WINTER/SPRING 2021 Volume 55, No. 1

Magazine of The American Psychoanalytic Association All That Is Solid Melts into Air: INSIDE THIS Zooming in Unprecedented Times ISSUE Jeffrey Prager

“All that is solid melts into air, all that sanctity and solidity of the consulting is holy is profaned.” In his 1848 The room has been upended, dramatically Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx replaced by the technological limitations anticipates how capitalism depends on proscribed by the internet. Long before Covid-19, George Floyd, constant technological innovation with the coronavirus, psychoanalysis Racism, Psychoanalysis, increasingly efficient machinery in his struggled with how enthusiastically to and Music time and, now, with the globalization of embrace this new technological capacity Julie Jaffee Nagel the marketplace, an ever-improving that enables the therapist to practice his internet. For Marx, this process always or her trade absent in-the-room CrossCurrents Part II results in worsening and thinning interaction. Today, we are faced with no relationships between human beings. A alternative: We exist in a post-viral age. Lisa Roth, Tareq Yaqub, person’s value increasingly becomes What had suddenly occurred, I imagined, Matthew von Unwerth defined as transaction; vestiges of was the degradation of my working day. humane, more ethical bonds between What had been holy between me and my Holmes Commission one another disappear. Connections patient was profaned. Dorothy E. Holmes, between people that had once been solid Months into our lockdown, I do not Dionne Powell, Anton Hart, and stable dissolve over time becoming speak so confidently. The virtual always more ephemeral and instrumental. experience, as a rule, is not as bad as I Beverly J. Stoute As that process within capitalism reaches imagined. Without a doubt, it is a its denouement, Marx insists, “Man is at different way to engage with another. Film: Id(e)a last compelled to face with sober senses, No longer can I ensure a physical space Giuseppe Civitarese his real conditions of life, and his for my patients to explore their inner relations with his kind.” worlds or the privacy of their own Finding Order in Meaning, For now, because of the pandemic, thoughts. Instead, they confront the real Being and Becoming through only “virtual” psychoanalytic constraints imposed by their living relationships are possible. For us, the arrangements. Some of my patients have Memoir: An Interview adapted more successfully than others. with Joan Wheelis The few patients who decided to take a Fred L. Griffin Jeffrey Prager, Ph.D., is research hiatus from treatment, while expressing professor of sociology, interim chair of the various reasons including “not having APsaA’s Fellows 2020-2021 Department of Information Studies at anything to talk about,” nonetheless UCLA, and training and supervising seem less able to pursue their own self- analyst at the New Center for Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. Continued on page 5

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021 1 CONTENTS: Winter/Spring 2021 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSOCIATION President: Bill Glover Reimagining APsaA - Continued Bill Glover and Kerry Sulkowicz President-Elect: Kerry Sulkowicz 3 Secretary: Bonnie Buchele Treasurer: Julio G. Calderon Executive Director: Thomas H. Newman 7 Covid-19, George Floyd, Racism, Psychoanalysis, and Music Julie Jaffee Nagel THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST Magazine of the 8 CrossCurrents Michael Slevin, Special Section Editor American Psychoanalytic Association Coronavirus Has Infected the Internet! Lisa Roth Editor Time Travel, Teleportation, and Telepsychiatry Tareq Yaqub Lyn Yonack The Frame and the Lens Matthew von Unwerth Special Section Editor Michael Slevin Education Editor 11 Diversities Justin Shubert, Diversity Editor Alan Sugarman Analyzing Psychoanalytic Racism Mark J. Blechner Diversity Editor Notes from the Inaugural Meeting of the Justin Shubert Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in APsaA Candidate Editor Sheryl Silverstein Dorothy E. Holmes, Dionne R. Powell, Anton Hart, and Beverly J. Stoute Book Review Editors Arlene Kramer Richards and Arnold Richards Film: Id(e)a Giuseppe Civitarese 16 Science Editor Robert Galatzer-Levy Finding Order in Meaning, Being and Becoming through Memoir: Psychotherapy Editor 18 Ann H. Dart An Interview with Joan Wheelis Fred L. Griffin Child and Adolescent Editor Leon Hoffman Psychoanalysis in a Broken World: Editorial Board 21 Phillip Freeman, Peter Loewenberg, Who We Are and What We Might Become Judith Logue, Julie Jaffee Nagel, Thomas H. Newman, ex officio Manuscript and Production Editors 24 APsaA’s Excellent New Fellows for 2020-2021 Michael and Helene Wolff, Technology Management Communications The Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis in the The American Psychoanalyst is published three times a year. 27 Subscriptions are provided automatically to members of The Time of Covid Deborah Fried and Bonnie Becker American Psychoanalytic Association. For non-members, domestic and Canadian subscription rates are $36 for individuals and $80 for institutions. Outside the U.S. and Canada, rates are $56 for individuals and $100 for institutions. Committee on Psychoanalytic Study (COPS) Gail Glenn, Chair 28 To subscribe to The American Psychoanalyst, visit https:// Study Group on Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience Charles P. Fisher www.apsa.org/product/american-psychoanalyst-domestic- and-canadian-individuals, or write TAP Subscriptions, The American Psychoanalytic Association, 309 East 49th Street, New York, New York 10017; call 212-752-0450 x18 or 29 A Psychoanalytic Approach to Combating Racism Margarita Cereijido e-mail [email protected]. Copyright © 2020 The American Psychoanalytic Association. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be Psychoanalytic Education in the Age of the Pandemic reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any 30 form or by any means without the written permission of The Alan Sugarman, Education Editor American Psychoanalytic Association, 309 East 49th Street, New York, New York 10017.

ISSN 1052-7958 32 Psychoanalysis Underwater Luke Hadge The American Psychoanalytic Association does not hold itself responsible for statements made in The American Psychoanalyst by contributors or advertisers. Unless otherwise stated, material in The American Psychoanalyst does not reflect the endorsement, official attitude, or position of The American Psychoanalytic Correspondence and letters to the editor should be sent to TAP editor, Association or The American Psychoanalyst. Lyn Yonack, at [email protected].

2 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021 FROM THE PRESIDENTS

trauma and suffering. We urgently need Reimagining APsaA – Continued a strong national voice to impact Bill Glover and Kerry Sulkowicz interdisciplinary and public conver­ sations and promote our values and thinking, support research, influence Reimagining APsaA Membership public policy, and advocate for psycho­ A Home for Psychoanalytic Thought analytically based treatment while and Practices listening to and learning from others. How will we define the family that APsaA can provide this voice and reaffirm lives in the APsaA home? The its leading role in mental health by philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein actively including members from the suggested replacing the essence of a broader psychoanalytic community. category or a concept (to determine Bill Glover Kerry Sulkowicz The potential for broadening the what belongs and what does not) with scope of APsaA membership has been family resemblance, that is, there are demonstrated by the enthusiastic Our first column, in the fall issue of similarities and differences, but not response to the spontaneous opening TAP, on “Reimagining APsaA” gave a one characteristic common to all. of our institutional borders during the broad vision for the Association’s future. Adapting what he says to the concept Covid-19 pandemic. We are providing This vision builds on multiple efforts-– of psychoanalytic: Our family includes resources to the public, free training the Strategic Planning Task Force, calls all psychoanalytic thought and and peer consultation to mental for racial justice, taking positions and practices, their features overlapping health professionals who are adapting organizing programs on social issues, and crisscrossing. We extend our their practice during the pandemic correcting injustices within APsaA, all concept of psychoanalytic as in and opening our Covid Town Halls to the work that led to the 6-Point Plan spinning a thread we twist fiber on the entire psychoanalytic community. with the restructuring of governance fiber. And the strength of the thread We are perceived as more welcoming and the creation of the Department of does not reside in the fact that one and hospitable, and it is a breath of fresh Psychoanalytic Education (DPE), and fiber runs through its whole length many more. air to see so many new faces joining but in the overlapping of many fibers. familiar ones. The features of Reimagining stem from — Britt-Marie Schiller, Head, Department The scope of Reimagining APsaA our evolution in governance, educational of Psychoanalytic Education standards, social engagement, self- membership follows over 20 years of examination on race and gender, while One decade into its second century, considering membership for psycho­­ maintaining excellence in psychoanalytic APsaA is poised to become a richer and analytic psychotherapists. Many education. more welcoming organization through institutes/centers have developed Reimagining is a vision for a plan to be vigorous policies of inclusion and psychotherapy training programs that developed in the coming months correction of injustices. A better and enrich and strengthen them. Exposure to through dialogue across the Association necessary future for APsaA will consist of psychoanalysis motivates therapists to with all stakeholders in a variety of a membership more diverse in race, want more for themselves and for their settings: committee meetings, forums at gender, geographic location, cultural patients. Some go on to seek analytic meetings, local discussions, town halls, heritage, and age. APsaA will be a home training; others practice psychotherapy board meetings, and online exchanges. for psychoanalytic thought and practices, or use psychoanalysis in other ways. The focus of this column is Reimagining building on but not limited to education We now recognize APsaA is strongest APsaA membership. This initiative comes and clinical practice in psychoanalysis if we support the full breadth of from the work of the Expanded and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, psychoanalytic thought and practice Membership Task Force (previously the including research, scholarship, and and welcome researchers, scholars, and Psychotherapy Membership Task Force). psychoanalysis in the community. These advocates into the community as full The ideas presented are for discussion intertwined fibers of the psychoanalytic members. Synergy among our various and elaboration as we work together to fabric support and strengthen one constituencies will advance psycho­ secure APsaA’s future. another. analytic thinking and promote contem­ In these challenging times, psycho­ porary psychoanalysis. Reimagining APsaA membership Bill Glover, PhD, is president of APsaA. analysis has a great deal to offer in quickens the pace of change, building on Kerry Sulkowicz, M.D., is president-elect. addressing social as well as individual Continued on page 4

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021 3 FROM THE PRESIDENTS

Reimagining APsaA possible with meaningful and proport­ Researchers Open to graduates of a Continued from page 3 ionate representation. didactic program at an APsaA institute, Educational Responsibility Delineation or to scientists who demonstrate interest years of work nationally and locally, and of responsibility for education will be in psychoanalysis in their work. can make psychoanalysis more vital, specified where functionally necessary, Community Advocates Open to accessible, and influential in today’s with communication and collaboration community members who are interested world. within the organizational structure. in psychoanalysis and support the The Task Force on Expanded Stepwise Evolution Implementing a mission of APsaA. Membership is developing a proposal to Reimagined APsaA requires compromise Each of the first four groups will have present in 2021. There are myriad details and flexibility. To achieve the consensus a corresponding category of Candidate to consider in a reorganization of this necessary for change to occur, some or Student membership, but with some scope. The preliminary sections that steps may be incremental and evolve limitations to voting rights and eligibility follow address important concepts and over time. to hold office. decisions with the understanding that As we have pointed out, Reimagining Proposed APsaA Membership they will evolve and we will go into APsaA is an evolving document that will Categories greater, more nuanced detail as the plan change in dialogue across the APsaA is developed in dialogue across the A key feature of Reimagining APsaA is membership. We look forward to lively Association. The culminating step will expanding membership by drawing debate culminating in the adoption and be a comprehensive bylaw amendment. from a number of constituencies, as implementation of a comprehensive To further discussion, here are core listed below. A question for discussion is plan for a sustainable and reinvigorated assumptions for Reimagining APsaA and whether those groups should be Association. suggestions for new membership groups: identified as belonging to different formal membership categories, or all be Core Assumptions - Reimagining APsaA characterized simply as APsaA members, Contacting the A Conceptual Guide to an with equal benefits, voting rights, and Inclusive APsaA eligibility for all nationally elected National Office offices, with the following criteria and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion APsaA The American qualifications: strives for a demographically diverse Psychoanalytic membership with equitable rights/ Psychoanalysts Open to all graduates Association of a program in clinical psychoanalysis benefits and inclusion throughout the 309 East 49th Street Association. at an APsaA or IPA institute, or to those New York, NY 10017 who demonstrate substantially equivalent Pluralism APsaA values diversity in Phone: 212-752-0450 psychoanalytic thought and respects psychoanalytic training and experience. Fax: 212-593-0571 Psychoanalyst members shall be different uses of psychoanalysis. All [email protected] primarily responsible for education and members are united by shared values http://apsa.org/ and common goals. qualification in psychoanalysis. Democracy All members are eligible Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists National Office to vote and stand for office, including Open to all graduates of a program in Voice Mail Extensions president. New membership categories clinical psychotherapy at an APsaA will be represented on the Board and institute, or to those who demonstrate Taylor Beidler x12 other administrative bodies. substantially equivalent training and Chris Broughton x19 Local Option APsaA institutes/centers experience in psychoanalytic psycho­ Brian Canty x17 determine their own membership therapy. Psychotherapist members would Sherkima Edwards x15 criteria, choose their own forms of be primarily responsible for education Tina Faison x23 demo­cratic governance, and may exceed and qualification in psychoanalytic Carolyn Gatto x20 APsaA Educational Standards. The APsaA psychotherapy. Scott Dillon x28 DPE is available for assistance. Academics Open to graduates of a Nerissa Steele-Browne x16 Integration New membership constit­ didactic program at an APsaA institute, Tom Newman x25 uencies will be integrated into APsaA or to educators and scholars who Debbie Steinke Wardell x26 governance, education, programming, demonstrate interest in psychoanalysis Wylie Tene x29 and other activities to the fullest extent in their work. Bronwyn Zevallos x18

4 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021 WORKING IN A PANDEMIC

All That Is Solid Melts forces us to confront ourselves and our their exper­i­ inter­personal relationships in ways that ences of radical into Air might otherwise have escaped our uncertainty. Continued from page 1 attention. For both of us, exploration. I will return to this at the I find my­self often exploring with my we felt the end of these reflections. patients’ fundamental existential ques­ contingent­ Still, there are many features that remain tions otherwise obscured in the comfort quality of decis­ the same. When I reflect on my reaction to and safety of the office. ion-making as the script “the internet connection is we tried to Precarity, or the “World’s”Vulnerability unstable” in session, as an accusation that I adapt to the Jeffrey Prager In almost an instant, we were forced to haven’t adequately provided for my powerfulness accommodate to a new realization: our patient, it’s not much different than when and complexity of a world over which we precarity to the danger of infection by a we shared the same space. It reminds me of have little control. The asymmetry of virus for which we have no immunity. those rare occasions when someone, like a power inherent in the analytic However felt, in abandoning my office, the delivery person, would knock on my relationship, for a time at least, was illusion of a vast chasm between my consulting room door during a patient rattled. The actual conditions of mutually patients and me, at least for a time, hour. Then, annoyed at the disturbance, shared precarity became front and center. powerfully dissolved. We were all doing my concentration and focus broken, and The intensity of that moment has the best we could to navigate treacherous protective of the patient’s privacy, I would passed, the novelty of our meeting on waters. One patient reported feeling Zoom has worn off and the pre-existing routine has returned, more or less. But I Virtuality does not weaken feelings and behaviors know that the forcefulness of a permanent and solid world we relied on has been essential to the analytic relationship. profoundly shaken. We don’t yet know whether the visceral realization of human fragility in the world will be more reassured, seeing me via Zoom in the quickly handle the breach, apologize to permanently inscribed in our safety of my home. She reported that until the patient for the intrusion and, more to consciousness. Will the universality of this then it was difficult to hold a view of me as the point, feel as if I failed to provide the shared experience of human vulnerability existing outside my office and, therefore, kind of safety I implicitly promise. When I make us all more ecologically mindful? with the virus sweeping the world, am unable to provide a stable and strong Will the largely unchecked impulse to especially vulnerable. I could hear her internet signal, I similarly experience master nature, as if it were possible, concern for me and my importance to her. impatience as if I am letting down the generate instead a more authentic relation patient. Even that has receded, as we Those feelings could no longer be so neatly to our real place in nature? together adjust to the realities of today’s bracketed off as when she could more world. I am able to demonstrate my comfortably think of us as in my office Solitude and Finitude reliability, punctuality, and my capacity together “doing therapy.” The pandemic brought a rapid retreat to create and maintain a sense of care In the immediate aftermath of the into our homes, halting immediate plans, and responsibility for the patient’s well- lockdown last spring, my distress at not calling into question long-range ones, and being. Virtuality does not weaken seeing my patients in person surfaced squelching visions for the future. We were feelings and behaviors essential to the vividly. It was not unlike in the aftermath required to reside more fully in the present analytic relationship. of a Southern California earthquake, and live within our inner selves. We There is nonetheless a truth to Marx’s when fear, danger, and uncertainty shared in the experience of solitude, original assertion that this new undid our routine. Then and now, I felt radical downscaling expectations in which we became less reliant on the outside world technological capacity makes us all “face… freer, even compelled, to share my own of people and things for stimulation. our real conditions of life and [our] experiences with my patients, including What now seems to be a nearly compulsive relations with [our] kind.” For those we what precautions I took to protect myself. desire for novelty of e x p e r ie nc e s — treat and for ourselves, our new reality— In this instance especially, my own need t rave l, rest au ra nt s, entertainment, the necessity for self-isolation and our to improvise with respect to the new cars, new people—has been called into dependence on internet technology— unexpected made me better­ appreciate Continued on page 6

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021 5 WORKING IN A PANDEMIC

All That Is Solid Melts into Air urgency. Protesters stood against systemic Continued from page 5 anti-Black police brutality and a political leadership refusing to articulate a common question. For many of my patients, this loneliness, feelings that one does not national purpose and a collective vision scaled-down life has come to feel surprisingly matter to anything or to anyone. Anger, for the future. In my view, the ubiquity centering, offering a greater confidence in defiance, denial, anxiety, somatization, and durability of the protests express a their own capacity for self-care. lethargy, and retreat all function to refusal, especially by the young, to tolerate Simultaneously, as physical and defend against loneliness. simultaneously drastic social isolation and emotional vulnerabilities are confronted, so too is the reality of one’s own death. We are forced to acknowledge our own finitude. Many of my patients, with a In this moment, anti-racism and anti-loneliness more stripped away perception of time, are powerfully linked together. feel greater urgency to realize their life. I have found this especially among people of color. For them, their finitude is more By loneliness, I mean not an existential a radical rejection of white inhumanity profoundly experienced, especially crisis but rather an expression of profound toward Blacks. In this moment, anti- because of recent reminders that life can social failure. For me, keeping this kind of racism and anti-loneliness are powerfully be instantaneously taken away because of patient in treatment has presented a serious linked together. the color of their skin. Seeing their own challenge; without social supports to Marx’s invocation that new technology vulnerability with greater clarity, they encourage idealistic, even grandiose, forces us to confront, in the new ways, engage their treatment with a more vivid purpose for which to prepare, the “the relations between [our] kind,” might sense of time passing and opportunities uncertainty of any planned future, and capture, at least in the U.S., today’s potentially lost. financial insecurity, the motivation to work In short, the locus of personal moment in ways that Marx could not on oneself becomes very precarious indeed. experience has shifted away from the anticipate. The rallying cry that “all lives No one could have anticipated the “mundane”—the life world—and toward matter only when Black Lives Matter” sudden acts of near universal condemn­ more “sacred” existential issues of being. suggests a new sensibility and a new ation of police brutality, systemic racism, Here again, more than reliance on a new subjectivity among people—dramatically and racial injustice in America in the technology, our retreat to Zoom comes to forged in the course of these protests midst of the pandemic. Following the represent existential uncertainty. Zoom against police brutality, with the pandemic becomes a prod to face the “real conditions death of George Floyd in May 2020, as its backdrop. Beset by the affective of life” rather than superficial distractions. massive multiracial demonstrations realization that life is both precious and throughout the country burst forth and brief, the uprising embodies the realization Loneliness and the Uprising Against It. they have endured. They take place in big that overcoming loneliness requires a For many, especially young people, cities and small, and in urban, suburban, world that cares for everyone, not just Covid-19 threatens to evaporate hard and rural parts of the country. The starkly some. Millions of protesters proclaim that fought gains in creating a place of one’s disproportionate number of Black Americans America cannot be whole until “our kind” own—a sense of forging and securing who have died from the virus highlighted has no racialized referent. one’s individuality and personal the undeniable truth of racial inequality. Only now has the reality and morally autonomy. This experience is surely This social uprising would likely not bankrupt character of white supremacy aggravated for some by the near-absence of have attained either the breadth or come into sharp focus. This is not a new any collective expression that unites their intensity of expression had it not been for insight for African-Americans, but it may own responsible behavior with serving a the Covid-19 lockdown and the social be for others. What is solid that has public good or the common welfare. We isolation it created. The protests required melted into air may not be our discovery live in a nation that, rather than providing individuals to forswear best practices that that therapy can occur without a physical a sustaining linkage between individual otherwise serve to protect them from office but rather our complacency with initiative and the collective good, demands infection. This “acting-out” occurred as a which we imagined that, following the that individuals fend for themselves and unified vision of America, one no longer pandemic, our nation will return to the socially isolate. This contributes to divided by racism, gained strength and way it was.

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mind when Covid-19, George Floyd, Racism, my patient is not associating Psychoanalysis, and Music to music, and Julie Jaffee Nagel this influences my response. Like many of you, I tuned into the unemployment, a conundrum around In my clinical APsaA Sunday Town Halls on Zoom opening schools, and analysts’ anxieties work I have when we first began the lockdown and about safely returning to their offices —or noticed my found them supportive and thoughtful. not—has exacerbated Covid-19 anxiety. patients For a large group of members, many of Julie Jaffee Nagel Oral and Aural Roads: An Intersection soften their whom know each other only through of Music and Psychoanalytic Ideas defenses, express affect, and recall badges at APsaA national meetings or In many analytic sessions, currently memories that resulted in fruitful on Open Line postings, there was an and past — not unlike in the APsaA associations from their past, relevant to extraordinary sense of camaraderie and Town Halls — a number of my patients present relationships, and expressed in sharing personal feelings. Kerry have recalled music in their lives. Mr. T. their relati­onship with me. Can analysts Sulkowicz and William Glover provided spoke about a “spectacular concert” he creatively use music both in­­side and out­ a safe and welcoming atmosphere. attended and “wished I could have side our cons­ult­ing rooms to reach out At the beginning of the third Town heard the music.’’ Exploring his to a public that is coping with the Hall, in reply to Kerry Sulkowicz’s comment in our session, he revealed his pandemics of illness, loss, death, racism, question “How are you all doing and wish that I could have been with him at and murder? My answer is yes. what’s helping you during this time?” I the concert. Mr. C. softly hummed The polyphonic, or multiple functions was particularly moved to hear several members comment that music provided relief for personal and professional fears. Particularly poignant, was the comment Music is always present inside the consulting room by one member who recently lost his when we listen and pay close attention. mother and mentioned the comfort a particular musical composition brought to his mourning. Two of the Town Halls melodies as he walked from my waiting of music, like overdetermined principles concluded with recorded music provided room to my consulting room, totally in psychoanalysis, enable us to feel by William Glover. unaware, until I inquired, that he was both elevating and disquieting As I write in mid-summer, we are remembering a special song. Ms. D. dynamics simultaneously. I remember moving beyond our initial efforts to recalled that as a child, she shared music once saying to my analyst, “I wish I scramble to adjust to working remotely with a currently estranged parent and could speak like a full orchestra so I with patients, the initial rise and fall of associated to her faded but ever-present could talk about all the feelings I am the Covid-19 curve, and tragically, a wish to establish an adult relationship having at the same time. With music Covid-19 surge occurring again in July. with this parent. you can play more than one note at the Additional trauma including the Classically trained as both a musician time.” With words, you can only say one murder of George Floyd, civil protests, and a psychoanalyst, I feel acutely word at the time. “Multiple formal exposure of systemic racism, attuned to melodies in our minds. I am musical elements resonate with the curious about what resonates intra­ disparities among simultaneously Julie Jaffee Nagel, Ph.D., graduated from psychically when words have limited conflicting impulses, defenses, affects, Juilliard, University of Michigan, and value. What brings particular music to and actions that we and our patients Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. She my mind ­— or to your mind? Why did share. We hear the resonance and integrates music and psychoanalysis in Leonard Bernstein’s “Age of Anxiety” nuance of music in our analysand’s Melodies of the Mind, Managing Stage (especially the Masque movement) associations, their tone of voice, the Fright, and A Conversation Between comfort me immediately following the rhythms in their speech, the timing and Freud and Mozart. Nagel is in private heartbreaking, untimely death of my length of their silences, and the power of practice in Ann Arbor, Michigan. mother? Sometimes, melodies enter my Continued on page 34

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021 7 CROSSCURRENTS : PART II

CrossCurrents Part II Michael Slevin, Special Section Editor

The election is behind us. The pandemic continues. Racism remains in the forefront of APsaA and the nation’s dialogue. With that in mind, we complete our series of brief essays on the way our lives as clinicians have been affected. The suddenness of infection in our bodies and the uprising that compelled conscious recognition of the long-term damage of systemic racism have segued into the familiar and a long slog of change and commitment. Yet the three essays here printed are as timely as when written in the heat of summer. I offer you the gift of three fine writers: Lisa Roth, Tareq Yaqub and Matthew von Unwerth. Michael Slevin

Michael Slevin, M.S.W., is a psychotherapist in private practice in Baltimore and co-editor with Beverly Stoute, M.D., of a book, The Trauma of Racism: Lessons from the Therapeutic Encounter, forthcoming under the Routledge imprint.

Coronavirus Has Infected the Internet! Lisa Roth Augustus*, a One missed session, and then another. little boy with His aunt would appear on screen and say feelings as big as he refused to come. Their house had his name, stood at curtains, not doors, so I assumed he “THIS IS YOUR WINDOWS his window and could hear me. If he was angry at me, I OPERATING SYSTEM. REBOOTING. asked me to stand said into the ether, maybe we could talk 1%... 2%... 3%...” at mine. It was or play about it in session. “Wow, this is going to take a really our first video I saw his face, a chubby finger coming long time.” session during the towards the camera, then black. “20%... 99%...” pandemic after Lisa Roth “Oh yay! I will see him so soon!” “Internet disconnecting! Internet two years of “7%...” disconnecting! Coronavirus has infected treatment. I waved, jumped, and “Oh no! I’m never going to see him!” the internet!” shouted, but he could not find me. He “80%... 98%...” “Oh no! I was so excited that Augustus turned from his window to the screen. “Yay!” was finally going to play with me for our “Dr. Roth, where is your house, “32%...” session, and now coronavirus has anyway?” “No!” A pang of guilt. I had left the city, and infected the internet and I can’t see him I was helpless at the hands of the him, on the coattails of my privilege. after all? I am so sad and angry and coronavirus, which had infected our “My house is in the Catskills.” disappointed! I wish more than anything treatment. He did not even have a door “Oh, well then I definitely can’t see that we were back in the office so we to close, a space that deigned to mimic you. My house is in the Bronx.” could play together like normal!” the private world we shared in my office. A whisper coming from the blackness. He would not pretend that video was the Lisa Roth, M.D., is a child, adolescent, and “Dr. Roth, you have to restart Windows.” same, that my leaving was okay, that we adult psychiatrist in private practice in New “Oh phew! I just have to restart were still together. My guilt was my own York City (downtownpsychiatry.com) and a Windows and then I’ll see Augustus after to bear. But now, at least, we could play child and adolescent psychoanalytic all. Such an easy fix. BEEP! WINDOWS about being apart. candidate at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. RESTARTING.” *Not his real name

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reasons, Baba was forced to stay in Saudi Time Travel, Teleportation, Arabia for one year after the rest of us and Telepsychiatry departed. I recall both the pain and the wonder of speaking to my father on the Tareq Yaqub phone: he under the night sky and I under the sun. Our voices were the I hate the virus. I’m pacing through sweatpants: my bridge between day and night. At times, the sepulcher, otherwise known as my patient will never I thought our voices alone would shatter apartment, wondering how my social know. I am tying the distance. I pictured the sound waves distancing sacrifices will be my tie and I that connected us traveling through the monumentalized within these walls. I’ll am flooded by telephone wires I had seen earlier that surely die here confined by these 600 memories of my day. I imagined what it would be like to square feet. I am deeply alone, and yet I father walking me am bombarded by notifications of through the join those waves on that journey through “connection.” This living space has also motions, hundreds the wires to once again reconnect with Tareq Yaqub become my workspace and my place of of times, until I my father. Despite my inability to leisure. Days become nights and, in the learned to master it on my own. I’m metamorphosize into a sound wave, I absence of routine, time collapses. finding it particularly difficult to tie a found myself, nightly, in Virginia, in I stare at myself in the mirror and knot today. “Stop thinking about it and Riyadh, under the sun, under the moon, begin to laugh at the absurdity of my do it,” I tell myself, echoing my father. I so near to my father, and yet so far, all at wardrobe: a shirt, tie, and a new pair of miss my father’s voice. the same time. Time and space have lost their I write this now, envying my previous ability to exist outside of time and space. Tareq Yaqub, M.D., is currently a fellow in coherence before. I remember first For now, however, I have finally tied my child and adolescent psychiatry at the coming to terms with the idea of a “time University of Michigan and was a 2019- zone” when my family, excluding my tie and can’t be late for my patient: He 2020 American Psychoanalytic Association father, immigrated to the United States has been struggling with the isolation fellow. when I was six years old. For various brought about by the virus.

order to delineate the analytic The Frame and the Lens relationship from all those other kinds Matthew von Unwerth of being with-others on whom one must cling or rely, endure, respond, or relate. In the middle of the journey through accumulated Those conditions, informed by the my analytic training, I had a patient thinking that doctrine of abstinence from gratification who wondered to the point of insisting had glacially which was considered so central to why psychoanalysis couldn’t be gathered — even analysis in its early, randy days, were conducted en plain air, walking together as our forebears understood (by me) to foster, through in some shared landscape instead of practiced their Matthew von Unwerth their idiosyncrasy, transparency, and him lying beneath my chair, in my craft through constancy, to allow the dyad to dispense office. I dutifully, perhaps breezily, the disruptions of war, persecution, with the semantic anguish of civilized certainly defensively, recited the displacement, economic calamity, and life, and focus on the mental and exile — to forge the fearful asymmetries internal experience of the patient, to Matthew von Unwerth, Ph.D., is faculty of the analytic frame: the chair and the the approximate exclusion of reality. at IPTAR and the Program in Narrative couch, the purse and the pocket, the Convincing not even to myself, my Medicine at Columbia University. He is fastened, shortened “ h o u r , ” t h e patient — who was after something I author of Freud’s Requiem: Memory, analyst’s space housing the patient’s couldn’t yet apprehend — had no use Mourning and the Invisible History of mind, in person, but at an angle — in for my reasons, and though he a Summer Walk. Continued on page 10

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The Frame and the Lens ultimately, we learned that Continued from page 9 much of what I had to tell the patient about himself accord­ grudgingly tolerated the rules of our ing to the theories with which engagement, the gauntlet was down, I prosecuted him was of far less and, before long, he assayed various use than what he had to show inspired infractions against the frame. me about what it was to be With my half-hearted endorsement, him, and that it was work and with my supervisors’ eyes on me, enough for a long time to bear the patient sat on the floor, then lay on witness to his mind, and his the floor, then insisted we switch chairs; yearning to be both idiopath­ once he hung upside down. Later on, we ically himself and also played with time — shorter and longer acknowledged and cherished the sudden disclosure, through barking sessions, floating appointments — for his becoming. For it was in that and baking and other irruptions of our which, to my relief, the patient found witnessing, in our embroiled reaching own humanity into an analytic frame even less congenial than I did. and not being reached and yet still newly mediated by the camera eye, we But really, why, apart from the anxiety reaching, that he could feel himself are learning new ways to work, ways of scrutinized inexperience that somewhat known, fleetingly seen, that were proscribed by custom if not analytic training entails, should I have provisionally less separate, less mediated. training, until made urgent by our and our patients’ mutual need. And now, having abdicated so many of the ...we are learning new ways to work, ways that were familiar symbols, guardrails and first things of our practice, we are left to proscribed by custom if not training, until made urgent ponder, as my patient and I did long by our and our patients’ mutual need. ago: How shall we find one another again, what is really required to witness the mind of another, and can our cared? As we came to understand Now, de golpe, psychoanalysis, so patients still use us to find out what together, all of this playing with the intrinsically concerned with the they come to us for? frame wasn’t simply a matter of working mediation of inner experience, must Several years further on into the out the nature of control in the suddenly contend with the mediations treatment, I was inadvertently locked relationship (though it was that), but of film, the Modernist twin with whom out of my office at just the time I was to the founding of the relationship itself. it has so long shared the frame. And In wanting to know what could be meet with my patient, and I hastily now we all find ourselves with certain changed about the place and the way arranged for a substitute space. The rules dispensed, rules that we might we interacted, the patient was asking space was just a few minutes away, and have been cautiously considering would this be a collaboration; could he so we walked there together. The initial before, in terms (we’d tell ourselves) of count on our relationship to move with moments, which were not unfamiliar what was effective, therapeutic, ethical, him and still be constant, and above all, from rides we had occasionally shared developmentally informed, in the could he get with me what he had come in the elevator, had an anxious and patient’s interest, but perhaps also a for, and be sure it was his and not mine? uncertain quality for both of us, but In due course, I had to learn with this little defensively, fearful of some then we adjusted to the new situation, patient (for that was what was needed) disintegration if how we are with and we began to talk as we might in the to dispense with not a few of the rules I patients were to become too estranged office. It was not lost on either of us that had learned: We opened and read his from our inheritance and self- we had accidentally finally realized the mail together in my room when the pile conception. Trading face time for patient’s early wish. As it turned out, grew too large in the patient’s mind; we FaceTime, evacuating our offices (for my patient and I did have our walking spoke by phone when the effort of many of us, the incarnation in space of analysis, and managed to find ourselves finding the office was too great; our therapeutic identities), confronting together again in the new frame.

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DIVERSITIES Justin Shubert, Diversity Editor

be killed, which led to the genocide in Analyzing Psychoanalytic Racism which hundreds of thousands were Mark J. Blechner murdered. When Australia was settled by ex-convicts from Great Britain, the It is time for conscious and unconscious racism. We settlers developed a law that said the psychoanalysis must grapple with such questions as: land was uninhabited by humans, so as a profession How are issues of race and culture that the whites could take the land. This to reckon with addressed in our courses? In our journal law came off the books only in 1993, its conscious and articles and our reading lists? How many when aboriginal people were redefined unconscious members of racial minorities hold as human beings. racism. We need positions of authority and power? What That some people are not humans to reject the is the proportion among administrative leads to the acceptance of inferior or evil status quo and leaders and training and supervising “races,” who can then be murdered and engage in a self- Mark J. Blechner analysts? In the day-to-day operation of mistreated without guilt. These days the study of our own psychoanalytic institutes and organiz­ notion that one race of people is not prejudices. The membership of the ations, how much and in what ways are fully human is being lived out in the American Psychoanalytic Association issues of race addressed? Are any issues United States, consciously and unconsc­ does not reflect the proportional racial bypassed or given short shrift? iously, in regard to people of color, most diversity of the United States population, egregiously toward African-Americans, but rather reflects years of insufficient Some Lives Matter Less and pervades our thinking and action. attention to the psychological issues of The relationship of psychoanalysis We disavow this idea even while we people of color and the psychodynamics and issues of race has been complex. tolerate it, until a picture of a white of racial prejudice, in our conferences, What can psychoanalysis teach us about police officer with his knee on a Black our teaching, and our publications. the psychology of racism? How does man’s neck captures, viscerally and No psychoanalytic institute, as far as I racism affect psychoanalysis today, and emotionally, the outrage of a man know, claims to be racist. However, it is how can racism in psychoanalytic murdered as if he were not human. not enough to say, “We don’t discriminate.” institutes be lessened or ameliorated? Psychodynamics of Racism We can also ask, “How much do we Today, we hear the statement “Black actively support candidates of color? Do Lives Matter.” Some respond “All Lives A psychoanalytic view of racism would we welcome them? Do we actively train Matter,” but that rejoinder misses the naturally look at the psychological our candidates to have expertise in point that all lives should matter equally, tendency of human beings to categorize working with issues of race and prejudice? no matter the skin color, religion, ethnic people according to groups and to To what degree are we anti-racist? Do we heritage, or other factors. Essential to presume that some groups are inferior to passively accept the status quo?” Every racist tradition and maltreatment is the others. In 1985, Erik Erikson called this one of our organizations­ and institutes idea that some human groups are not “pseudospeciation.” According to must engage in an interrogation of fully human or not people at all. In pre- Erikson, “The term denotes that while Civil War America, Black people were man is obviously one species, he appears counted as 3/5 human. In December and continues on the scene split up into Mark J. Blechner, Ph.D., is the author of 1945, a question asked by a Polish child groups (from tribes to nations, from The Mindbrain and Dreams: castes to classes, from religions to Explorations of Dreaming, Thinking, was written about in the underground and Artistic Creation (2018). He press: “Mommy, was it a human being ideologies, and I might add, professional established scholarships to fund the training that was killed or a Jew?” In Rwanda in associations) which provide their of candidates of color and transgender 1992, Leon Mugesera, a Hutu, preached members with a firm sense of unique and candidates at the White Institute. that Tutsis were cockroaches and should Continued on page 12

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Analyzing Psychoanalytic Racism slaves. Equality of men was stated in Continued from page 11 clear terms. In practice, however, equality applied only to white men. superior human identity.” Harry Stack limited the civil rights of Jews (who were The idea that Black people are not Sullivan thought that racist prejudice considered an inferior race), separating fully human continues today among protects us from feelings of inferiority them into their own neighborhoods and many white people, despite the fact that and resultant psychopathology. He wrote eliminating their right to marry outside the Fourteenth Amendment to the in 1940: “It may be said of the practice of their racial category. Yet the Nazis, at Constitution conferred to all people “equal protection of the laws.” The last time I served on jury duty in New York It is not enough to say, “We don’t discriminate.” City, all defendants were Black or Also ask, “Do we actively support candidates of color? Do we Hispanic. It seemed that I was in a court welcome them? Do we train candidates to have expertise for people of color. A year later, one of my white patients told me when he was working with issues of race and prejudice?... Are we a teenager, he was stopped by a anti-racist? Do we passively accept the status quo?” policeman, who searched his car and found marijuana. The policeman gave him a warning and let him go. I said to disparaging others and the entertaining least in 1935, thought American race him, “Do you realize that if you were of active prejudice to whole classes of laws were too extreme, as documented Black, you would have been put in jail people that, like the use of alcohol, they by James Whitman in his 2017 book for 10 years?” The “average expectable protect the person concerned from a Hitler’s American Model. The Nazis based environment” is clearly different for more serious disturbance of personality; their definition of a Jew on the number white and Black people in the United they are, in a word, the lesser of two evils of Jewish grandparents. They did not go States. We know this racial disparity for the person who manifests them.” so far as the American “one drop exists but allow it to continue. Belonging to a privileged racial group principle,” which stated that one drop of The two conflicting strains in Amer­ allows a person to believe that she or he inferior blood stripped a person of his ican culture — human equality vs. has heightened value by virtue of birth. belonging to the superior race. The Nazi maintenance of racial purity — continue This is true of all racisms, not only the lawyers argued that the American to compete in the contemporary United version of “white racism” most familiar miscegenation laws were also too harsh. States. Their disjuncture allows for various to Americans. In China, for example, While the Nazis made it illegal for Jews forms of splitting and dissociation. In the westerners are called “big-noses” or to marry non-Jews, they did not at first psychoanalytic literature, there are “white devils.” By developing a field of make already consummated mixed-race examples of unabashed racism. For “comparative racism,” we would be able marriages a crime, as was the case in the example, in 1914 John Lind studied the to consider how notions of race are used United States until 1967. dreams of 100 African-Americans and the same or differently by different While the United States race laws were concluded that their dreams were groups and the role that prejudice plays harsh, they were balanced by a liberal, undisguised wish-fulfillments, as Freud in human personality functioning. egalitarian streak underlying the United said was characteristic of children’s States government. The Declaration of American Race Laws: Too Harsh for dreams. Lind stated that Negroes had Independence stated in 1776: “We hold the Nazis in 1935 childlike minds and childlike dreams. He these Truths to be self-evident, that all Adolf Hitler wrote in his auto­ did not take into account that many were Men are created equal, that they are biographical manifesto Mein Kampf that in jail, reporting dreams to white endowed by their Creator with certain he admired the United States as the investigators, so likely less than fully unalienable Rights, that among these are world leader in devising strict laws to candid about their dream content. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of maintain racial purity. Nazi legal scholars There are many other examples of Happiness….” Many of the authors, looked to American racial laws as the sanctioned racism in the psychoanalytic including Thomas Jefferson, owned model for the Nuremberg laws which past, but change in the present is more Continued on page 13

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Psychoanalytic Racism If we really want to engage in self- understand latent and unconscious Continued from page 12 study on this issue, we must welcome racism, you must ask the opinion of feedback from the members of our people who are experiencing discrim­ important. At the William Alanson community who have been the targets of ination to tell you what you cannot see White Institute, we have established scholarships for candidates of color (and for transgender candidates) in the hope If we really want to engage in self-study on this issue, we must welcome of attracting future leaders who may feedback from the members of our community who have been the targets of correct for past blind spots in our prejudice and invite the opinions of people outside our community. thinking and training. That is just the beginning of a vast task. Systemic racism tends to accommodate perturbations in prejudice and invite the opinions of about yourself. Psychoanalysis needs a society, give lip service to justice for a people outside our community. Psycholo­ thoroughgoing analysis of the ways racist while, and then re-establish the status gist Marie-Louise von Franz said that you and other prejudices are silently, perhaps quo. Can we as psychoanalysts outline cannot see your own back. If you show it unconsciously, imprinted on its theories psychodynamics that will lead to to another person, he can see it, but you and practices. genuine long-lasting change? can’t. If you are white and want to fully

Notes from the Inaugural Meeting of the Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in APsaA The Leadership Team

At last, on October 11, 2020, the weekly meetings of the Holmes Commission’s leadership team — regularly attended by (the eponymous) Dorothy E. Holmes, Anton Hart, Dionne Powell and Beverly J. Stoute — expanded to all 19 members in our inaugural gathering of the Holmes Commission on Racial Equal- ity in APsaA. It occasioned warm wel- Dorothy E. Holmes Dionne R. Powell Anton Hart Beverly J. Stoute comes and introductions, listening to Dorothy E. Holmes experience has taught us that in every the Stanford Talisman Alumni Virtual In addressing psychical matters that phase of the patient’s recovery we have Choir’s rendition of “Lift Every Voice may or may not require psychoanalytic to fight against his inertia which is and Sing,” which brought many to attention, Freud referred to the patient’s ready to be content with an incomplete latent, instinctual conflict as a “sleeping solution. tears and the emotionally connected dog.” But, he noted, when such a dog is, sharing of personal reflections and In the reality of our current society and in fact, causing disturbances, it is not aspirations as we began our work as a in our organization, the “sleeping dog”— truly sleeping and should not, thus, be racial conflict and racial inequality— commission. left to lie. Instead, Freud argued: have again been awakened. It is, in fact, Commission Chair Dorothy E. Holmes We seek to bring this conflict to a head repeatedly barking and loudly. opened the meeting by reading from to develop it to its highest pitch in order Following Freud’s admonition that we Freud’s 1937 Analysis Terminable and to increase the instinctual force must bring such latent conflicts “to a Interminable. available for its solution. Analytic Continued on page 14

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Holmes Commission Continued from page 13 head,” the commission’s aim is to bring Systemic racism, wherever it is found, Dionne R. Powell to a head the conflicts and disturbances involves powers, the organizational It is difficult to come up with around race in APsaA, and to bring equivalent of instinctual forces that are introductory remarks for such a lifelong them to their highest pitch. This will expressed to create and maintain racial battle; including the personal, which I not be easy. inequality. The formation of this believe is the source of any meaningful In the formation of CO-RAP, our commission is an intentional effort to change. We are a segregated, invisibly acronym for our commission, there is an bring a new powerful voice to meet and gated community. And while there may intellectual recognition of the mental transform the old organizational powers not be the snarling white faces and racial sickness of racism and that we must do epithets of my youth, the message of that have kept systemic racism in place. something about it, starting in our own how “welcoming” APsaA and analytic Our work will be aimed at helping APsaA analytic home. Given the intransigence institutes are is suggested by its lack of redefine and rebuild its structures, and embeddedness of racism in its many diversity, particularly African-Americans, operations, and practices, including expressions, institutionally and individ­ Latin Americans, and Asian- Americans. institute practices, in order to achieve ually, and the historical record of high The Holmes Commission is an attempt racial equality and to build alliances to cultural moments about race being to look at all of this closely or as stated in do the same with other analytic groups. repeatedly followed by the basest my recent paper “From the Sunken Place In such kinships we will also aim to moments, we need to wage a fight against to the Shitty Place: The Film Get Out, inertia in our attempts to find solutions actively work in larger communities— Psychic Emancipation and Modern Race to racism within our organization. regional, national, and global — to Relations from a Psychodynamic eliminate all forms of oppression. Clinical Perspective” published in the Just as Freud speaks of necessary [2020]Psychoanalytic Quarterly: Anton Hart, PhD, FABP, FIPA, is a suffering, frustration, and damming up Our analytic understandings are training and supervising analyst and faculty of libido as necessary components of the at the William Alanson White Institute, formed within a racist system that work to be done to liberate oneself, in and co-chair of the Holmes Commission on privileges certain people and excludes Racial Equality in APsaA. fostering CO-REAP, APsaA has agreed to others. We hide behind maintenance the examinations the commission will of an “analytic stance” and yet are Dorothy E. Holmes, PhD, psychoanalyst conduct that will likely involve some blinded and mute to how that precludes in private practice, Bluffton, SC; teaching, inclusiveness and diversity. In the end training and supervising psychoanalyst, organizational frustration. We will our stance becomes defensive armor Psychoanalytic Center of the Carolinas; persevere to make discoveries and propose that is rarely challenged. fellow, IPTAR; PsyD Program director changes that will not dam up but emerita, clinical psychology, The George transform organizational instincts into The Holmes Commission is tasked to Washington University. Her current constructive developments. Deep look at our participation and the scholarship is focused on “whiteness.” disservices of race are as old as our maintenance of racist structures and Dionne R. Powell, MD., is a training and country. They persist and course through behaviors individually, organizationally, supervising psychoanalyst at both the all of us. Perhaps racism is interminable, and institutionally, requiring us to dwell in the shitty and unpleasant places, Psychoanalytic Association of New York but the commission’s commitment is that exploring its embeddedness and (PANY) and Columbia University Center for it is modifiable for the good of all in our intransigence, finding new paths to Psychoanalytic Training and Research Association and beyond. We pledge to be (CUCPTR), New York. mitigate the effects of racism. This is radical in our examination of race in the undoubtedly subversive and uncomfortable Beverly J. Stoute, MD, FABP, FAPA is a best psychoanalytic sense. That is, we as we acknowledge our sordid past and training and supervising analyst at the will upset the status quo for the purpose Emory Psychoanalytic Institute, and child present, while looking at personal, of progressing toward racial equality. and supervising analyst at the New York institutional and organizational Remarks by Dionne Powell, Beverly J. Psychoanalytic Institute, and co-chair of the thoughts, behaviors, and biases that Stoute, and Anton Hart of the Holmes Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in have denied, discriminated, and Commission’s leadership team follow below. APsaA. restricted access to those often identified Continued on page 15

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Holmes Commission Butts, Henry Edwards, Walter Bradshaw, Continued from page 14 Samuel Bullock, Jean Christmas, Charles Pinderhughes, Argyle Stoute. They are as foreign or stranger or the Other. racism. In tough moments, our words the Black psychoanalysts who forged the However, if we can struggle with humility will fail us. But, as psychoanalysts, we desegregation of psychoanalysis. and openness, we can reclaim those know that breakdowns are opportunities The places at this metaphoric table aspects of the self that have been for finding new thoughts and words. that we each occupy were earned by unacceptable because of our conscious When conversations fail, there are sacrifice, by painful struggle, by activism, and unconscious attempts to exclude and possibilities for figuring out how we can by this generation of freedom fighters — deny that have our institutions, start talking again. Let’s expect such Black psychoanalysts who came before organizations, and an entire nation breakdowns, and let’s think of them as us and carved out paths where there psychologically enslaved. To move opportunities. were none. Many shunned membership toward a freedom that is essential for My hope for APsaA is that we will in APsaA because of exclusionary psychoanalysis and our nation, is the begin to transform indifference toward practices, insularity, lack of community reason for my excitement for the racial equality into curiosity and engagement, and the intolerable commission’s and APsaA’s possibilities. engagement, and that we will help prejudiced teachings about African- people start to move from positions of Americans espoused in institute Anton Hart holding on to what they preciously cling curricula. There are times when My understanding of our convening to, toward positions of recognizing what leadership takes charge and forges a path is to help us think together, to create the they could generatively lose. of social progress, but there are equally mind of our group, and to use this mind important times when leadership in the service of equality and justice, Beverly J. Stoute recognizes that it must yield to the forces and that is an exciting prospect. I James Baldwin once said, “History is of the historical moment to revive the experience this as the beginning of not the past. It is the present. We carry radical potential of psychoanalysis by something exciting rather than obliga­ our history with us. We are our history.” internalizing the mobilizing force of tory, a chance to think together and to Every African-American knows this. Blackness into the American be surprised, to be curious, to have This is a trans-generational mantra of psychoanalytic identity. Blackness humility, and to have courage. racial suffering. Every psychoanalyst represents Black psychoanalysis but also This is not always what it feels like knows this. It is a fundamental the symbolic Other. Our task is a noble when starting a meeting with a group of psychoanalytic tenet. James Baldwin one and a necessary one. Let’s commit psychoanalysts, I dare say. We sometimes believed that the true American identity ourselves to the struggle for racial justice succumb to bureaucracy, to some other would be forged by overcoming and equality with honor, with dignity, version of what it is to have a meeting or whiteness and Blackness in favor of a with authoritative humility, in our to get administrative work done. My reformulated American nationalism, organization and hopefully reposition hope is that we will keep this interesting, resolving the split between Black and psychoanalysis in our work community stimulating, and surprising. I expect white within the American psyche. By to reclaim our psychoanalytic soul. that, in addition, to being imaginative recognizing that which has been and courageous we’ll also have to excluded, the identity of Black America, * * * become uncomfortable with each other Baldwin believed that the identity of Lastly, Holmes commissioners took and in relation to the organization we’re white America would be transformed to turns speaking personally about what trying to help. reclaim its humanity. This is true of had brought them to the present We’ll have to expect breakdowns, that America as a nation. This is true of endeavor. Each account was moving and things in our dialogic process will break American psychoanalysis. inspiring, reflecting fear and courage, down. Conversations will falter. I would like to mention the members apprehension and commitment. As Sometimes we won’t be able to find words of this commission who could only be expectably overcommitted each to speak to each other. We won’t be able here in spirit today: Solomon Carter commissioner is, there was a palpable to find suitable ways of speaking to our Fuller, Ellis Toney, Margaret Morgan sense of gratitude for the opportunity to organization. These are inevitable when Lawrence, Charles Prudhomme, Jeanne come together and do the important walking in the territory of race and Spurlock, Enrico Jones, Ruth Fuller, Hugh work we have set before us.

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various levels: the historical level, the current level of the relationship between F I L M the characters, the level of the characters seen as internal presences within Ida’s mind and therefore the level of the intrapsychic, and finally the level that includes the Id(e)a spectator in his creative reception of the Giuseppe Civitarese film. It is clear that the spectator films/ views the film and gets filmed/viewed by it. Ida, Paweł the world outside the perimeters of the For the purposes of our discourse on the Pawlikowski’s 2013 convent. This meeting offers a way to emotional work of analysis, we conceive of film set in 1962 reintegrate painful aspects expelled outside Ida as an “idea.” What we hope to do with Poland, tells the herself, thus rendering her choice to become our patients and ourselves is to have new story of a young a nun more conscious. In her encounter and fruitful ideas, both rational and novice who, with Wanda, Ida discovers many things “sensitive,” about ways of giving meaning abandoned as a about herself and her family of origin. to life. Ida’s life is the same as any new child, raised by the Striving to embrace this new content, which idea: She can die, live, or close herself in a nuns, is about to is also potentially destructive, Ida endeavors claustrum. (D. Meltzer uses this Latin word Giuseppe Civitarese take her vows. As a to become more “human.” that means “closed place,” then “cloister” child, she was A Polish black and white film about a in his 1990 work, The Claustrum (London: welcomed into a total institution: a young novice who is about to take her Karnac) to indicate a claustrophobic and container that we can see as a metaphor for vows? Accustomed to the narrative constrictive psychic container.) containers that are not “concrete,” but grammar of Hollywood and more or less The film is built around binary pairs, psychic. In her case, its rigidity is happy consumers of successful American starting with the choice to shoot it in proportionate to the explosive force of television series, it would be difficult, at black and white. The effect transports us emotions that, if given free rein, threaten least for the Italian viewer, not to evoke the to the beginning of the 1960s; by to drive her mad. (See W. R. Bion, Learning hero of Paolo Villaggio struggling with renouncing color, the director establishes from Experience, 1962) “Container and Ėjzenštejn. This refers to a “mythical” a past/present opposition more effectively contained are susceptible of conjunction scene in Italian cinema in which the than a simple historical setting would do. and permeation by emotion. Thus conjoined famous comic actor played the tragicomic Other binary couples include: fidelity/ or permeated or both, they change in a figure of a humble member of the atheism, morality/dissoluteness, victims/ manner usually described as growth. When disjoined or denuded of emotion they diminish in vitality, that is, approximate to In terms of mental health, the point is what is true, not in inanimate objects. Both a container and contained are models of abstract absolute terms, but how much truth/idea is sustainable representations of psychoanalytic (containable) for the individual and the group. realizations.”) A week before taking her vows, Ida is invited by the abbess to visit her aunt, Communist Party who for once rebelled butcher, communism/postcommunism, Wanda, as if to take a definitive farewell to against the ideological obligation to see Catholics/Jews, openness/closure, spirit/ and applaud the Battleship Potemkin for the body, Ida/Wanda, idea/body, virgin/ umpteenth time. (https://www.youtube. prostitute, submerged/saved, asceticism/ Giuseppe Civitarese, MD, PhD, training com/watch?v=3EZEd9FGvbw) depravity, fidelity/cynicism, Catholicism/ and supervising analyst (SPI, APsaA, IPA), Instead, none of this. Having overcome postcommunism, and guilt/redemption, is the author of several books. The latest in our initial reluctance, we remain fascinated illustrating how many different English are: Sublime Subjects: Aesthetic by the magic of great cinema. We rediscover interpretative paths could legitimately Experience and Intersubjectivity in the ways a wonderful photograph can be taken. Psychoanalysis, London, 2017; and demonstrate the most subtle emotional But what truths do these couples An Apocryphal Dictionary of nuances. Ida is a complex and successful represent to us? The journey that Ida Psychoanalysis, London, 2019. film because it effortlessly operates on undertakes deconstructs rather than Continued on page 17

16 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021 ID(E)A

Id(e)a be integrated in contact with the other and bad nuns, that is, doubly cloistered. Continued from page 16 “maternal” aspects represented by her From a psychological perspective, the aunt—who invites Ida to become integration abbess-Wanda, characters strengthens these oppositions. As acquainted with her aunt. This could who somehow are the opposite of each Dostoevsky teaches, there is sanctity in represent a first truth or contained waiting other, has not succeeded. In fact, Ida still abjection and wretchedness in virtue. The to be metabolized. feels the need to renounce living a more past is in the present as the present is in Between Ida and Wanda, an uneasy vital and fulfilling life and sacrifices it to the past. The saved become executioners relationship is established. The film asks: an inner cruel God. and vice versa, as we see every day in so Will Wanda become more human in/ As a last reflection, I would like to many ruined places on Earth. At this through her contact with Ida? Will Ida be comment on the strength of the film. point we evoke a principle of Bion’s able to become more human in/through There is one element, in particular, that method: the caesura seen not as a clear her contact with Wanda? Will the mother- deserves attention. The real protagonist of separation but as a transitable area and an abbess succeed in contaminating herself the film is not actually Ida but the instrument-symbol of an attitude, both with mother-Wanda? beautiful and expressive face of Agata ethical and epistemological, to the It is a fact that, together, Ida and Wanda Trzebuchowska, the actress who plays Ida. systematic exercise of doubt. This exercise undertake a journey to discover Ida’s She is the interpretative key the director has the precise purpose of widening the family origins. As always, the essential offers us. The incredible beauty of Ida’s area of what we can think—host in our mystery is of birth and death. Along their face represents the beautiful face the mind—and tolerate. In terms of mental path, they come across several “truths” mother has for her newborn baby. In Ida’s health, the point is what is true, not in that reveal Wanda’s bloody past, her case, it is the face she could not sufficiently absolute terms, but how much truth/idea miserable present, the revelation of her contemplate. As the film progresses, Ida’s is sustainable (containable) for the Jewish heritage, the Holocaust, the face becomes an intense and sensual individual and the group. betrayal and murder of her parents. presence that evokes an intolerable Ida “works” as a psychoanalytic journey In her journey, however, Ida also absence. In fact, in taking vows, she hides of discovery. It expands the mind and helps encounters music, Coltrane’s jazz, this face, as if Ida were enacting the us take responsibility for ourselves, or rather sensuality, youth, dance, and sex. We absence of the other. By neither allowing for the crowd of characters our minds are witness as she gradually sheds features of anyone to gaze at her nor allowing herself made of. It “looks” like a black and white her rigid uniform and “sees herself,” and to see a reflection of herself in the other’s film, but in reality, it is a film about life’s is seen, with new eyes. eyes, Ida’s ultimate decision serves to infinite shades of gray. Nothing is ever However, the aunt cannot stand the represent this profound absence, thus purely black or white. Ida’s emotional work, pain and takes her own life. It is as if this containing the pain and anger that it stirs as well as the emotional work of the viewer new trauma pushes Ida to close down within her. who identifies with her, is to free oneself abruptly and definitively, totally [Editor’s note: For more information about from the hyper-bright logic of binary disillusioned and again abandoned. The the author’s sources, please email gcivitarese@ oppositions. new Ida, or id(e)a, who stayed in her for a gmail.com.] The film-as-a-container of our anxieties, while, announced the possibility of a as any work of art is meant to be, presents different and fuller life but does not various institutions as true characters: the ultimately come alive. It is, nevertheless, In Memoriam convent, the party, the mind, the true that Ida is now richer, more human community, the family. Each such and her choice represents a more mature We note the sad news of Bruce character is responsible for managing one. Of course, Wanda represents what Sklarew’s passing. For years, Dr. certain content. Some content can be Ida cannot accept about herself and her Sklarew served as TAP’s film potential killers, i.e., destructive. At a aunt’s suicide is the “suicide” of the editor, offering psychological certain point in her life, unexpectedly, Ida cloister that Ida creates by choosing insight into such movies as is given the possibility of a change that poverty, obedience, chastity, simplicity. could be catastrophic—in a sense that is Even if Ida does not actually open herself Casablanca and others. Many not necessarily negative. Little does it up to life, she will not live the same have commented how much matter that it was the abbess—a maternal cloister she would have had she never met they enjoyed his contributions. imago or internal split object that offers to her aunt. Surely, there are human nuns

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021 17 MEANING, BEING AND BECOMING THROUGH MEMOIR

Finding Order in Meaning, Being and Becoming through Memoir: An Interview with Joan Wheelis about The Known, the Secret, the Forgotten Fred L. Griffin

the Secret, the Forgotten, written by Joan the possibilities of a future. Through the Wheelis and published in 2019 by Nor- creation of metaphor, the writer Cynthia ton. After a few comments to set the con- Ozick tells us, “We strangers can imagine text, I interview Wheelis about her book. the familiar hearts of strangers”; this act “transforms the strange into the familiar Memoir and Clinical Psychoanalysis Memoir is a literary genre that is more (Metaphor & Memory, 1991). about the emotional experience of a life Language in creative works, moreover, than the factual accounts. Memoirs are generates nuances of sound and rhythm; it can convey how it feels to hear and say Fred L. Griffin Joan Wheelis as diverse in their nature as their authors, both in the ways they are constructed words. In so doing, language commu­ There is a growing­ interest in and what they aim to do. Rather than nicates something more, beyond the memoir among the general readership, and words themselves. I am referring to how an increasing number of psychoanalysts­­ trying to define what memoir is and is language works inside us, between us who are writing books about their lives not, I am more interested in how it goes and others. that readers within and outside the field about doing what it does: how it brings are eager to read. order to one’s life; how it plays with The Known, the Secret, the Forgotten, This article centers on one particular memory and time; how it attends more Joan Wheelis’s memoir about her rela- memoir by a psychoanalyst, The Known, to the subjective experience of what is tionship with her parents, both accom- emotionally true than the objective plished psychoanalysts, beautifully Joan Wheelis, M.D., is a training and truth; how the process of writing memoir captures such elements of language and supervising psychoanalyst at Boston may lead to a discovery of meanings as it memoir that many psychoanalysts find Psychoanalytic Society and Institute; captures states of being; how writing intriguing. Wheelis writes in her opening assistant clinical professor at Harvard memoir may be itself an act of becoming. chapter: Medical School; clinical faculty at McLean All of this is to say, writing—and perhaps My parents are both dead, yet their Hospital; and teaches at Massachusetts reading—memoir is not so unlike what lives are very much within me. Time General Hospital / McLean Hospital happens in the analytic situation. and memory rushing in like waves on distant shores. Pulling shells and Psychiatric Residency Program. Why are psychoanalysts stones and crabs out to sea and then Wheelis’s parents were both psychoanalysts interested in memoir? tossing them back to shore again. who practiced in San Francisco, in offices Many psychoanalysts are drawn to Loudly and then softly, inexorably. that occupied a part of the home in which creative writings and to their authors. It she grew up. Her father, Allen Wheelis, was is not only a scholarly interest that makes This is language we can feel, that has the author of 15 books, including psycho­ good writing so appealing, and not just the power to stimulate the imagination analytic and philosophical explorations, because we rely upon words to achieve so we not only grasp something of its novels, and memoir. Joan Wheelis’s mother the talking cure. For those of us who love meaning, but also sense how the author was known professionally as Ilse Jawetz. language, words are fascinating in the is trying to reach the reader. Her words Fred L. Griffin, M.D.,is training and ways they are used to create implicit and bridge the gap between her and us. supervising analyst at the Dallas explicit metaphors as the psychoanalytic Memoir is a unique kind of self-inquiry Psychoanalytic Center and clinical professor process unfolds. Imaginative language— conducted not only at the writer’s desk in the Department of Psychiatry at the shared by analyst and analysand—has but also in the public square. For some University of Texas Southwestern Medical the potential to communicate the past, authors, memoir brings narrative order School. He is author of Creative Listening the present, the as-if experience of to a life. For some, writing memoir is a and the Psychoanalytic Process. transference-countertransference, and therapeutic act. Deriving its name from Continued on page 19

18 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021 MEANING, BEING AND BECOMING THROUGH MEMOIR the French word for reminiscences, These elements of memoirs speak of asked myself if I would be comfortable memoir generates its own unique qualities that mirror the depths of the with family, friends, colleagues, and treatment of memory and time. Memoir psychoanalytic experience and echo patients reading it, and I was. I still am. can create states of mind much like those what we hope to achieve in a personal FG: Did you learn anything about found within the psychoanalytic process analysis. Many psychoanalysts are drawn yourself you weren’t expecting? Did as consciousness is in fluid interplay to this near-unconscious treatment of anything take you by surprise? with time and memory. inner and relational emotional JW: The experience of writing the memoir was varied. Initially it was extremely difficult and slow and brought up many uncertainties about my writing Memoir can create states of mind much like those found abilities and comparing myself with my within the psychoanalytic process as consciousness is in fluid father. Sometimes an idea came to me interplay with time and memory. while I slept, and I wrote an entire piece when I woke up. Sometimes I had an idea but couldn’t write a word for months. At experience and to the realness of one In speaking about the emotional times it felt cumbersome and plodding person turning to another— be it ambience of timelessness captured in his and other times it was exhilarating and psychoanalyst or imagined reader— in memoir, Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov fluent. Rather than writing from nine an effort to reach toward emotional writes: until noon each morning like my father, growth and the freedom to be oneself. A sense of security, of well-being, of I had no routine. Sometimes I wrote early summer warmth pervades my The Known, the Secret, the Forgotten in the morning before I started seeing memory. That robust reality makes a Fred Griffin: Why write a memoir? patients, in the breaks between patients, ghost of the present…Everything is Did you set out to write such a book, or in bed late at night or on the weekends. as it should be, nothing will ever did it happen in a different way? My father always wrote on bond paper change, nobody will ever die…I Joan Wheelis: My father died in 2007, on a clipboard with a fountain pen. confess I do not believe in time. and I wrote a short piece entitled “Last Sometimes I wrote on my computer, John Banville, novelist, short story Cut,” about cutting my father’s hair, sometimes I jotted things down on a writer, and author of Time Pieces: A which I read for his memorial. I never scrap piece of paper or in a notebook Dublin Memoir, raises questions about the intended to write a book, but over time I with a pencil or a ballpoint pen. These reliability of memory in memoir when thought to put together some other comparisons with my father’s habits he writes of “the blithely treacherous reminiscences of my father for my son. were invidious and often made me feel nature of memory, about its playful After my mother died in 2012, the fraudulent. It took a long time and much deceptions, its willful insistences, its process of sorting through the belongings encouragement to feel I had a worthy blind spots and black holes.” He of my parents led me to discover their voice of my own. challenges us to question our notions of journals and letters and took me on a FG: Did you find that writing your time— “When does the past become the journey into their past as well as my memoir was a therapeutic act? A process past?”—and goes on to say memoir is an own. The vignettes that I wrote started of self-analysis? art form that articulates states of being: to coalesce around themes of love and JW: The first piece I wrote, “Last Cut,” “Art is a constant effort to strike past the loss. Ten years after I wrote the first was therapeutic as it helped me take stock mere daily doings of humankind in vignette for my father’s memorial, a of my father’s death. It also initiated a order to arrive at … the essence of what it memoir took shape as a kaleidoscope of process of self-analysis as I revisited some is, simply, to be.” reminiscence and reflection on my of the vicissitudes of my relationships These authors speak of the authenticity relationship with my parents. with my parents and my son in each of emotional experience conveyed in FG: What was it like to release your vignette I wrote. memoir—how it transcends our everyday book out into the world? Any regrets? FG: In an earlier conversation, you ideas about time and memory and JW: I had no regrets. Perhaps because told me it was after your mother died in demonstrates something about being it took so long to write, I had more than 2012 and you were in possession of all of and becoming more fully human. ample time to metabolize its content. your parents’ belongings that you were With the reality of its publication, I Continued on page 20

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021 19 MEANING, BEING AND BECOMING THROUGH MEMOIR

Interview with Joan Wheelis transporting. Listening to them speak to Continued from page 19 one another, before they were married, expressing their love for one another, struck by the “enormity” of the material son might someday look at a photograph their hopes and desires for the future, possessions and, I assume, of the emotional of me and see our physical similarity. He their wish to have a baby was to take a legacy of what you had to go through. You told me he found this last line abrupt. Of walk with them in their past. told me this memoir is, in part, a way for course, it was. To claim any certainty At one point my father was playfully you to put things in order. I am thinking about his sensibilities still to be realized describing a conversation with psycho­ here about Joan Didion’s statement: “We is to arbitrarily answer questions that analyst David Shapiro about his struggles tell ourselves stories in order to live.” But remain for him. I thought of how I have as to whether to accept a wooden cabinet you may have something else in mind. responded to the question: “When do made in the Shop at Riggs by a patient JW: I have always told students that you know an analysis is over?” with and whether he should keep it for a while the goal of psychoanalysis is to develop a “when you understand it can go on or return it and all the psychological narrative of one’s life that one can live forever.” To end my book with another manifestations of each option. I with. I resonated with Joan Didion’s inquiry was in recognition of the telephoned David in New York and statement when I wrote in my book, “We timelessness of self-analysis. played this for him. I could hear him create stories to live by.” Writing the FG: The Kirkus Review said, “This is laughing. He said, “’I’m sitting right next memoir felt like that in so far as I more of a memoir about memory—its to that cabinet! I never gave it back.” It organized recollections differently from connections and deceptions—than about felt so exhilarating to listen to my father’s my lived experiences. Even deciding the author and her family in particular. It voice in 1953, then speak in the present which chapter should follow another shows how the dead live on.” A memoir with David who still had the object and was a way of creating a new narrative about memory. Does it seem so to you? the memory of my father at that time. It distinct from the timeline of my life. JW: Yes, very much so. This book is as was such unusual access to the layering Like a dream where a vivid piece may much about time and memory as it is of memory and the interface across time. stand out to send the dreamer into about love and loss. As I had access to Like the process of analysis zigzagging unexpected psychological excursions, my father’s journals as well as his through present and past experiences writing the memoir seemed to offer me published writing, I was repeatedly when time and memory come together such an opportunity to discover and struck by the interplay of my own and then pull away. reorganize what mattered. memory and his about shared Also, when I read my father’s journal In the end it was reassuring. Developing experience. Finding objects and letters describing important events, I noted the another narrative of my life felt liberating. of my parents after their deaths ignited convergence and divergence of his Mortality felt less tethered to existential my own memories and sometimes led to memory of an event with my childhood angst, allowing the telling of the story to interesting experiences of both the as well as adult recollections of the same create structure for closure. Like the collapse and expansion of time. event. It was another entry point to satisfaction to leave a house after a full After my parents died, I found an explore the intriguing layering of and rich summer—fixing a broken step, audograph, which is an old version of a perspective and construction. Like the storing kayaks and picnic tables, picking tape recorder, as well as a stack of cobalt movie Rashomon where Kurosawa shows apples and pears to take back home, blue discs that could be played on this us the subjective, self-serving, often sweeping the deck, finding the missing machine. I discovered that many of these contradictory stories told by the different sandal, pulling down the shades, locking discs were recordings of love letters characters who wrestle with their the door. Everything in order with dictated by my parents to one another experiences of a specific event. expectation but not certainty one will after my mother finished her residency FG: In a review of your book, Warren return again. training at Austen Riggs and before my Poland said it captures “the struggle to I thought of my son and how I enjoyed father left as a staff member there to join become and be a person.” It demonstrates thinking I would leave him with much her in San Francisco. Listening to these certain kinds of “transformations.” of myself in this memoir but also the recordings was like sitting in a room Does it seem so to you? room to develop his own narrative. The with my parents. The clarity and JW: Yes, it does. In writing the memoir last line of the memoir, “Or maybe not,” familiarity of their voices from 60 plus I was aware how important answers used refers to my musing as to whether my years prior was unnerving, and to be for me growing up and how much I Continued on page 21

20 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021 PSYCHOANALYSIS IN A BROKEN WORLD

Psychoanalysis in a Broken World: Who We Are and What We Might Become

At the June 2020 APsaA online meeting, the pivot from what has been a nearly exclusive room. Freud, Abraham, Aichorn, Erikson, third panel in the “Psychoanalysis in a Broken focus on psychic reality to material reality and in our era Lord John Alderdice, Sverre World Series” was moderated by Jane Kite, and back again? Varvin, Sally Weintrobe, Jorge Bruce, training and supervising analyst at the Boston We are, manifestly, a notoriously conserv­ Dorothy Holmes, Gil Kliman, Harold Kudler, Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. ative and largely white organization Stuart Twemlow, Henri Parens, to name just The panelists, Past President Prudy legitimately proud of our intellectual a few, have made enormous contributions, Gourguechon, President Bill Glover, President- heritage, and legitimately confused about using psychoanalytic concepts to explain Elect Kerry Sulkowicz, and Program Chair Don how and where to turn next. Personal pain and facilitate change regarding social and Moss, grappled with three questions. and personal curiosity have been, for most cultural problems. of us, the engine driving our careers as Jane Kite introduced the topic: Despite this persisting and proud legacy, analysts. We are part of what now reveals Against a societal backdrop that has only a small minority of analysts are itself as a broken world. How do we reliably laid bare the disavowed history of engaged in non-clinical psychoanalytic bridge the deeply personal and the systemic racial injustice in this country, work. And our training programs have powerfully social? and in the shadow of death, the panels in almost exclusively ignored training in What is the place for psychoanalysts this series have invited new insight, new applying psychoanalytic knowledge outside outside the consulting room, especially in energy, and new depth of feeling. They the consulting room. Not all analysts are the context of the contemporary moment? have created the possibility for us of a suited to this work or interested in it. What is the nature of the tension between different experience of being an analyst. I believe there are five distinct cohorts of those working inside the consulting room We are at an inflection point as a field. analysts: and outside the consulting room, and 1. Those who want to do good clinical Who are we as psychoanalysts at this how does this impact our training? work inside their offices and really historical moment? What are the questions Prudy Gourguechon: Psychoanalysis has don’t experience the excitement or we need to ask, and more importantly, what always had a place outside the consulting are the actions we need to take? Can we Continued on page 22

Interview with couch, questing on for the known, the enough discomfort to wrestle with secret, the forgotten.” It seems here ambiguous answers. The stories told and Joan Wheelis Hoffman is pointing to something we retold, forgotten and remembered help Continued from page 20 psychoanalysts are sorting through: Is the that process to occur. psychoanalytic process about a search for FG: Can we look forward to more turned to my parents for answers to my meaning or about attunement to states of books by Joan Wheelis? questions. It created a sense of safety and being and becoming? Or both? JW: I hope so. I am working currently security. Writing this memoir made me JW: Yes, I believe the psychoanalytic on a book about my mother’s Austrian aware of the shift that had occurred in process of sorting through is both about parents who perished in the Holocaust. me. Exploring the questions and living in being and becoming, which is being Again, I have an unusual treasure chest the uncertainty of the answers felt rich comfortable with change and not of letters and diaries dating to World and empowering. While disconcerting at knowing, while searching for coordinates War I as well as many of their things, times, it led to living more flexibly. of what can be known and become books, documents, linens, and my FG: Roy Hoffman of the New York Times meaningful. Being too certain takes one mother’s stories. As I make this journey, I describes your memoir as an “often down the familiar roads with little have discovered new family members luminous work [that] is less an act of discovery. No compass at all can lead one and acquaintances, enlarging the view therapy than a hushed celebration of to being in the woods without light. into the lives of my grandparents. Looks everyday mysteries…[Wheelis’s] success is Finding meaning requires enough like more to come on time, memory, and in letting enigmas endure beyond the comfort to explore the questions and continued self-analysis!

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021 21 PSYCHOANALYSIS IN A BROKEN WORLD

Broken World subject responding primarily to its Not nearly enough. We need to go deeper, Continued from page 21 demanding interior. work harder. But we’ve taken some steps. At a panel on racism at the February 2018 Kerry Sulkowicz: “The use of analysis for potential for psychoanalytic work meeting, we sat at tables and shared thoughts the treatment of the neuroses is only one of outside the consulting room. and reflections. I recalled and shared its applications; the future will perhaps 2. Eloquent theorists. something I had remembered but never show that it is not the most important one.” 3. Researchers—a vital minority. spoken about – a contemptuous and grossly That was Freud, in The Question of Lay 4. Interdisciplinary academics. racist comment my grandfather made when I Analysis, nearly a hundred years ago. The 5. Traveling analysts who pack our was 10 or 11. I felt guilt, shame, and worry— future is now. psychoanalytic understanding in a how would I be seen by my peers? But the While most psychoanalysts do, and will, metaphorical backpack and take it on larger issue was how could I deal with this practice clinically, I think we need to raise the road, talking to whatever segment family secret. How could I reconcile my love other forms of analysis to the same level. of the public will listen to for my grandfather with his blatant racism? That means we need to teach them, support psychoanalytic explanations. Kept hidden, such conflicts lead to disavowal, them, and value them accordingly. Working We naturally select. secrecy, complicity. in non-traditional settings forces us to learn Regarding training, we must make sure I found Jonathan Lear’s article, “Gettysburg to speak plainly and elevates our standing in that those trainees who have the interest and Mourning,” very helpful (Critical Inquiry, 2018). the modern world. This accrues to the benefit talent to be travelling analysts are exposed to In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln mourned of those who choose to focus exclusively on the work of its best practitioners and taught the Union war dead but not the rebels, who clinical work by raising public awareness of the theory and technique that underlies it. were buried outside the cemetery. Lincoln psychoanalysis as something of inestimable The theory and technique behind extra- links the Confederate dead to Polyneices, the social relevance and brings more patients to clinical work needs to be better elaborated disgraced brother of Antigone in Sophocles’ the doors–real or virtual–of psychoanalysts. and articulated by traveling analysts so it can play. Antigone defied an order against honoring Every field of human endeavor, from the be taught to future generations. Polyneices, the traitor, whose body had been arts to education to politics to economics, left to rot. Lear describes the Southern Don Moss: I first came to psychoanalysis as can benefit from collaboration with a Antigones, sisterhoods of Southern women a theory of possibility, of what humans might psychoanalyst. However, the analyst must who formed memorial associations to bury be, a theory of liberation, working with groups not take an arrogant, know-it-all position their dead and build memorials and, in doing who were looking to become what they could that I would characterize as “pathological so, celebrate them. They romanticized the only imagine but had not yet seen. Standard certainty,” and instead adopt an attitude of “Lost Cause” of the confederacy, nostalgic for a clinical training focuses on psychopathology, curiosity and humility. society that never existed, its foundation on on “cure,” diminishing or eliminating psychic Simply put, psychoanalysts need to get out slavery hidden by denial, disavowal, and impediments. I was disappointed in my more. We can do a lot of good for the world if revisionist history. training where the dimension of possibility we also work at a larger than dyadic scale. Lear leads us to ponder the psychic retreats had little or no place. Conscious and unconscious bias in us as of white people – “What about our losses? My own work outside the consulting individuals and in psychoanalysis as a What about our poverty? They are pushing us room has meant a scholarly and theoretical field has shown itself in an outsized aside!” These protests represent white focus on homophobia, misogyny, and diversity problem involving race and class. melancholia, psyches stuck in racist bastions, racism — first conceptualizing them as Has any real progress been made? What rather than mourning and reconciling. Lear symptomatic structures and then imagining are the obstacles standing in the way of points to the need to mourn the dead without relations free of them. My paper, “Like our becoming a more diverse, anti-racist honoring their cause, “…in order that our Drives, Culture Exerts a Demand on the community and a socially relevant field? Nation might live.” Mind for Work” (Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Bill Glover: The word “obstacle” implies Don Moss: Psychoanalysis’ problem with 2010) provides theoretical grounding to something that can be removed, something race began in our formation. Freud contain the tension between working defined, concrete. Racism is much more persistently refers to civilization as “white” inside and outside the consulting room. diffuse, pervasive, embedded in our habitus, and “Christian” and consistently refers to We can understand the human in its full in our psyches. Complicity is obscured by Continued on page 23 surround rather than the interiorized denial, disavowal. Have we made progress?

22 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021 PSYCHOANALYSIS IN A BROKEN WORLD nonwhite peoples as primitive, infantile. We And we white analysts need to do a lot of less than living in the consulting room with linked unthinkingly with the racist premise this work ourselves, without unduly transferences to it. To actively interpret that that Europe embodied civilization while burdening our Black colleagues.It’s one thing world and the transferences evoked is a non-industrialized cultures embodied to seek their advice and guidance, but it’s psychoanalytic/interpretive act. “primitivity.” wrong to ask them to do the work for us. The race issue resembles the ones we face Racism not only confers “privilege” on regarding white peoples’ relation to the Do we have an obligation to act, as white people, it also afflicts white people, objects of nature— a posture of limitless individual analysts and as an organization, depriving them of relationships with and dominion: “Be fruitful, and multiply, and in pandemic times or other times of crisis? connections to a wide swath of the world’s replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have If so, what are the meanings and possible peoples while also afflicting them with the dominion over the fish of the sea, and over roles for psychoanalytic activism? internalized violence they have visited upon the fowl of the air, and over every living Bill Glover: One contribution we can those peoples. thing that moveth upon the earth.” make to the current climate is to bring our Kerry Sulkowicz: Do we have an Kerry Sulkowicz: There are some things psychoanalytic attitude and setting to obligation to act, as individual analysts and we’re born with that we can change. There activism – understanding the importance of as an organization, in times of crisis? Yes, are other things we’re born with that we and creating spaces to think, recognize, and we do. Psychoanalysts don’t often talk about can’t change, like our race or our inheritance examine. “values,” and I’m not entirely sure why. of trauma. My parents were Holocaust An example of this kind of work is going Psychoanalytic activism is founded on survivors from Poland who emigrated to the on in San Francisco ­—in a program called psychoanalytic values. U.S. in 1947. Their experience—most of “Reflective spaces, Material places.” What do I mean by “psychoanalytic their family members were murdered and Prudy Gourguechon: We have the values”? One of our primary values is truth they themselves were emotionally potential to act, both as individuals and an (especially emotional, historical, and damaged—profoundly shaped me as I was association. What can we do to enhance developmental truth). We value listening growing up in very segregated Dallas, Texas. this potential for psychoanalytic activism without passing judgment, and tolerating I feel strongly that our country has not come until it builds into an internal force that painful emotions. We value complexity and close to dealing with its own history of compels action? an appreciation of conflict. We value crimes against humanity and genocide. The • Understand that people are hungry for language and expressiveness. We value the transgenerational transmission of trauma is a in-depth understanding of the uncert­ idea that we’re all products of our biology subject we analysts know something about. ainties and confusion they face. and our early environment and of our Has any real progress been made in the • Appreciate the power of psychoanalytic accumulated life experiences. We believe field of psychoanalysis with our diversity concepts to explain social and cultural that with understanding and self-awareness, problem involving race and class? Not much, issues. and with personal truth and reconciliation, not nearly enough. We need to keep having • Grow the potential through training for we can change. And we value fundamental the hard conversations about racism that candidates and graduates and support human equality. we’ve just begun to have. We need to tell our for those who dare to leave their office. If you think about our values, they sound personal stories and listen carefully to others. like the makings of an activist. Our work is Don Moss: We know there is no such We need to look in the mirror and make sure radical, whether with individual patients or thing as “not acting.” This question raises we don’t have policies and procedures that with larger groups. Psychoanalysis stands the more fundamental one of “what is inadvertently (i.e., unconsciously) contribute for freedom – emotional and otherwise. neutrality” not only during pandemics or to our lack of diversity. We need to actively Finally, I think we American analysts other times of crisis, but always. Actually, recruit more people of color as candidates and need to be part of a global, not only an there is no cultural/historical moment members. We need to make sure we’re warmly American, psychoanalytic movement. which is not, for billions of people, a time welcoming potential students of We in APsaA need to take a hard look at, of crisis. psychoanalysis, of psychoanalytic and ultimately abandon, what has The issue here is whether activism and psychotherapy, or of academic disciplines that become an American exceptionalism neutrality are in contradiction. Silence is are informed by psychoanalysis. Our numbers that, as the history books tell us, never action. Not acting is action. Our patients live need to reflect the society in which we live and ends well. in the world and have transferences to it, no work. Right now, they don’t.

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021 23 APsaA FELLOWS

APsaA’s Excellent New Fellows for 2020-2021 The American Psychoanalytic Association Fellowship Program is designed to offer additional knowledge of psychoanalysis to outstanding early-career mental health professionals and academics, the future leaders and educators in their fields. The 17 individuals who are selected as fellows each year have their expenses paid to attend the national meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association during the fellowship year and to participate in other educational activities. The biographies below introduce this year’s excellent group of fellows. We enthusiastically welcome them to APsaA.

Maura Boldrini, Danielle Frank, MSW, development, family systems, religiosity/ M.D., Ph.D., is associ- LCSW, is a clinical spirituality, and the integration of ate professor of clinical social worker at Lenox psychoanalytic and behavioral approaches Hill Hospital’s Outpatient to psychotherapy. neurobiology in the Center for Mental Department of Psy­ Anne Friedman, Health in Manhattan, MSW, LCSW, is a chiatry at Columbia Montefiore Medical doctoral candidate at University College of Center in the Bronx, and is also in private the Smith College Physicians and Surgeons. She is a practice. She earned a BFA from the School for Social Work. Maryland Institute College of Art, an MSW co-investigator in the Conte Center for She received her MSW from Smith College School for Social Work Suicide Prevention, Project 1, from U.C. Berkeley and and completed a post-MSW clinical “Neurobiology of Suicide: Childhood her BA from Brown University. She fellowship at Bennington College practices as a therapist at a Federally Adversity, Neuroinflammation andPsychological Services. In 2017, she Qualified Health Center in Oakland, CA. Genomics.” She has been studying adult co-chaired a conference at the Institute for Friedman completed training in a variety hippocampal neurogenesis in the human Clinical Social Work in Chicago on the of settings including the San Francisco VA, significance of the work of Frantz Fanon brain since 2006, assessing how it is the San Francisco Department of Public for contemporary psychoanalytic practice. affected by antidepressants treatment, Health, and the Coalition for Clinical She is currently a board member of the psychopathology, and aging. Boldrini is Social Work housed at the San Francisco Association for the Psychoanalysis of Center for Psychoanalysis. Her current interested in studying the relationship Culture and Society, and presents her research focuses on social theories of between childhood adversity and writing on issues of trauma, mourning, power and intersectional identity for neuroplasticity in the hippocampus, and identity, and the implications of employees in community health and sociopolitical subjecthood on the psyche. the effect of genetic and epigenetic factors mental health settings. An additional on it. In the Conte Center, Boldrini will Andrew Frazer, Ph.D., interest is the role of neoliberalism as it study brains from depressed suicides and received his Ph.D. in impacts both the therapeutic process and non-suicides and individuals without clinical child psychology clinical settings. from the University of psychopathology, assessing the Ali Haidar, M.D., Kansas and completed relationship between history of childhood graduated from the an internship and faculty of medicine at adversity, levels of neuroinflammatory fellowship in the the American markers, and the total number of neurons psychiatry department at the Louisiana University of Beirut. in the hippocampal subfields. The project State University Health Sciences Center He subsequently aims to distinguish the effect of (LSUHSC). While at LSUHSC, Frazer joined the National completed a fellowship in infant mental psychopathology from that of adversity. Mental Health Program in the Lebanese health, and he also participated in the Boldrini’s research in mood disorders and Ministry of Public Health as an intern, honorary mentorship program through suicide has been continuously funded by working on national policies and guidelines the New Orleans-Birmingham serving refugees and underserved private foundations, New York State, and P s y c h o a n a l y t i c Center. Frazer splits populations of Lebanon. He also served as NIH since 1999. She has been the PI of his professional time between his private an intern at the World Health Organization several grants studying the neurobiology practice and serving as an evaluator for in Geneva, where he contributed to the several research projects affiliated with of neuropsychiatric diseases in the Mental Health Gap Action Plan. He LSUHSC. His interests include child postmortem human brain after trauma. Continued on page 25

24 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021 APsaA FELLOWS completed his psychiatry residency at SUNY psychodynamic psychotherapy at the St. Hospital’s Institute for Technology in Downstate and is currently a child and Louis Psychoanalytic Institute. Prior to Psychiatry under Justin Baker examining adolescent psychiatry chief fellow at Mount becoming a social worker, she completed a deep phenotyping (with multiple digital Sinai. He is also pursuing further training in Ph.D. in women’s, gender, and sexuality signals from smartwatches, questionnaires, adult and child a n d a d o l e s c e n t studies at Emory University, focused on and clinical interviews) of borderline psychodynamic psychotherapy. His feminist philosophy. She is interested in personality disorder. primary areas of interest include public applying psychoanalytic theory in diverse Celeste Lipkes, M.D., psychiatry, cultural psychiatry, medical clinical practice settings a nd br o ad e n i n g MFA, is a fourth-year education, and global mental health, p s y c h o a n a l y t i c understandings of the psychiatry resident particularly, displacement and migration’s perinatal period. at Yale New Haven effect on the psyche. Alba Lara, M.D., is a Hospital. Prior to Carly Inkpen, MSW, chief resident at the medical school she is a social worker, writer, University of Texas at received her MFA in and collage artist. In Austin Dell Medical poetry from the University of Virginia and each of these roles, they School. She received her taught writing workshops at the high focus on trauma, gen- M.D. from Texas A&M school and college level. Her first manuscript der, migration, and how College of Medicine. As of poems was a finalist or semifinalist for people inhabit their an APA/SAMHSA fellow she will investigate several national book prizes. Her professional bodies as they move through the world. the mental health and somatic outcomes interests include mental health illness Inkpen holds an MSW from Smith College of trauma in refugees and immigrants in narratives, emergency psychiatry, long- School for Social Work and works in com- addition to leading psychoeducational term psychodynamic therapy, and munity mental health and private practice workshops and co-establishing a advocating for providers with chronic medical in Boston. They are interested in the role psychological asylum evaluation clinic at conditions. This year she will serve as a chief of creativity can play in digesting trauma her program. She enjoys incorporating medical education and chief of Yale’s and they are drawn to the free-associative psychodynamic psychotherapy into psychiatry emergency department aspect of collage as a way to say what routine psychiatric encounters and Xiaochen Luo, Ph.D., might feel unsayable. Their article, “Fabu- incorporating these ideas into resident and is assistant pr ofe s s or lousness – What the Doctor Ordered: medical student psychiatric education. of counseling psychology Exploring the Intrapsychic Significance Her additional professional interests at Santa Clara Univer- and Social Meanings of Fashion,” was include psychosomatic psychiatry and sity. She earned her recently published in Psychoanalytic embodiment of psychic conflict, Ph.D. d e g r e e i n Social Work and they are currently co- neuromodulation of affective disorders, c l i n i c a l psychology authoring a book about collaborative attachment/relational trauma, and disorders from Michigan State University and com- negotiation, career development, and of self and identity. pleted her postdoctoral fellowship at Stony community building. process and clinical Eric Lin, M.D., Brook University. She received her BS in settings. received both his BS in psychology and BA in philosophy from Nikki Karalekas, psychobiology and Peking University as well as her MS in Ph.D., MSW, LMSW, is M.D. from UCLA. His epidemiology from the University of a social worker w ith psychiatry residency Groningen. Luo’ s current research focuses the Perinatal Behavioral and research training on effective therapeutic processes, Health Service in the were at Yale and its Neu- therapeutic relationship, and psychotherapy Department of Psychia- roscience Research Training Program. integration. try at Washington Uni- Lin’s work applies machine learning and Charla Ruby Malamed, versity in St. Louis. This service provides natural language processing to clinical MSW (They/Them), is a co-located mental health services to trial data and patient interviews with the recent graduate of the pregnant and postpartum women across aims of improving clinical nosology. He School for Social Work antepartum, postpartum, and neonatal hopes to apply his love for psychodynamic at Smith College and an units at Barnes Jewish Hospital and St. formulation to digital phenotyping. As a entering post-graduate Louis Children’s Hospital. Karalekas first year VA Boston Medical Informatics fellow in the Program provides emotional support, clinical case fellow, he splits his time between the VA for Psychotherapy at management, and brief psychotherapy to MAVERIC machine learning group under Cambridge Health Alliance. They parents in the NICU. In 2018, Karalekas Nate Fillmore doing big data analyses in completed their second-year internship at completed advanced training in the veterans’ health records and McLean the Center for Counseling and Continued on page 26

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021 25 APsaA FELLOWS

2020-2021 Fellows therapy and social sciences. Her dissertation research fellow developing MRI contrast research examines the sociotechnical Continued from page 25 agents to map neuronal connections. Follow- enactment of gender in artificial intelligence ing this, he entered SUNY Stony Brook Uni- Psychological Health at UMass, Amherst, technologies (AI), and the ways in which versity’s Medical Scientist Training Program where they developed a space for clinicians these gender enactments mediate the (specifically white clinicians) to inquire (M.D./Ph.D.). There he completed a doctoral intersecting space between the technical into the nature of whiteness, particularly dissertation in neuroscience under the men- reality and social fantasy of AI. This work as it unfolds in the clinical context. torship of Josh Huang at Cold Spring Harbor includes bringing more explicit Malamed, has continued investigating Laboratory. His thesis work employed mouse psychoanalytic theory into the field of what it looks like to integrate social justice dissections of excitatory/inhibitory neuron science and technology studies in order to work with clinical work in white clinician/ subtypes with a focus on fear circuitry and white client dyads. Their paper, “A White expand the kinds of questions STS asks. In chandelier inhibitory interneurons in pre- Person Problem: Conducting White/White addition to Steele’s dissertation research, frontal microcircuits. His research interests Treatment with a Social Justice Lens,” is she has also extensively researched and currently under review in Psychoanalytic presented on mental health and technology. include uncovering circuit mechanisms of Social Work. Malamed’s professional She has been involved with the American psychiatric disorders with hopeful applica- interests include the relationship between Psychoanalytic Association for several tions to novel therapeutics. He’s involved in spirituality and individuation; queer and years, including serving on the Committee Stanford’s psychotherapy education leading trans-feminist theory; sexuality, gender, on Gender and Sexuality and the DPE an individual psychotherapy small group intimacy, attachment, and consent; and diversities section. and he leads a support group for internal the creation of spaces in which paradox, Kelly Truong, M.D., is medicine residents on ICU rotations in conflict, and difference can be played with an addiction psychiatry response to the Covid-19 health crisis. In lab creatively and constructively. They hold a BA in liberal arts from Sarah Lawrence fellow at Baylor Col- he’s currently investigating the role of opioid College and a master’s in clinical psychology lege of Medicine, Men- receptor subsystems in mouse models to from the New School for Social Research. ninger Department of hopefully uncover the role of endogenous Psychiatry and Behav- opioid modulation in the value circuitry Clio Stearns, Ph.D., is ioral Sciences, where involved in addiction and primary drive pro- an assistant professor of she completed her psychiatry residency. education at the Mass­ cessing during play, bonding, and care. She also completed the psychodynamic psy- achusetts College of chotherapy training program at the Cen- Liz Camarena West, Liberal Arts. She received ter for Psychoanalytic Studies in MSCP, AMFT, APCC, her doctorate in Houston, TX. In college, Truong culti- received her MS from curriculum and inst­ vated her interest in the humanities by Notre Dame de Namur ruction from the studying African-American history, the- University of New Hampshire, and her MS University after earn- ater, and neurobiology. A former circus Ed in childhood education from Bank ing a BA in psychology Street College of Education. Her book, artist and current aerial acrobatics from ITESO University, Critiquing Social and Emotional Learning: instructor, she enjoys thinking creatively Jalisco, Mexico. She has served nonprofits Psychodynamic and Cultural Perspectives, about the intersection of the body, per- in Mexico, Nepal, and the United States. examines the ways children’s emotional formance art, and psychoanalysis. Her Immigrating four years ago, West lives can be excessively regulated in professional interests include psychoanal- continues to advocate for other oppressive classroom structures. Her ysis and addiction, psychopharmacology, immigrants by teaching ESL and current research deals with the role of personality disorders, trauma, community citizenship. While completing her consent as it relates to classroom mental health with focus on race and master’s, she was selected by NDNU to management, and she is also involved sexuality. travel to a detention center to serve in creating groups that support teachers women seeking asylum in the U.S. She is to work with children experiencing or Jason Tucciarone, a member of the Bay Area Border Relief, recovering from trauma. M.D., Ph.D., is a research and believes in the power of justice for track psychiatry resident Jamie Steele, MA, asylum seekers at the southern border. at Stanford University. He MFT, LMFT, is a doctoral Currently, she provides counseling received a BA in biology candidate in science and services at Ayudando a Latinos a Sonar and philosophy from technology studies at (ALAS), and is interested in implementing Union College. He spent three years at the Rensselaer Polytechnic community-based psychoanalytic Institute and holds National Institute of Neurological Disorders therapy for Latino immigrants suffering master’s degrees in family and Stroke as a post-baccalaureate IRTA from trauma.

26 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021 IN THE TIME OF COVID

The Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis in the Time of Covid Deborah Fried and Bonnie Becker

necessary by Zoom. What seemed a distant, vague threat one day quickly evolved into a clear and present danger — a pandemic. There have been more than Asians, whites, and blends of many 200 epidemics documented in cultures. our world, including scores The next week, WNEIP’s leadership Deborah Fried Bonnie Becker widespread enough to be called a society-wide meeting where we created an ad hoc committee of six, On March 13, 2020, one of Western classified “pandemics.” Lasting including our society and institute New England’s (WNEIP) study groups as long as 25 years, pandemics have presidents and the chair of the gathered for its weekly meeting; this killed up to 200 million people, the Education Committee. The psychiatry group focuses on race, diversity, and most devastating being the ongoing department responded enthusiastically psychoanalysis. It is a candid and HIV pandemic appearing in the 20th to our offer of analytic assistance to sometimes painful exploration for a century and the Black or Bubonic cognitive-behavioral supports underway. group composed of mostly white, older Plague in the 14th century. Others, like We led the virtual Town Halls offered psychoanalysts. This particular meeting cholera, influenza, typhus, TB, leprosy, by our psychiatry department to the began with nervous laughter about a and malaria have lasted for years and YNHH communities. Initially offered rumored virus, then concluded in many have recurred. twice daily, we used Town Hall meetings somber, thoughtful, quiet determ­ That we could be in this current to address fear and conflicts about the ination to meet again in person the pandemic for years to come, even with virus, the sudden lockdown mandate, following week, certain that given our treatments, vaccines, and modernity, and managing life at home with work size and the size of the room we would was only an inkling when at our next and families. be safe. Zoom meeting our group spoke about We also joined the staff of the Within 48 hours, we were emailing our desires to be helpful in the larger Department‘s 1:1 professional support our doubts and then determination to community. The idea surfaced to program for members of YNHH hospital meet the coming week and as long as volunteer with the Yale University programs and their families. The Department of Psychiatry, which was program offered acute stress Intervention sessions, using a Deborah Fried, MD, is a psychoanalyst on organizing large-scale support for curriculum developed by a member of the faculty of WNEIP, and is associate members of the Yale New Haven our institute, Steven Marans. We also clinical professor of psychiatry at the Yale Hospital (YNHH) community, and their School of Medicine. noted that some of those seen through families, who were treating Covid-19 Bonnie Becker, PhD, is a clinical this program were struggling with race- psychologist in private practice, an advanced patients. YNHH serves the 860,000 related issues that exploded after academic associate candidate at WNEIP, residents of the greater New Haven George Floyd’s killing on May 2020. and an assistant clinical professor of region, a college town embedded in a Significantly, as the pandemic and psychiatry (psychology) at the Yale School of mixed community of Blacks, Hispanics, racial issues flared, the relevance of our Medicine. Continued on page 35

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021 27 COPS

strongly recommend Gillian Russell’s Committee on Psychoanalytic excellent 2015 book: Screen Relations: Study (COPS) The Limits of Computer-Mediated Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. The Gail Glenn, Chair problem with the article is that it works

As we continue to deal with our new working with with a somewhat dubious premise that normal during Covid-19, COPS study patients screen relations and in-person relations groups remain diligent in pursuing their through video should be similar. Or, said differently, missions. We moved our study group technology. that screen relations are a second-rate discussions online, and we learn from This phen­ version of the in-person relations that one another as we deal with the omenon is not they mimic.” pandemic and our analytic work. In this universal, His counsel is to “allow yourself to issue, we feature Charles P. Fisher, chair however. Our play with the differences between the of the Study Group on Psychoanalysis study group is two mediums rather than suffer the lack Charles P. Fisher and Neuroscience, who discusses the interested in of verisimilitude,” and “imagine that relevance of neuroscience on our why this phenomenon is so frequently digital time and space are a different reactions and ways of coping during the reported, why it is not universal, and kind of time and space with a different pandemic. We welcome your feedback, what it might imply about psycho­ way of configuring experience.” In effect, comments, and participation in COPS. analytic and psycho­therapeutic Hartman supports video psychotherapy processes. as a valid but fund­amentally different Study Group on Psychoanalysis An article in the New York Times, form of treatment. Others believe that and Neuroscience “Why Zoom is Terrible,” by Kate Murphy the video format is simply a different Charles P. Fisher, Co-chair (April 29, 2020) points out, “The problem frame for treatment. Hartmann suggests The COPS Study Group on is that the way the video images are it is fatiguing when we fight the Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience was digitally encoded and decoded, altered difference. created in 2009 to develop educational and adjusted, patched and synthesized The “Johnson” blog for The Economist materials and programs about the introduces all kinds of artifacts: blocking, (May 16-22, 2020) presents an article relationship between psychoanalysis and freezing, blurring, jerkiness, and out-of- entitled “The Linguistic Psychology of neuroscience for APsaA candidates, sync audio. These disruptions, some ‘Zoom Fatigue.’” The author writes there members, and institutes. Virginia Barry below our conscious awareness, is a lag of about 150 milliseconds – and I are the co-chairs. confound perception and scramble sometimes more – between the picture In a time of rapid change in subtle social cues. Our brains strain to fill and the sound on Zoom and other neuroscience and of theoretical pluralism in the gaps and make sense of the platforms. That makes it difficult for within psychoanalysis, the work of our disorder, which makes us feel vaguely speakers to time conversational turns study group has turned to current disturbed, uneasy and tired without with “no gap, no overlap.” Interruptions controversies in both domains. In the quite knowing why.” and pauses are more frequent, leading to light of the Covid crisis and the turn to A different spin is offered by Stephen difficulty in accurately assessing the distance analysis as a form of treatment Hartman, a psychoanalyst. In a widely intention of the speaker. For example, an practiced by most or all APsaA members, circulated email, he wrote in response to additional pause due to the 150 we are thinking about how neuroscientific Murphy’s article: “It’s not that the -millisecond lag time can make the considerations may inform us, the effects article is wrong about screen fatigue, speaker seem less convincing to the and significance of working with patients etc. In fact, it could be much more online, and how that interacts with listener. (Daniel Foti and Felicia Roberts, descriptive about the neurocognitive analytic process. “The neural dynamics of speech differences between screen relations Many psychoanalysts and psycho­ perception: Dissociable networks for and in-person encounters. For that, I therapists describe unusual fatigue in processing linguistic content and Continued on page 34

28 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021 COMBATING RACISM

the European A Psychoanalytic Approach to culture. The savage­ man is Combating Racism Western man’s Margarita Cereijido alter ego, an artificial It’s clearly time that we, as a society, exploitation of one group by another. savage who confront white heterosexual hegemony Psychoanalysis holds that racism and hate preserves the that “normalizes” racism and other forms toward “The Other” are universal civilized identity of the of prejudice and discrimination. Such characteristics of individuals and societies Margarita Cereijido prejudices are antithetical to what should predicated on the need to construct one’s European man be our society’s aspiration to be inclusive psychic self by excluding, devaluating, and justifies racism. In other words, a and pluralistic. and hating the Other. constructed Other becomes the depository Cultural hegemony is the cultural As it develops, the undifferentiated, of our unwanted repressed aspects. This influence exerted by a dominant group primitive, and narcissistic ego projects captures how psychoanalysis’ notion of over a culturally diverse society. The outside of itself that which it experiences the unconscious connects the social dominant group’s subjective world views as unwanted and dangerous, thereby phenomenon of racism with our become the accepted cultural norm, making the external object into something individual psyches. Given that racism inhibiting alternative views. foreign and evil. In that fashion, the stems from the projection onto the Other Cultural norms are the result of social process of projection renders strange what of unwanted aspects of ourselves, owning constructions. They are related to conscious is in fact old and familiar. That those unwanted aspects would mitigate and unconscious identifications,­ and to “strange”/“otherness” is part of our our impulse to ascribe them to others. the historical place each of us has occupied unconscious, and therefore is an inherent The 2020 summer’s social protests were within society. To be an inclusive pluralistic part of us (Freud, 1919, “The Uncanny”). about racism. The year before, in June 2019, society, which embraces cultural diversity, In Civilization and its Discontents, Freud APsaA apologized to the LGBTQ community we need to encourage the articulation of (1930) states that just as we maintain a about homophobia. Without minimizing alternative world views and cultural norms. cohesive sense of self by projecting onto their differences, racism and homophobia That calls for deconstructing the existing the Other our own unacceptable aspects, are both forms of discrimination and hegemony. Psychoanalysis has much to so too we can love one another as a group devaluation of the Other. contribute to that process. as long as there are outsiders we can hate. In its capacity to combat racism and As part of that contribution, psycho­ That projective process takes place at other forms of discrimination by fostering analysts need to question, explore, analyze, both the individual and social levels. It an understanding of the unconscious and confront prejudice in themselves and encompasses both the individual psychic construction of the Other, a psychoanalytic their patients. Psycho­analysts must also and the social imag­inary, that include perspective can contribute to the larger distinguish between popular discrimin­ the values with which each soc­iety society. By promoting an integrative atory stereotypes and patients’ personal constitutes itself. As an example, consider process of owning unwanted aspects, anxieties wrapped in prejudice in order to this probably apocryphal anec­dote from understanding them, and changing them, differentiate between social ideology and 1870. Argentine president Domingo psychoanalytic practice helps and personal pathology. Sarmiento, was meeting with an supports individuals as they do their own Socially shared prejudices represent indigenous chief. Sarmiento opened a work combating their own prejudice. an unconscious part of the ideology of window complaining “it smelled of As Julia Kristeva says in her 1988 a society, feelings that provoke and horse” and the indigenous chief opened work, Strangers to Ourselves, acknow­ justify discrim­inatory measures, including another window, complaining­ “it smelled ledging our “otherness,” allows us to of cow.” Both were ind­irectly accusing stop perceiving “the Other” as a threat. Margarita Cereijido, Ph.D., a training the other of having barbaric eating In her words “If I am a stranger, then and supervising analyst at the Washington habits, and hence being barbaric. there are no strangers.” Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis, has The Mexican sociologist and written and taught on gender, culture, and anthropologist Roger Bartra wrote in [Editor’s note: For more information on this prejudice. She is on IPA’s Women and his 1992, El Salvaje en el Espejo that article’s sources, contact the author at Psychoanalysis Committee and is in private the creation of the myth of the savage [email protected]] practice in Washington D.C. man is a fundamental ingredient of

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021 29 PSYCHOANALYTIC EDUCATION IN THE AGE OF THE PANDEMIC

while tabling Psychoanalytic Education the rest for the next and fur­ in the Age of the Pandemic ther meetings. Alan Sugarman, Education Editor We planned follow-up For all of us, the world turned topsy- the leadership of the DPE fielded indiv­ workshops turvy last March. We had met in New idual and institu­ tional­ questions about d u r i n g t h e York in February for APsaA’s 2020 the effect of changed cir­cumstances on A P s a A National Meeting, and conducted formal psycho­analytic education. Alan Sugarman meetings, and business as usual with only faint As everyone began to gather their feet possibly over rumblings from Asia about a virus in under them and rea­lize that the the course of the summer. faraway places. We attended organiz­ situation could go on for some time or Most striking was the sheer number of ational meetings, candidates met in the re­appear in a second w av e , D P E concerns, questions, and issues that Candidate’s Council, members attended leadership­ considered ways of developing institute leaders raised, mostly about the scientific program, and the longer term aids for institutes, faculty, candidates’ anxiety around training. Department of Psychoanalytic Education and candidates. No longer enough to Some reported candidates’ doubts about (DPE) went about its activities promoting provide short term solutions to maintain the quality or value of educating remotely. quality psychoanalytic education. We psychoanalytic education, we now needed Harriet Wolfe, IPA president-elect, now know we were operating in a state to help institutes, faculty, and candidates described a candidate’s fear that the of ignorant bliss, secure in our prepare for the next academic year pandemic was the “death knell” of assumptions that psychoanalytic life operating remotely. psychoanalysis. Harriet responded that, would continue in the manner it had Just as APsaA and the DPE were in fact, psychoanalysts were most well- been. At that time, all seemed well. beginning to deal with COVID-19, equipped to deal with the anxieties and Just a few weeks later, most of us were George Floyd was murdered. The entire uncertainties brought by the pandemic. living, practicing, learning, and teaching country erupted in this most recent Her response reflected the need to in lockdown. Everything we had taken example of institutionalized racism and balance, in these challenging times, the for granted changed, seemingly rose up in protest. APsaA and its worries with a positive vision of growing overnight. Suddenly we were scrambling institutes now faced challenges both to and maintaining an analytic identity and to see our patients and maintain our take a stand on racism and to look mind. Many institutes offered their own involvements in psychoanalytic educa­ inward at our lack of diversity, in our town hall meeting for candidates and tion. APsaA’s leadership acted quickly curricula and in those we educate. We all faculty as a way of dealing with these and decisively to create a team to help now were compelled to grapple with a anxieties. One institute reported that the membership deal with the crisis. second trauma. candidates seemed more open with their Town Hall virtual meetings were concerns when faculty were not present. instituted, along with other events, to Workshop for Directors of Others thought it was useful to combine support our members and community. Institutes, Education Committee both groups. Institutes were encouraged to move all Chairs, and Child and Adolescent Often candidate anxieties involved aspects of their functioning to Program Chairs more practical issues. For example, telephonic or video-conferencing The DPE moved up the date of its many continued to worry that remote modalities. Both APsaA and the IPA Workshop for Directors of Institutes, training would not count despite announced that remote learning, Education Committee Chairs, and Chairs reassurances from both APsaA and the including training and control analyses, of Child and Adolescent programs, IPA. Clearly anxiety was interfering would count toward progression and allowing the leadership of APsaA with the ability to take in and trust graduation in all APsaA institutes. And institutes to share problems and consider information. Some candidates worried solutions for more immediate educational about beginning control cases virtually, issues. Held virtually, the May 16 a difficulty that seemed even more Alan Sugarman, Ph.D., is former head of workshop was well attended. Meeting daunting with child control cases. Some the APsaA Department of Psychoanalytic online became tiring, so we limited the institutes wondered if tuition should be Education. discussion to the two most pressing issues Continued on page 31

30 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021 PSYCHOANALYTIC EDUCATION IN THE AGE OF THE PANDEMIC

Psychoanalytic developed a bibliography that institutes seeking excellence in psychoanalytic could draw on for their courses. education, can afford to simply pause Education Since June, the new leadership of this lengthy pursuit indefinitely while in Continued from page 30 Britt-Marie Schiller as head, and Wendy social isolation, let alone repeat the reduced for virtual coursework. The Jacobson as associate head, have insti- pause if Covid-19 rebounds in the future. group shared ideas, sources, and tools to tuted more regular virtual meetings of Our institutes and APsaA exist, in part, to help with these issues. this group to remain available and spawn the next and future generations of Another common concern revolved help institutes share their experiences analysts. Consequently, the task force around graduations during social of educating with distance-mediated was asked to examine how best to distancing. The fact that graduation technology with each other. maintain, adapt, and improve psych­ acknowledges candidates’ efforts and oanalytic education at present and in successes seemed to highlight the The Psychoanalytic the future when elements of virtual importance of providing some event. Education Forum education may need to be integrated Some institutes planned to postpone Typically, the forum discussion revolves with in-person training. graduation until they could gather in around controversial subjects in psycho­ This task force plans to study and person, while another institute planned analytic education. In 2020, considering suggest strategies for: graduations via Zoom, where they could the Covid-19 crisis, the June 14 forum • Distance supervision drink a toast virtually. Attendees were all focused on complexities of teaching • Distance analysis in training impressed by institutes’ creativity and psychoanalytic courses by remote analyses and control cases thoughtfulness. technology. Britt-Marie Schiller distributed • Teaching engagingly and effec- Other concerns, such as the pressure related materials and invited all APsaA tively via technology candidates might feel to see patients in members to attend. • Recruitment, admissions, and person once their state opened when they There was a consensus that teaching progression procedures via did not feel safe working that way, were remotely poses particular challenges. It technology postponed for the June workshop. It was is difficult to use more Socratic or • Curriculum issues clear that we faced an ongoing need to seminar-based learning, for example, to • Complexities of transitioning back create and sustain a psychoanalytic promote critical thinking. Furthermore, and forth between virtual and community during this difficult time; to not being able to read body language, to in-person as environmental that end, we discussed establishing know when to speak, to feel the circumstances change consortiums of institutes in geographic emotional atmosphere in the group in • Maintaining institute morale and proximity to share instructors, scientific virtual meetings adds to the pedagogical connectedness when in-person meeting speakers, and other personnel. challenge. meetings cannot occur The DPE held a second workshop on • Financial strains of social isolation June 13 where we focused primarily on Task Force for Model Mixed for candidates, faculty, and ways of recruiting diverse candidates and Distance-Mediated/In-Office institutes teaching about racial and ethnic diversity Training • Ethical issues involved with as part of the analytic curriculum. Another effort to help institutes during technology Because having a course on this subject is the pandemic involved the creation of a far from sufficient, we noted the role, task force to develop a model of best To date, the task force has met biweekly meaning, and relevance that racial and practices for analytic education that to develop a document to help institutes ethnic differences have in all the promoted a necessary mixture of in-person think about and deal with the complexi- traditional tracks of an analytic and remote training. ties of providing excellent psychoana- curriculum. The way that children The task force’s mission: Just as APsaA lytic education in an environment where organize their experience of others along is responding to the needs of its members they may have to move back and forth the lines of sameness and difference, for to manage these complexities, it is also between the office and virtually. Its early example, contributes to how looking or committed to the DPE’s role in helping discussions led to the realization that indi- behaving differently takes on meanings APsaA’s institutes adapt psychoanalytic viduals, local institutes, and APsaA had that are then internalized. We were education to the virtual realm during reacted to the trauma of the pandemic reminded that the Diversities Section of the pandemic. Neither our institutes nor with rapid action and prescription of poli- the DPE, chaired by Anton Hart, had our candidates, in their partnership of Continued on page 35

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021 31 PSYCHOANALYSIS UNDERWATER

Psychoanalysis Underwater Luke Hadge

Over the last swimming directionless, looking year during the down at the reef which caused me Covid-19 to veer into its “lane,” so to speak. pandemic, I’ve The turtle gave me a look that I can spent a good only describe as, “What the hell deal of my time are you doing?” or “Watch where underwater you’re going!” or “Get out of the swimming and way, man!” It took me a moment to snorkeling realize this was its home, not mine. Locating to a New Life in the Pacific Luke Hadge I was trespassing. I promptly Prior to the pandemic, I traded in a Ocean off the apologized as the turtle swam away. I life where I was keeping my head above coast of Hawaii. I live on land in Honolulu have consequently become more careful water on the island of Manhattan, for near a coral reef, visited by all sorts of in watching where I am in the water and this one on Oahu where I try to keep my fish, including Hawaii’s state fish, the more adroit at swimming alongside the head below water. As a native New humuhumunukunukuapua’a (a word even turtles, who don’t seem to mind me Yorker, I found the decision to relocate harder for me to pronounce than anymore. difficult, but, now in hindsight, it has Nachtraglichkeit!). Easy to spot in the The rest of my time in the year of the worked well for my family and me, water, this colorful reef triggerfish pandemic has been spent in the dry particularly now that Hawaii has been displays a palette of white, black, blue, confines of my office, way above sea level hit less dramatically by the virus than orange, and stripes of yellow. The water on the 20th floor of an office building much of the rest of the country. is home also to sea turtles and monk overlooking the ocean where I prac t ice It wasn’t until sometime after leaving seals, with occasional appearances by psychotherapy and psychoanalysis New York that the pandemic struck. dolphins, whales, and sharks further out in-person and remotely with humans, Residing on my new tropical “rock,” as in the open sea. Most of my submerged not sea creatures. It has occurred to me locals call Hawaii, exploring the coral sessions, not far off the south shore of that some of my patients may have, from reef, its inhabitants, and all the ocean Oahu, are spent in silent conference time to time, thought or wanted to say: around it, my mind has become freer to with a bounty of mostly friendly fish “What the hell are you doing? or “Watch drift along with my body in the water. and turtle species native to the where you’re going!” or “Get out of the Far from my office, my patients, my Hawaiian Islands. way, man!” Nevertheless, we keep books, and theory in a concrete sense, The first time I ran into one of these swimming along, albeit flailing and, at my mind frequently drifts toward large sea turtles, I had hardly seen it times, spasmodic, around a reef, we hope, psychoanalysis in a way I had not coming when, all of a sudden, I found of understanding, insight, healing, and experienced before. Alone in the water myself face-to-face with a real live honu change. This has been especially with the sun rising above me or setting (Hawaiian for “turtle”). Fortunately, challenging given the tsunami of illness, in front of me, I sometimes see the sun turtles are dexterous in the water, and death, economic hardship, and setting on one side and the moon rising this one was able to avoid my flailing, disruption we’re all swimming in. I lost a on the other: I float between two celestial spasmodic body. I must have been family member last year to the virus, and bodies. Lying on my back or swimming I still grieve this loss. Much of the time I through the undulations of waves, I Luke Hadge, Ph.D., is associate clinical have spent in the ocean these past recall something a patient said to me and professor of psychiatry, John A. Burns School months has been floating around what it might possibly mean, or of my of Medicine, University of Hawaii; founder thinking about my loved one — also an own analyses, or something Freud wrote of the Hawaii Psychoanalytic Society; and analyst -- reflecting on her life and what and I have a sense, maybe for the first author of Psychoanalytic Stories (2019, she meant to me. time, what it really means. IPBooks). Continued on page 33

32 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021 PSYCHOANALYSIS UNDERWATER

Psychoanalysis When I am out in the water, I realize I lose track of time as I do during analytic that I am freed in these moments -- in hours, but here I cannot reorient myself Underwater these hours, like analytic hours — from to time or human connection since Continued from page 32 the distractions of daily life and, now, there is neither clock nor human voice. I Like an “oceanic feeling,” floating the constant reminders of the pandemic. am out there, a speck in the ocean — an lubricates my mind. But then I wonder if I am away from my office phone, my insignificant speck — a floating mind a mind thinks about psychoanalysis smartphone, my laptop, my desktop, my within a floating body, suspended in while in the ocean, does psychoanalysis email, my snail mail, even my watch. animation. therefore exist in the ocean? If a mind Importantly, I am away from other The water never stops moving. The tides contemplates psychoanalysis, is people with whom I have to confront go high and the tides go low. The waves psychoanalysis alive for those moments fear and anxiety, or “fear and trembling,” form and break. The current goes this way in the vast open space of salty water and in Kierkegaard’s words. “Wet trembling” and that. Fish and turtles and other sea sea life? Fred Busch’s idea of “creating a in my case. The writer and surfer creatures go about their business, not psychoanalytic mind” comes to my William Finnegan described the ocean thinking about the pandemic, certainly mind. Some assert that, these days, as “an unkind god, power beyond not thinking about psychoanalysis. But I psychoanalysis exists only on the measure.” It feels primordial but also lie in this ungodly expanse of ocean in margins. This is literal for me, living in soothing. Alone in the elements, I feel a awe of a virus-free world. With my goggles, Hawaii: I am the only APsaA member clarity of thought arise within me. Avid I see my own personal loss and try to and formally trained analyst practicing swimmers have described an altered reflect on the analytic mind swimming in in the state. And even though it may be state of consciousness called “sea- even more marginal underwater, as long dreaming” and a state of mind of our own watery skulls. During this tragic as a single human mind conceives of “forgetting the water.” I haven’t quite and terrifying time, I think underwater is psychoanalysis — or functions according had this experience yet, but often, while the safest place to be. to its truths — then psychoanalysis lives. swimming and letting my mind wander,

THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021 33

Psychoanalysis and Music COPS Continued from page 7 Continued from page 28 their affects. Increasingly, I have conflicts in all the characters as well as monitoring speaker turn-taking,” Brain & appreciated that the symbols and formal reflecting the aggressive and loving Language, 2016.) structures of music I studied at Juilliard conflicts in all of us. Poignantly, An additional consideration is the also can be thought of as an auditory throughout “West Side Story,” from the difference between two-dimensional representational world of individuals opening sound to the last note, composer images on a screen and three-dimensional and a non-verbal pathway to the Bernstein weaves a musical interval perception in face-to-face interaction. unconscious. Music is always present called the tritone representing instability Erez Freud and Tzvi Ganel in “Visual inside the consulting room when we in sound. The tritone does not resolve listen and pay close attention. The late consonantly but ambiguously.­ In psycho­ control of action directed toward two- psychoanalyst, Stuart Feder, stated, analytic terms, there is no psychic dimensional objects relies on holistic “Music is a simulacrum of mental life.” resolution by the end of the show. processing of object shape,” (Psychon In my book, “Melodies of the Mind,” I As with colleagues and patients, music Bull Rev 22, 2015) point out that two- suggest that Freud’s adherence to the is in our minds on many occasions. dimensional and three-dimensional (verbal) Royal Oral Road of dreams has a Psychoanalytic ideas have homes and images are processed differently in the (non-verbal) Royal Aural Road counter­ purpose both in our consulting rooms brain, requiring the mental construction part which can lead psychoanalytic and outside our clinical walls. In of “perceptually driven holistic represen­ thinkers to embrace a theory of affect left pointing out the similarities between tations of object shape” in order to guide incomplete by Freud. music and psychoanalytic­ ideas as action. It is not clear from their routes to affect and the unconscious, it Future Directions: Beyond the is my intent to illustrate that the Royal experiments whether psychotherapy Consulting Room and Concert Hall (oral) Road has converged, rather than evokes the mental imagery of action on In my presentations and writing, I have diverged, at an aural and oral junction the part of the psychotherapist. What illustrated an intersection between music within the larger community of ideas. kind of reverie, mirror neuron activity, or and psychoanalytic ideas with the iconic Creative, bold challenges and imagined action takes place in the musical “West Side Story,” a timeless opportunities invite, indeed demand, psychotherapist or psychoanalyst in the masterpiece that premiered in 1957. involvement by the psychoanalytic office or on the screen? Through the story of rival gangs, Jets community as we discover our new The natural experiment of teletherapy (White) and Sharks (Puerto Rican), on the “normal.” Multiple crises and opport­ during the Covid crisis, combined with streets of New York City, this musical unities are begging for psychoanalytic insights gained through neuroscience explores intolerance, prejudice, searing listening, understanding, re-evaluation, pain, boiling anger, and intense and active involvement in novel ways. research, help us parse the internal frustration between the gangs and within When we work in harmony with other psychic processes of psychoanalysts at the individual minds of their members. disciplines, psychoanalysts can confront work with patients in an office, on a The overtly comic but deadly serious the deadening viruses of hatred, video call, or on a telephone. In addition song, “Gee! Officer Krupke” illustrates intolerance, injustice, anxiety, loss, and to helping us discern whether video- the way neither gang felt heard nor grief by providing creative approaches to therapy is a distinctly different process respected. Despite the loving (and emotional healing. As we respond to the from practice in an office, such forbidden) relationship between Tony lessons of the current moment and experiments will support us in our efforts (Jet) and Maria (sister of the Sharks’ their psycho-historical precedents, to describe the essential ingredients of a leader, Bernardo), a fair fight between psycho­analytic contributions both psychoanalytic frame. the gangs turned foul, culminating in inside and beyond our consulting Tony’s unintentional murder of rooms can have a powerful impact on [Editor’s note: For more information on Bernardo. The harmony sought through others, especially when music has the sources in this article, please contact the story and in the song “Maria” something to do with it. Charles P. Fisher at [email protected].] becomes dissonant, sonically repres­ enting intrapsychic and inter­personal

34 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • Winter/Spring 2021

In the Time of Covid Psychoanalytic Education Continued from page 27 Continued from page 31

Race and Diversity Group became cies and guidelines. Task force members The task force also has noted that com- increasingly apparent. were struck by the relative absence of the plicated issues are likely to arise as we Members of Western New England usual analytic principle of self-reflec- move out of the pandemic. It was impos- were invited to participate in a tion preceding action. Most had not even sible to anticipate the pandemic, leaving departmental pro-bono virtual therapy thought to pause, reflect on, and discuss no time to think about it beforehand. clinic for Covid workers. Many from advantages and disadvantage before acting. But APsaA and its institutes do have the WNEIP stepped up both to supervise It seemed that one of the pandemic’s trau- luxury of anticipating its end and con- residents and to provide brief matic effects was to cause reflection and sidering how it will affect educational treatment. While fewer workers sought discussion about education to collapse. programs. It would be valuable to think help than we anticipated, those who APsaA and its institutes moved their educa- about what changes lie ahead. One issue did were relieved to see such symptoms tional functions into the virtual arena that is likely to arise will be whether a as insomnia and panic resolve rapidly. quickly and reflexively because it seemed candidate will be allowed to graduate if “Doing better,” said one caller, “quite so obviously necessary. all his or her control cases were con- better! Without using my screens all Meeting and discussing with each other ducted virtually. The task force is not night and now reading this book called helped the task force members to regain advocating a policy. Instead, it is empha- Educated, and then? I can sleep, and I’m their bearings and to remember the value sizing that it is useful to think about and getting educated myself!” Another of talking and thinking about the impact discuss the principles that such an issue participant reported, “Talking helps, of the pandemic on education. It helped involves. It is important to be mindful of voicing my concerns. I have more energy them to clarify what was useful in educat- the value of being reflective about such to work. I’m not as easily upset, am ing candidates and what seemed to inter- educational issues. The document that it sleeping much better.” Regarding the fere. For example, it highlighted b o t h ultimately develops will delineate the fallout from the George Floyd murder, the importance of such reflec- various issues that institutes and APsaA we heard the sober understatement: “We tion and discussion before devel- might find it most useful to deliberate as just need to learn how to be more oping educational policies as well as how we all continue our educational careful,” words that spoke to the the traumatic anxieties and losses of the mission. powerful intersection of the many pandemic could lead to forgetting this In summary, APsaA’s institutes have present dangers. basic axiom. They realized that the been challenged to maintain the high We are, as we write this, many months change to distance-mediated teaching, quality of education during the Covid into the pandemic. By the time you read supervising, and analyzing had affected pandemic and racial reckoning. They this, we will know more, likely have both the traditional analytic frame and have shown resilience and creativity in suffered more and certainly will have the more implicit, but equally tradi- response. In addition, APsaA’s Depart- continued to offer our help to as many tional educational frame. Thinking ment of Psychoanalytic Education is an as possible. We are surprised by how about these changes in frame and how active partner in this task. This partner- relatively few front-line workers asked they may impact so many educational ship highlights the importance of work- for help, yet we continue to reach out to activities is valuable. Articulating the ing together in adapting psychoanalytic them. We anticipate that over the longer new frame more explicitly is also education to the changing environmen- haul more will seek treatment. Many important. tal and social context. psychoanalytic communities are stepping up in ways similar to ours, and we look forward to the time when we take stock of how we have integrated Corrections our efforts as we learn from each other In the last issue of TAP, the names of Alan Sugarman, education editor, on and manage to survive these surreal page 2, and Timothy Rayner, director-at-large candidate, on page 23, were times — now and for a long, long time misspelled. We regret these errors. to come.

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