holocaust and sometimes even the more breathtaking. Genocide. He has written immensely, mostly in the company of others, shared his ideas

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generously, and also has done formal research. and accomplishment of this man, his vision, his His works are in English and German and have value to the human community and the been translated into other languages. He and immensity of his contribution which deeply his colleagues are responsible for the honors Freud. His work has extended beyond introduction of such original and captivating the victims of the Holocaust, to studying and concepts as “the empty circle,” which helping Bosnian victims, all victims of current “symbolizes the absence of representation, the wartime crises and the domestic homeless. He rupture of the self, and the erasure of memory still is the Deputy Director for Trauma Studies at that together constitute the core legacy of The Macmillan Center for International and massive psychic trauma.” (1998 p. 507 in “The Area Studies: Genocide Studies Program at empty circle: children of survivors and the limits Yale University. To convey his immersion in his of reconstruction” J Am Psychoanal Assoc. own work, and his modesty in feeling more in 1998;46(2):507-29.); or “witnessing witnessing,” service to his vision than personal promotion for the study of how the survivors’ testimony is glory – I can tell you that I was the person who received. suggested to him at his recent 80th birthday To a large and specific population, Dori Laub party, that I would put him forward for a brought his own life, his talents as a doctor, a Sigourney Award. He had never thought of it psychiatrist, a psychoanalyst, teacher, scholar before for himself, as he does not think of his and writer, with naturalness in his profound work as sufficiently psychoanalytical. However, understanding of Freud and his way of listening I would say that it is obvious that he richly and responding both to individuals and groups. deserves this award, and that his contributions He observed very closely; he theorized with and heritage are of formidable and compelling colleagues; he formed communities; he wrote a human significance. great deal and traveled to involve others and We will sorely miss his presence in our lives. publicize the worth of his projects. And he never lost sight of the individual as his subject, or the history of their being, or the psychic impact of their early lives that often -- but not always -- contrasted with the War with its chaotic and violent surround. He studied breakdown and he studied survival. I am not the supporter to define in detail his psychoanalytic contribution as can my colleague in this nomination, Ilany Kogan. I am one who can convey to you the sheer power

SAVE THE DATE

2019 WNEPS Symposium

Saturday 6 April 2019

“A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND”

Donald Moss • Sidney Phillips • Elizabeth Brett

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Figure 1:

Top: Mitochondria, electron microscope photograph

Middle: In this image of a mouse hippocampus (magenta), new cells are labelled in red, and mitochondria— the intracellular power packs responsible for driving cellular activities throughout the body — are labelled in green. The hippocampus, a brain region involved in learning and memory, is one of only a few areas in the brain that continues to create new neurons throughout adulthood. (Steib, et al. The Journal of Neuroscience, 2014).

Bottom: Mitochondria (in blue) are not static, cylinder-shaped organelles but change shape and move about the cytoplasm on an almost continuous basis. These activities often appear to involve cytoskeletal microtubules, which influence the characteristic direction and dissemination of the mitochondria in various kinds of cells, like a microscopic highway or subway system. The number of mitochondria present in a cell is related to the metabolic needs of that cell, and may range from a single large mitochondrion to thousands of the organelles ( Michael W. Davidson and Florida State University).

OFF THE COUCH experiences of thought, will, memory, and Candidates’ Column emotion. Gretchen Hermes, MD, PhD The Project (as many refer to it) was ambitious in the extreme (in its time, in any A Mitochondrial Vision for the “Project for time). It was composed in feverish states on Scientific Psychology” train rides home from visiting his friend and In his unfinished manuscript “Project for a mentor Wilhelm Fleiss. He wrote “I have never Scientific Psychology,” been so intensely preoccupied by anything.” undertook, as he put it, “to represent psychical The work is difficult--almost impossible in processes as quantitatively determinate states places--to read. It has been difficult to discern of specifiable material particles.” He meant that its relevance. Freud seemed to be operating mental activity had its material basis in the out of a conviction that understanding a nervous system. In Strachey’s translation, material, particle-based mind would result in a these particles, invested with a discrete quantity “rapprochement between psychology, medicine of energy, were called neurons and by some and psychoanalysis.” In the end, he was neurobiological or neuro-electrical means, a frustrated and ashamed of the work: “I had to conjecture of Freud’s, the movement of energy rework a number of drafts and alternated between these particles generated the between pride and happiness and shame and misery, and at the end of enormous mental

WNEPS • July • 2018 • 4 ASSOCIATIONS torture I tell myself with apathy: it does not also know that mitochondria, which support work, maybe it will never come together.” He energy demanding processes like neural ultimately apologized, writing to Fleiss, “I can no transmission and synaptogenesis, are points of longer understand the state of mind in which I intense research interest in the energetics hatched the psychology and cannot fathom how underlying the neurobiology of mental illness I could have burdened you with it.” [1]. For example: The primary difficulty with the work may • Patients with mitochondrial cytopathies have been that it was decades ahead of its (diseases) are overwhelmingly time. In recent years, a number of diagnosed with major depressive neuroscientists have revisited the Project to disorder (MDD), bipolar, and panic highlight ways in which Freud’s intuitions make disorders. sense in the context of more modern research findings. I, too, sense that we are at a moment • Evidence from functional assays, protein when several of these ideas come alive again expression studies, and linkage under the electron microscope, allowing analyses, point to a specific role for visualization of organelles within the neuron, mitochondria in psychotic illnesses. specifically mitochondria, the energy production • Patients with bipolar disorder have been centers in cells throughout the body and in shown to have impaired brain energy neurons across the brain. metabolism and increased mitochondrial Our current understanding of the DNA mutations. functional role of mitochondria did not emerge until after a method for isolating the intact • A recent report on major depressive organelles was developed in 1948. While the disorder demonstrated significantly presence of mitochondria, in large numbers, in reduced mitochondrial energy most cells of the central nervous system, production in neurons of patients supports Freud’s intuition about the ubiquitous compared to controls. presence of energy sources in the brain, the The importance of the mitochondria, the distribution of mitochondria, at times more specifiable material particles under populous in certain more active regions of the consideration here, includes their role in brain, supports a host of other speculations in neurodegenerative diseases—Alzheimer’s the Project. Still, in order to be relevant to Disease, Parkinson’s Disease and Huntington’s Freud’s larger project, mitochondria would have Disease. These disease states may relate in to be important, at minimum, to mental disease part to the heritable nature of mitochondrial states and normal psychology, provide a basis pathology. From the point of view of current of memory as well as linkages between the self neurophysiological research, however, Freud’s and the environment, and help facilitate levels sense of dynamic brain-based communications of consciousness, from aliveness to an is perhaps the most prescient aspect of the awareness by the mind of itself and the world. Project.

Specifiable Material Particles and Disease Contact-Barriers: Memory, Development and States the Shaping of Circuits From the outset, Freud indicated that his Freud used the term “contact-barrier” to quantitative line of approach was “derived describe the neurophysiological entity directly from pathological clinical observations, subsequently known as a synapse, a space especially from those concerned with … created between neurons which facilitates hysteria and obsessional neurosis.” He was neuronal communication and a prerequisite for trying to make an explicit link between normal brain function. Freud speculated that psychopathology and disturbances in neural the density and intensity of such excitations. Ultimately, his misgivings, furthered communications between neurons could by the limitations in the neuroscience of his day, enhance or suppress memory. overpowered him. Of course, we now know he We shall describe this condition of the was correct. Major psychiatric illnesses are contact-barriers as their degree of "facilitation" strongly associated with underlying impairments ("Bahnung"). We can then assert that memory in neural excitations and synaptic plasticity. We

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is represented by the facilitations existing consciousness, we know through PET studies between the 'Y -neurones…It is therefore that there is a 45% reduction in cerebral energy more correct to say that memory is consumption [4]. Because baseline brain represented by the differences in the energy consumption has been shown via facilitations between the 'Y-neurones. magnetic resonance spectroscopy to be almost A number of researchers have asserted that exclusively dedicated to neuronal signaling, Freud was describing long-term potentiation some scientists propose brain energy as the (LTP), a neurobiological process considered to necessary property of the conscious state, a be the foundation for memory and learning. state afforded by the cellular power stations— LTP refers to strengthening of synapses based the mitochondria. on a long-lasting increase in signal transmission Still, Freud’s larger unsolved problem between two neurons; the opposite of LTP is goes beyond this level of consciousness and long-term depression, which produces a long- includes an even more difficult brain/mind lasting decrease in synaptic strength. The problem, which is how differences in the ability of synapses to change their strength quantity of energy translate into differences in based on the internal and external milieu the quality of experience. Consciousness, in underlies synaptic plasticity. These this case, is an aspect of the mind generally modifications in synaptic strength are thought to thought to comprise qualities such as the ability encode memories. to perceive the relationship between oneself More recent research has focused on and one's environment. In his own attempts to the energy requirements in synaptic account for mind at the level of the brain, Freud transmission. Mitochondria are the focus of wrote that the “mechanistic explanation is not these studies as they are actively recruited to successful.” For us now, mechanistic synapses to provide the requisite energy for explanations, while at a remove, are much neuronal firing [2]. Mitochondrial motility across closer to offering potential understanding. How long expanses of neurons in the central might we apply contemporary mechanistic nervous system as well as the dynamic size, explanations to something distinctly, powerfully shape and number of mitochondria present in psychoanalytic? some neurons and in some behavioral circuits Harold Searles, the enigmatic physician have also garnered significant research and psychoanalyst, wrote a moving description interest. A number of preclinical studies have of an ‘aha’ moment of his own, a moment when shown that mitochondrial activity is shaped by his mind gained simultaneously in subjectivity exercise, environmental enrichment, histories of and relatedness. acute and chronic stress [3]. These findings make it reasonable to image the effects of the For many years I have enjoyed washing residues of the day or après-coup experience, dishes and not rarely have had the feeling for example, on mitochondria and that this is the one thing in my life that I feel synaptogenesis and therefore might visualize entirely comfortably capable of doing. I have what Freud had in mind about the mind. always assumed that, in my washing of dishes, I was identifying with my mother, who Levels of Consciousness: A Particulate routinely did them in my early childhood. But State of Being Awake and Aware in recent years…it has occurred to me that I In the Project, Freud clearly attempts to have been identifying with my mother not only delineate a model of consciousness. In the in the form but also in my spirit of washing most fundamental sense, consciousness dishes. I had not previously allowed myself to requires a state of being awake. An individual, consider the possibility that she, too, may human or animal, is defined to be in a have felt so chronically overwhelmed, so conscious state empirically by the behavioral chronically beyond her depth in life, that this ability to respond meaningfully to stimuli, activity, this washing of dishes, was the one whereas the loss of consciousness is defined part of her life with which she felt fully by unresponsiveness. In this formulation, the equipped to cope comfortably [5]. role of mitochondria becomes more explicit. In states of anesthesia-induced loss of To offer any comment about the role of neural excitations in response to Searles’ account

WNEPS • July • 2018 • 6 ASSOCIATIONS feels like a clash of aesthetic values. I wonder [3] M. Picard, B.S. McEwen, Psychological if Freud too might have felt this, that a Stress and Mitochondria: A Systematic Review, mechanistic explanation didn’t rise to the level Psychosom Med, 80 (2018) 141-153. of the pathos or grace in analytic narrative and [4] R. Shulman, F. Hyder, D. Rothman, Baseline that this contributed in some measure to his brain energy supports the state of reluctance and skepticism. consciousness, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 106 My own sense is that there is now (2009) 11096-11101. sufficient beauty in either direction: quantity or [5] T.H. Ogden, Reading Harold Searles, Int J quality. Presumably, Harold Searles stood at Psychoanal, 88 (2007) 353-369. his kitchen sink at approximately the same time of evening for approximately the same number of minutes for most nights for many years. He often thought of the comfort in doing dishes and thought of places in his life away from the kitchen sink where he felt less comfort. He likely often thought of his mother as well. One can imagine that while Searles’ body and mind dwelled in these spaces, there was a neurophysiological dance taking place involving mitochondria sliding and fusing and dividing across meters of distances in neurons, especially in the axons and dendrites in neurons. This choreography was in response to Searles’ routine, his physical activity, his stress, strain and relief. The entrainment of his nervous system—around an emotional awareness that had been held in abeyance until at a moment of psychological ripeness when an intuition about his mother gets incorporated into consciousness—was almost certainly Continuing Education for supported by the neuro-energetic forces that WNEPS 2018-19 sub-serve learning and memory. By Deborah Fried, MD Despite his nervous disappointment and Plans are afoot in the Continuing Education despite hiding the Project in a desk drawer for Committee for the upcoming academic year. decades, Freud’s preoccupation with the world There are new and ongoing classes planned, of energy and neurons was not for medicine, including: nor psychiatry nor psychoanalysis what he • continuing the study group on gender. feared most, a ‘philosophical stammer.’ He was • continuing the study group on primitive on to something that could not be seen then but states. that we can see now as the beauty that • a new class on ‘hate in the consulting supports life, memory and knowing (see figure room’. 1). • a new class about analytic perspectives on sexuality and sex therapy. References • the return of Reprisal of Tragedy, a highly regarded class from several years [1] H. Manji, T. Kato, N.A. Di Prospero, S. Ness, ago. M.F. Beal, M. Krams, G. Chen, Impaired Moreover, the Continuing Education Committee mitochondrial function in psychiatric disorders, would be quite glad to offer further options to Nat Rev Neurosci, 13 (2012) 293-307. the community! [2] M.J. Devine, J.T. Kittler, Mitochondria at the neuronal presynapse in health and disease, Nat Rev Neurosci, 19 (2018) 63-80.

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Pleasures of Mind expectable adventures and turmoils at a huge By Paul Schwaber, PhD public High School in Brooklyn, after intense A slightly modified version of this article initially grade school years in a small Zionist Yeshivah, appeared in JAPA 52/3: 427-435 (2005). Paul I had a lot to fathom, a lot to be puzzled and also presented a version to fellow-retirees at curious about. When I was a child, I asked so Wesleyan’s retirement center last year. Paul many questions, my father would call me thought this recollection may be of interest to Pinocchio. I was that nosey. And nosiness candidates and fellow-analysts as a piece about (since the ego is first of all a body ego) is a the bearing of psychoanalysis on other good word for it, the spark that energizes my disciplines, and vice versa. fascination, my continuing The editors feel it says much pleasure, in figuring out more, including how a life what’s going on and whether I develops and flourishes in have a sufficient take on it. psychoanalytic work and In college it took only study, and how there is room brief exposure to Chaucer’s for many original paths and Canterbury pilgrims, explorations. Wordsworth’s poetry, and introductory Physics to Often when I meet convince me that literature, people socially for the first not medicine, was for me. time, I’ll be asked: “How did Chaucer surprised me: those you come to have two characters were like New professions?” Well—as this Yorkers on a subway car. audience can well imagine— Wordsworth seemed to read it’s a long story. Usually I my soul. Suddenly too, the lilt mumble something about of language proved narrative and fascination and captivating. A gifted teacher, try to shift the attention back John Hicks, exemplified that to them. Today’s occasion such things constituted manly offers a chance to reflect work. So the door to my first about my two professions, profession opened easily what drew me to them, and enough. I was a much slower how they overlap and study about psychoanalysis. integrate. One emotional Norman O. Brown, in those truth governs for me. They years at work on Life Against are sources of pleasure: more Death, offered a course in the exactly, intellectual, moral, at psychoanalytic interpretation times sober and dreadful, at of Greek and Roman myths, others humorous, playful, which I took with a anxious, or conflicted, often combination of befuddlement, complex pleasures—in short, sublimatory bemusement, and skepticism. One day he pleasures. Both professions are alike in that. began the class by looking at me and asking, They allow me ranging joys of thought in the “Schwaber, why does Athena, goddess of work I do, even when the work itself may wisdom, carry a spear?” I replied that I did not involve distress. know. He said, “Think! Why does Athena, For a long time, my path to them was goddess of wisdom and rationality, fully sprung more serendipitous than chosen. The youngest from the head of her father Zeus, carry a in a lively, affable, verbal family; an identified spear?” Even more confused, I could only Jew emerging to consciousness during World confess, “I.. really…don’t know.” Upon which War II, the discovery of the camps, and the he asked, ‘Have you ever thought that you struggle to protect the fledgling State of Israel, might be too nice for this course?” all while safely ensconced in America, where I might have talked of hard-edged clarity Jews were a minority but hardly threatened; and rules of thought, of masculine pride and and an adolescent tacking through average- castration fear, of repression, hysteria, penis

WNEPS • July • 2018 • 8 ASSOCIATIONS envy. I might have commented on the oddly as a scholar-teacher or critic of literature with absent mother or the patriarchal denial of the my interest in psychoanalysis. Because what I female. I could have chuckled at the repressed wanted couldn’t be gotten from books. I returning, sprung solely from father Zeus’s needed sustained experience with the idiomatic head, in the goddess who lent her name to the actuality of minds other than my own. lauded city state. I could have, had I known I joined the class of ’78, as we came to then what I know now. But Professor Brown call ourselves, and after two and one-half years was right: I was naïve, still too nice for all that, qualified to see patients. But as my first clinical perhaps even willfully innocent. I thought it a hour not as a patient but as an analyst came funny moment, embarrassing but silly—though I hurrying near, I found myself in a bit of a panic. was glad enough to learn about Athena. Sam Ritvo, my first supervisor, seemed startled Defenses too serve pleasure, and mine were when I asked, “What if the patient doesn’t follow humming. Yet somehow I’ve never forgotten me back into the office?” I recall him saying, “I that Athena carries a spear. thought I’d heard everything.” What really was Skip two decades now to another bothering me was something else. How did revelatory moment. I’d earned a Ph.D. in one listen with a third ear? It’s one thing to read English and Comparative Literature at and discuss Freud’s technique papers, Columbia, having written a thesis on the mad Greenson’s book, or Theodor Reik’s. It’s peasant poet John Clare, and taught for a another to be exigently responsible for doing number of years at Wesleyan, where I’d been something one had never deliberately and tenured--to the chagrin of the Psychology consciously done before. And doing it right Department, I might add, because I apparently mattered. When I pursued the question with took Freud seriously. Life having had its way Sam, who seemed relieved that I’d regained my with me by then, and I with it, I was ready to focus, he explained sensibly that I might listen resume my analysis, which had been to why the person had come seeking help. The interrupted when my analyst moved away. opening session in fact went quite well, and at Robert Rubenstein, with whom I consulted, our next supervisory session I recounted what kindly suggested that I consider a training had been said, when, and how and all that had analyst and clinical training, given my interest in emerged of the patient’s past. I even concluded psychoanalytic criticism. I hadn’t known that that the patient seemed introspective and was possible, nor anything of how unusual it analyzable. Sam smiled his little cat smile and was at that time for an institute of the American said, “You see what you get into just sitting to give full clinical training to someone not an there?” M.D. I think only Western New England, the I soon had another realization. The Chicago Institute, and some California institutes process of listening with evenly hovering would have entertained the likes of me as a attention and, as it were, a third ear (which was candidate in those days. But Western New one’s own subjectivity), was strikingly similar to England’s first generation of teachers included reading poetry as I had learned to in the heyday David Rapaport, a psychologist; Ernst Kris, an of the New Criticism. That is, one reads art historian; and Erik Erikson, a kindergarten attentively, perhaps sounding it in one’s head, teacher and artist (by then, too, a Professor at attuned not only to manifest meaning and story Berkeley who, during the McCarthy days, but to diction, flow, music, imagery, recurrent refused to sign a loyalty oath). Roy Schafer patterns like rhyme, meter, and stanzas, alert to was Western New England’s first research intruding intensities or strangenesses that graduate. Among its trainees were Joseph tweak one’s curiosity—to images that force Goldstein, a Yale law professor; George Mahl themselves forward, to slant rhymes, discords, and Sidney Blatt, both psychologists; and closer unexpected hesitations, silences, or sudden to my time Meredith Skura, who would go on to turns. “A poem must not mean but be,” write a magnificent book on literature and the Archibald Macleish wrote. It is a ground for psychoanalytic process. She encouraged me experience, not an idea or attitude suitably to apply. So it was my blind good luck that summarized. Poems have shape, Western New England was there and development, emerging structure, unfolding hospitable. I knew that without clinical training, thoughts, feelings, and situations. That I was stymied in what I could do professionally aesthetic assumption immediately seemed to

WNEPS • July • 2018 • 9 ASSOCIATIONS apply when I listened to a patient, letting the Freud emerges as a persona, a literary words reach me, inviting not formulaic judgment character if you will. He poses mysteries and but what Coleridge called the “willing patiently goes about solving them; he expounds suspension of disbelief for the moment that with care, boldly synthesizes, probes, questions constitutes poetic faith,” what Blake invoked and argues with his own notions--clarifying, with the epigram: “Anything possible to be augmenting, reformulating. His writings believed is an image of truth.” Significances consistently present a narrator distinctive emerge not from content only but from style, enough to trust or to take distance from. Thus form, and a reader’s receptivity. Significances one can identify, admire, agree, doubt, emerge from the shape and mood of an hour, disagree, refuse, but only by enlisting in the from what is said and how it is said, from how it sociability of thought, person to person, and, is heard and by whom, from how it is one hopes, intelligently. Because whether understood—or not. As well, of course, as from persuading or provoking resistance, Freud what isn’t said, except perhaps disguised in involves us. He meets us in what Winnicott displacement and condensation. designated “the play space of culture.” Indeed, Thus my trained but personal when people praised his expository powers, responsiveness to poetry brought a Freud suspected resistance to his ideas. That pleasure of familiarity to analytic of course still happens. Praise of his literary listening, an activating parallel that skill can serve to disavow his thought. offered entry to a new role and The dynamic of interaction between experience. The concord of his prose and his readers, however, difference between the two fields has surely been crucial to the formed a methodological metaphor, spread and influence of his ideas. which helped me to make sense Literature helped him to shape and without imposing what Keats transmit his discoveries. It helped described as “irritable reaching after fact me to attend closely to my patients. and reason.” One didn’t aim to conclude; The activating potential between the one aimed to explore. What two fields, moreover, runs both ways. psychoanalysts now call “intersubjective,” You hardly need to be told that the recognition of both self and other in the psychoanalysis has had enormous influence in exploration, began for me in aesthetics—an the humanities since Freud’s time. The ideas aesthetics that prioritized the text while also and processes of psychoanalysis have respecting the self. resonated broadly. My own contributions often Every clinician, of course, can supply focus on the explication of texts—what I.A. examples of intruding strangenesses or Richards called “practical criticism”--but by intensities without needing a literary prelude: an bringing clinical experience to bear when I angry patient says “you” instead of “I” (as in consider a text. Let me illustrate. “You won’t put up with it any more”), a patient in Everyone knows Robert Burns’s little pain comes late, a long-term analysand, poem, “My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose.” Its reporting a great success, sighs and calls it “not opening line alone lifts the spirit; and despite too bad,” another tells a joke about ageing bald their overuse, roses still smell enchantingly and analysts. One has only to be there and notice, red roses in particular send singular messages. and the work is joined. But the activating So a doubly red rose invites one to linger and parallel between literary and psychoanalytic look, however momentarily. processes, though it continues helpful to me, is not limited to methodology. Freud alluded O my luve’s like a red, red rose, easily to European high culture—to Sophocles, That’s newly sprung in June; Goethe, Shakespeare, Leonardo, Michelangelo, O my luve’s like the melody Balzac, Ibsen. He called on them in formulating That’s sweetly played in tune. his theory and in illustrating it. Would psychoanalysis ever have taken hold—whether The stress on “red, red” and the phrase “newly clinically or as one of the great informing ideas sprung” suggest a bit of sexual arousal, but not in Western culture--without its central allusion to so as to divert from the speaker’s charming the myth of Oedipus? Moreover, in his prose compliment or the melody sweetly played in

WNEPS • July • 2018 • 10 ASSOCIATIONS in tune, with a true rhyme to confirm it. The That fascination—the workings of the lover’s compliment continues through four mind—brought me to literature in the first place stanzas, and the analogies expand: and, in time, to the discipline of psychoanalysis. No doubt you can hear in my thoughts today a As fair art thou, my bonnie lass, bias toward persons—my father, the Canterbury So deep in luve am I; pilgrims, riders on a New York City subway, And I will luve thee still, my dear, Wordsworth, Freud as a literary character, the Till a’ the seas gang dry. speaker of a love poem. It dovetails with an interest in each patient’s distinctiveness; and it Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, helps to account for the emphasis in my And the rocks melt wi’ the sun teaching and published criticism on character O I will love thee still, my dear, and aesthetic realization (that is, made real in While the sands o life shall run. words)—on Thoreau in Walden, the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Joseph in Egypt, And fare thee weel, my only luve, tough-minded fragile John Clare in his poems; And fare thee weel awhile! on representations of John F. Kennedy in And I will come again, my luve, poetry; on Freud in his dream book, Freud and Though it were ten thousand mile. women, King Oedipus, Robert Lowell’s confessional poetry, Poe’s Usher and He’s exaggerating and palavering, flirting with ratiocinative detective Dupin; on Juliet, Othello, her, proclaiming devotion. The diction could not Cleopatra, Gabriel Conroy, Leopold Bloom, be simpler, the rhythms and rhymes more Stephen Dedalus, and Molly Bloom—on the dependable. Yet he is going away, bidding cast of character within a world. As it happens, farewell for a while. And what of his my interest in character and aesthetics cuts exaggerations? They combine humor and against the grain of developments in extremity to provide comfort. But think of the professional literary study in recent decades; images his reassuring rhetoric controls. Till all but it is what pleases me. No doubt some pride the seas go dry (said twice) and the rocks melt in difference and in rabbinic hermeneutics in the sun, life figured as dry sand, ten contributed. But bolstered by the training in thousand miles of distance between them: clinical psychoanalysis I was lucky enough to some stuff of nightmare there, evaded by get at Western New England and by the syntax. In thought, he’s horrified and traveling intellectual community I have found there, as far away. So he may be comforting himself as well as by the consistent support of my well as her. This love poem is more colleagues in Wesleyan’s College of Letters, complicated than it is reputed to be--no less I’ve been able to hold to my course. For that I gracious, playful, and sincere, perhaps, but am grateful beyond words. implying a well of fear too, which the surface Let me close with yet another moment. covers over. The fellow is not only in love, he’s It took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the site last “so deep in love,” as he says, that he may not June of the annual meeting of Joyceans around be able to get out. The intensely red rose June 16, Bloomsday. Robert Scholes, a signifies both loveliness and threat. Intimate distinguished Emeritus Professor at Brown and love can be terrifying, we know. Burns knew it the keynote speaker, asked the group whether too, and he wrote an enduring poem about it. it wasn’t time to recall to Joyce studies the But “My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose,” importance and availability of sentiment, which recognized and relished by just about he believed had been lost in the hubbub of everybody, rarely is remembered through to the narrative technique, neologisms, post- end. Most people’s memories stop with the structuralism, deconstruction, gender criticism, melody sweetly played in tune. Evenly and post-colonialism. He wasn’t being hovering attentiveness opens to a richer, more reactionary. He’s been at the forefront of much troubling poem. It all depends on what pleases cutting-edge work. But he wondered whether you, on how intrigued you are by the workings we’d grown so sophisticated, so ingenious to of the mind. meet Joyce’s genius, that we’d lost touch with directly available sentiments that Joyce himself loved. When it was the audience’s turn to

WNEPS • July • 2018 • 11 ASSOCIATIONS comment or question, someone brought up the three refusing affect but yielding it in trust to the moment in Ulysses, when Stephen Dedalus, at reader, who has gotten to know each of them the climax of the penultimate chapter--a chapter intimately through the course of June 16, 1904. so remarkable for its positivist zeal Joyce The reader recognizes Stephen and Bloom named its technique “mathematical within character if not immediately catechism”--sings an anti-semitic song to understanding why they do what they do. And Leopold Bloom. It is about a beautiful Jewess the narrator joins his characters in not feeling, who cuts off the head of a little Christian boy— saying goodbye to them in this chapter—the the very stuff that started pogroms. Stephen’s next one is Molly Bloom’s--but leaving the felt act is stunningly rude and emotions of loss to his rendered suddenly, readers, many of whom without feeling but admit that they are complete with musical immensely moved by this notes on the page. He “facts” chapter, which sings that to the man who itself seems determined picked him up from the to refuse feeling. It is an gutter, protected him from epic and risky projection, arrest by the police, and and it works. I could brought him home to explain that to the group, sober him up. Stephen and people seemed then offers a theological immediately to agree. explication too abstract to There were headshakes follow, and Bloom is of comprehension and described as wishing he’d friendly smiles. sung about something Someone said that really else and then himself made sense; others thinking about something came up to me afterward else: his own delightful to ask the title and daughter. So the meeting publisher of my book. It and companionship of was akin to a good these two lonely figures-- clinical interpretation a Jesuit-educated, perfectly timed, and not grieving, non-writing the sort of thing that in young writer and a my experience usually middle-aged canvasser happens in the academic for ads, Jewish but not world. I could not have really so, who this day given that explanation, has been cuckolded—to could not have written the Telemachus finding Ulysses. George Truffaut 1880. which the whole book has book, and would not have elaborately built, comes to this; and they soon had that moment of professorial pleasure, part, presumably forever. without my training at Western New England Several other members of the group and my colleagues through the years there and admitted puzzlement, and the stage was set for in the American. So once again, thank you. me to raise my hand. Evidently they hadn’t all read my book—though I didn’t say that. But I could explain the immense load of sentiment in that highly attenuated moment—Stephen, grateful to and even grudgingly admiring of Bloom, unable to bear more for which he yearns and backing strikingly away, as is his wont; Bloom entering into wool-gathering diversion and denial, as is his; and the multivalent performer narrator too, stressing to parodic extreme externality and objectivity—all

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Peregrinations Eds. Richard Tusch and Lynn Kuttnauer. (Please submit news of your journey so we may London Routledge. know where to find you.) Balsam, R.H. (2018) Modern Gender Flexibility: Pronoun Changes and the Body’s Activities. In Vaia Tsolas and C. Anzieu Premmeurer (eds.) The Body and the Changing World. Routledge.

Balsam, R.H.(2018) “Castration Anxiety” Revisited: Especially “Female Castration Anxiety”, Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 38:1, 11-22

Balsam R. H. (2018) Response to John Steiner's “Overcoming Obstacles in Analysis: Is it Possible to Relinquish Omnipotence and Accept Receptive Femininity?” The Psychoanalytic Quarterly Volume 87: 1 pp. 21-31, 2018 Rosemary H. Balsam MD Meetings: Grand Rounds Westchester/Cornell and NY Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Jan 9, 10 2018. Sybil Houlding, LCSW The Pregnant Body and Psychoanalysis: Chapter publication: “A Note on Retirement and Fantasy, Gender, Theory-making. Mortality,” in Flirting with Death: Psychoanalysts Consider Mortality, Routledge Press, May 2018. The 15th Annual Bruce A. Gibbard, M.D. Corinne Masur, editor. A reprinted chapter was Memorial Lectureship Program also published in the same volume: “When a Sponsored by the Department of Psychiatry, Patient Dies.” The Robert M. Larner, M.D. College of Medicine at The University of Vermont, April 6, 2018: How is the (Pregnant) Body involved in the Mind? Missed Opportunities in Theory and Clinical Practice. Faculty retreat.

American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting, May 5-9 2018 NYC. Matrescence: The Psychological Birth of a Mother, from Cognitive and Hormonal Changes to Intergenerational Psychodynamics, with Alexandra Sacks, Catherine Monk.

Center for Modern Psychoanalysis, NYC: May 18th 2018 From “The Child Woman” to “Wonder Woman.”

Publications: Balsam, R.H. (2018) Response to Lynn Kuttnauer’s “Venturing onto Thin Ice: Tiptoeing in the Wake of Empathic Failures” Ch. 2 in: Conundrums and Predicament in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis

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2018 to 2019 WNEPS March 18th Scientific Meeting Schedule Joel Whitebook, PhD Discussant: Paul Schwaber, PhD September 22nd th Steve Ablon, MD April 20 Discussant: Larry Levenson, MD Lisa Marcus, PhD Discussant: Eileen Becker-Dunn, MSW October 27th Ann Pelligrini, PhD Meetings convene at 4 and end 6 pm. Discussant: Anne Dailey, JD Scientific Meetings are free and open to the public. November 17th Ken Corbett, PhD Dinner receptions following the Scientific Discussant: Matt Shaw, PhD Meetings are held at Society member’s homes. December 15th Lynne Zeavin, PhD Dinners are open to all Scientific Meeting Discussant: Elizabeth Wilson, MD attendees. Candidates and trainees are invited and encouraged to attend. January 19th Anne Dailey, JD CE/CME Credits are free to Society Discussant: Barbara Marcus, PhD members. Credits are $10 for non-members.

Western New England Psychoanalytic Society—255 Bradley Street New Haven CT 06511 WNEPS Executive Board: Matthew Shaw, PhD (President); Stan Possick, MD (Vice-President); Elizabeth Wilson, MD (Secretary); Carole Goldberg, Psy.D (Treasurer). Associations Editorial Board: Prakash Thomas, MD, Lisa Driscoll, PsyD, Mary Ayre, MD Send Submissions to Associations to: Anne Rodems ([email protected]) or [email protected]