Joué
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"Persecutory guilt is simply a form of self-attack, it is tormenting and it belongs to the paranoid schizoid position and it is narcissistic. People sometimes don’t fully recognize the narcissism in the paranoid-schizoid position, because it is in that position you are feeling hunted by predators… When we're in the depressive/reparative position other people are real to us, we not only are able to empathize with them we need to go beyond empathy to sympathy in the depressive position where I not only know how you feel, but I care and I wish to relieve your pain."
Description:
We discuss the differences between guilt that reflects concern for the other and alternatively self-abuse that serves narcissistic purposes. The former relates to Klein's depressive/reparative stage, labeled ‘conscience’ by Carveth, and the latter derives from the paranoid/schizoid position, labeled ‘superego’. We review varying technical approaches to each of these clinical presentations and note that the countertransference provides vital guidance in understanding the state of the analysand's mind. We close by considering how the capacity to bear guilt may be a measure of the maturation of a civilization.
Our Guest:
Donald L Carveth, Ph.D., RP, FIPA is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Social & Political Thought at York University in Toronto. He is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis, past Director of the Toronto Institute of Psychoanalysis, and past Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis/Revue Canadienne de Psychanalyse. He is the author of The Still Small Voice: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Guilt and Conscience (Karnac, 2013) and Psychoanalytic Thinking: A Dialectical Critique of Contemporary Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2018). He is in private practice in Toronto.
Many of his publications are available at http://www.yorku.ca/dcarveth.
His video-lectures on psychoanalysis may be found at www.youtube.com/doncarveth.
Recommended Readings:
Sagan, E. (1988). Freud, Women, and Morality: The Psychology of Good and Evil. New York: Basic Books.
Carveth, D. (2013). The Still Small Voice: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Guilt and Conscience. London: Karnac.
Carveth, D. (2016). Why we should stop conflating the superego with the conscience. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society Vol. 22, 1, 15–32.
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"We, as analysts, really need to use our psychoanalytic understanding of the value of the inner life of every individual and of the value of growth and development that occurs in a relationship. We need to use that kind of knowledge to find alternative ways, other than the intensive treatment we offer in our offices, to reach those not only in developing countries but also in our own country."
Episode Description: We begin with a conversation on the nature of altruism and the benefit it offers to the self. We specifically consider the role it plays in repairing "mismatches" that we all have in our pasts. Dr. Harrison describes the many activities of her international organization, Supporting Child Caregivers. She walks us through her early training in infant development and the learning curve she went through when she first brought that knowledge to an orphanage in El Salvador. Her experiences there taught her how to find the care-givers' language which enabled her to help them engage with the children with greater attunement. We consider the presence of trauma in the lives of these families and the help that sensitive caregiving can provide. A clinical vignette from her work in Pakistan demonstrates the power of 'magic moments.'
Our Guest:
Alexandra Murray Harrison, M.D. is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute in Adult and Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis, and an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Harrison has an adult and child psychoanalytic and psychiatric private practice in Cambridge Massachusetts. She has a particular clinical interest in treating preschool children and consulting with their families and treating children with autistic spectrum disorders. In 2017, Dr. Harrison co-founded a non-profit, Supporting Child Caregivers, that offers training in infant-parent mental health to child caregivers throughout the world.
Dr. Harrison has co-authored a book on autism and published articles on numerous topics, including body image, play therapy, therapeutic change, and volunteer consultation. Dr. Harrison has lectured extensively in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Central and South America.
Recommended Readings:
Supporting Child Caregivers
Harrison AM (2014). The Sandwich Model: The 'Music and Dance' of Therapeutic Action, Internat J of Psychoanal, 95(2):313-340. Harrison AM (2017).
Harrison AM (2017). Altruism as Reparation of Mismatch or Disruption in the Self, Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 37(7): 464-473
Harrison A, M Gregory G, Neelgund P, Stieglitz A, (2019). Supporting Child Caregivers in South Indian Orphanages: Identifying 'Ghosts' and Creating 'Angels', Institutionalised Children Explorations and Beyond, 6(2):142-150.
Harrison AM, Beebe B (2018). Rhythms of dialogue in infant research and child analysis: Implicit and explicit forms of therapeutic action, Psychoanalytic Psychology, 35(4):367-381.
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"By sitting down with me, they were really, in a way, forced to be more reflective, so I had only reflected back to them some of what they were saying and not paying attention to, but I think sitting with me encouraged them to be a little more reflective themselves. They would have to slow down because they were trying to attune to me as I was trying to attune to them."
Description: Dr. Steven Rolfe welcomes Dr. Kenneth Eisold to today’s episode to talk about leadership, groups, what psychoanalysis brings to consulting, and the differences between psychoanalysis and consulting with organizations.
Kenneth Eisold, Ph.D. is a psychologist and psychoanalyst, who has been consulting on management dilemmas for a number of years. In addition to having a deep understanding of individual behavior, honed through his extensive counseling and coaching practice with executives and leaders, he has a wide understanding of the complexities of system-wide behavior, both overt and covert, affecting the ability of organizations to address their missions.
Dr. Eisold is currently President of the William Alanson White Institute In New York City, he previously served as President of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations. For several years he directed the A. K. Rice Institute’s National Conference, devoted to the study of leadership, authority, and organizational dynamics. He has also worked on conferences designed to help managers grasp the complex dynamics of systems in New York, Washington, Chicago, Houston, St. Louis, and Seattle.
In 2010, he published What You Don't Know You Know: Our Hidden Motives in Life, Business, and Everything Else, a review of unconscious dynamics in individual, group and organizational settings, as understood in psychoanalytic theory and updated by more recent neuropsychological research. 2017 saw the publication of his collected papers on The Organizational Life of Psychoanalysis (La Psicoanalisi e le sue Instituzioni was published two years earlier in Italy.) Dr. Eisold has worked extensively with professional organizations, hospitals, university schools and departments, law firms, and training institutes. He has coached leaders in the financial industry, public health, law, and higher education.
Key takeaways:
[6:26] Dr. Eisold shares his thoughts about the concept of applied psychoanalysis.
[8:07] Dr. Eisold talks about how he got immersed in consulting.
[11:07] What does Dr. Eisold think now about the interaction between the leader and the group after more than 20 years of conceptualizing the myth of the heroic leader?
[13:01] Dr. Eisold explains the differences between therapy and consulting.
[17:45] What does psychoanalysis bring to consulting?
[19:52] Similarities between supervision and consulting.
[22:38] How can psychoanalysts be further trained to work with organizations?
[25:59] Dr. Eisold shares some examples from his work with organizations.
[33:19] Dr. Eisold and Dr. Rolfe talk about the unconscious needs behind the decision-making process in organizations.
[37:58] Dr. Eisold talks about a case of a trader he used to work with.
[40:11] Dr. Rolfe shares an abstract from one of Dr. Eisold’s papers written in 2004.
[41:50] Dr. Eisold reflects on the paper he wrote in 2004 and how much is still true today.
Mentioned in this episode:
IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org
Recommended Readings:
Eisold, Kenneth, The Organizational Life of Psychoanalysis: Conflicts, Dilemmas and the Future of the Profession, Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2018.
Eisold, Kenneth. Corporate Greed and the New Class System, Chapter 5 in Greed: Developmental, Cultural and Clinical Realms, Salman Akhtar, ed., pp 87 – 105, London: Karnac, 20015.
Eisold, Kenneth. Psychoanalysis at Work, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, vol 22: no 5 ( 2012), pp 517-528.
Eisold, Kenneth, What You Don't Know You Know: Our Hidden Motivations in Life, Business, and Everything Else. New York: Other Press, 2010.
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"Each one of these individuals who I interviewed, watched their testimony or read their last words in the desperate letters they wrote to Nazi agencies asking for a little more time to raise a little more money - each one of these individual Jews of Vienna who I came into contact with, brought me closer to my own roots, to my own grandparents who I loved very much and who I never got to ask the questions."
Episode description:
We discuss the political and social context for Freud's years in Vienna starting with Hitler's rise to power in 1933 along with the burning of Freud's books at that time. We learn of the varying optimism and pessimism that were rampant in the Jewish Viennese community culminating in the German invasion in March 1938. We cover the pogrom of March 1938, the role of the witnesses to the atrocities along with the family suicides that became commonplace.
After Freud and most of his family escaped in June 1938 we recognize both the celebration of his reception in London as well as the ongoing calamity that remained in Vienna leading up to Kristallnacht in November 1938.
We also discuss the personal meaning that these events have for Professor Offenberger
Our Guest:
Professor Ilana F. Offenberger is a scholar of history and author of the book, The Jews of Nazi-Vienna, 1938-1945: Rescue and Destruction published by Palgrave Macmillan (2017). Professor Offenberger received a Ph.D. in History from Clark University (Worcester, MA) in May 2010, graduating from the doctoral program in Holocaust History and Genocide Studies. She earned a B.A. in German Studies from Skidmore College (Saratoga Springs, NY) in 2000 and spent a year of undergraduate study in Salzburg, Austria. Her dissertation, The Nazification of Vienna and the Response of the Viennese Jews was selected for the first annual Radomir Luza Prize for an outstanding work in Austrian and/or Czechoslovak history in 2012.
Since 2012, Offenberger teaches in the department of History at University of Massachusetts- Dartmouth. Her many courses include “Jewish Resistance in the Holocaust;” “Germany 1933-Present;” “Europe in the 20th Century;” “From Auschwitz to Israel;” “The Jews of Nazi-Vienna,”
She is currently working on a second book project: Preserving Czech-Jewish Life Under Nazi Occupation, 1939-1945.
Recommended Readings:
Bukey, Evan. Hitler’s Austria: Popular Sentiment in the Nazi Era 1938-1945 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2000) OVERVIEW HISTORY NAZISM AUSTRIA
Clare, George. Last Waltz in Vienna: The Rise and Destruction of a Family: 1842-1942 (New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston,1982) CLASSIC MEMOIR of VIENNESE FAMLY
Offenberger, Ilana F. The Jews of Nazi-Vienna: 1938-1945, Rescue and Destruction. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY JEWISH LIFE IN VIENNA
Orgel, Dorris. The Devil in Vienna. (Logan: Perfection Learning Corporation, 2004). A GREAT READ FOR YOUNG ADULTS! FRIENDSHIP, FAMILY, LIFE AFTER ANSCHLUSS
Spitzer, Leo. Hotel Bolivia: The Culture of Memory in a Refuge from Nazism (New York: Hill and Wang,1998) MEMOIR: THEMES OF IDENTITY & DISPLACEMENT AFTER EXILE
Secher, Pierre H. Left Behind in Nazi Vienna: Letters of a Jewish family caught in the Holocaust, 1939-1941 (Jefferson: McFarland & Co, 2004) PRIMARY SOUCE LETTER COLLECTION /A VIENNESE FAMILY DESTROYED BY NAZISM
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"When you think about the analyst's reverie - we are in a session and something is happening, the patient is telling you something and your mind starts to drift - an image comes to your mind that just sticks and it won't let go. It may well be that something is happening to the patient that they cannot tell you because they don’t know. But it is stirring up something in you that is resonating and an image will come out of that - something that allows us to find a register, a meaningful register, in which to speak to the patient,"
Description: Dr. Harvey Schwartz welcomes Prof. Marsha Hewitt to today’s episode. Professor Hewitt is a psychoanalyst with a private practice in Toronto, Canada. She is also a Professor of Religion in the Department of the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto, Trinity College.
Prof. Hewitt’s books include From Theology to Social Theory: Juan Luis Segundo and the Theology of Liberation, Critical Theory of Religion: A Feminist Analysis. and Freud on Religion (Key Thinkers in the Study of Religion). Her most recent book is called Legacies of the Occult: Psychoanalysis, Religion and Unconscious Communication. Unconscious communication is precisely the subject that is addressed in today’s episode through a discussion about the early history of psychoanalysis and Freud’s relationship to unconscious communication - what he called ‘thought transference’
Prof. Hewitt dives deep into the meaning of being in relation to an analysand, talking about the moments in which an analyst has the experience of daydreaming about something, experiencing a reverie, and moments later, hearing the same thoughts and images from the patient. Dr. Hewitt also emphasizes the importance for analysts to always maintain an open-minded psychoanalytic curiosity about what the meaning of the phenomena happening in the dyad.
Key takeaways:
[10:33] Dr. Hewitt talks about unconscious communication.
[15:56] What is the meaning of a cult?
[18:38] Telepathy means feeling in the distance.
[20:26] Prof. Hewitt talks about the term bracketing.
[22:04] Prof. Hewitt relates the drift of the unconscious and the job of the analyst.
[24:06] There is an aspect of the transference that cannot be understood.
[27:20] Dr. Schwartz shares a case to exemplify how he experienced reverie with a patient.
[29:30] Prof. Hewitt encourages analysts to keep thinking about what is not understood by sharing a case example.
[32:50] Prof. Hewitt dives deep into the concept of intersubjectivity.
[38:10] Prof. Hewitt continues sharing her efforts in understanding what was not evident.
[39:50] The experience of working with people that have been traumatized.
[43:55] Even in the most flagrant psychosis there is truth.
[45:42] Prof. Hewitt explains where her passion for the unseen and the different forms of subjectivity comes from.
Mentioned in this episode:
IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org
Recommended Readings:
From Theology to Social Theory: Juan Luis Segundo and the Theology of Liberation, Critical Theory of Religion: A Feminist Analysis, Marsha Hewitt
Freud on Religion (Key Thinkers in the Study of Religion), Marsha Hewitt
Legacies of the Occult: Psychoanalysis, Religion and Unconscious Communication, Marsha Hewitt
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“There is a history of psychoanalysis and its relationship with political thought and even political action. There is clearly quite a strong historical tradition of a sort of rebelliousness on the part of psychoanalysis or at least a challenge to social mores, which I see as beginning right from the start and certainly as early as Freud’s 1908 paper on ‘Civilized’ Sexual Morality. He has the words ‘civilized’ in inverted commas because what he’s using psychoanalysis for there is to say something deeply hypocritical about the sexual mores of his day and that this is causing trouble.”
Description: Dr. Harvey Schwartz welcomes Professor Stephen Frosh. Stephen Frosh is a Professor in the Department of Psychosocial Studies (which he founded) at Birkbeck, University of London. He was Pro-Vice-Master of Birkbeck from 2003 to 2017, a senior management position in which he was responsible at various times for teaching and learning, research and internationalisation in the university. Stephen’s background is in academic and clinical psychology, and he was a consultant clinical psychologist at the Tavistock Clinic. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Academic Associate at the British Psychoanalytical Society, a founding member of the Association of Psycho-social studies, and an Honorary Member of the Institute of Group Analysis.
As you will hear in today’s conversation Stephen is remarkably well versed in the psychoanalytic literature. We discuss Stephen´s contention that the “unconscious is barbaric,” that Freud’s famous fort-da observation may be meaningfully applied to the place of psychoanalysis in our culture and that Steven Reich’s musical piece “Different Trains” serves as a profound commentary on the witnessing of trauma.
Key takeaways:
[9:15] Stephen explains the meaning of his quote “The unconscious of psychoanalysis is barbaric.”
[12:30] Stephen shares his view on Freud as a democrat.
[15:34] Stephen talks about the political tension that psychoanalysts went through in South America.
[16:45] Stephen comments on the alliance between Blacks and Jews, who were both characterized by the colonials as barbaric.
[19:16] The relationship between psychoanalysis and social movements.
[20:05] Stephen talks about the structure of traditional Freudian psychoanalysis and how powerful it was for its time.
[22:54] Freud’s aspiration was to bring into reason that which was unreasonable and could cause damage, not to destroy it but, on the contrary, to put it to good use.
[24:22] Stephen talks about fort-da as an example of how psychoanalysis works in relation to culture.
[28:02] Stephen discusses how Freud talked about and experienced the human tendency of repeating disturbing and even traumatic events.
[32:37] The repetition compulsion : Even when you think a piece of work is done it finds some way to come back.
[34:20] Stephen talks about the question of witnessing.
[36:05] The history of trauma.
[38:15] Stephen shares the impact of being listened to but not heard on a victim of trauma.
[42:12] Stephen shares his reflections on a particular piece of music as they relate to the meaning of witnessing and trauma that is included in his most recent book: Those who come after.
[48:06] Stephen talks about himself and what brought him to the point where he is today.
[53:55] Where we are today in regards to COVID according to Stephen.
Mentioned in this episode:
IPA Off the Couch www.ipaoffthecouch.org
Recommended Readings:
Frosh, S. (2019) Those who come after. London: Palgrave.
Frosh, S. (2020) Psychoanalysis as Decolonial Judaism. Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society, 25(2), 174-193.
Frosh, S. (2018) Psychoanalysis, Politics, and Society: What Remains Radical in Psychoanalysis? In R. Gipps and M. Lacewing (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Butler, J. (2020) The Force of Nonviolence. London: Verso.
Khanna, R. (2004) Dark Continents: Psychoanalysis and Colonialism. Durham: Duke University Press.
Zaretsky, E. (2015) Political Freud. New York: Columbia University Press.
