news, analysis, opinion for the psychoanalytic community issue 26 ANUTUM 2018

Where are we with Identity in the Light Gabrielle Rifkind on Culture, Race and Sexual and Gender of #metoo Conflict Resolution Language in the 8 Diversity? 12 18 22 Consulting Room egregious misrecognitions, often on the and often have, excluded working class grounds of inadequate understandings of people from its domain, or that fail to Class, Identity Politics the far reaching effects on individuals of social forces and dominant ideologies, and/ Continues on page 2 or because of particular theoretical views and Disavowal (e.g. the rendering of all homosexuality as perversion or immature). With class, the By Joanna Ryan issues are also those of distribution and resources, who can afford financially to undertake either psychoanalytic lass is a highly contested, especially in the areas of gender, sexuality therapy or training. But complex and elusive concept. and race, with class notably absent. questions of In addressing class in relation misrecognition also to psychoanalysis – both These identity based critiques are often arise in the cultural theoryC and practice – I have drawn on contestations with theory and practice and class values a variety of sources to understand the that is, or was, oblivious of its own that psychoanalysis many ways in which class is at play in biases, exclusions, and blind spots, and is seen to embody the profession, whether acknowledged or its unreflective enactments of particular and enact, not. I have also drawn on my experiences socially normative positions, at the same that may in aspects of identity politics to articulate time as valuing much that is unique appear to, some of the issues arising when the to psychoanalysis in its radical psychoanalytic world comes into contact understandings of subjectivity. with social movements of various kinds, They also seek to explore the and with the discourses of diversity, non- internalised aspects of various discrimination and equality. Here there has social forces and norms. We been much critical and innovative thinking can broadly characterise and practice, as well as some resistance, these struggles as pursuits for arising from the impact of identity politics, recognition, disputing the more NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 2

Class, Identity Politics and Disavowal However much of this experience does not may impede useful work where there filter through to mainstream thought, and are large social differences. When the is insufficiently recognised for what it can subject of class is broached in mixed class continued from front page suggest. contexts, as I have found, a proliferation of mainly unvoiced experiences and emotions recognise and understand the particularity working class communities. Many parts of emerge, many very painful, conflictful of working class experiences and the profession have been and are engaged 'Class is a highly and troubling. These discussions can also circumstances, especially those of poverty with class inclusive projects of various provoke considerable anxiety, anger and and social marginalisation. This is evident kinds, or work in various public sectors, contested, inhibition – a testimony to the morally in the now considerable but scattered where access to psychoanalytic therapies complex and problematic nature of class inequalities, literature on psychoanalysis practised in (though not trainings) are free or low cost. elusive concept.' and the different ways in which people in different class positions suffer, live with Class is thus an absent presence – and defend themselves against the impact significantly present in the economic, of these. A further source of inhibition cultural and social resources mainly is the widely voiced feeling that it is needed to engage in this field, but largely somehow unanalytic to talk about class NA absent from professional and clinical in clinical contexts. My suggestion is that discussions: there but not there, a form this derives from the theoretical vacuum of disavowal. This widespread silence around class that opened up early on, relegating class only to the purely external, New Associations is published Managing Editor Gary Fereday Contribute to New requires explanation, having many sources. by the British Psychoanalytic Editor Daniela Pasquini Associations There is a long history of theoretical so that many practitioners feel they do not Council, Suite 7, 19-23 Wedmore Production Susan Rentoul We welcome your ideas for articles, extrusions and disavowals of class matters have a language in which to talk about it Street, London N19 4RU Illustrations Allen Fatimaharan reviews, and letters to the editor. in its subjective and intra-psychic aspects. Tel. 020 7561 9240 Printer Blackmore In particular we are looking for in the founding texts of psychoanalysis Fax 020 7561 9005 reviews of cultural events, books (which I describe in detail in my recent www.bpc.org.uk Views expressed in New Associations and films with psychoanalytic book). The demeaning misperceptions that Identity politics of various kinds are [email protected] under an author’s byline are the interest. If you would like to propose views of the writer, not necessarily a topic for a longer article (up to working class people were not suitable as often characterised by an emphasis on the Three issues of New Associations those of the BPC. Publication of 1200 words) please contact psychoanalytic patients, (rather than that importance of historical, intergenerational are published each year in the views and endorsements does not Daniela Pasquini at: and cultural circumstances in the spring, summer, and autumn. constitute endorsement by the BPC. [email protected] analysts had trouble working with them), became a powerful stereotype that took formation of psyches. They also make Subscriptions © 2018 British Psychoanalytic Deadlines: The next issue of New particular hold in the more conservative much use of the notion of internalised UK annually (3 issues): £10 Council. No part of this publication Associations will be published in oppression, first formulated by Frantz Overseas annually: £16 may be reproduced, stored or December 2018. The deadline era of psychoanalysis, in mid- 20th century transmitted in any form or by any for the Spring 2019 edition is US especially. It still seemingly needs to Fanon in his now classic ground-breaking means without the prior permission 31 November 2018. Letters to the be disproved in some quarters, despite book, White Skin, Black Masks (1952). For insertion of advertising of the publisher. Editor should reach us no later than materials contact: 1 December 2018. the important recognition of cultural and Previously, through the class inclusive [email protected] other forms of countertransference which ISSN 2042-9096 Continues on page 3 NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 3

The retreat from overt class politics and at the same time deny the efficacy of Class, Identity Politics and Disavowal coincided with neoliberal attempts race?” (Hall, 2018, 96). As he also points to legitimise class inequalities, often out, the disavowal of those deemed most continued from page 2 construed in terms of the supposed socially abject “runs through the social psychological or behavioural deficiencies relations of class, gender, sexuality and work of the free clinics in the early 20th per se, but rather ceasing discussing these of the poorest sections of our society. The intimacy”(102), as well as race. I also century, Otto Fenichel and Wilhelm in term of class and the snobbery and pursuit of neoliberal agenda, adopted suggest that disavowal is a ubiquitous and Reich had raised similar questions, about condescension that went with this, to by both centrist parties, thus amounted powerful process involved in the living how psychoanalysis could be practised which he himself had been subjected. to a fundamental shift in the terms in and the representing of divisive social in working class contexts, and what the Although New Labour did subsequently which political discourse was conducted. realities, including those of class. Diane implications were for psychoanalytic theory. achieve a moderate lessening of social Chantal Mouffe in For a Left Populism Reay’s extensive psychosocial work on class, This was an era when class was central inequality through redistributive policies, (2018), describes this as hegemonic in its (Miseducation: Inequality, Education and to the concerns of many left and social- the discourses of social exclusion and effects, replacing the Keynesian ideology the Working Classes, 2017), in which she democratic psychoanalysts, and when the personal responsibility for poverty came of managed economies and social provision. draws on psychoanalytic concepts, suggests extension of psychoanalysis outside its fee- to replace those of class. Working class Thus, at the same time as extreme how disavowal can be anxiously embedded paying context was seen as essential to the political representation diminished under inequalities have been increasing, class in middle class ways of engaging with future of the profession. the restrictive legislation on trade unions, became increasingly absent from political class difference, where there may be both a pursued by the Thatcher government, and and wider cultural discourse, again a desire for class inclusivity and social justice Class, it is generally said, disappeared from following the defeat of the miners’ strike. striking process of disavowal. but also subliminal disdain and distancing. political and academic debates in the West New Labour’s centrist policies marginalised She (and other authors) also describe how in the last decades of the 20th century, working class representation in the Labour disavowal is involved for those in working and this is often attributed to the rise of party, with the far reaching political 'We now see the class circumstances having to negotiate identity politics. Certainly, identity politics reverberations that are now modest gains of the middle class values of educational and came to the fore during this period, and with us. other institutions, creating a divided sense with the exception of most anti-racism the early 21st of self. movements and some forms of feminism, We now see the modest gains of the century wiped out seldom included class in its remit. However, early 21st century wiped out by rising ‘Identity’ is not a psychoanalytic term the apparent disappearance of class can levels of social inequalities, flat lining by rising levels of (it does not appear in Laplanche and also be attributed to the far reaching social mobility, through the savagery social inequalities' Pontalis’ dictionary of psychoanalytic influence of Thatcherite ideology: the of austerity politics and the attacks on concepts, for example), though of course pronouncement that there was no such welfare provision. Mental health services identifications of all kinds are central thing as society, only individuals, which have faced decades of underfunding Disavowal is also named by Stuart Hall in his memoir, Familiar Stranger, as poles of psychoanalytic thought. The banished class and social structure from and reconfiguring, and are drastically importance of history and culture political discussion. This was followed by inadequate to face the rapidly rising need regards to race in Jamaica, and also more generally. He asks: “What kind of in the intergenerational evolution Major’s much quoted aspiration for Britain for them, in the face of the impacts of of identities, including those of class, to become a classless society, by which he increased poverty and precarity. collective psyche could invest so much did not mean removing social inequalities energy in maintaining racial dominance Continues on page 4 NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 4

Class, Identity Politics and Disavowal formation of class identities. This analysis is especially useful in understanding '… research which continued from page 3 how class operates within and around suggests that psychoanalysis. Other contemporary work has demonstrated the complexity of class class identity cannot be underestimated. As Hall wrote: against their economic and other interests. identities and the many ambiguities and "Identities are the names we give to the With Brexit, we see how many people, generally, and ambivalences that are involved, as also was different ways we are positioned by, and lacking a political voice and ignored by apparent in my research. The ordinary working class position ourselves within the narratives large sections of the centre parties, turned language use of ‘working’ and ‘middle of the past." (Quoted in Gary Younge, to right wing parties and their fantastical identity especially class’ still, in my experience, has enormous Guardian, 11/02/2014). Or as Mouffe slogans, such as ‘Take back control’, that application, often qualified by other factors. remains writes: “There are no essential identities appeared to recognise people’s sense of This is borne out by research which but only forms of identification… The disenfranchisement and powerlessness, widespread.' suggests that class identity generally, and history of the subject is the history of her and validate some of their strongly felt working class identity especially remains identifications.” (Mouffe, 72). This forms fears and needs. (Although I am not here what transpires. So concurrently are widespread, with very few claiming part of her argument for the relevance of discounting the significant middle/upper the various enactments of privilege. classlessness. What has changed radically psychoanalytic understandings of affect class support for Brexit). The unthinking assumption of certain is political representation at the national to the construction of a left populism, to cultural values, as self-evidently level, that is class position has substantially counter that of the right, who often have Which brings us back to the question universal, also may come into question ceased to determine voting preferences the monopoly of affect-driven politics. of class identities. Within sociology, in more class diverse contexts. There (Evans and Tilley, The New Politics of This argument, that left and progressive there is debate about whether class is also the difficulty for some of really Class, 2017), at least to the extent that it politics rely too exclusively on rational and identities are disappearing in the face listening, without defence, displacement used to. objective arguments and neglect the more of what is described as the increasing or inappropriate interpretation to affect-driven, “irrational” or unconscious individualisation of society, even whilst class–related pain and anger, or to the My experience in writing and talking emotional forces at work, is an old one that social inequalities remain and increase. felt constraints of circumstances. The about class in relation to psychoanalysis is goes back as far as Reich (in his earlier Pierre Bourdieu and others have shown defences of privilege may partly be guilt that there is a growing acknowledgement incarnations) who advocated and put into how central questions of taste, style, bodily driven, producing paralysis of thought of the unsatisfactory situation in which practice a politics based on psychoanalytic presentation, etc are to the subjective countertransferentially. But they may class is hardly discussed, and a considerable understandings of people’s needs and experiences of class and to the construction also involve a subliminal disdain and interest in doing so, albeit with many desires. He showed in the Mass Psychology of class identities, as these interact with distancing, where the expression of complex and ambivalent feelings. of Fascism how the propaganda of the economic and structural inequalities. He class related anger about experiences of Especially important to explore are the Nazi party appealed to the repressed also proposed that different forms of social injustice were sometimes rendered experiences of those from working class and displaced libidinal desires of many capital – economic, cultural, social and as grudges or grievances, leading to backgrounds entering the profession, as working class and lower middle class symbolic – are all involved in the workings therapeutic impasses on the part of some these have largely been unvoiced so far, people, so that they chose a form of of social power and social space, and in the middle class therapists with working and yet yield many insights as to the class authoritarian politics even whilst it was class patients. At a wider social level, a coded or inflected nature of Continues on page 5 NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 5

I suggest that the up/down dimensions of publications, Class, Identity Politics and Disavowal class hierarchies, and any accompanying including Class and feelings of superiority or inferiority, are Psychoanalysis: continued from page 4 the most psychologically taboo aspect Landscapes of class, offending our sense of respect, of Inequality similar process, of inadequate recognition The self-reflections of the psychoanalytic social justice and equality, something (Routledge, 2017). and lack of appropriate social response psychotherapists in my study (and also that can inhibit discussion. The litmus has been described by Paul Hoggett in other work) who came from working- paper of class-inflected transference and colleagues in their psychosocial class backgrounds vividly illustrated the and countertransference in the clinical work. They describe the centrality of complexities and conflicts of upward situation can and does expose many of grievance, resentment and stuck victim social mobility, creating a divided and these usually defended against aspects positions in contemporary conditions of often ambivalent sense of present day of class. The challenge here is to evolve very divisive social policies and political class position and identity. The complex an adequate appreciation of class in all disempowerment. They suggest, on the concoction of a working class past and its force and materiality, as it creates us basis of their psychoanalytically informed middle class present powerfully illustrated intergenerationally as classed beings, work with groups, how unheard and the impact of class on the formation and to combine this with our existing unresponded to, such blocked expressions of the psyche and its enduring nature, psychoanalytic theories and practices of grievance can lead to socially toxic despite very changed circumstances. It responses. also illustrates the immense social gulf Joanna Ryan, Ph.D, is a between classes that must be negotiated psychoanalytic '… really listening, in such personal trajectories, as well as psychotherapist, the overriding domination of middle class supervisor and without defence, cultural mores and social power. This was researcher; and displacement or notably so in relation to lingering feelings author of of inferiority, the tenacity of a past and a numerous inappropriate whole world where negative evaluations, disadvantages and discriminations interpretation abounded. Shame, contempt and the to class–related associated defences, displacements, projections and disavowals are thus all pain and anger, part of class emotion, albeit experienced or to the felt differently for those in different class positions. constraints of circumstances.' NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 6

Editorial consider issues of diversity. These have in their scope to be attractive to trainees ‘Class is an included: conferences on ethnicity and from diverse backgrounds. We need absent presence’: Uncomfortable sexuality; bibliographies to support to ask whether we should look beyond Registrants and BPC accredited training our own profession and bring in the response to questions courses; a greater emphasis on diversity expertise of educational specialists to issues when accrediting and reaccrediting help the restructuring, and running of Joanna Ryan By Gary Fereday our member institutions; and the BPC more economically viable courses. We becoming a signatory to the second need to ask how we present ourselves as By Lynsey Hanley Memorandum of Understanding on a profession, how we market our training he lack of diversity Conversion Therapy. courses and how to ensure we signal t 23, I got into pronounced within the psychoanalytic that we are open to trainees from all emotional difficulties for psychotherapy profession Yet, with some notable exceptions, our backgrounds. probably the third or fourth has been debated within profession remains overwhelmingly time since moving from a theT pages of New Associations many white, older and middle class and it is times. This edition of New Associations '…our profession ABirmingham council estate to university far from clear if LGBT trainees feel that in London, and decided it was time to try looks again at the issue and highlights the profession has fully understood their remains and sort it out once and for all. Having some of the debates and initiatives concerns. the BPC has undertaken with articles overwhelmingly been told that the waiting time for an NHS referral was six weeks (this was 1999), I on sexuality, gender, ethnicity and Yes, things are changing but the gap white, older and found a therapist at a reasonable rate in class. These include: an update on the between the demographics of the wider north London, 45 minutes away from my research being conducted by Wayne population and of our profession remains. middle class.' home in the East End. Full examining attitudes towards LGBT Perhaps now is the time to radically issues; an examination of class with rethink how we deliver training to These may not be comfortable questions, She asked me why I was there and, as Joanna Ryan and Lynsey Hanley who develop a clearer model with common but unless we ask them we may not tends to happen when you’re in crisis discussed the issue together at the PP introductory courses that are attractive, make the changes needed to develop the and it’s your first session, the whole Four NOW 2017 conference; Susie Orbach accessible, more affordable, and offer profession and properly address the lack Yorkshiremen sketch fell out of my mouth. looking at the sexualised and gendered a clear training escalator and career of diversity. Let’s ask them ways that identity is expressed in today’s progression. This may help address the ‘You’re not the first working-class person to society; and Kannan Navaratnem lack of diversity. Gary Fereday is the Chief Executive of examining culture, race and language in the British Psychoanalytic Council go to university, you know,’ she replied. the consulting room. To do this we need to ask whether some The second person I saw, closer to home, rationalisation of training courses is chuckled when I stated that I felt so The BPC has developed a number of needed, whether some are too small to weighed down by family troubles back in initiatives that primarily address and be economically viable and too narrow Continues on page 7 NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 7

Earlier in life I had been seen by an NHS vote for Brexit?’ It was as though class ‘Class is an absent presence’: response to CAMHS counsellor, who was genuinely had suddenly a factor of interest because Joanna Ryan sympathetic to the lives of the young working-class people had done something people she worked with on the peripheral which mystified, and ultimately enraged, continued from page 6 estate where we were growing up. She was those who were supposed to have more at pains to place our experiences in context political clout than them, namely the Birmingham that I was permanently tired, psychic landscape, and, in Ryan’s words, as a way of showing to us that we were not urban middle class. and that the tiredness was down to feeling ‘disavowed’ by middle-class clinicians who mad: something which my later therapists I had abandoned them and let them down may have known nothing else but material overlooked or resisted. The confused reaction by the political, by leaving home to go to university. This security. academic and media class to the Leave vote therapist’s reply had a similar ring to the At last year’s BPC conference I was lucky didn’t lead to an outbreak of self-reflection first’s: ‘Everyone has to leave home, it’s enough to share a platform with Joanna and remorse on their part. Instead their your parents who are immature.’ 'How could I get Ryan to talk about these issues. I felt that response was more along the lines of, ‘Why good therapy from she had truly absorbed similar lessons did we ever give these ignorant racists the Perhaps they aren’t immature, I thought. offered by the sociologist Les Back in vote?’ The political fallout of the Brexit Perhaps they are alone and desperate, and therapists who his book The Art of Listening: that no result has exposed, in Joanna’s words, the it had never occurred to them that their didn’t seem to one’s life deserves to pass unnoticed and ‘overriding domination of middle class child might one day go to university, or unexamined; that all social differences cultural mores and social power’. what that would mean, because it had think that class are, when push comes to shove, essentially never happened before to anyone they mattered.' trivial since we are all human; and that it It has also revealed the disastrous knew. A conundrum revealed itself. How is surely the task of the therapist to take consequences of allowing socio-economic could I get good therapy from therapists Whether it was embarrassment or an society and its manifestly unjust structures inequality to grow to the extent that who didn’t seem to think that class unwarranted sense of superiority that into full account when examining the the group with the greatest social power mattered – that, indeed, class may have caused my earlier therapists to overlook interior life of a patient. couldn’t conceive of why people without been utterly central to the difficulties I’d essential parts of what I was trying to tell such power might, in a crude referendum been experiencing since adolescence? them, I never found out. I eventually found In her piece Joanna makes clear the costs held by a complacent leader, seize the a ‘good fit’, or a better one at least, though to psychotherapy, and the therapeutic chance to complain about it Joanna Ryan confronts this question in her even this third and final – for now – community, of consistently overlooking excellent book Class and Psychoanalysis therapist was not averse to telling me that class and its impact on individual Lynsey Hanley was born in Birmingham and in this piece for New Associations, I was ‘using the sociological defence’ when identity when the psychosocial effects and lives in Liverpool. She is the author describing class as an ‘absent presence’ I tried to put my memories of a working- of gender, ethnicity and sexuality are of Estates: An Intimate History, and in the therapeutic environment, both class childhood in a context of time, place taken for granted. Yet as a journalist and Respectable: The Experience of Class. She insisted upon by clients who need to and social ‘space’. commentary writer, I was repeatedly asked is a regular contributor to the Guardian and explore the structural influence on their by middle-class print editors and broadcast the Times Literary Supplement. producers ‘Why did working-class people NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 8

of Christopher Lasch in his 1979 book, pathology. Since the issuing of the Position BPC. This role both confirms the BPC’s Moving Forward: Advice from The Culture of Narcissism, who claimed Statement in 2012, the Advisory Group commitment to this essential area of the BPC's Advisory Groups that consciousness-raising movements has been seeking to promote inclusive work and identity, and equally enables targeting racism, sexism and homophobia attitudes within the profession towards the Executive and the BPC Council to and their psychological consequences, were differences in sexual orientation and engage with the development of the in fact the result of a self-obsessed strain of gender identity. The group has sponsored kinds of initiatives described above. In Where are we individualism that developed in the 1960s discussion and training in various settings, particular we recognise the ongoing (Lasch, C.: The Culture of Narcissism: and has recommended organisational need for fundamental shifts of position with Sexual American Life in an Age of Diminishing changes to tackle perceived incidences and perspective not only in explicit ways Expectations, Warner Books, NY 1979). of discrimination, particularly during (related to teaching curricula and reading and Gender training. lists, for example) but equally in less overt However, the accusation that postmodern ways (in terms of more subtle expressions Diversity? ‘identity politics’ tend to undermine basic Wayne Full, a member of this group, or attitudes of discrimination that can so values is powerfully contradicted when we describes the research he has been often exist beneath the surface). Further By Juliet Newbigin and look at the history of psychoanalysis and conducting into BPC registrants’ to the opening remarks above, the task is the biases that crept in under the guise attitudes towards sexual diversity on not about fostering “political correctness” David Richards of medical diagnosis – something that page 5. Members of the group also or policing our profession’s behaviour, but has had a particularly tragic impact on joined with Peter Hudson, the former feeling genuinely committed to an equality ctivists in today’s populist potential practitioners and patients who Policy and Public Affairs officer for the that acknowledges and indeed celebrates politics are taking up arms identified their orientation as other than BPC, in contributing to the drafting of diversity of identity within psychoanalysis against the liberalising heterosexual. The former were banned the Memorandum of Understanding, as in the wider society legislation passed in recent from access to training, unless they could launched by the Department of Health Ayears to protect minorities who have been be ‘cured’, and the latter were subjected to warn the public of the dangers of Juliet Newbigin is a Psychoanalytic the object of discrimination. The internet to serious psychological damage. It was conversion therapy that offers to reestablish Psychotherapy member of the British and the tabloid press endlessly complain only organised opposition from the LGBT heterosexuality and natal gender in people Psychotherapy Foundation and chair of the about political correctness inflicted on community that brought about change. who find themselves identifying otherwise. BPC Advisory Group on Sexual and Gender ordinary people by out of touch elites. The MoU, which has been signed by us as Diversity. Even respectable academics like Mark What is now the BPC’s Advisory Group on well as UKCP, BACP, BPS and many other Lilla argue that “identity politics” are Sexual and Gender Diversity came into bodies, had its Parliamentary launch on 4 David Richards is a psychodynamic a side-show that diverts attention from being as the result of the working party, July and is being supported by government psychotherapist, and a member of the BPC fundamental issues of human rights (Lilla, established in 2010, to write a position legislation. Executive and the BPC Advisory Group for M.: The Once and Future Liberal: After statement for the BPC, decisively breaking Sexuality and Gender Diversity. Identity Politics, Harper, 160 pp, August with this homophobic history which had The group has also provided the BPC 2017) His argument is reminiscent of that defined homosexuality as an expression of Executive with a new member holding responsibility for diversity within the NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 9

questionnaire on same-sex sexualities, Research which was disseminated to the entire BPC membership (n=1450). While the questionnaire primarily focussed on BPC members’ theoretical and clinical understanding of their work with LGB Conversing, not clients, respondents were also asked about their training institutes’ attitudes conversion, with towards LGB candidates and colleagues. The questionnaire was fully piloted and received ethical approval from the UCL Same-Sex Sexualities Research Ethics Committee (REC).

By Wayne Full Sample Two hundred and eighty seven (n=287) A clinical attitudes questionnaire circulated to the BPC membership in 2015 investigated valid questionnaire responses were BPC members’ perspectives, experiences and ways of working with Lesbian, Gay and returned, an overall response rate of 20%. Bisexual (LGB) clients. This is a selective summary of the findings. Of these 287 responses, 195 (70.9%) were female, 79 male (28.7%) and 1 identified as ‘Other’ (0.4%). In relation to sexual Background who are LGB and who wish to train, orientation, 211 (77.6%) respondents lthough psychoanalytic are training and or train others in identified as heterosexual, 39 (14.3%) therapies and training psychoanalytically-informed practice. identified as LGB and 22 (8.1%) identified institutions have become The BPC has supported several other as ‘Other’. More than three quarters increasingly inclusive initiatives aimed at promoting a more 2012, (n=211, 81.2%) were aged Aand tolerant of LGB colleagues and informed attitude to sexual and gender chaired over 50. clients, the BPC continues to proactively diversity. These include reviewing the by Juliet address the legacy of suffering caused by implementation of the Equality Act across Newbigin, The most frequently identified professional psychoanalytic pathologising of same-sex BPC training institutions as part of the is tasked with designation(s) across the sample were: orientation in the past and discrimination registration review and becoming a major ensuring that the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist (n=139, against LGB individuals who wanted signatory on a UK-wide Memorandum of profession continues its 2 48.4%), Psychodynamic Psychotherapist to train as therapists. In 2011, the BPC Understanding (MoU) condemning the efforts to be more open and 3 (n=67, 23.3%), Psychoanalyst (n=48, published a Position Statement on use of reparative therapies. welcoming to LGB trainees. In 2014- 16.7%) and Jungian Analyst/Analytic Homosexuality,1 opposing discrimination 15, as part of its activities, the Advisory Psychologist (n=42, 14.6%). In terms of in the selection or progression of those The establishment of an Advisory Group Group supported a PhD researcher, Wayne on Sexual Diversity [‘Advisory Group’] in Full, in designing a clinical attitudes Continues on page 10 NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 10

in the qualitative responses, many statement. When asked what they would Conversing, not conversion, with respondents question the plausibility do if a LGB client specifically requests Same-Sex Sexualities and usefulness of Oedipal narratives help to change their sexual orientation, for explaining the origins of sexual the majority (n=235, 83.6%) report that continued from page 9 orientation. Many respondents dismiss their main therapeutic approach would Oedipal theory as “too rigid”, “too be to work with the client to explore the simplistic”, “out-dated”, “ignorant”, and underlying reasons for wanting to change. theoretical orientation, almost half of their LGB clients experience a reduction “pathologising”. There is little empirical the respondents identified as Kleinian/ in symptoms (n=206, 73.3%) as a result of evidence to support the hypothesis that Whereas almost two-thirds of respondents Post-Kleinian (n=132, 46%) followed psychotherapy. Oedipal conflicts and/or pathological (n=181, 64.6%) consider it inappropriate by British Independent (n=125, 43.6%), parent-child relationships cause same-sex for therapists who are LGB to disclose their Post-Classical4 (n=87, 29.2%), Freudian/ On the question of aetiology, the majority attraction (again see Bailey et al 2016) sexual orientation to their LGB clients, Contemporary Freudian (n=71, 24.7%) of respondents indicate that sexual but Oedipal narratives may be useful for a quarter (n=72, 25.7%) are uncertain and Jungian/Post-Jungian (n=56 or orientation is multiply determined (n=241, understanding certain psychodynamics about it and almost 10% (n=27) think it is 19.5%). 85.1%) and is likely to be a mixture of exhibited by LGB (as well as non-LGB acceptable practice. Those opposed suggest nature/nurture (n=206, 72.6%). This clients). self-disclosure impedes the transference Findings suggests that most respondents believe experience with the client. Those who are there is a complex interaction between Respondents cite relationship difficulties Respondents expressed mixed views more open to self-disclosure emphasise genetic, heritable and hormonal factors (n=234, 81.5%), anxiety (n=225, 78.4%) on whether they had received any its practical benefits including: validating on the one hand and environmental, and depression (n=224, 78.4%) as the formal teaching on sexual orientation: LGB experience, building trust and social and cultural factors on the other. most common reasons LGB clients 132 respondents (47.0%) answered enhancing therapist credibility. There is a substantial and accumulating give for seeking therapy. The general affirmatively, 113 respondents (40.2%) body of empirical evidence indicating impression reported by over half of the answered negatively. Almost half (n=129, Only just over half of respondents that same-sex orientation may be respondents (n=114, 52,7%) is that the 47.6%) agree that their theories of sexual (n=151, 55.77%) agree with the moderately heritable and contain some problems LGB clients bring to therapy orientation need updating and respondents statement “colleagues within my MI genetic components and/or have some are indistinguishable from those of non- suggest that they would welcome closer treat LGB colleagues the same as non- biological basis (see Bailey et al 20165 for a LGB clients, and just as varied. Where study of data and insights from other LGB colleagues”. This is worrying: if compelling review of the evidence), while differences are discernible, respondents disciplines. this question was about race or gender identify some LGB-specific clinical issues environmental or social aspects may shape there would be outrage. This finding some elements of sexual orientation and including internalised homophobia, While three quarters of respondents seriously raises questions about how fairly how it is expressed. discrimination, shame (linked to their (n=209, 74.6%) express disagreement and equitably LGB colleagues are treated same-sex sexuality) and familial and/ with the statement “sexual orientation (or perceived to be treated) within BPC Almost half (n=135, 47.9) agree with the or parental rejection. In terms of can be changed or re-directed”, almost a training institutes. statement “sexual orientation is influenced treatment efficacy, almost three quarters quarter (n=63, 22.5%) remain undecided by unresolved Oedipal conflicts”. Yet, of respondents indicate that most or all of and a minority (n=8, 2.9%) agree with the Continues on page 11 NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 11

and varied bibliography on sexuality and trainees are treated equally and fairly. The Conversing, not conversion, with gender diversity for use by BPC teaching BPC and the Advisory Group has already Same-Sex Sexualities and supervising staff to refresh their course successfully piloted a train-the-trainer content in this area.6 course with the Tavistock and Portman continued from page 10 NHS Trust to raise awareness of sexual Given the compelling evidence7 indicating and gender diversity and the equality The polarised response to the statement themselves about LGB-specific issues such that conversion therapy is ineffective and legislation. “My MI promotes LGB and non-LGB as internalised homophobia, shame, and potentially harmful to the mental health of colleagues equally to senior positions the role familial rejection in the lives of LGB clients, we might have expected more within the organisation”, with 119 LGB clients. than three quarters of respondents to reject 'BPC members (43.9%) respondents unable to commit this statement that “sexual orientation can have a personal either way, also raises legitimate concerns BPC members appear to hold multiple be changed or redirected”. This finding about equality of opportunity and whether aetiological theories about sexual is also surprising given the BPC’s Position and professional there may be barriers (real or perceived) orientation. Some of these theories, Statement on Homosexuality and the responsibility to to LGB career progression across BPC Oedipal theories for example, appear to BPC’s signing of a MoU condemning training institutes. be inconsistent with empirical data from reparative therapies. BPC members have be familiar with other disciplines. Rather than consider a personal and professional responsibility these important Qualitative responses further indicate that Oedipal explanations as aetiological to be familiar with these important attitudes towards LGB colleagues and theories, it might be more appropriate to BPC initiatives and the evidence base BPC initiatives' trainees within BPC training institutes think of them as a useful framework for underpinning them. are mixed. Whereas some respondents thinking about and working with specific In relation to self-disclosure, there appears There are some limitations to this highlight the continued existence of psychodynamics demonstrated by LGB to be a spectrum of opinion. Recent study. As respondents are self-selecting, explicitly homophobic and discriminatory clients (and non-LGB clients). In terms of studies (Kronner 2013;8 Borden et al 20109) clinicians who are specialists on sexual activity in the selection and progression the origins, many respondents recognise indicate that LGB clients who perceive orientation and/or who identify as LGB of LGB clients as well as in the way the need to integrate a psychoanalytic higher levels of therapist self-disclosure are more likely to have responded. It is sexuality is taught, others describe a more understanding of sexual orientation report higher levels of connection with possible that BPC members who conduct progressive and accepting atmosphere at with findings from other sciences, the therapist and perceive the therapist to reparative therapies did not respond to their training institute. specifically neuroscientific, genetic be more expert, trustworthy and helpful. the questionnaire: the responses may, and psychoendocrinological data, and The question of self-disclosure and its therefore, underestimate the frequency Going Forward postmodern disciplines (e.g. queer theory). potential therapeutic benefits may require of reparative therapy practices across the It is encouraging that more than half of BPC training institutes have a role to play further discussion and thoughtful reflection BPC membership. There is the social BPC members do not perceive their LGB in updating their course curriculum to amongst BPC members. desirability factor to consider: respondents’ clients to be any different to their non- ensure that teaching on sexual orientation answers may have attempted to construct LGB clients in terms of their presenting reflects wider societal, cultural and More work is needed within BPC training an account that conforms to a socially symptoms and difficulties. However, scientific developments. In 2014, the institutions to ensure more LGB candidates acceptable model of belief or behaviour. BPC clinicians must continue to educate Advisory Group compiled a pluralistic apply and enter training and that these Continues on page 12 NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 12

Conversing, not conversion, with Society Same-Sex Sexualities continued from page 11

Acknowledgements References Identity in the I would like to thank all the BPC members 1 https://www.bpc.org.uk/sites/psychoanalytic- council.org/files/6.2%20Position%20 who took part in the questionnaire, the statement%20on%20homosexuality.pdf BPC administrative staff who promoted 2 https://www.bpc.org.uk/sites/psychoanalytic- council.org/files/Memorandum%20of%20 Light of #metoo and disseminated the questionnaire, the Understanding%20on%20Conversion%20 members of the BPC Advisory Group Therapy%20in%20the%20UK%20WEB.pdf By Susie Orbach on Sexual Diversity who advised and 3 Gay conversion therapy, sometimes known as reparative or ‘gay cure’ therapy, attempts to supported the questionnaire and my PhD alter a person’s sexual orientation or reduce supervisors, Professors Mary Target and attraction to others of the same sex. It often here is a desperation in girls swooning and men’s virility in cliched Michael King. I would like to acknowledge assumes that homosexuality is a mental disorder and boys for acceptance, for forms. We see urgency, simultaneous 4 y B Post-Classical, we include: relational, Karen Ciclitira and Nena Foster: this article intersubjective, interpersonal, existential and longing, for recognition. orgasms up against a wall, desperate has used a similar structure and format to self-psychological. For all of us, of course, but longing satisfied. a research article they published together 5 Bailey, M., Vasey, P., Diamond, L., Breedlove, as we forge identities in adolescence, M., Vilain, E., and Epprecht, M., (2016). T in New Associations in the summer of 2013 Sexual orientation, controversy and science. bodies and the erotic are in ascendancy. What we see is what we absorb in the (Issue 12) entitled: ‘Diversity: a helpful Psychological Science in the Public Interest, Vol Being a girl means learning that sex making of our personal idiom and in our first step.’ 17 (2), 45 -101. 6 https://www.bpc.org.uk/bpc-bibliographies-and- is crucially important, but only sort of efforts to be expressive, find acceptance, task-group-documents for you. It is something you have about longing and recognition. For boys the Wayne Full MSc is a PhD student at the 7 http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/sexual- yourself and something to look forward struggle is no less problematic. Desire UCL Psychoanalysis Unit. His research orientation.aspx to and experiment with. Girl on girl sex trumps tenderness. Power trumps 8 Kronner, H. (2013). Use of self-disclosure for the interests include psychoanalysis, sexuality, gay male therapist: the impact on gay males in is widely permissible for our patients and awkwardness. Thrusting trumps ignorance. gender and queer theory. He is a member therapy. Journal of Social Service Research, 39 yet at the same time, for many girls and A limiting binary continues to railroad of the BPC Advisory Group on Sexual (1): 78-94 women even their nether regions are a forms of masculinity and femininity. 9 Borden, L. A., Lopresto, C. T., Sherman, M. F., Diversity. He is currently co-ordinating and Lyons, H. Z., (2010). Perceptions of self- mystery. We don’t applaud when they the BPF’s flagship introductory course, disclosing counsellors among lesbian, gay and find their clitorises and we may not have How can we draw the line from the intense bisexual individuals. Journal of LGBT Issues in Psychotherapy Today. He has taught Counselling, 4: 2, 54-69 even given them language or explain preoccupation and dismay girls have about psychoanalytic theory on several MSc the ways in which human sexual organs their bodies, the intense sexualisation of courses. work. In movies we still rarely encounter the culture, the commercial pressures much beyond penetrative sex with women Continues on page 13 NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 13

had to be held and seen and wanted, the Identity in the Light of #metoo My practice over the past period, is replete anxiety that accompanied these longings with hurt around #MeToo agendas. I have and his aggression. He unwittingly used his continued from page 12 many points of contact with things ‘done sexuality to repel as perhaps, I summized, to’ or engaged in myself. For many years he had felt humiliatingly repelled. The which are promoting cosmetic surgery apps she has the right to dress as she pleases I had in treatment a man we would call a excitement he generated for himself in the to girls as young as six, preparing them to and to make it her own. How she dresses perpetrator. He thought he was impressing session was a withdrawal from potential ever transform themselves, and be ready to might make us uncomfortable but perhaps, me by telling me of his multiple sexual moments of exposure to self, exposure to spend on those huge industries of beauty; I continue, it is her attempt to create a encounters. But they weren’t sexual me and moments of meeting. Sex held him fashion, diet/food on the one hand and - on body that pleases her. You are not so fond encounters as I might understand the enthralled and he admired the Lothario the other - the representation of femininity of the burkha or the nun’s habit I say. Oh, term, they were sexual assaults. He would in himself, but it was an agony to behold. in millions of digitized and ‘perfected’ empowerment he says. Well not exactly, I shine his high beam on a woman in what I could admire the feat of his insisting on images because of; the democratization of reply, and there follows a discussion about might seem the first moves of a seduction his presence of course and in a sense that glamour, the virulent reintroduction of Ken the differences between the notion of at a supper party, but rapidly this would insistence kept up a momentum in the and Barbie, and what boys and men expect empowerment which I find rather soupy follow his sticking his hand under the table therapy. and what girls and women are looking but which he as a lawyer finds robust, and and inserting his finger into her vagina. for? There is a connection. It may make us agency which I find associated with the His sexuality or perhaps we should say his uncomfortable but it exists. The search for taking up of subjectivity. anxiety had been weaponized. He would 'We are now a bodily sense of self that is validated by talk of such triumphs expecting me to firmly in the the other takes strange tributaries as girls We are now firmly in the category of admire him. His assaults were compulsive present themselves in facsimile versions of internalized misogyny. Empowerment for a la Weinstein although he was not in the category of what they see. Meanwhile for adolescent me turns patriarchy into a kind of dusting, same kind of business and did not yield internalized boys and young men, there is too often rather than a vicious system of inequality power over women’s employment prospects. a thought that the fuck will hold their in which women and men unbeknownst In sessions, his telling me, would excite misogyny. fragilities together. to them, absorb and make themselves in him and I began to think about what use Empowerment patriarchy, taking up forms of femininity I could make of the bold confrontation he A friend asks, how do you explain the and masculinity which necessarily encode forced on me in his insatiable longing to be for me turns clothes my daughter goes out in. Isn’t internalized misogyny as the sequelae phallically recognised. I didn’t like it. And patriarchy into a she being, well, provocative? That’s one of unequal gender relations. We don’t I felt uncomfortable disabusing him of the way of seeing it, I respond. But I think do it consciously. We don’t purposefully notion of his being a wanted Adonis. Yes, kind of dusting, it’s more that she could be on a search for bequeath this misogyny to our daughters he was right to reveal his difficulty within a body that fits with the bodies she sees or to our sons. We do it as psychoanalysis the therapy, how could it be otherwise, but rather than a represented around her (Orbach 1978. details, unconsciously. Tragically we can it was so distracting to him, that it made it vicious system of 2009). She wants to be cute, or sexy or do so while vowing to break the bonds of hard to talk about the desperate longing he lovely, or tough looking, and she thinks patriarchy. inequality…' Continues on page 14 NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 14

Herman Lewis (1992) insist on the Freud Horney and Thompson and indeed the Identity in the Light of #metoo before he abandoned the seduction theory Freudian Helene Deutsch detailed was or do we creatively try to put together pre the intra and inter psychic construction, continued from page 13 and post seduction theory and the intricate costs, demands, strictures and rebellions ways in which longings for attachment of femininity. Literature describes these So commonplace, which is not to say and dependency become eroticized in so well but no other discipline comes close without enormous significance, are ways which reflect the sexualization and to understanding the complexities bred the women in my practice aggression of our culture. Little girls’ in the lived experience of the making of and the men who have sexualized wriggling is now commonplace. femininity and masculinity as we journey experienced sexual Not for personal sexual exploration but for through life. Conscious intent is one thing. intrusion. Everything attention, because they see it, they mimic Unconsciously motivated behaviours from parents’ friends, to it and oh, it looks so very cute. Only, it including holding, feeding, the proscription relatives, and clergy. We doesn’t. It disturbs, just like high heels for of emotions, the absence or curtailing know the stories. We know babies and bras and cosmetic surgery apps of an erotic in the mother daughter our stories. We know for six year olds. Girls are being trained bond, arced by notions of femininity some of the ways that into sexual show without knowing what and masculinity have not tumbled down, psychoanalysis can hear the show means. And it is deeply troubling. however much we may have desired them and enable individuals too. Change is social but it also needs to be to talk and heal Feminist thought which flourished psychic. somewhat, but what in the 70s and 80s and revitalised as contemporary psychoanalysis, profoundly understood Feminism invigorated psychoanalysis psychoanalysts do the human as relational in the deepest for a new generation and out of it was we make of it? sense. Who an individual could be was born Relational Psychoanalysis and a Do we, like seen as an outcome of the interpersonal new interest in Attachment Theory Judith relationships in which they were raised, and Interpersonal Theory. There were given air and light or darkness and despair. some brilliant innovations in treatment Social relations, the political, economic, and feminisms’ often unrecognized class, ethnic, geographic and gendered contribution to theory and practice-making locations – Marx’s proposition that “the (Eichenbaum & Orbach 1999) is worth individual is the ensemble of social remembering as we look towards a post relations” was taken up implicitly and #MeToo world. We need to remember explicitly by some of the great founders the dedication to the understanding of of The William Alanson White – Freida the making of femininity, of the making Fromm Reichman, Erich Fromm, Karen of heterosexuality that we theorized in Horney and Clara Thompson. What Continues on page 15 NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 15

the internalization of racism in Black Skins Identity in the Light of #metoo White Masks (1952) remains the landmark 'Women know work from which we need to study our own continued from page 14 that the hyper disturbed relations to gender, to class, to race, to geographic location1. femininity of order not to reproduce a feminine psychic absent, maternal object. Part of the turbo charged structure that was moulded by emotional therapist job is to receive and tolerate such Women know that the hyper femininity of deprivation, unentitlement, the shame of felt experiences as we endeavour to move turbo charged capitalism is a carapace and capitalism is a vulnerability and compulsive giving to the individual analysand from dwelling a con; a work of fashioning mind and body. carapace and a others in the search for self (Chodorow with part objects to coming to a sense of They know less that hyper masculinity is 1978, Orbach 1978, Eichenbaum & Orbach a self who can engage with other subjects a carapace and con because the menace con; a work of 1981). We need to remember the cost of who have their own separate sense of self associated with it is often directed at them fashioning mind internalized misogyny and the cost of while being attached to us. The struggle or their sons and daughters. But, and fragile masculinity, fragile class and fragile in psychoanalysis is to see and be seen here is the rub, the presence of fragile and body. They whiteness embedded in the making of the (Eichenbaum & Orbach 1981, Benjamin masculinity inside of the carapace can be western subject and in all of us. As Dorothy 1988) to prize oneself out of defensive enticing to a woman. At an interpersonal know less that Dinnerstein (1976) so persuasively showed, mergers and defensive distances, to take level the draw can be compelling. What’s hyper masculinity the hand that rocks the cradle constructs up a subjectivity that recognizes personal sweeter than a man able to show his a psychic imago of women we all wrestle value which ceases to demean self and hesitancy and yet ‘be a man’? Men’s is a carapace with and in part wish to control or disavow. other. In this practice the opportunity fragility comes in strange disguises, and con...' Mothers exert control. They say yes, of encountering one’s own internalized sometimes with orange skin or sewn in and they say no. Repudiation, loves’ first misogyny is implicitly addressed and hair or tattoos from head to toe. And many A discussion of #MeToo leads me to ask cousin in rejection, arises to manage the understood (Eichenbaum & Orbach 1985). women are drawn to and simultaneously what mythical psychic representations of disappointments, the battles with authority, Dependency, need, and the refusals we find compelling, the anguish hidden in Oedipus we encounter in the consulting the hurts and incomprehension that come experience in infancy and early childhood the carapace. Schooled in the provision of room today. Oddly for a psychoanalyst I’ve from the no. Repudiation along with the customarily by and from women, create nurture, the weave that is femininity is not been much drawn to this unlike my UK attempt to control and sometimes diminish sexed subjects who don’t simply love shot through with repairing, with looking colleagues. I, along with Luise Eichenbaum the person who is felt to have so much women. Unmet dependency needs are a out for it, with soothing. When it comes with whom many of these ideas have been power, becomes a bedrock of relations to breeding ground for internalized misogyny. to fragile masculinity, the die is cast; developed, focused much of our work on women for everyone mother reared. This is as true for women as it is for men. what is offered as powerful but presents the mother daughter relationship. The It is true for all of us, however we define as less than, can drive a woman to care intensity and emotional labour of that Psychotherapists experience this in the ourselves. And we need to bring these ideas and reassure and provide succour and relationship in which nurture collided consulting room where we become – to awareness now as we start the work of bolstering. As she does so she lends the man with the historic imperative to raise whether we are a he, a she or a they - deeply reconfiguring our understandings of her power. His fragility is (temporarily) girls to not expect emotionally and in experienced as enabling, punitive, longed genders and misogyny. Franz Fanon’s work ameliorated by the gift. for, withholding, disappointing, adored, stands as a beacon. His understanding of Continues on page 16 NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 16

may have some smidgen of regard for the transformations so that we accept in Identity in the Light of #metoo boldness of these men but we examine it ourselves, and in those we work with, the as a mirror image of their own hesitations. vulnerabilities of living and feeling continued from page 15 Let me be clear, these are men who from the outside have successful work lives and Susie Orbach is a psychotherapist, which dependency needs were to be met identified people. Women in my practice families. They have weight in their worlds. psychoanalyst, writer and social critic. via providing them for others, created may idealize and long for direct fathering This does not exempt them from the enormous ambivalence. It created an or they may have projected on to men shame, confusion, embarrassment about References internalized misogynist psychic structure the contempt mixed with strange power their emotional needs. They are aware of Benjamin, J. (1988) Bonds of Love. Penguin Press, inside of girls and women. The longing for valances learned from home, but for how challenges can flay them and how New Yorkc d mothering without prohibition and without many, despite having brothers, men have Chodorow, N., (1978) The Reproduction of Mothering: aggression can come in to cover feelings Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender. the direction or instruction to always turn a certain foreignness to them, reinforced of hurt and vulnerability. The parcelling University of California Press, Berkeley towards others in order to give to them, here in the UK by single sex education. No up of gendered emotional states ill serves Dinnerstein, D. (1976). The mermaid and the leaves complex psychic traces. The tide of wonder then that men, father, masculinity, minotaur: Sexual arrangements and human malaise. men and women. It reduces our possible Harper & Row, New York denying the maternal inside of oneself look untainted, attractive and compelling. humanities and directs us to externalize Eichenbaum, L., & Orbach, S., (1982) Outside in and the power of the feared, loved, longed Raised to look after, to please, to flatter, to difficulties rather than explore, understand, Inside Outside: Towards a feminist psychoanalytic for mother takes enormous psychic energy. twirl for others, the other, the man, could account. Penguin, London explain and try to overcome them. As Eichenbaum, L., & Orbach, S., (1986) Between Men’s non-domestic power was for many be beguiled and beguiling. To reach or Carol Gilligan and Naomi Snider write Women: Love, Envy, Competition and Anger. Penguin girls growing up, a thing apart; or mediated be reached by a man is to encounter ‘the in Why Does Patriarchy Persist (2018) Press New York by mother’s experience. This was obviously other’. A liberating flight from – at an Eichenbaum, L., & Orbach, S.’ (1999) Relational “Patriarchy harms both men and women analysis and feminism: A crossing of historical paths, not the case for the molested ones, or the imaginative level – self-doubt, merger and by forcing men to act as if they have or in At the Thre, L.,shold of the Millenim: A Selection of ones who were dropped at a certain age identification with the maternal. need relationships and women to act as if the Proceedings of the Conference, ed Moises Lemlij or only considered interesting after a & Maria Rosa Fort Brescia Prem Lima Peru 1999 they don’t have or need a self. But you are Herman, J., L. (1992) Trauma and Recovery. Basic certain age. In my practice when women Men in my practice are questioning their not supposed to say this”. Books, New York talk of experience of the father-daughter own attitudes and from whence they come. Orbach, S. (1978) Fat is a Feminist Issue. Paddington Press, London relationship, it is frequently refracted The personal struggles that have led them #MeToo offers a unique moment for a Willis Aronowitz, N. (2018) The Feminist Pursuit of through the maternal bond and their to come to therapy are recast in the light reconsideration of all fragilities, and the Good Sex, The New York Times, February 16th 2018 mother’s view of the father. The father- of publicized male behaviours exposed sexualized and gendered ways in which More recent works from Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, daughter relationship is thus not exempt by #MeToo which induce in them fear, Afua Hirsch, bell hooks, James Baldwin, Ta Nehesi they become expressed and distorted. Coates and Henry Louis Gates take up similar or stand alone. Untangling the direct confusion, embarrassment and dismay. themes and indirect experience of fathering is a (I don’t have in my practice, men who Our work as therapists is to enable our complex process in psychoanalysis and what admire such wrongdoings even if they patients to move towards dignity; dignity we receive in the countertransference can wish for more sexual confidence). The towards self and dignity towards others. enlighten us about the pulls of masculinity men I see – apart from the man whose Our endeavours are focused on acceptance, for both men and women and non-binary invasive actions I have already detailed – an acceptance that can generate NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 17 Discover Routledge Mental Health Your link to the best professional psychoanalysis and psychotherapy books Routledge Mental Health offers a range of resources for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and mental health professionals.

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In Conversation With

Gabrielle Rifkind on Conflict Resolution Richard Sherry in conversation with Gabrielle Rifkind; group analyst, psychotherapist and specialist in conflict resolution. Her latest book is titled The Psychology of Political Extremism: What Sigmund Freud would have thought about Islamic State (Routledge, 2018)

ichard: Hello Gabrielle, marginalization and exclusion and so it sort I’m very much excited and of became my bread and butter. From there pleased to be here with I then decided I wanted to train in groups you today to talk about so I trained as a group analyst, actually Gabrielle Rifkind and Richard Sherry, in conversation at Gabrielle Rifkind's consulting room, London bothR your new work on the psychology of en route I also became an art therapist – I political extremism and some of the wider think that was probably an exploration of journeys there which was at the height of the trauma. I immersed myself into the implications. my own self-expression – but being a group the Second Intifada and there was huge Palestine Israel story, my experience told analyst came with a kind of belief that if tension and anxiety. We were training me that having worked in groups and with This is not the usual thing for a you could work with people in groups what them to be group analysts, and part of that marital couples and in my consultancy room, psychotherapist to be thinking about and people had to offer each other was as equally was working with people who have been that conflict is much much more complex. writing about, could you tell us a little bit… as powerful and sometimes more powerful very traumatized, I could hear people say You know if you're dealing with a couple in than the individual relationship with the things like we had three children in case couples therapy you had to look at the power Gabrielle: It’s certainly been a very psychotherapist, I certainly saw that with one of them got killed. But I decided I dynamic between them and the asymmetry interesting trajectory. I actually started working with people been in and out of didn't want to work with people who were of power, also what went on between them my work life when I was 21 as a trainee prison. being traumatized, I wanted to, perhaps and how this human dynamic was sustaining probation officer, and so I was used to talking rather hubristically, or in a state of kind of the conflict or was creating it - something to people who had fallen out the system In 2000 I was invited to Israel to train 49 innocence and not knowing, to work more we don’t often think about when we're and we’re already experiencing things like group analysts, which I did and made 28 with the political process that was creating Continues on page 19 NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 19

the lived experience. Everything has this stage but it's a challenge how to put it all Gabrielle Rifkind on Conflict Resolution larger interconnection that I think often together. we don't really understand with conflict, continued from page 18 and even with Freud’s work there’s a kind of oversimplification about these depths of 'My experience trying to resolve conflict. It seemed to me, then over time, we’re talking almost twenty processes. Whether it is the biological or the said that resolving certainly with the Palestine Israel conflict, years, I was involved in some of the work psychosocial. I think often we really do miss people felt so emotionally attached to it, they on the proxy war in Syria. I had meetings some of these synergistic processes and how conflict was always positioned themselves on one side. I in Saudi Arabia. It became clear that it was we understand that these too have a history about people, immersed myself deeply into understanding a regional conflict and then out of that to them. the Palestinian conflict and in the early days emerged the Arab Spring and the terrible was about human we did meetings behind the scenes trying to tragedy of the wars that have immersed G: Your point about the micro and the macro, motivation, why ripen the conditions for a peace process and since then, so that’s a sort of long explanation you see that more and more in politics today. then it became clear the Palestinians didn’t of my involvement. When we focus on the small, we can focus people were want to sit with the Israelis partly because now on Novichok and what Russia has done behaving in they felt the weaker party and it became However, I think my passion lay with that to two individuals, however horrendous it is clear that you had to work with both groups the resolution of conflict is usually around we forget about the picture of the Cold War, certain ways, separately, interestingly not just with the power and geopolitics, and those kind of we no longer see each other as enemies. It’s groups who wanted to make peace, but more often dirty deals. My experience said that very hard to keep holding on to the big and and where that right across the political spectrum. You had resolving conflict was about people, was the small at the same time. sits at with to work with the politicians, you had to try about human motivation, why people were and create an inclusive model, and we moved behaving in certain ways, and where that sits R: Which I think is crucial. I have a friend the geopolitics into trying to help the groups to think much at with the geopolitics relationship. In fact a and colleague who helped negotiate the relationship.' more strategically, ‘what would it look like to conversation I had last week with an Iranian fall of the Berlin Wall and Glasnost, and I end conflict?’ It became clear to me that the about whether there was an entry point think one of the things you’re describing is R: We don’t often talk about how big a Palestine Israel conflict was part of a much again in to the collapse of the nuclear deal the vista of what the psychological process change that we can make. Particularly bigger regional conflict and that my mind in Iran, I said I came from a psychological is to have the courage to dream at a level, to in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis the began to think much wider, and it took me background, he said this whole region is work at a level of health which is actually work that it takes, day in and day out toTehran. psychological, this whole conflict is about completely paradigm shifting. to stay on task, to work with the proper humiliation, marginalization, victimhood, technique – it’s really interesting when you In 2006, by then I’d met a very senior ex-UN and certainly that that’s a crucial piece of G: That’s probably right, psychotherapists are start to apply that to socio-political place or negotiator, which actually ended up why it's so difficult to resolve the conflict. trained to think about the forensic, the detail. state. The British trained psychoanalysts with us doing work on the Iranian nuclear I’m not sure how much they’re trained to working in South Africa with the peace and issue but nevertheless our belief was that R: It’s extraordinary just to be able to think turn that around, and I always think that our reconciliation group, and also with Northern Iran would play a key actor in all of this, and of the scope of the work and the detail of profession has so much to offer on the biggest Continues on page 20 NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 20

Gabrielle Rifkind on Conflict Resolution differences as opposed to how if you get people in the same space they will find continued from page 19 common agreement. It’s in everybody’s interest to end the violence but notions like reconciliation and forgiveness I think it takes Ireland, I think some of those are heroes, like accepting the present and even the grief or generations to heal. When people have done Paul Williams, going back and forth to really the trauma that can go with that, it’s almost terrible things to each other; if you killed address some of these issues in a way that is like each individual social environment or my brother I’m not going to just govern deeply about healing. culture has a kind of ecosystem to it. To harmoniously with you, I might have to really fully appreciate where there’s struggle learn a few skills to manage how we work G: Yes, I think that psychoanalytic frame or there’s greater conflict then there needs to together. There’s so little understanding is incredibly important but I also think be a lot of understanding about the greater about the consequences of what war does sometimes we have to be an an econoclast, context-particularly in your book, I think to people and then why people later hate we have to know when to break the frame your view of conflict is that there’s such each other, and why they don’t want to live when we’re in a different cultural setting. depth to it. together. Going back to Palestine and Israel One of the reasons we struggle with there’s a history of so much mistrust and resolving conflict is so often because we come G: I do start from the premise that war suspicion, one has to just accept that as a in with our own lens, with a particular view monsters people and that it enlarges the reality that's where you need to start. When of the world and how it should be ordered, most disturbing aspects of us. It breaches people talk about one state solution, you've even if we think it should be, for example, a trust so fundamentally, it takes people to very got to have communities that respectfully liberal democracy. Say you have a war in Iraq dark places. I came into this work perhaps want to live together to achieve that, the and we’ll say let’s bring in elections because a bit inspired by the Oslo process, with the current state of mind is so far from that so then we can have a liberal democracy, belief that if you put people in the same we need a little dose of political reality. whereas actually what psychotherapy room, even if they’d been in conflict, if you teaches us is we have to start where the other put them there long enough they would R: I think what you’re describing is the person’s at, or you have to start with where find areas of common interest or mutual texture and the sort of micro processes, that country's at, and it means often we agreement. I’ve actually changed my mind I know when I was in Rwanda that Paul have to start in rather unpalatable positions, on this. conflict is it creates so much disturbance Kagame works with the person who literally starting not where we want to be but where and the trauma is so deep that often people killed his sister and the courage it takes to be we are. One of the failures to resolve conflict R: I was wondering about this- want retribution more than they want able to make that reconciliation. is we usually start where we think we want reconciliation. Therefore, what we have to other people to be. G: I’m not sure psychotherapists will do in the immediate to resolve conflict – G: Paul Kagame, I think is a really particularly feel that comfortable with and we’ve actually done a lot of work on interesting one because he’s often accused R: I think there is a maturity of what I’m saying or maybe certain schools developing a methodology around this – is for being very authoritarian and a understanding about reality and really would but I think what’s happened with much more about how you manage radical Continues on page 21 NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 21

young men had a deep sense of alienation the kind of the up-to-date view of conflict Gabrielle Rifkind on Conflict Resolution and anomie, many of them had come from and political extremism what would you say, different cultures, perhaps they’d come from if there is kind of one key thought that you continued from page 20 Pakistan or Bangladesh (and of course other wanted to really leave us with in terms of Middle East countries) with their families the journey that you’ve been on and what disciplinarian, not tolerating any kind of R: That does, in some ways reinforce the what they saw of their own parents was you found most essential in your work… dissent but it could be that when people thing that we’re trying to work against. people who came to a culture where they have done terrible things to each other couldn’t speak the language where they G: I suppose one key thought, would be the you need very strict tight rules. They’re an G: Yes. It’s a very interesting question about weren’t able to get jobs, and there was a ordinariness of human beings and how all of extraordinary example of development in what creates the conditions for groups like kind of humiliation for them, and probably us can be monstered by conflict. the face of a terrible trauma, I think we Islamic state and that’s certainly what I was wishing in some ways that these weren’t probably need to be a little more circumspect trying to explore in my last book. You have to the parents they wanted in terms of them This is a selection of the conversation and a little more psychological about what have the conditions in the first place. In the feeling integrated and empowered. It would between Richard Sherry and Gabrielle happens after these kinds of traumas. Middle East, you’ve had these endless cycles fit beautifully into the Freud idea that they Rifkind, for the full conversation please visit of war, it ripens and creates the conditions, were looking for a very strong father, and a our New Associations section on: bpc.org.uk R: In terms of the health aspects, and and then you need some kind of ideology strong father was the Islamic state. The podcast of the full interview will also be the relational or attachment repairing that links to it and so we had the Wahhabi available shortly that psychotherapists and psychoanalysts ideology that came out of Saudi Arabia. What you see more and more is when have a unique expertise in, I think it's Then there’s a kind of ordinariness to it, there’s disturbance in your society, and a Dr. Richard Sherry is founder and Clinical also really understanding working with young men in their bedrooms in the UK who disequilibrium, what people are looking for Director for Psychological Systems Ltd and environmentalists, social political educators were suddenly attracted to these movements, is strong leadership. I’m not sure they even the Institute for Applied Social Innovation and planners, and politicians to be able to what is it about them? Is it a particularly care what kind of leadership it is, it just (IASI). He is also the International start to bring things together. high risk group? Often we were struck by the deals with that awful sense of vulnerability Strategic Health Advisor for EuroCSE and ordinariness of some of these young men it and uncertainty in ourselves, and we can is on the Board of Global Health for the G: Yes and also to find a language that’s wasn't even that clear how traumatized they suddenly feel safe if there’s a strong leader. Wilderness Medicine Society (WMS). digestible to other professions. Words like had been. It’s something to be very very concerned ‘projective identification’ won't quite do it about because there lies the roots of fascism Gabrielle Rifkind is a group analyst, for people that are not in the trade. We have One of the things I certainly explored was and authoritarianism, and we can even see it psychotherapist and specialist in conflict to find a language that’s extremely ordinary the power of social media, the ability to happening in this country now - how people resolution. She is the founder and director and common-sense, things like people’s need be seduced online maybe some of these are more interested in not necessary what of the Oxford Process which is an to belong. I think people understand that people might have joined a rock group or leaders are doing, but whether they read organization that specializes in preventive language and I think sometimes we sort of a punk band but they joined Islamic state. strong. diplomacy and behind the scenes mediation. undermine our potential to make a political A kind of adolescent state, looking for the She is interested in the relationship between contribution by choosing a language that can kind of excitement to be part of something R: If we were to kind of consolidate both the conflict, geopolitics and the human mind. be quite alienating. bigger, something that gave them a kind of thinking you’ve done in your book and grandeur identity. Some of these particularly NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 22

reveals a universal need in all of us, as avoidance of crucial analytic themes” Theory in Practice human beings. This is the profound need (Davies, 2011). The dialectical discourse of for attachment and belonging to one group, identification and disidentification between at the same time as clearly identifying analyst and patient is central to the analytic other groups to which we do not belong. In encounter even when cultural or racial Culture, Race and Language discussing these dynamics of identification differences are not present or relevant. and disidentification, Dalal (Dalal, 2002) However, as Davies suggests, when those in the Consulting Room: refers to a joke about a devout and orthodox differences between the analytic couple Jew who is marooned on an isolated island. are actually present, the meanings of Minding the Gaps He builds two synagogues. When asked ‘sameness’ and ‘otherness’ acquire complex to explain this he says that one is the meanings. By Kannan Navaratnem synagogue he goes to and, the other is the one in which he would not set foot! Racial themes, especially those which An Inner City Immigrant Analyst’s Viewpoints – A section from explicitly concern skin colour, also have the ‘Racial enactments’ are what Leary defines potential readily to erupt in the treatment Kannan Navaratnem’s article based on papers presented at the Cambridge as interactive sequences embodying the of more damaged and disturbed patients. Convention of the Association of Independent Psychoanalysts, May 2017 and actualisation in the clinical situation of As a result, the proximity of primary the Regional Colloquium of the British Psychoanalytical Society, April 2018. cultural attitudes toward race and racial process to the conscious narrative often difference. She observes that there is a confronts and demands much of both and countertransference listening in growing force to recognise the analytic analyst and patient. As an immigrant Culture and Race: analytic work’ (Quinodoz et al, 2006). situation as deeply relational. In this analyst with my cultural, racial and skin Gaps in/between However, it actually differs in its tasks for context, she emphasises that “the analyst's colour differences - an actual foreigner Identities of Patient the immigrant analyst in relation to his personality and his or her person— – I have to be aware of the multiplicity patients, be they immigrants or not. including his or her race, ethnicity, and of concrete and symbolic meanings of and Analyst gender—are always instrumental in a patient’s narrative and the dynamic he gaps which form For some immigrant patients, the yearning evoking the clinical themes and dialogues currents in the areas of transference between the identities of for a cross cultural identification with that develop in the course of the work” and countertransference. However, the patients and analysts and an immigrant analyst is very powerful. (Leary, 2000). immediate analytic work, if it is at all those that are formative in The wish is not only to resonate with possible with some damaged and disturbed theirT respective identities - need careful each other at a more personal level in Davies emphasises that, while the cultural patients, may well have to begin with a analytic attention and working through. our emotional and existential difficulties background of the analyst is only one half gentle exploration of how I am experienced I think such work requires some audacity as foreigners, but also to have a common of the analytic inter-subjective story, the by him as a ‘foreigner of a different colour and courage. In its essence, it may not understanding, and prejudices, about the “Failure to acknowledge these differences, and creed’: be different from ‘the everyday audacity host nation and its people. I think these or to explore their unique meanings necessary for the internal processing patients’ predicament in therapy also for each analytic pair, may result in an Continues on page 23 NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 23

interchangeable use of these words continues to place the emphasis of a Culture, Race and Language in the obfuscates the actual difference between transformative cure in psychoanalysis Consulting Room: Minding the Gaps the two. A helpful distinction is drawn on interpretations based on verbal by Tang and Gardner who suggest that formulation. It could be argued, therefore, continued from page 22 race is a biologically determined factor when analyst and patient share the same that encompasses “certain distinctively language as their mother-tongue, their Timimi underlines the psychodynamics frightened of the black mummy and the physical traits now seen more as a social emotional contact is more fluid and that of race and colour when he points out black Pigga; she says, ‘Because they make construct with its point of origin being communication takes place through a that the term ‘Blacks’ often means those me black’. She talks about going to see you, identifications based on skin colour”. They verbal channel (Jiménez, 2004). However, identified as being black, as well as those to tell you about the babacar. The babacar add that such physical characteristics, analytic technique also takes account parts of the self identified with being black. now seems to be carrying blackness from which form the basis of a racial identity, of the significance of the pre-verbal As recipients of projections, ‘Blacks’ are, one person to the other” (Winnicott, 1980). are as dominant as gender of a person in and emotional level of communication in effect, being asked to act as containers developmental terms. In contradistinction, (Rayner, 1992), and our conceptual tools for these hated parts of the self. He asserts The human tendency to disavow unwanted they define culture as “those values, are not limited to verbal communication that “such dynamics will occur not only emotions by forcefully projecting them onto aspirations and behaviours that are in the analytic relationship. Recent in the landscape of multi-racial cities but – as well as into - others is a process well transmitted by conscious and unconscious research evidence too, shows that there also within the internal landscape of the recognised in our everyday psychoanalytic processes through teaching, parenting and are several levels of attunement mobilised mind, with whites and blacks separated with work. Such feelings, when lodged into the modelling” (Tang and Gardner, 1999). in therapeutic work, of which language is paranoid anxieties suffusing the scene when gaps of colour, culture and race, become A further elaboration is made in their only one (Gowrisunkur et al, 2002). one tries to become integrated with the the repudiated but distinctive attributes of assertion that culture is reflected in the other” (Timimi, 1996). others. When deeper dimensions of mental formation of ego-ideal, self and object Language in the consulting room could be disturbance are involved in these dynamics, representations as well as in traditions, thought of as having two aspects. One is An important reference to the theme of contempt and hatred become more concrete institutions and social organisations. affective language and the other is metaphor. blackness is given by Winnicott in the and entrenched. However, when such In his paper, ‘The Location of Cultural Affective language has its roots in the Piggle. In it, he refers to the letter written projective identifications take place in relation Experience’, Winnicott also reflects that in physical and the experiential while metaphor to him by the mother, following the little to me and others who are ‘actually different’ - using the word culture, he is “thinking of fuses sense experience and thought in girl’s first consultation session with him. in ‘colour and creed’. I think it is helpful to be inherited tradition” (Winnicott, 1967). language (Sharpe, 1940). A similar emphasis The mother repeats the girl’s sentences aware of the fragile narcissistic vulnerabilities is made by Brierley when she asserts that in the letter: “The babacar is ‘taking and the precarious internal splits in a ‘Affect language is older than speech’ blackness’ from me to you, and then I am patient in order to understand his defensive Language and (Brierley, 1937). However, the analyst’s frightened of you.” “I am frightened of the grandiosity and not to risk damaging the Meaning: Gaps in task also concerns another language. This black Pigga” and “I am bad”. The mother tenuous transference link to me as his analyst. Communication and involves helping the patient to translate his states that these have come up quite often communications from the language of the recently and goes on to say that “We are The words ‘Race’ and ‘Culture’ Continuity unconscious to the language of the conscious. not in the habit of telling her that she is appear continuously to be conflated in The influence of Strachey’s work on a bad girl and that sort of thing. She is popular culture. In fact, the common mutative interpretation (Strachey, 1934) Continues on page 24 NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 24

Culture, Race and Language in the different ethnic backgrounds sometimes about their respective sense of belonging feel a sense of grievance that their cultural and otherness. On the other hand, the Consulting Room: Minding the Gaps identity is either ignored or overlooked by absence of such work carries the risk of the analyst. This is especially so if he/she widening the gaps between the analyst and continued from page 23 is an immigrant analyst and/or of another his patient. These dynamics apply to all cultural background. immigrant analysts, even if they are what As Hoffer argues, Freud was very much other hand, it needs to be borne in mind Akhtar terms an ‘invisible immigrant’, the at home with the idea that psychoanalytic that memories which are recalled in the Sameness and invisibility here being attributed to being treatment itself is a form of translation of original language of experiences are more White, middle class, and English speaking these languages (Hoffer, 1989). Conversely, affectively charged and vivid than those Otherness: Gaps (Akhtar,1998). the analyst’s familiarity and understanding that are recalled in a different language created by immigrant of the language of dreams, symptoms, (Javier and Munoz 1993). Nevertheless, there may be many differences phantasies, and defences enables him to analyst and/or amongst different immigrant analysts. translate into words unconscious attempts The protracted mourning process immigrant patient As Lobban notices, these may include to communicate which had previously been mobilised through multiple migrations This area needs a special mention because class, culture, attitudes to assimilation inaccessible and incomprehensible. Through is often trans-generationally transmitted I think that the analytic tasks of the and integration, levels of privilege, their work together, the analyst and patient in families. It is a situation in which the immigrant analyst, with his own cultural professional training and theoretical come to have, as Rycroft puts it, a language patient also becomes the container of the and racial differences, are made more orientation, but “They all have to grapple of common means (Rycroft, 1958) in sharing unspoken residues of his or her parents' complex and difficult by the paradoxical, with viewing themselves at once through the same associations to words. mourning (Akhtar, 2003). yet the central necessity for him to find the the lens of mainstream culture and their patient and identify with him in himself. mother country lens” (Lobban, 2013). Nevertheless, actual language and words The words black, brown and white, used His sense and experience of ‘otherness’ She also emphasises that each immigrant in the consulting room are important. in ‘racialised’ ways, become “imbued with becomes multi-layered by issues of culture analyst evolves her own conscious and The healing process for the ‘Linguistically powerful associations, which increasingly and race in the consulting room. These, in unconscious blueprint regarding how to lacerated self’ (Akhtar, 1995) of an become dislocated from ‘things’ black and turn, add many meanings, which require fold her immigrant status into the job immigrant patient can take a long time. white” (Dalal, 2002). Equally, race in the the analyst (and at times his patient) to description “analyst” (Lobban, 2006). mind is determined by both internal and do some important supplementary work. She conceptualises a potential split in Yet, such a patient may also express a external factors, and both realities are The analyst, for his part, has to overcome the immigrant analyst denoting this as longing for ‘total communication’ in a important in the “analysis of racial material his inner obstacles in order to get to grips a ‘double-consciousness’, which results language (usually, the mother tongue) in the transference” (Hamer, 2002). In with the alikeness and otherness between from an unconscious attempt to maintain which is also “an object of idealization and a split between ‘Black and White’, there himself and his patient. Analytic work two separate versions of an analytic self, creates the narcissistic illusion that only it may be no room for a third position: A in examining and ascribing meaning to a culturally neutral one for indigenous can express things well. The new language, ‘Brownness’, ‘Yellowness' or the otherness unconscious and conscious fantasies in patients, and an outsider self for foreign and accordingly, is devalued as being weak of the analyst . Another important link here relation these issues facilitate the analytic immigrant patients. and ridiculous” (Akhtar, 1998). On the is embedded in the fact that patients from couple in making fruitful discoveries Continues on page 25 NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 25

‘cultural neutrality’ (Akhtar, 1998). Vigilance For the patient, references to race provide Culture, Race and Language in the is also needed to be aware of the gaps an additional point of entry to transference Consulting Room: Minding the Gaps between the internal and external realities reactions (Holmes, 1992). I think it of the nature of migration, be it for exile, is interesting that Ferenczi made an continued from page 24 refuge or education and employment. Often, important early comment about cultural these distinctions blur in relation to the loss and racial factors in the formation of It is of central importance that the immigrant the aftermath of migration becomes a new and trauma which emerge in the analytic Superego when he stated that: “Tendencies analyst does not make the assumption that he opportunity in the treatment of immigrant work with these patients. that, owing to the cultural upbringing and his immigrant patient necessarily have a patients. With interpretations of transference of the race and of the individual, have common immigrant experience, or similarities distortions and the need for corrective Minding the Gaps: become highly painful to consciousness in their identities of foreignness or the use of analytic experience, the immigrant analyst and are therefore repressed drag into language. Much work is needed in the area of also has the potential to become a ‘new Further Reflections repression with them a great number countertransference in order to maintain an object’ (Baker, 1993) for his patients. In the consulting room, the issue of race of other ideas and tendencies associated internal analytic attitude within oneself and leads to some specific issues. Intra-psychic with these complexes and dissociate them an external analytic stance with the patients. Migration, be it the analyst’s or the patient’s, meanings associated with race emerge in from the free interchange of thoughts” belongs to the category of cumulative the gap between the body – as a biological (Ferenczi, 1912). Highlighting Mahler’s emphasis on the area trauma. Its psychological effects are often given – and the historical and social of separation and individuation (Mahler, hidden, but remain deep and long-lasting. construction of it. Here, as Hamer points For a full list of all the references in the 1965), the Grinbergs suggest that if the In situations where the analyst and patient out, sameness or difference in body features article by Kannan Navaratnem, please mother's capacity for support has been are immigrants, countertransference (as in skin colour or hair texture) can head to the BPC website site, under the good, the child will be able to carry out becomes a crucial area of challenge, but also serve as the basis for a myriad of psychic New Associations section:www.bpc.org.uk/ the different developmental migrations, the source of creative work. In the many constructions. (Hamer, 2002) new-associations/issues/all and even actual migrations, if they occur, examples of patients I describe, there is a without subsequent disorders. However, they struggle to be sensitive to the specific gaps For the analyst, his cultural values and Kannan Navaratnem is a psychoanalyst predict that, “If the relationship with the created by cultural differences. Alongside racial background are an essential aspect in private practice. He teaches at the mother has been negative, lacking adequate this, the analytic requirement to pay careful of his subjectivity and may determine his Institute of Psychoanalysis, BPF, UCL holding, and the father has not been able to attention to the internal world of the views on human nature as well as any the and the Tavistock Clinic, where he is the change this situation, the result might be patient sometimes comes into conflict with choice of any particular analytic theory clinical seminar leader on the Inter-cultural future symptoms of excessive dependence the easier observation of the more obvious and technique in his work (Altman, 1996). Psychotherapy Course. or, on the contrary, an inability to develop cultural aspects of the patient. It is also important for the analyst to be roots and an illusory search for other earth- mindful about the deeper motivations and mothers”. They conclude that, under these These difficulties, nevertheless, also call for fantasies of patients who choose an ‘ethno- conditions, migrations tend to fail (Grinberg the awareness of the reality of the ‘ethnic culturally different’ analyst and carefully and Grinberg, 1984). Despite its trauma, dimension’ of my personality and the task of to examine and analyse the patient’s transferences (Akhtar, 2006). NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 26

room had now become a veritable sick bay Professional Heritage (Jones, 1957; Schur, 1972).

Dr. Ernest Jones (1957, p. 245), Freud’s colleague and, ultimately, biographer, Freud’s Death Bed: Notes noted that the father of psychoanalysis benefited from having his sick bay On The “Invalid Couch” At downstairs, in the study, because it afforded a clear view into the garden and permitted him to gaze at his “beloved flowers”; Maresfield Gardens whereas his upstairs bedroom, by contrast, looked out onto the road. Dr. Max Schur By Professor Brett Kahr (1972, p. 527), Freud’s physician, reported that, at one point, in September, 1939, t may not be widely appreciated Sigmund Freud arrived in London on 6 Freud had to be moved to a so-called ‘ that, on Saturday, 23rd September, June, 1938 – a refugee from the Nazis – but “safe” zone’ at Maresfield Gardens, to 1939, Sigmund Freud died, not in a he did not take occupancy of 20, Maresfield protect him from potential bombings, away bed but, rather, on a couch. Gardens, in London’s Swiss Cottage, until from the garden windows and into the centre of the room (Young-Bruehl, 1988). I 27 September, 1938, having spent the In spite of his illness, Freud worked Freud did not pass away on the famous previous months in Primrose Hill at 39, vigorously during the final months of 1938 psychoanalytical couch but, rather, on a Elsworthy Road. In his new home, parallel and during much of 1939. He even treated 'This special “invalid couch”, installed in his to the Finchley Road, Freud ensconced a small number of psychoanalytical study. himself in the combined consulting room patients and continued to write. Freud also extraordinary and study on the ground floor, but he slept spent time lounging in his garden on a room had now As this less well known couch has remained in a small bedroom on the first floor with special hanging couch. However, his cancer in storage at the Freud Museum London, Frau Professor Martha Freud, his devoted progressed, and he became increasingly become few psychoanalytical historians have ever wife. As Sigmund Freud, then eighty-two necrotic (Schur, 1972). By 1 August, 1939, a veritable seen Sigmund Freud’s actual death bed. years of age, struggled to ascend or descend Freud (1992) ceased clinical practice A close scrutiny of this “other” couch the spacious staircase (Berthelsen, 1987), entirely, and not long thereafter, it became sick bay.' might seem rather fetishistic, but it may his son, Ernst Freud, a skilled architect, clear that he could no longer be shuttled be of some interest to contemporary arranged for the installation of a lift which upstairs in the lift, and that he would The renowned psychoanalytical couch, psychoanalytical clinicians to learn more transported the father of psychoanalysis have to be cared for full-time in his more which Freud had brought to London from about Freud’s final moments. from one level to the next (Roazen, 1993). spacious and brightly-lit, book-lined and Vienna, and which he had used in his antique-strewn study. This extraordinary practice for more than fifty years, would Continues on page 27 NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 27

BRIGHTON · LONDON · MANCHESTER · MIDLANDS · NORTH EAST (Newcastle) · OXFORD · TURVEY (BEDS) · YORK

Freud’s Death Bed: Notes On The “Invalid

Couch” At Maresfield Gardens Training and Development in Group Analysis continued from page 26 Providing training for over 800 Suitably qualified and experienced not have provided the dying man with only invalid beds and chairs and appliances individuals every year throughout the therapists (including from non-group sufficient orthopaedic support; hence, the but, also, hospital surgical furniture, bath UK, the Institute of Group Analysis is the trainings) can continue their learning family purchased a special “invalid couch” chairs, and ambulances. Headquartered, premier provider of group analytic and and development with a qualifying training group work training in the UK. such as the IGA Diploma in Group Supervision from J. and A. Carter’s, a well-known initially, at 6-A, New Cavendish Street, or IGA Diploma in Reflective Practice in Relevant to anyone with an interest Organisations which lead to IGA associate company, based on Great Portland Street in John Carter’s company, which eventually in the dynamic relationship between membership (subject to terms and Central London, which specialised in the came to receive a royal warrant, also the individual and the group, the IGA conditions). If you would like to know more about manufacture of furniture for the aged and produced revolving bed-tables, wheelchairs, Foundation Course in Group Analysis group analysis and group therapy, or how the disabled. invalid carriages, hand-lifters, stretchers, introduces students to an exploration to continue your learning journey, join and perambulators. Furthermore, Carter of our essentially social nature and one of our free events or courses. Book the wide range of applications of group J. and A. Carter’s supplied the Freud created a patented “literary machine” – online at www.groupanalysis.org or ring analytic theory. household with a suitable invalid couch, essentially a bookstand designed to help the National Office on 020 7431 2693. Group analytic training will equip some 224.5 centimetres in length, 54 reduce the orthopaedic strain on Victorian students to understand and to participate centimetres in height, and 77 centimetres scholars who had become fatigued from more fully in a range of group settings in width, consisting of a dark, mahogany holding heavy tomes! Eventually, John including: work, family, social, learning frame with turned feet, and an upholstered Carter amalgamated his business with The IGA provides: and therapeutic. base attached to the upper side of the that of Messrs. Alfred Carter of Holborn Graduates of the IGA Qualifying frame. This special invalid couch, one of Viaduct and Shoe Lane, and they came to Course in Group Analysis are eligible • Foundation Courses the manufacturer’s many types of patient trade as Messrs. Carter and, later, as J. and to become full members of the IGA • Introductory Week-ends and to gain professi onal registration • Professional training (UKCP furniture, also contained a special ratchet A. Carter. accredited) which permitted the head end to be lifted. with the UKCP as clinical psychotherapists. • Short Courses Freud’s new bed boasted a silk-trimmed The particular type of invalid couch, • Personal development and CPD seat and a cotton fabric covering, decorated which had now come to serve as Sigmund Book Online workshops with a floral pattern, and trimmed with Freud’s bed, had first become popular www.groupanalysis.org • Bespoke Training and Consultancy blue, pink, and green silken cords on the during the Regency period; and from the • Reflective Practice in Organisations seat and on the back. 1830s onwards, it would be fitted with Enquiries • Therapy referrals to Group and 1:1 springs and other mechanisms, which 020 7431 2693 • Supervisor and TGA referrals The firm of J. and A. Carter’s, originally allowed for the adjustment of the patient’s established in London circa 1880 by one bodily position (cf. Kravis, 2017). Institute of Group Analysis 1 Daleham Gardens London NW3 5BY 020 7431 2693 www.groupanalysis.org The IGA is a charity registered in England and Wales (280942), and in Scotland (SC040468); and is a company registered in John Carter, had become leading suppliers England and Wales 01499655 of patient furniture, manufacturing not Continues on page 28 NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 28

Freud’s Death Bed: Notes On The “Invalid Eventually, in the small hours of the Acknowledgements morning of 23 September, 1939, the eighty- I wish to extend my particular thanks to Ms. Bryony Davies, Assistant Curator and Photo Library Manger Couch” At Maresfield Gardens three-year-old Sigmund Freud, assisted of the Freud Museum London, for her gracious by an injection of morphine, died on his assistance. continued from page 27 invalid couch, only a few feet away from References the more famous carpeted and cushioned Balzac, Honoré de (n.d. [1920]). La Peau de chagrin: Roman philosophique. Vienna: Manz, Éditeur. psychoanalytical couch. Berthelsen, Detlef (1987). Alltag bei Familie Freud: We do not know precisely when Freud In spite of his progressive emaciation and Die Erinnerungen der Paula Fichtl. Hamburg: moved into his study full-time and lay upon his excruciating pain, Freud bore his final To this day, Sigmund Freud’s death bed Hoffmann und Campe Verlag. Freud, Sigmund (1992). The Diary of Sigmund Freud: his invalid couch but, in all likelihood, he days with fortitude. Indeed, his sister-in- or invalid couch remains in the possession 1929-1939. A Record of the Final Decade. Michael did so only a few weeks before his death. law Minna Bernays remarked that a more of the Freud Museum London, carefully Molnar (Ed. and Transl.). London: Hogarth Press. Sadly, at that time, the genius physician ordinary man might already have killed preserved in a small upstairs storage room, Jones, Ernest (1957). The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud: Volume 3. The Last Phase. 1919-1939. New and psychoanalyst began to experience himself by this point (Roazen, 1993). which also contains the many boxes of York: Basic Books. some memory loss (Roazen, 1995) as archived papers of both Sigmund Freud Kravis, Nathan (2017). On the Couch: A Repressed well as tremendous physical pain from and Anna Freud. This precious piece of History of the Analytic Couch from Plato to Freud. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. In spite of his furniture – catalogue item LDFRD 4902 his long-standing carcinoma. Tragically, Roazen, Paul (1993). Meeting Freud’s Family. Freud’s bones became more and more illness, Freud – will, perhaps, one day be displayed to Amherst, Massachusetts: University of foetid and emitted a putrefying odour members of the general public. Meanwhile, Massachusetts Press. worked vigorously Roazen, Paul (1995). How Freud Worked: irst-Hand which frightened his beloved chow (Jones, we must extend our thanks to the curatorial Accounts of Patients. Northvale, New Jersey: Jason 1957) and, also, attracted countless flies; during the final staff of the museum for permitting the Aronson. consequently, his attendants had to cover publication of two photographs of this Schur, Max (1972). Freud: Living and Dying. New his makeshift invalid bed with mosquito months of 1938 hugely resonant, even iconic, “other” couch York: International Universities Press. Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth (1988). Anna Freud: A netting (Schur, 1972). and during – possibly the first time that such images Biography. New York: Summit Books/Simon and have appeared Schuster. As all Freud scholars will know, during much of 1939. He in print his final days, he read Honoré de Balzac’s even treated a novel, La Peau de chagrin: Roman Professor Brett Kahr is a registrant of philosophique, in the original French, in small number of the British Psychoanalytic Council and a an edition published in Vienna (Balzac, n.d. Trustee of the Freud Museum London and [1920]) – a book about a man whose skin psychoanalytical of Freud Museum Publications. His books begins to decompose. As Freud remarked patients and include Life Lessons from Freud and Coffee to his physician, Dr. Max Schur, ‘ “This with Freud. He works in Hampstead, North was the proper book for me to read; it deals continued to London, with individuals and couples. with shrinking and starvation” ’ (Quoted in write' Schur, 1972, p. 528). NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 29

room, some looking stupefied, some crying On the Ground in silence, no one saying a word. This scene from mental health practice is in total contrast with what I experience every Sunday and Monday in some other part of A Letter this unthinkable city… It’s been over three years that every from Tehran Sunday and Monday I leave my house in eastern Tehran at around 2.00 p.m. in By Mahyar Alinaghi order to catch the first bus from a station which takes me on a journey that has ome days ago, I had to attend never failed to fascinate me. At the end of a hospital in Tehran for some this trip, I reach a somewhat old-fashioned medical examination and while building, nine floors high, in northern wandering around to find the Tehran, which houses many physicians, Mahyar Alinaghi and his growing psychoanalytic library. Sorthopedic ward, I stumbled upon the lawyers, and business administrators. psychiatric ward and given the curiosity But in addition, there is an office on study English. I remember clearly how, In 2009, I managed to enrol in the faculty I always had to find out what happens the sixth floor where one can find … a while engaged in my studies in English of psychology at the University of Tehran: between the closed walls of psychiatric psychoanalyst! language, we had the task of discussing the oldest university in the country, wards in Iran, I didn’t risk to lose the prominent twentieth-century figures. I founded in 1934. To my great sadness, I chance for a sneak peak. Just the very few As a twenty-six-year-old psychology was told by another student that Freud discovered that psychoanalysis, which I minutes I spent there before I was detected graduate with a long-standing interest was a man in Vienna who had developed referred to as my “high school sweetheart”, by a macho male nurse who led me outside in psychoanalysis, I regret that I a new “religion” called psychoanalysis. was not at all welcome within Iranian while murmuring under his breath such cannot provide a full-fledged history of This came as a great surprise because I had academic circles owing to many historico- words as “dangerous people inside… psychoanalysis in Iran, or a comprehensive previously stumbled upon Freud’s name political reasons. My studies began in the security…” etc. was more than enough to examination of its current status. and I knew him to be a self-proclaimed lonely library of the university where, to put me in a state of shock. The ward was Still, I trust that this humble piece of “godless Jew”. For better or worse, my my delight, I discovered an old, dusty set festooned in white tiles up to the ceiling writing provides a glimpse into my own interest in humanities and literature of the famous Standard Edition in blue (which mostly made the ward resemble a generation’s encounter with the talking led me to the study of the human mind binding, bequeathed before the Islamic morgue) and there were at least ten people cure in a land far away. and in the hope of learning more about revolution of 1978, and piled at the end of in each section, with apparently no private Freud whose name now appeared more a long corridor where librarians kept books space. The unisex ward hosted men as My first encounter with Freud and frequently in my reading material, I not frequently requested by readers ! young as eighteen to octogenarians with psychoanalysis took place years back decided to study psychology at university, various diagnoses, all crumbled in the same when, as a high school student, I began to upon my graduation from high school. Continues on page 30 NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 30

published an award-winning title, Doing professionals such as Dr. Ruben Gallo, Dr. temporarily due to the aforementioned A Letter from Psychoanalysis in Tehran. I then had the Salman Akhtar, Dr. Jay Greenberg, Dr. sanctions, which prohibit any financial Tehran great privilege of attending Beheshti Thomas Charlier and the late Dr. Felix de exchanges necessary for formal University in Tehran (founded in 1959) Mandelssohn, and Dr. Monica Horovitz, to cooperation. continued from page 29 where Dr. Homayounpour also lectures. name just a few, who have kindly accepted I subsequently discovered that she had our invitation to visit the country for All the same, I have established a As I began to discover Freud through founded the Freudian Group of Tehran, seminars and supervisions. psychoanalytical library in my home in his writings, my already burning desire begun in 2007, with almost five initial Tehran, and so far I have acquired more to learn about psychoanalysis became members. These endeavours have all unfolded than 1,800 titles in English and French. even more enflamed, and I craved new without any national or international I have undertaken this project with the material to read. But to my despair, I I joined this group almost three years ago affiliation, with students and candidates assistance of many friends who have discovered that various sanctions imposed and it has been a pleasure to see how this not being able to receive any certificates immigrated to other countries and who on Iran for nearly four decades forbid group now boasts one hundred members or degrees for having enrolled in the have always honoured me with their almost all financial interactions with the in Tehran and fifty others in Mashhad, a various classes or for having participated friendship and purchased appropriate outside world, making any purchases, religious city in eastern Iran. The group in conferences. (The psychoanalytical titles of my need and sent them to even of books, literally impossible. I then subscribes to the I.P.A.’s tripartite system journal club created by members of our Iran throughout these years. I hope discovered that reading excerpts of books of training (theory, personal analysis, and group meets in Mashhad every month with that one day we can inaugurate “The on Amazon, as well as on-line reviews, clinical supervision – the latter reserved for an audience of more than one hundred Psychoanalytic Library of Tehran” which helped me with my education. Alas, I had those already practising psychoanalysis and people. This journal club has since become would be the first library of its kind in no possibility of obtaining a subscription to psychoanalytical psychotherapy, or those one of the cultural highlights in a city well the country. I have also translated several Pep-Web or other similar resources. aspiring to do so). The Freudian Group known for its religious ambience.) psychoanalytical papers and four books has thus far organised two international into Persian, namely, The Examined Life Happily, while embarking upon my congresses, one on “Freud and Women” by Dr. Stephen Grosz; Like Wind, Like self-directed psychoanalytical odyssey, I and a second on “Geographies of '… my interest in Wave:Fables from the Land of the Repressed had the good fortune to meet Dr. Gohar Psychoanalysis, Encounters Between humanities and by Dr. Stefano Bolognini as well as Tea Homayounpour, an Iranian member Cultures in Tehran”. This second congress with Winnicott and Coffee with Freud by of the International Psychoanalytical has since been converted into a book, literature led me Professor Brett Kahr. Association. While searching for a certain launched at the 2015 I.P.A. Congress in to the study of the review on-line, I saw a link to a paper Boston. Students in Tehran, as well as those Tehran still has its own delights in terms entitled “The Couch and the Chador”, in Mashhad, enjoy theory classes, where human mind.' of book collecting. Believe it or not, published in 2012 in The International they study Freud extensively, as well as I did manage to find a copy of Erich Journal of Psychoanalysis. I was delighted other classical and present-day authors. It is a pity to learn that the attempt of Neumann’s Amor and Psyche: The Psychic and surprised to discover that the I.P.A. Over the years, we have benefited from the Freudian Group of Tehran to become Development of the Feminine from an had an Iranian member and that this the presence of internationally acclaimed an I.P.A. allied centre has been put to rest ambulant bookseller in a secluded street particular psychoanalyst had already Continues on page 31 NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 31

chapter on ‘Sadism and Intellectual A Letter from Sadism: Psychoanalytic Disability’ (Chapter 5). Tehran developmental perspectives I admire the clarity with which core continued from page 30 concepts from forensic psychotherapy are (2018) Edited Amita Sehgal, explained and illustrated. This includes corner in Tehran for less than forty concepts from Glasser’s difficult papers on pennies! And who would ever have thought Oxford, Routledge violence, perversion and sadism and ideas that one could find, in Tehran, a book from Freud, Klein, Bion and Winnicott. written by a Jewish psychoanalyst who Reviewed by Gabrielle Brown More contemporary psychoanalytic pioneered in-depth psychology in Israel? theories are also presented, such as Yakeley’s work on violence and reflective The story of psychoanalysis in Iran has capacity and Motz’s ideas of how addictive really just begun, but as Freud had once his superb collection from Sadism uses aggression violence in ‘toxic couples’ provides an remarked in his famous radio broadcast, Brett Kahr’s Forensic and sometimes intensity that may be experienced as love. “the struggle is not yet over” Psychotherapy Monograph violence to cause The wide appeal of the book is the way in series offers deep suffering in the object, which it makes part of our psychoanalytic understanding of sadistic, aggressive rather than simply destroy Tehran, Iran. T legacy genuinely accessible and useful. and victimising relations throughout the it. When we are being sadistic, exerting March, 2018. lifecycle. Discussions of case material control and creating strong feelings of fear, But the book is much more than a good Mahyar Alinaghi is a graduate in and clinical technique describe sadism shame and vulnerability in another, brings textbook. The real delight of reading it psychology from the University of Tehran in children, adolescents, between the excitement. This sexualised aggression is how each chapter gives insight into a and a current trainee of the Freudian generations, within couples and in victims provides a psychic solution that defends our different field of work and the important Group of Tehran. He has so far translated of sexual violence and abuse. The primitive minds against feeling helpless, depressed, conceptual developments that each author four psychoanalytic titles from English in to terrors of early life are powerfully re- empty and craving human contact. Susan has achieved within it. I learnt a great Persian. evoked by existential challenges of Irving (Chapter 7) notes how Freud and deal and felt intellectually challenged subsequent development, including in subsequent psychoanalysts use the term and refreshed. Many chapters are ageing and the end of life and for those ‘sexualisation’ to denote ‘an unconscious generously referenced – Graham Music, living with intellectual disability. It is mechanism leading to excitation and not for instance, provides the reader with 80 useful to have a volume which presents the the manner of the subsequent acting out.’ references as he illustrates his correlation whole arch of human development and (p. 122). Masochistic fantasies are often between classical psychoanalytic ideas of brings together creative thinking from a the other side of the same coin, providing developmental trauma and contemporary wide range of highly specialist clinicians. perverse retreat from psychic reality, as understandings of the brain. Morit Richard Curen describes in his moving

Continues on page 32 NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 32

Working in her countertransference, Sadism: Irving notes ‘a huge split between extreme Obituary Psychoanalytic omnipotent certainty and the fear of developmental knowing’ (p. 126) which perverts the relationship with reality in the work. perspectives Richard Curen, is one of several authors Mildred Forrell continued from page 31 who encourages us think about sadism as ‘reaching out to others for understanding and compassion, even though it is done in a Heitzler’s introduces ways of working (1923-2018): Editor way that might make one turn and run in with the somatic trauma of a victim of the other direction’ (p. 89). Sandra Evans gang rape, in which the sadism of the points out that professionals also have perpetrators needs to be understood and of the Mind. sadistic responses to vulnerability in those responded to within the containing, to whom we provide treatment or care, triangular space of the therapeutic who come to embody our own dis-owned encounter. Brett Kahr, reflecting on parts: ‘understanding our own sadistic By Professor Brett Kahr sexual cruelty within apparently devoted feelings…is a governance issue for all care couple relationships presents his theory of institutions’ (p. 163). n 5 May 2018, Mildred Forrell, ‘intra-marital infidelity’, where unilateral a much-loved psychoanalyst, fantasies act like ‘erotic tumours’ which Overall, this book provides the valuable died at the age of ninety-four may provoke a crisis, termed a ‘conjugal tools for making creative use of sometimes years. Although Forrell lived aneurysm’. His carefully worked case challenging communications from our andO worked in Manhattan, she will be examples and contributions from his patients without lapse into sentimentality, remembered by Britons for her loyal work extensive research on sexual fantasy, sensationalism or moralising as a training therapist at the London Centre allow him to suggest that it is fruitful for Psychotherapy during the 1970s and to think about ‘whether we marry our Gabrielle Brown, Adult Psychotherapist. 1980s, in which capacity she fostered an partners primarily as an expression of Portman Clinic. Tavistock and Portman entire generation of practitioners. love, or rather, as an opportunity to express NHS Trust. London. hatred’ (p. 114). Also from couple work Born in Brooklyn, New York, on 11 is Susan Irving’s fascinating observations November, 1923, Mildred Brines first of a ‘sadomasochistic monad’ in which worked as a receptionist at the Office of difference and otherness becomes an War Information during World War II. unbearable threat, through the legacy Her supervisors quickly recognised her of fused maternal relating in early life. Continues on page 33 NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 33

both “warm” and, also, endowed with interest in story-telling, which she had the psychoanalyst shape stories. Both take Mildred Forrell considerable “intellectual curiosity”. Upon come to regard as a lost art, deserving of bits of narrative and piece them together.” (1923-2018): Editor qualification, Mildred Forrell developed resurrection. In many respects, one might think of of the Mind a heaving practice in Highgate, North Mildred Forrell as a veritable “Editor of the London, and her trainees remained devoted Mildred’s Mind”. continued from page 32 to her over decades to come. granddaughter, Dr. I had the great pleasure of having known In 1984, Mildred returned to Manhattan. Mildred for many years, first as a family capacities and trained her to become a Keen to develop her professional capacities Anna Marshall, friend and, gradually, as a colleague. I have film editor, with special responsibility for even further, she became a licensed social a Chartered rarely met such a warm and delightful creating anti-German propaganda movies. worker and, also, a trainee psychoanalyst at practitioner, whom I experienced as the Gene Forrell, a budding composer, wrote the New York Freudian Society. Professor Psychologist for epitome of compassion and sincerity. the scores for many of these films, and in Martin Nass, who supervised Forrell’s first the Camden and due time, he and Mildred married. five-times-weekly case, described her as Mrs. Forrell continued to treat patients “highly intuitive” and “clinically astute”, Islington N.H.S. until only weeks before her death. Hunter After the war, Mildred became increasingly with an “outstanding capacity to “read” Foundation College in New York City, the home of prominent as a film editor and Gene, the material with her patients”, thus psychoanalytical social work, has now likewise, as a musician, enjoying successful distinguishing herself “far beyond many of Trust in London, inherited her professional library. She will careers in Manhattan, before relocating to the students in the program”. be deeply missed by her family and friends, London, where Gene Forrell conducted the characterised her her colleagues, and, of course, her many English National Orchestra and the English Gradually, Mildred developed a thriving grandmother, in grateful patients. Sinfonia. practice in Manhattan and she worked full-time well into her nineties. Her whose footsteps (I wish to express my kind thanks to Betsy At some point, Mildred forged an patients embraced her with such affection she followed, as Spanbock and Professor Martin Nass of the acquaintance with Ilse Seglow, founder of that many found it impossible to leave Contemporary Freudian Society for their the London Centre for Psychotherapy, who treatment! “forever curious”' kind assistance and, also, Dr. Earl Hopper became a cherished mentor. A formidable for his reminiscences. I extend my deepest woman who had studied with the Mildred’s granddaughter, Dr. Anna Mildred’s daughter, London-based theatre appreciation to Mildred Forrell’s daughters, pioneering psychoanalysts Karl Landauer Marshall, a Chartered Psychologist director and writer Lisa Forrell, noted that Lisa Forrell and Bess Steiger, and to her in Frankfurt and, also, August Aichhorn in for the Camden and Islington N.H.S. many struggled to understand how her granddaughter, Dr. Anna Marshall) Vienna, Seglow championed Mildred and Foundation Trust in London, characterised mother navigated the transition from film invited her onto the training programme her grandmother, in whose footsteps editor to psychoanalyst. Mildred often of the newly-formed organisation. Dr. she followed, as “forever curious”. Dr. spoke about these seemingly disparate Earl Hopper, one of Mildred’s teachers, Marshall described Mrs. Forrell as a professions, explaining, “They are really remembered her affectionately as classical Freudian who maintained a huge one and the same. Both the film editor and NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 34

News Diary

The signatories are: The British For full event listings, visit: 13 October 2018 BPC signs Psychological Society, The Association www.bpc.org.uk/events-calendar NEAPP CONFERENCE 2018 - “ HOME IS for Child and Adolescent Mental Health, WHERE WE START FROM" REFLECTIONS ON A JOURNEY Association of Christian Counsellors, The OCTOBER the MoU2 on Neville St, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 Association of LGBT Doctors and Dentists, 12 October 2018 5DH, UK www.bpc.org.uk/events-calendar British Association for Behavioural ANGER AND CREATIVITY: THE DYNAMICS Conversion and Cognitive Psychotherapies, The OF AGGRESSION IN INTIMATE FAMILY British Association for Counselling and RELATIONSHIPS NOVEMEBER Therapy Susanna Abse Psychotherapy, British Psychoanalytic 3rd November 2018 Council, CliniQ, College of Sexual and Tavistock Relationships, 70 Warren Street, PP NOW 2018 – PSYCHOANALYTIC The BPC has reiterated our opposition Relationship Therapists, The National London W1T 5PB PSYCHOTHERAPY NOW 2018 to conversion therapy alongside 15 Counselling Society, NHS England, NHS https://tavistockrelationships.ac.uk/ INNOVATION AND EVIDENCE: A CONTEMPORARY VISION other leading organisations with the Scotland, Pink Therapy, Relate, Royal training-courses/cpd Jonathan Shedler, Stephen Grosz, Dr Eilis signing of the second Memorandum of College of General Practitioners, and the 13 October 2018 Kennedy, Dr Felicitas Rost, Dr David Understanding on conversion therapy, UK Council for Psychotherapy updated to include gender identity. The Confederation for Analytical Psychology Hewison MoU2 supports the rights of Lesbian, Conference The British Library, 96 Euston Rd, London AFRICAN AMERICAN JUNGIAN ANALYSTS: NW1 2DB www.bpc.org.uk Gay, Bi and Trans (LGBT) people at ON CULTURE, CLINICAL TRAINING/ risk from conversion therapy. MoU2 is a PRACTICE AND RACISM 30 November 2018 commitment to end the harm caused to Resource Centre, 366 Holloway Rd, WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE: the LGBT community by a practice that London, N7 6PA CELEBRATING THE FIRST 70 YEARS OF assumes that their identity is a mental Consulting Room for Hire http://www.confederation-an-psych.uk TAVISTOCK RELATIONSHIPS - LEARNING illness that can be ‘cured.’ Signatories FROM EXPERIENCE, INNOVATING FOR THE FUTURE have pledged to achieve this by ensuring 13 October 2018 Professor Paul Burstow, Stanley the public are well informed about the Wandsworth, South London Northern Ireland Association for the Study Ruszczynski, Baroness Claire Tyler, Dr risks and that healthcare professionals Six newly refurbished, sound insulated of Psychoanalysis (NIASP) 30th Renee Singh, Mary Morgan, Professor and psychological therapists are aware of rooms minutes from Wandsworth Town Anniversary Conference SAFEGUARDING THE ANALYTIC SPACE IN A Brett Kahr, Andrew Balfour the ethical issues relating to conversion station. Kitchen, toilet and shower SAFEGUARDING CULTURE King’s Building, King’s College London, therapy. The MoU was launch at a House facilities. Designed for psychodynamic/ 185 Stranmillis Rd, Belfast, BT9 5EE, UK Strand, London WC2R 2LS of Commons reception hosted by Ben psychoanalytic work with day-beds in four http://niasp.org.uk/ https://tavistockrelationships.ac.uk/ Bradshaw MP. rooms. £10 per hour. forthcoming-events/1120-autumn- Email [email protected] conference-2018 NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 35 ANNIVERSARY 70th CONFERENCE WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE: CELEBRATING THE FIRST 70 YEARS OF TAVISTOCK RELATIONSHIPS Learning from Experience, Innovating for the Future

30 November 2018 Speakers to include: at King’s Building, King’s College, London WC2R 2LS The conference will explore what we mean when we talk about love, and consider the nature Louis Theroux of intimate relationships at this particular moment of 21st-century history. Lisa Appignanesi What are the pressures brought to bear on the couple relationship in the age of reality television programmes such as Love Island, and how can we think about these clinically? Stanley Ruszcynski Couple psychoanalytic psychotherapy has been shown to be effective in addressing the key social problems of our time, and can help to alleviate distress in children as well as Professor Brett Kahr their parents. The conference will look at the context of social and family policy from the inception of the Professor Paul Burstow welfare state in post-war Britain to now, with a focus on evidence and the links between family functioning and mental health. Baroness Claire Tyler Consideration will be given to the institution’s ground-breaking developments in analytic Mary Morgan work with couples, including the therapeutic opportunities of the triangular setting of couple therapy, and the importance of working with the couple’s enacted experience in the room.

BOOK NOW AT https://tavistockrelationships.ac.uk/training-courses/cpd Tel: 020 7380 8288 Email: [email protected]

Counselling and Psychotherapy Training

Forthcoming CPD Courses in London NEW Diploma in Being in the Moment: How Acting Techniques When Hope Is Lost: The Impact of Perinatal Psychosexual Therapy Can Help the Therapist to Be Present Loss, Infertility and IVF on the Couple and This two-year course, starting in Date: Friday 21 September 2018 the Family January, is designed to provide Trainers: Scott Williams, theatre director and producer; Date: Saturday, 2 February 2019 knowledge, skills and opportunities Perrine Moran, psychodynamic counsellor and Trainer: Dr Marguerite Reid, child and adolescent for clinical practice in the area psychoanalytic couple psychotherapist psychotherapist (perinatal psychotherapist) and couple of psychosexual and relationship Fee: £118 psychoanalytic psychotherapist therapy. It qualifies graduates to Fee: £118 (£108 if booked and paid for by 22 Dec 2018) practise as psychosexual therapists Anger and Creativity: The Dynamics of in statutory and voluntary sectors as Aggression in Intimate Family Relationships Venue: Tavistock Relationships, 70 Warren Street, London well as in private practice. Date: Friday 12 October 2018 W1T 5PB Open to qualified therapists and Trainer: Susanna Abse, psychoanalytic psychotherapist, For the latest listing of all our CPD courses see: counsellors of any discipline. executive coach, organisational consultant www.TavistockRelationships.ac.uk/training-courses/cpd Teaching modules will be delivered on Fee: £118 weekends (Saturdays and Sundays monthly in year 1 and Saturdays The Impact of the Internet on the Couple and the monthly in year 2). Students will be Individual: Social Media, Online Gaming FREE LONDON OPEN EVENING offered a containing environment and Pornography Friday 2 November 2018, 6pm-8pm in which to weave together theory, Date: Friday, 7 December 2018 practice, self-reflective skills and Trainer: Poppy Mellor, couples therapist and For qualified therapists and those interested in group supervision. Support from a psychosexual therapist foundation study. personal tutor will be provided with Fee: £118 (£108 if booked and paid for by 26 Oct 2018) Learn about our courses including: opportunities to undertake clinical Inhabiting Life in Later Years: How to Work work at an external placement to • PG/Dip MA in Couple & Individual Psychodynamic broaden experience. Clinically with Ageing and Dementia Counselling/Psychotherapy Full course details including clinical Date: Friday 25 January 2019 • MA in Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Trainer: Andrew Balfour, consultant clinical psychologist, case requirements available on adult and couple psychotherapist, Chief Executive of • Introduction to Couple Counselling & website. Tavistock Relationships Psychotherapy Fee: £5,900 Fee: £118 (£108 if booked and paid for by 14 Dec 2018) Venue: Tavistock Relationships, 70 Warren Street, Venue: Tavistock Relationships, London W1T 5PB 70 Warren Street, London W1T 5PB BOOK NOW: Tel: 020 7380 8288 Email: [email protected] www.TavistockRelationships.ac.uk ANNIVERSARY 70th CONFERENCE WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE: CELEBRATING THE FIRST 70 YEARS OF TAVISTOCK RELATIONSHIPS Learning from Experience, Innovating for the Future

30 November 2018 Speakers to include: at King’s Building, King’s College, London WC2R 2LS The conference will explore what we mean when we talk about love, and consider the nature Louis Theroux of intimate relationships at this particular moment of 21st-century history. Lisa Appignanesi What are the pressures brought to bear on the couple relationship in the age of reality television programmes such as Love Island, and how can we think about these clinically? Stanley Ruszcynski Couple psychoanalytic psychotherapy has been shown to be effective in addressing the key social problems of our time, and can help to alleviate distress in children as well as Professor Brett Kahr their parents. The conference will look at the context of social and family policy from the inception of the Professor Paul Burstow welfare state in post-war Britain to now, with a focus on evidence and the links between family functioning and mental health. Baroness Claire Tyler Consideration will be given to the institution’s ground-breaking developments in analytic Mary Morgan work with couples, including the therapeutic opportunities of the triangular setting of couple therapy, and the importance of working with the couple’s enacted experience in the room.

BOOK NOW AT https://tavistockrelationships.ac.uk/training-courses/cpd

Tel: 020 7380 8288 Email: [email protected] NEW ASSOCIATIONS ISSUE 26 AUTUMN 2018 36 Counselling and Psychotherapy Training

Forthcoming CPD Courses in London NEW Diploma in Being in the Moment: How Acting Techniques When Hope Is Lost: The Impact of Perinatal Psychosexual Therapy Can Help the Therapist to Be Present Loss, Infertility and IVF on the Couple and This two-year course, starting in Date: Friday 21 September 2018 the Family January, is designed to provide Trainers: Scott Williams, theatre director and producer; Date: Saturday, 2 February 2019 knowledge, skills and opportunities Perrine Moran, psychodynamic counsellor and Trainer: Dr Marguerite Reid, child and adolescent for clinical practice in the area psychoanalytic couple psychotherapist psychotherapist (perinatal psychotherapist) and couple of psychosexual and relationship Fee: £118 psychoanalytic psychotherapist therapy. It qualifies graduates to Fee: £118 (£108 if booked and paid for by 22 Dec 2018) practise as psychosexual therapists Anger and Creativity: The Dynamics of in statutory and voluntary sectors as Aggression in Intimate Family Relationships Venue: Tavistock Relationships, 70 Warren Street, London well as in private practice. Date: Friday 12 October 2018 W1T 5PB Open to qualified therapists and Trainer: Susanna Abse, psychoanalytic psychotherapist, For the latest listing of all our CPD courses see: counsellors of any discipline. executive coach, organisational consultant www.TavistockRelationships.ac.uk/training-courses/cpd Teaching modules will be delivered on Fee: £118 weekends (Saturdays and Sundays monthly in year 1 and Saturdays The Impact of the Internet on the Couple and the monthly in year 2). Students will be Individual: Social Media, Online Gaming FREE LONDON OPEN EVENING offered a containing environment and Pornography Friday 2 November 2018, 6pm-8pm in which to weave together theory, Date: Friday, 7 December 2018 practice, self-reflective skills and Trainer: Poppy Mellor, couples therapist and For qualified therapists and those interested in group supervision. Support from a psychosexual therapist foundation study. personal tutor will be provided with Fee: £118 (£108 if booked and paid for by 26 Oct 2018) Learn about our courses including: opportunities to undertake clinical Inhabiting Life in Later Years: How to Work work at an external placement to • PG/Dip MA in Couple & Individual Psychodynamic broaden experience. Clinically with Ageing and Dementia Counselling/Psychotherapy Full course details including clinical Date: Friday 25 January 2019 • MA in Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Trainer: Andrew Balfour, consultant clinical psychologist, case requirements available on adult and couple psychotherapist, Chief Executive of • Introduction to Couple Counselling & website. Tavistock Relationships Psychotherapy Fee: £5,900 Fee: £118 (£108 if booked and paid for by 14 Dec 2018) Venue: Tavistock Relationships, 70 Warren Street, Venue: Tavistock Relationships, London W1T 5PB 70 Warren Street, London W1T 5PB BOOK NOW: Tel: 020 7380 8288 Email: [email protected] www.TavistockRelationships.ac.uk