Hanns Sachs Library and Archives Newsletter
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Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute Hanns Sachs Library and Archives Newsletter VOLUME 15, NUMBER 1 SUMMER, 2015 DIRECTOR OF From the Director Dan Jacobs, MD LIBRARY Dan Jacobs, MD Life passes into pages if it passes into anything. place for such study, open to everyone. ~ James Salter A library and archive has its own LIBRARIAN/ life, ever changing, growing, and ARCHIVIST Our library is filled with those who put hopefully, expanding. Take note of the Olga Umansky, MLS their psychoanalytic lives into words. new books we have ordered (p. 8), of Some, like Grete Bibring whose the new programs we are planning (p. LIBRARY/PROGRAM accomplishments we are celebrating in a 2) and the recommendations for COORDINATOR new publication (see p. 2) were life-long reading made by our members (p. 2, 6, Drew Brydon members of BPSI. Others, like Arthur 7). The directions for further growth Valenstein and his colleagues, about and outreach that our members suggested in responding to our survey, LIBRARY whom Jim Barron writes in this issue, chose another path (see pp. 3-6). We vary are excellent ones. We will keep you COMMITTEE posted as to their implementation. James Barron, PhD in our theoretical approaches and technique and, sometimes, in the The addition of new members Ellen Goldberg, PhD psychoanalytic societies we join. But we from PINE have made the library a Malkah Notman, MD come together in the study of busier place. Their presence is welcome Rita Teusch, PhD psychoanalysis, its history and current as is yours. If we can help you in any Shari Thurer, ScD challenges, and in contemplation of its of your analytic endeavors, please call Marcia Smith-Hutton, future. Our library is a quiet and beautiful on us. LICSW, BCD Anna Wolff, MD Library News MANAGING Look for the Hanns Sachs Library table 9:30pm on Mon-Thu, 9:30am-5:00pm DIRECTOR at the IPA Congress exhibit hall. The on Fri throughout the academic Carole Nathan, MBA Library Committee members will share year. Our summer schedule is Mon-Thu, FINANCIAL our news and recent publications, taking 10am-8pm. Olga and Drew welcome your orders for Grete Bibring: A Culinary you to come and enjoy our comfortable OFFICER Biography, Edward Bibring Photographs reading areas (photograph by Allen Palmer). Pharrel Wener Psychoanalysts of His Time, and Freud and Me books. The library is planning to facilitate many exciting projects in the next few B O S T O N years. We will be blogging about our P S Y C H O A N A L Y T I C S O C I E T Y A N D authors and posting new videos of I N S T I T U T E psychoanalytic events on our web site. The 141 Herrick Road Library Committee is organizing a task Newton, M A 02459 force to review our book collection to make space for new acquisitions. 6 1 7 · 2 6 6 · 0 9 5 3 Please note our new schedule: we now keep the library open from 9:30am to VOLUME 15, NUMBER 1 HANNS SACHS LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES NEWSLETTER PAGE 2 Meet the Author Series 2015-2016 Grete Bibring: A Culinary Biography On Mon, May 23, 2016, by Daniel Jacobs, Olga Umansky, and Ana-María Rizzuto will the Members of the Hanns Sachs discuss her new book Library Committee is out and Freud and the Spoken Word: available on Amazon this Speech as a Key to the summer! Meet the Authors on Unconscious. Routledge, Tue, Oct 6, at 7:45pm to learn 2015. In this work, Dr. how this project came about and Rizzuto contends that developed into a book Freud’s focus on the publication. The book tells a intrapsychic function and fascinating life story of our early member, viewed meaning of patients’ through the meticulous record of her dinner parties, words allowed him to use discovered at BPSI Archives. Grete Bibring’s biography the new psychoanalytic method of talking to is accompanied by previously unpublished photographs, gain access to unconscious psychic life. In brief accounts of some of her guests’ lives, and 11 creating the first ‘talking therapy’, Freud began a authentic recipes from her table. movement that still underpins how psychoanalysts understand and use the spoken On Tue, Feb 9, 2016, Judy Kantrowitz will talk about word in clinical treatment and advance her new book Myths of Termination: psychoanalytic theory. What Patients Can Teach Psychoanalysts About Endings. Routledge, 2014. This work New Books by BPSI Members confronts and refutes the myths about the termination phase of Celenza, A. (2014) Erotic Revelations: psychoanalysis that are passed Clinical Applications and Perverse Scenarios. from generation to generation. It London: Routledge. is a refreshing and insightful study that will be welcomed by Grodin, Michael A. (2014). Jewish psychoanalysts, psychodynamic Medical Resistance in the Holocaust. New therapists, such as clinical York, Oxford: Berghahn Books. psychologists, social workers, and others trained or in training to do clinical work. What Are We Reading? von Unwerth, Matthew. Freud's Requiem: his passionately curious, lovestruck teenage years Mourning, Memory, and the Invisible History to his death after a long struggle with cancer in of a Summer Walk. Riverhead Books, 1939. Drawing on a variety of literary and 2005. A poetic apprehension of Freud’s historical sources—Homer, Shakespeare, and early work, this book has the power of a novel while accurately exploring the Goethe, as well as Freud’s own writings, development of Freud’s early ideas on including his letters—Freud’s Requiem is both creativity, love, memory, and mourning. an intimate personal drama and a spirited In Freud’s Requiem, the philosophical intellectual inquiry.” Matthew von Unwerth is disagreement between Freud and his companions— the director of the New York Psychoanalytic who may have been the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and Society library. He was the moderator at a recent his muse and former lover Lou Andreas-Salomé— BPSI program. – Recommended by Anna Wolff, MD becomes a prism through which to consider Freud’s creativity as a response to his own experiences, from VOLUME 15, NUMBER 1 HANNS SACHS LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES NEWSLETTER PAGE 3 In the Archives James Barron, PhD Perspectives on the PINE BPSI Split departments of psychiatry were decreasing. Over the past year, In 1973, BPSI was a large organization with 250 members. along with 29 other Within BPSI there were no clear divisions along theoretical former members of lines as occurred in the British Psychoanalytical Society PINE, I joined BPSI. (followers of Melanie Klein versus followers of Anna Soon after Dan Jacobs Freud). There were, however, significant power struggles invited me to join him between the Institute and the Society, and between the on the Library Education Committee (EC)/TAs and non-TAs. Many Committee, I became members of the EC were fearful of what they perceived as aware of the richness the intrusion of the Society into their domain and of the of the library archives resulting loss of autonomy in running the Institute. – a collection of documents, Many members of the Society felt that they were being photographs, letters, interviews, committee reports, excluded and marginalized, and they were looking for more recordings, and other primary sources. The archives meaningful roles within BPSI. The criteria and procedures provide a unique window into the history of to become a TA were not transparent, and there was the psychoanalysis in Boston, including the history of our perception and not infrequently the reality that those in psychoanalytic organizations. We owe a debt to Sanford favor were “tapped” to become TAs, fueling discontent in Gifford who was passionate about supporting the BPSI the ranks of mid-career and senior analysts who felt their library in general and its archives in particular over many pathways to becoming TAs were blocked. Candidates were years until his death in 2013. Gifford’s letters and emails in “reporting” analyses that influenced their status and have themselves been incorporated into the archives.* progress in the Institute and stirred up feelings of insecurity and mistrust. Given my long association with PINE as candidate, faculty member, and as immediate past-president, I was In an attempt to diffuse the tensions and bridge the excited about the opportunity to explore the archives differences between Institute and Society, the EC accepted and to learn more about the tensions and conflicts the recommendation of a specially appointed Ad Hoc during the early 1970s leading up to the formalization of Committee to establish the part-time paid position of the split in 1975. As analysts we are acutely aware that Dean. In the fall of 1971 James Mann began his ill-fated our memories are dynamic, that we are continuously (re) tenure as Dean. He proved to be a divisive figure, and the constructing the past, and that we are unconsciously EC acted unilaterally in May 1973 to discontinue the drawn toward “selected facts” that shape our narratives. position of Dean, exacerbating the tensions between My readings of the various texts in the archives therefore Institute and Society. inescapably reflect my embeddedness in the fields of both organizations and my subjective “take” on the split. In my view, there was a growing sense among a subset of With those qualifications in mind, I will summarize some senior analysts that BPSI had become too big, complex, of the complex intertwining environmental factors, bureaucratic, bogged down in committees and personalities, and events contributing to the split and unproductive meetings, too diffuse in its interests (in then present the personal “voices” of several of the key hospitals, departments of psychiatry, academia), and too players and observers.