Psychoanalysis On and Off the Couch

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• My Journey from Veterinary Medicine to Psychoanalysis with Michele Gaspar, DVM,MA,LCPC (Chicago) 28.06.2026 52นาที

  "I have always been fascinated by the world of animals. What fascinated me about them is that when you pay attention to animals, this is a world beyond words. Words are not part of their world, so you start paying attention to movement, to breath, to reaction, to the pause, all these things, and I found it fascinating…Certainly, in veterinary medicine, as any type of clinical medical practice, if a patient comes to you, there's always things that you can do. You can take a blood sample, you can do a radiograph, you can give oxygen, you can give certain treatments. There's always a solution that you can give, a fix. Psychoanalysis is very, very different. I haven't successfully overcome the urge to fix, but I have come to realize that solutions that are given too early are oftentimes not usable. So, as a clinical veterinarian, most of my solutions were usable. That's not what happens in psychoanalysis."  Episode Description: Michele begins with sharing her life-long fascination with animals. As a veterinarian she learned to attend to the nonverbal and to the triadic aspects of veterinary medicine - clinician, animal and owner. She noted that owners often communicate their own distress through their animal's behavior. She learned that "animals don't require you to be brilliant but to pay attention" - certainly relevant to psychoanalysis. In addition to describing her ongoing practice of Zen meditation, she shared with us the challenges of changing mindsets from medical intervening to analytic listening, "This shift - from resolving not knowing to working within it - has been a central aspect of my development." We discuss the role of suffering and mourning, which relates to her Catholic background, and the importance of the body both in her veterinary and psychoanalytic work. She closes with an example of an analysand crying out for help with her acutely ill pet and recognizing that "you can help me." Our Guest: Michele Gaspar is an advanced candidate at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP). She currently has a private psychoanalytic psychotherapy practice in Chicago, provides feline internal medicine consultations to clinical veterinarians through the Veterinary Information Network (VIN) and works with veterinarians and veterinary students who have professional and personal challenges. Michele lectures at national veterinary conferences on psychological issues impacting veterinarians and also teaches Introduction to Psychoanalytic Theory and Introduction to Object Relations in CCP's two-year Adult Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Certificate Program. Recommended Readings:  The Other Family Doctor Karen Fine, DVM A thoughtful exploration of veterinary medicine as relationship-centered work. Fine illustrates how veterinarians routinely encounter attachment, grief, caregiving, guilt, and love through their work with animals and the people who care for them.   Animals in Translation Temple Grandin, PhD Grandin explores how animals perceive and experience the world, challenging readers to understand minds that communicate differently from our own. The book offers insights into observation, empathy, nonverbal communication, and the challenge of understanding another subjective experience.   How Animals Grieve Barbara J. King, PhD Drawing on scientific observations and research, King examines evidence of grief and mourning across species. The book raises important questions about attachment, loss, emotional bonds, and the continuity between human and animal experiences of bereavement.   All Creatures Great and Small James Herriot A beloved memoir of rural veterinary practice that captures the joys, frustrations, humor, and heartbreak of caring for animals and their owners. Herriot's stories reveal veterinary medicine as a deeply human profession grounded in relationships, responsibility, and compassion.   The Wisdom of Insecurity Alan Watts A classic introduction to Zen-influenced thinking about uncertainty, impermanence, and the limits of control. Watts offers a compelling perspective on living with ambiguity and cultivating a deeper comfort with not knowing.   When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, PhD and Susan McCarthy An influential exploration of animal emotional life, including grief, joy, attachment, fear, and affection. The book invites readers to consider the emotional complexity of animals and what their experiences may teach us about our own.   The Loss of a Pet Wallace Sife, PhD A foundational work on companion animal bereavement. Sife examines the profound attachment people form with their animals and the often-underappreciated grief that accompanies their illness and death.
• The Analyst as Transference and Developmental Object with Carla Neely, PhD (Washington, DC) 14.06.2026 56นาที

  "As analysts, we have our own development - as humans, we have our own development. My view is that the work of analysis, if the developmental piece is present, requires some relatively sophisticated developmental capacity on the part of the analyst. The work is intimate, and the patient is going to know something of our inner lives, despite the fact that we work hard not to let our own selves interfere with the work. I think to truly trust the analyst, the patient has to believe that the analyst can tolerate knowing all of him or her. If you think about it, how many times have you heard patients say that nobody in the world quite knows him the way the analyst does? There's going to be something in that connection that doesn't happen anywhere else." Episode Description: We begin by outlining the distinctions between serving as a transference vs. a developmental object for a patient. Carla writes about "affective honesty," which concerns the analyst's willingness to have their heart be experienced by a patient as malevolent or compassionate based on the patient's needs. We consider similarities between child and adult work, the differences between the 'corrective emotional experience' and being a developmental object, and her sense that a patient's "intimate experience can bring structural change." She presents a clinical example where her own authentic sadness helpfully enabled the patient to recognize her own - "we take on what the patient can't bear." We close with Carla sharing her personal analytic journey and stating, "I expect I will keep searching, as that is what analysts do."   Our Guest: Carla Neely, PhD, adult and child psychoanalyst, guest faculty, Cincinnati Psychoanalytic Institute.  Past President, Association for Child Psychoanalysis. Past faculty member at the Denver Institute for Psychoanalysis and the Washington, Baltimore Psychoanalytic Institute. Topics of her publications - sublimation, creativity,  developmental object, working through, and therapeutic action. Recommended Readings:  Hurry, Anne, ed., 1998. Psychoanalysis and Developmental Therapy. London: Karnac Books   Elliott-Neely, C. 1996. The analytic resolution of a developmental imbalance. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. Vol. 51   Miller, J. 2013. Developmental psychoanalysis and developmental objects. Psychoanalytic Inquiry. Vol. 33   Tahka, V. 1993. Mind and its treatment. Madison, CT: IUP  
• AI, Subjectivity and Psychoanalysis with Amy Levy, PhD (Chapel Hill, North Carolina) 31.05.2026 56นาที

  "Humanism has been the dominant Western belief system of the last century. It's based on the worship of human wisdom, human creation, human experience, human mind, and psychoanalysis has very much emerged from this humanist tradition. We believe in psychoanalysis, that delving into our feelings, our thoughts, and our shared wisdom will allow us to access truth and meaning and find proper direction for navigating life. AI is changing all of that. Instead of trusting our feelings and our thoughts, people are turning to algorithms to make meaning of our experiences and to offer us direction. We're plugging in our data and allowing the algorithms, or Chat GPT or Claude, to do the thinking and the decision making for us." Episode Description: We begin with Freud in 1930: "Humanity would proceed to create unimaginably great advances in technology so as to increase our likeness to God." Amy outlines the challenge that AI poses to our humanistic tradition and values within which psychoanalysis makes its home. She starts with the 'cult grooming' aspects of smartphones, which introduces our exchanging "human dependence for AI companionship." The question of the subjectivity of AI is a central focus, with some analysts emphasizing its "simulation of human intimacy" and others considering that "is it not also possible for AIs to at the same time be intersubjectively engaged with us?" Regarding using AIs as a therapist, we discuss the clinical implications of "without there being two bodies in a room, the contact is shallow and lacking an essential human component." Amy describes "a desire for transgression" involving AIs as well as the associated search for immortality that they represent. She writes about Bach's prescient 2008 term of "digital consciousness" as contrasted with the "analog watch where one can see the hour from which the hand has come and the hour to which it is going." Amy shares that it was fear that motivated her personal interest in the AI world we are facing, and she closes with, "And how do we address what we are losing from within psychoanalysis?"   Our Guest: Amy Levy, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. She chairs the American Psychoanalytic Association President's Commission on Artificial Intelligence, serves on the subcommittee "Artificial Intelligence" for the International Psychoanalytical Association, serves on the editorial board of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, and is Editor of the Substack series, "AI in My Mind," for The Psychoanalytic Quarterly. Along with her fellow CAI chair, Todd Essig, she is producing a documentary film for APsA which examines AI from a psychoanalytic perspective for the general public, entitled: Uncharted Territory: Humans and the Rise of AI. Dr. Levy is in private practice in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She is the author of the 2026 book, The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive. Recommended Readings:  Harari, Y. N. (2017). Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. New York: HarperCollins.   Knafo, D. (2024). Artificial intelligence on the couch: Staying human post-AI. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 84: 155–180.    Lemma, A. (2024). Mourning, melancholia, and machines: An applied psychoanalytic investigation of mourning in the age of griefbots. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 105(4): 542–563.   Shelley, M. (2003). Frankenstein. Penguin Classics.   Solms, M. (2021a). The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness. New York: W. W. Norton.   Suleyman, M. (2023). The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the 21st Century's Greatest Dilemma. New York: Crown.
• Analytic Endings: When Enough is Enough and When it Isn't with Joyce Slochower, PhD (New York) 17.05.2026 54นาที

  "When I train candidates I always say start with Freud, learn the interpersonalist, learn the object relations folks, know from what you come, even if you want to be a radical interpersonalist, a radical relationalist, because having that stuff in your back pocket is organizing and creates an ideal to which you can aspire or choose not to follow, but at least you'll know what you're not following. My perspective on this stuff really comes from the idea that before we are free to break the rules, we need to know what the rules are and we need to be well grounded in them." Episode Description: We begin by appreciating the evolution of some fundamental practices in psychoanalysis. We consider the meanings of 'rules' and 'guidelines'. Joyce shares with us her current thinking on answering patients' questions – for some, it's helpful, for others, not. We discuss the use of the word 'fantasy' with patients as contrasted with 'guesses' or 'imaginings'. Joyce considers the many ways that patients terminate their treatments and how frequently it does not accord with traditional models of ending. We consider reluctance to leave the treatment relationship from both sides of the couch – analysts, too, have needs satisfied in this work and can play a part in the nature of the ending. Joyce relates how some former patients remain in contact with their analysts, and that isn't necessarily problematic.  For others, "being able to 'go it alone' represents an extraordinary achievement." She concludes that "termination remains an ideal worth holding onto. But loosely."   Our Guests: Joyce Slochower, Ph.D., ABPP, is Professor Emerita of Psychology at Hunter College & the Graduate Center, CUNY.  Joyce is faculty and supervisor at the NYU Postdoctoral Program, the Steven Mitchell Center, the National Training Program of NIP (all in New York), the Philadelphia Center for Relational Studies in Philadelphia, and the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California in San Francisco. She has written Holding and Psychoanalysis: A Relational Perspective (1996) and Psychoanalytic Collisions (2006). She is co-Editor, with Lew Aron and Sue Grand, De-idealizing relational theory: a Critique from within and Decentering Relational Theory: A Comparative Critique (2018), both of which received the Gradiva award in 2019. Her latest book, Psychoanalysis and the Unspoken, was published in 2024. She is in private practice in Manhattan.    Recommended Readings:  Grand, S. (2009). Termination as necessary madness. Psychoanal. Dialogues, 19: 723–733.   Kantrowitz, J. (2025). A Personal View of Terminations and Endings. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 94:361-379   Levine, H. B. & Yanoff, J. A. (2004). Boundaries and postanalytic contacts in institutes. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 52:873–901.   Loewald  (1988). Termination analyzable and unanalyzable. Psychoanal. Study Child, 43:155–166.   Peddler, J. R. (1988). Termination reconsidered. Int. J. Psychoanal., 69:495–505.   Schachter, J. (1992). Concepts of termination and post-termination patient analyst contact. Int. J. Psychoanal., 73:137–154.   Slochower, J. (2022). Sequels. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 70:845–873.   Slochower, J.  (2024). Psychoanalysis and the Unspoken. NY, London: Routledge.
• My Evolution as an Analyst with Virginia Ungar, MD (Buenos Aires) 03.05.2026 56นาที

  "I'm not suggesting that repression has lost its place as a fundamental defense mechanism. Repression remains central, coherent, and fundamental to the founding of the unconscious. It is what makes certain contents inaccessible to consciousness, and what we access as psychoanalysts through dreams, play, symptoms, and associations. That remains true. What I was observing, and I'm still observing more now, is something different. When I see children and adolescents that are more capable to work on a task while doing homework, and at the same time listening to music, and at the same time texting with somebody - I don't think that they are real. This is my point. I don't think they are real. This multitasking way of living is part of life today… The clinical question for us becomes this - when does this multiplicity become a symptom? When does it interfere with the capacity for depth, for intimacy, for a sustained emotional contact?  I think that this is what we need to see, to study and to differentiate in our consulting room."    Episode Description: We consider how changes in our culture may impact the individual's intrapsychic space and from that the nature of the psychoanalytic encounter. Virginia comments on the diminishing of the paternal symbolizing function and with that a change in the 'rites of passage' that adolescents traverse - now the rituals are "created by the young people themselves" as contrasted with those passed down by their elders. This, she feels, has resulted in "intimacy becoming spectacle" and for many, the analytic session is where "the construction of intimacy may begin."  She shares clinical material with us from 40 years ago and contrasts the nature of her interventions with her contemporary treatments. Now, "I appreciate the mystery in the process and that we create meaning with the patient." Virginia closes with seeing analytic treatment as "an invitation to a process of thinking that, to remain alive, must be rethought."   Our Guests: Virginia Ungar M.D., training analyst at the Buenos Aires Psychoanalytic Association (APdeBA). She specializes in child and adolescent analysis, was the Chair of the IPA's Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis Committee (COCAP) and of the IPA Committee for Integrated Training. She was awarded a Konex of Platinum in 2016. She is the former President of the International Psychoanalytic Association (2017-2021).    Recommended Readings:  Etchegoyen,  H. (1986) The fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique, chapters 25 and 26, Karnac, 1991. Meltzer, D. (1968). A note on analytic receptivity. In A. Hahn (Ed.), Sincerity and other works: Collected papers of Donald Meltzer,  Karnac Books, 1994. Meltzer, D. (1988). The apprehension of Beauty, chapters 1, 2, and 4, Clunie Press, Perthshire, 1988. Sontag, S. (1966). Against Interpretation, Against Interpretation and Other Essays, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York. Ungar, V. (2017) Letter from Argentina, Vol 98, 3, IJP, 2017
• How We Care for Ourselves (and each other) with Stephen Bernstein, MD, Melvin Bornstein, MD, Mark Moore, PhD, Jonathan Palmer, MD, Harvey Schwartz, MD, Peggy Warren, MD 19.04.2026 1ชม.

  "We are a group of analysts working in the greater context of the analytic world, but as a group, we have a profound analytic group process that's evolved and in profoundly successful ways - we've become a group that contains one another, and deals with great difficulties. Mel has given a taste of where we go to an emotional authenticity that's very compelling… Somehow, we've gotten to a place where nobody seems to be hungry in the group. You're not hungry for affirmation or support, so that there isn't a sense that people are waiting to say something smart or do something smart or make a brilliant interpretation, and there's enough resources left over that the tendency is so powerful to look to enhance somebody else's sense of aliveness and creativity." J.P.   I feel very lucky in this group, because I received a gem of a gift that was unexpected. We were going along as a group in this wonderful way. I would look forward to speaking with everybody every four weeks. We got a lot of work done. We also became part of each other's lives in our own way. However, there was always reality around us that we had to cope with. And suddenly, last year, I had a catastrophic medical event in which I had routine surgery that went extremely well, and when I went to leave the hospital, I had a cardiac arrest, and then basically six weeks of ICU care, and lived because I was in a hospital. But it is this group that then took on even more of a meaning for me, because I felt the presence of everyone near me in this group always, and it did give me the sense that the group had also morphed into its own living, breathing entity that really kind of enveloped me at a very painful time. I realized we could go back and forth as a group, actually quite easily, between clinical work, psychoanalytic thinking, and the harsh realities of time, illness, whatever that would intrude or were surrounding us as a group. To me, this was kind of a miracle of a gift. It's been life-saving, really life-saving." P.W.   "Developing a sense of one another in how not only we talk, but who we are. That friends are people I feel I can be fully open with and not have to worry about it, to feel free and even when I say things that I might question or regret or feel self- conscious or embarrassed about with friends -  it's held, and I feel this has happened in this group, that there is a way in which we very tenderly hold one another, and there's something about that space, perhaps it's an analytic space. I feel we do it with our patients, but I feel with our peers. It's a very precious thing indeed." M.M.   Episode Description: This episode of the podcast takes a step back from our usual focus on how an analytic mindset can improve the lives of those in our care - either on or off the couch. Today, we consider how we can and do care for ourselves and each other. We are a group of six analysts who have been meeting regularly for 10 years. We evolved from a thirty-year group originally devoted to the study of analytic writing. We now meet to share our lives and our work in what Peggy Warren calls "a living and breathing entity."  We discuss "what we need as analysts to go on with this work", how time and illness has changed us as a group, how we feel we can share ourselves without inhibiting self-consciousness, and how what Mel Bornstein calls a 'love of life' can serve as an organizing spirit for what we do. We take up how the group is embedded into a creative process, individually and together. Jon Palmer closes our meeting by noting "there's a lot of love in this room - a necessary condition for us all to grow."   Our Guests: Stephen Bernstein, Jonathan Palmer, and Peggy Warren are on the faculty of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. Melvin Bornstein is on the faculty of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. Mark Moore is on the faculty of the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia, where Harvey Schwartz is also on the faculty, and of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York. Watercolor by Jonathan Palmer  
• Mothers and Their Little Girls with Ilene Lefcourt (New York) 05.04.2026 1ชม. 2นาที

  "In addition to the easy convenience of bathing two children together, or three children together, there are other motivations of bathing them together. Parents are less aware that there is an excitement in seeing the children naked - although convenience is what's stated first, I think other things do go into it. Through development reactions to the genital difference and nudity will change, and I believe that being aware of those changes is very useful for parents to make decisions about what they want to do in their family, about family nudity, toileting, bathing, running around naked."    Episode Description: Ilene demonstrates the many influences on mothers' engagements with their daughters which include their own remembered and forgotten pasts, cultural influences and their unique imaginations. She mentions the startling messaging in the famous movie "Gigi", "Thank heaven for little girls...so helpless and appealing, without them what would little boys do." We discuss the power of girls wishing to be like their mothers and how that at times conflicts with their wishes to also individuate from their mothers. The book demonstrates differences among new parents around the blue/pink choices for boys and girls, and she also discusses the many feelings parents have associated with family nudity. A special distinction is made between a three-year-old asking 'Do I look pretty?' vs 'Am I pretty' - each having very different meanings to the child and to her parents. We touch upon 'whining', self-stimulation, and what being a 'girly-girl' means to parents. We close with Ilene sharing with us how real her granddaughters found this work to be.   Our Guest: Ilene Lefcourt established the Sackler Lefcourt Center for Child Development in 1982. She was the Director, led the Mother-Baby-Toddler Groups, and provided Developmental Consultation to parents for over 35 years. She taught Child Psychiatry Residents and Parent-Infant Psychotherapy Trainees about her work. She has been a faculty member at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research since 1995. Ms. Lefcourt is currently in private practice in New York City. She is the author of  Parenting and Childhood Memories: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Reverberating Ghosts and Magic, Mother-Baby-Toddler Group Guide: A Psychodynamic Approach, When Mothers Talk: Magical Moments and Everyday Challenges, and Mothers and Daughters: The First Three Years. Visit Ilene's website: http://ilenelefcourt.com/.  Recommended Readings: 1975, Fraiberg S. Adelson E., Shapiro V., Ghosts in the Nursery, Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 14, 387-421   1993, Lieberman, A ., The Emotional Life of the Toddler, Simon and Schuster    2005, Lieberman, A., Angels in The Nursery, Infant Mental Health Journal. Vol. 26(6)   1995, Stern, D. The Motherhood Constellation, Basic Books
• A Memoir of Analysis, Poetry and Mortality with Alice Jones, MD (Berkeley, California) 22.03.2026 58นาที

  "All my writing before this has been poetry, and over the years in my books of poems I found the lines kept getting longer. I think the move towards prose had me working on this journal form, which I've not done. Many people write their journals their entire lives. For me, it's a more dipping in and out of this form of work. I began this segment when my father-in-law was dying, and it began as a small series of prose poems about his decline. What I found myself wanting to do then is weave in stories from work, how they were intersecting with what was going on at home. And the thought that all analysts, all therapists, live in this zone of interwoven stories where we're following multiple narrative threads at once, but we tend to talk to each other in terms of one case story at a time. So it was important to me to have all those levels present, because that's really what a lived life is, is being immersed simultaneously and in all of those."     Episode Description: Alice's 'meditative memoir' invites us into the multiple narratives in analysts' lives both within and outside of their offices. She shares how we inevitably bring our own experiences into each clinical hour which forms part of the musicality of the work. Her attention remains on the inside/outside aspects of the body, the mind and our world views. Mortality is never far from her awareness and is reflected in the work she engages in with her patients. She introduces 'Blake' to us and how after 12 years of vital work together, he dies quite prematurely. We discuss the intimate nature of analytic work and how it becomes part of our own inner life. Alice shares a saying of her at times 'directionally challenged' grandfather, "We are headed in the proper general direction" - a theme applicable to many venues of life and psychoanalysis. We close with her reading a poem of Galway Kinnell which concludes with "The still undanced cadence of vanishing"   Our Guest: Alice Jones, MD is a personal and consulting analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. She is the author of seven collections of poems and Cadence of Vanishing, a memoir. A collection of essays titled Poetry, Depth, and Endings in Psychoanalysis: Distant Music is forthcoming from Routledge in 2026.     Recommended Readings:  Alice Jones. (2025) Ever Ending. Psychoanalytic Quarterly. 94:3. 497-517.   Alice Jones (2020) Vault. Apogee Press.   Alice Jones (2025) Leavings. TAP Magazine.    Thomas Ogden (2025) Inventing Psychoanalysis with Each Patient. International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 106:3, pp 471-488.   Ellen Pinsky (2025) Driven to Write: 45 Writers on the Motives and Mysteries of their Craft. Routledge.  
• A Candidate Engages Patients Who are 'Difficult to Reach' with Pamela Polizzi, LCSW (New York) 08.03.2026 55นาที

  "This came from an experience with a patient. It was early in my analytic training, and I was working with a supervisor who I really admired, and worked with her for a number of years. She was post-Kleinian, and was great at interpretation, formulation, and she was really helpful with just starting to guide me towards a lot of this work. I remember describing to her a patient session, and I was going through my process notes, and I said, 'I feel like the patient is inside of me. I feel like they want something that's in me, and I don't know what it is, and I can't quite access my own self, I don't know what to do'. It was through this initial experience where I really felt why analytic training versus other less intense training, we were also right at the time doing infant development, offered so much. It was early in my training and she suggested I think about an infant or even a toddler when they want something from their parents - they want something from their mother. The mother kind of feels this kind of gripping or this yearning from them, the baby wanting something. I started to think of my patients, not as infants or babies, but that what I was feeling was that there was something that the person I was working with needed, and they didn't have words yet to tell me what that was."    Episode Description: We begin by recognizing the unique journeys that lead clinicians to become psychoanalysts. Pam shares with us her initial exposure to dynamic thinking but felt that she was missing some awareness of what was happening in herself and in the patients she was working with - "I was curious...I wanted to go deeper, to know more." This led her to enroll in full-time analytic training. She shares with us her understanding of the 'difficult to reach patients' that she was treating and presents a fictionized case that represents the many countertransference struggles she faced. She noted that "instead of the patient realizing that she wanted something from me, she instead felt attacked by me." Supervision was essential in helping her make sense of her experiences and of learning to 'listen to the music'. We close by noting her open-ended curiosity and interest in learning more - lifelong attributes of analysts who continue to take pleasure in our work.   Our Guest: Pamela Polizzi, LCSW maintains a full-time private practice in New York City. She specializes in working with patients struggling with eating disorders, complex personality struggles, anxiety, depression, relational trauma, and life transitions. She earned her Master of Social Work (MSW) in Advanced Standing Clinical Practice from Fordham University at Lincoln Center in 2011. Currently, she is an Advanced Candidate at the Psychoanalytic Training Institute of the Contemporary Freudian Society (CFS) in Manhattan, working toward becoming a psychoanalyst. She completed a 2015 Two-Year Advanced Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Certificate in the Integrated Treatment of Eating Disorders from the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy (ICP), Center for the Study of Anorexia and Bulimia (CSAB). She also completed the Contemporary Freudian Society's (CFS) Two-Year Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program in 2019.  Recommended Readings: Readings for Psychoanalytic Candidates:  Bach, S. (2011). The How-To Book For Students of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. Karnac.   Busch, F. (2021). Dear Candidates: Analysts From Around The World Offer Personal Reflections on Psychoanalytic Training, Education, and The Profession. Routledge.    Readings on Clinical Practice with the Patient who is Difficult to Reach:   Bollas, C. (1996). Borderline Desire. Int. Forum Psychoanal., (5)(1):5-9.   Joseph. B., Feldman, M., & Spillius, M. (1989). Psychic Equilibrium and Psychic Change: Selected Papers of Betty Joseph. New Lib. of Psycho-Anal., (9):1-222. (on Pep-web).  Joseph, B. (1975) The patient who is difficult to reach.  Joseph, B. (1982) Addiction to near-death.  Joseph, B. (1983) On understanding and not understanding: some technical issues.  Riesenberg-Malcolm, R. (1999). On Bearing Unbearable States of Mind. Routledge.    Steiner, J. (1993). Psychic Retreats: Pathological Organizations in Psychotic, Neurotic and Psychotic Patients. Routledge.    Winnicott, D.W. (1974). Fear of Breakdown. Int. R. of Psycho-Analysis. 1: 103-107.
• An Analyst's 'Couple State of Mind' with Mary Morgan, (London) 22.02.2026 1ชม. 3นาที

  "[A couple state of mind] is the capacity to be subjectively involved with both individuals, but then importantly, to be able to step back, find a third position, and try to understand what the couple are creating together. Although it's kind of obvious in a way, because surely, that's what a couple therapist is doing, they're trying to understand the couple relationship. It can have quite a powerful effect on the couple coming for help, because very often they're coming with a different state of mind. They're coming with a state of mind where the other one is felt to be the problem. Quite often, one partner feels brought by the other for treatment, and it's very much a kind of two-person interaction - 'You know, if you weren't this way or if you did this for me, then I would be happy'. What perhaps the couples don't  have is the capacity themselves to step back and observe what they're creating together - that's the couple state of mind. The couple state of mind is initially in the therapist. It's the couple therapist's analytic stance, if you like. But what I'm suggesting is that over time, this gets identified with and internalized by the couple into their relationship."    Episode Description: We begin by describing the nature of the 'couple state of mind' as it exists in the mind of the therapist and as it grows in the couple allowing them to reflect on their 'coupleness'. We consider the similarities and differences between this and the familiar analytic self-reflective capacities that develop in intensive individual treatment. Mary presents clinical examples of her countertransference inclinations that are evoked in working with those who are initially 'likable' or 'unpleasant', i.e., "I can't understand why they're together" and how that evolves into a deeper understanding of the nature of their 'togetherness'. She discusses fixed unconscious fantasies and projective identifications that are both defensive and creative. We also discuss how "curiosity is the opposite of narcissism" and how that vital ability lives in the therapist and in the couple. We close with recognizing that the couple's capacity for their own 'couple state of mind' is an indication of readiness for termination.   Our Guest: Mary Morgan, is a Psychoanalyst, Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, and a writer. She is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society, Senior Fellow of Tavistock Relationships and Honorary Member of the Polish Society for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. She is a consultant member of the International Psychoanalytic Association's Committee on Couple and Family Psychoanalysis, a member of the Editorial board of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and a member of the International Advisory Board of the journal of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis. She worked for many years at Tavistock Relationships, London, where she was the Reader in Couple Psychoanalysis and Head of the MA and Professional Doctorate in Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. She currently has a private practice of individuals, couples, supervision, and teaching. Along with Andrew Balfour and Christopher Vincent in 2012, she co-edited How Couple Relationships Shape Our World: Clinical Practice, Research and Policy Perspectives. Her book A Couple State of Mind: Psychoanalysis of Couples – the Tavistock Relationships Model (2019) is available in several languages. Her latest book Couple Relations: A Contemporary Introduction was published in 2025 and is available as an audiobook. Recommended Readings: Morgan, M. (2019) A couple state of mind: psychoanalysis of couples and the Tavistock Relationships Model. London & New York: Routledge.   Morgan, M. (2025) Couple Relations: A Contemporary Introduction. London: Routledge.   Ruszczynski, S. & Fisher, J. V. (Eds.) (1995). Intrusiveness and Intimacy in the Couple. London: Karnac.   Fisher, J. (1999). The Uninvited Guest. Emerging from Narcissism towards Marriage. London: Karnac.   Grier, F. (Ed.) (2005a). Oedipus and the Couple. London: Karnac.   Morgan, M. (2019) Love, Hate, and Otherness in Intimate Relating. Couple and Family Psychoanalysis 9:15-21   Clulow, C. (2009) (Ed) Sex, Attachment and Couple Psychotherapy: Psychoanalytic Perspectives (pp. 75–101). London: Karnac.  
• When the Analytic Frame 'Groans' with Allannah Furlong, PhD (Montreal) 08.02.2026 1ชม.

  "To come back to this idea of 'groaning' - I really like it because I think it's a good description of the work we do, but particularly because it refers to Antonio Ferro's concept of the absorbency of the frame, which I think is another way of referring to it, that the frame can take a little give and take, that there's something organic about it. It has a structure, but it's absorbent, it can move, it's alive. So that is a very important concept. I think a lot of younger analysts or psychotherapists who want to be inspired by psychoanalysis don't let themselves feel comfortable letting things happen first before they try and immediately intervene and feel that they have to have some kind of magical response to it."    Episode Description: We begin by unpacking the meanings contained in the metaphor of the 'groaning' analytic frame. Allannah speaks of flexibility, containment and "the expectation of misunderstanding." She shares the importance of the analyst having a sense of an internal frame which is then introduced to the patient and which contrasts with their assumptions of social relatedness - "Too much comfort in the relationship can lead to a pseudo-analysis." We take up the concept of the 'co-created' frame and touch upon the reflections of Aulagnier, Rothstein and Aisenstein. Allannah shares her thinking on the issue of charging for missed sessions and describes her reconsideration of her personal analytic experience with this. We close with a comment on the analyst's internal frame which enables them to "hear the patient in an out-of-the-ordinary way."   Our Guest: Allannah Furlong, Ph.D., a psychologist and psychoanalyst, is a member of the Société psychanalytique de Montréal. After serving on the IPA North American Editorial Committee, she was one of the original members of the IPA Committee on Confidentiality and organizers of the first interdisciplinary Inter-Regional Conference on Confidentiality. These collaborations led to the co-editorship of two books on issues of confidentiality in psychoanalysis. In addition, Dr. Furlong has written on the frame, missed sessions, informed consent in psychoanalysis, and the use of clinical material for teaching or publication. She has also written about the temporality of lovesickness, unconscious choice, and dehumanization as a shield against helpless openness to the other, for which she received the JAPA Prize for excellence in psychoanalytic scholarship. Her current research is on the subject-creating function of baby talk. Recommended Readings: M., Baranger, W., & Mom, J. 1983. Process and Non-Process in Analytic Work. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 64:1–15.   Bass, A. 2007a. When the Frame doesn't Fit the Picture. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 17:1–27.   Bleger, J. 1967. Psycho-analysis of the psychoanalytic frame. In Symbiosis and ambiguity: a psychoanalytic study, 1–13, trans. S. Rogers and edited by J. Churcher & L. Bleger. London: Routledge, 2013.    Caper, R. 1992. Does Psychoanalysis Heal? A Contribution to the Theory of Psychoanalytic Technique. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 73:283–292.   Donnet, J.-L. 2001. From the Fundamental Rule to the Analysing Situation. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 82:129–140.    Ogden, T. H. 1992. Comments on Transference and Countertransference in the Initial Analytic Meeting. Psychoanalytic Inquiry 12:225–247.   Roussillon, R. 2015. An Introduction to the Work on Primary Symbolization. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 96:583–594.   Stern, S. 2009. Session Frequency and the Definition of Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 19:639–655
• The Syntax of Trauma: Parasitic Language, Metaphor and Metonymy with Dana Amir, PhD (Haifa, Israel) 25.01.2026 58นาที

  "A saturated state is a state in which the conceptual or emotional object has absolute value, it is already stacked or closed to new meanings and therefore cannot undergo any kind of transformation. An unsaturated state, on the other hand, is a state in which the emotional or conceptual object is in an open state in which it is still open to transformation, to new meanings, to all kinds of change. What I think is interesting and important is to understand that one of the most difficult aims of working with traumatic objects is linked to this transformation from saturated to unsaturated states. Traumatic objects become fixed in a saturated state, which does not allow them to undergo any transformation within the psyche or within the therapeutic analytic process. The saturated state of traumatic events or objects is a frozen state in which therapy or analysis is used to preserve rather than intervene. This creates, in quite a few cases, a situation that I call false therapy or false analysis - a process, a therapeutic process in which very detailed materials are ostensibly presented, but in fact they are presented in a way that forces the therapist or  to either swallow them as they are, or vomit them up but not digest them because they are presented in a way that does not tolerate any intervention, any other point of view, any creation of movement within the given frozen narrative."   Episode Description: We begin with describing the difference between 'saturated' and 'unsaturated' memories - those that are frozen and without the freedom to reflect from those that contain the capacity to create new meaning. Dana emphasizes the importance of not simply collecting the particulars of a trauma, the 'notes', as much as attending to the nature of its delivery, the 'music' - "the way they tell the story." She presents a case involving 'parasitic language' where imitation of the other is at the level of fetishistic attachment lacking a voice of their own. In her countertransference she noted "I search for you - all I find is myself." We consider how this pseudo-relating induces a peculiar sense of closeness that ultimately contributes to a sense of claustrophobia in the analyst. She shares with us her personal story and reflects "Being a psychoanalyst doesn't mean giving up being a musician." Dana concludes with reading her final paragraph on 'forgiveness.'   Our Guest: Dana Amir, PhD., is a clinical psychologist, supervising and training analyst at the Israel Psychoanalytic Society, full professor, and head of the interdisciplinary doctoral program in psychoanalysis at the Zramim Postgraduate Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program at Haifa University, poetess and literature researcher. She is the author of seven poetry books, four memoirs in prose, and five psychoanalytic books published by Routledge. She was awarded literary as well as academic prizes, including seven international psychoanalytic awards, including the prestigious Sigourney Award (2025).   Recommended Readings: Amir, D. (2012). The Inner Witness. The International Journal of Psycho-analysis, 93:879–896. Amir, D. (2013). The Chameleon Language of Perversion. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 23: 393-407.   Amir, D. (2016). The Metaphoric, the Metonymic and the Psychotic aspects of Obsessive-Sympomatology. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 97, 259–280.  Amir, D. (2016). Hermetic Narratives and False Analysis: A Unique Variant of the Mechanism of Identification with the Aggressor. Psychoanalytic Review 103(4):539-54 Amir, D. (2023). "From Turning Away to Turning Toward: Adoption as Radical Hospitality". Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 21: 1–18. Amir, D. (2024). From mind-deadness to mindedness, from collaboration to cooperation. International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 21(4).
• The Unique Characteristics of Supportive Therapy with Rodrigo Sanchez Escandon (Leeds, England) 11.01.2026 1ชม. 8นาที

  "This patient taught me a lot. The context was that I just finished my second training as a psychodynamic psychotherapist and I felt I needed to prove a lot, and I clearly arrived with the wrong agenda. It was that if I was good enough and smart enough, a clever enough just graduated psychodynamic psychotherapist, I would manage to get into why the patient is struggling so much with the realization of his mother's cancer. That is a resistance, he didn't want to touch the topic at all. I thought that if I uncover the underlying reason why the cancer of his mother was so extremely distressing, and be able to explore with him how he's processing this, I would be helping him. I was extremely wrong. The patient was really generous with me. What I meant is he was forgiving. He clearly was tolerating me trying to push for something he really had no appetite for." "Psychoanalysis is not only about clever interpretations. Psychoanalysis can be about the tools to help us feel what we are experiencing. And in those radical settings, you become almost the object you are projected to be and you need a frame of mind to ground you that you are not that and can offer something different. So that is why I thought it was really useful."  Episode Description: We begin with a description of the distinction between supportive and exploratory psychotherapy. Rodrigo presents clinical examples of individuals who were in crises and their capacity to be aware of their inner experiences was not available to them,  hence supporting their defenses was vital. In addition, "being with them" became a key aspect of the therapeutic benefit they gained. We consider patients who are phobic about intimacy and have backgrounds where trusting others proved to be actually dangerous. He also spoke of therapists who unknowingly privilege their own need to feel like an interpretive healer in the face of their patients' more immediate need to be listened to. Rodrigo alerts us to the risks of colluding with patients' binary view of the world and recommends helping them recognize that "the therapist may not always be on their side or share their perspective" - this is the creative challenge of supportive work. We close with his sharing with us his personal journey and his appreciation that psychoanalysis can be meaningful as well in settings 'off the couch'.   Our Guest: Rodrigo Sanchez Escandón Trained as a Clinical Psychologist in Mexico City and completed his Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy training at the Mexican Psychoanalytic Association before moving to London to undertake further psychoanalytic training at the British Psychoanalytic Association (BPA). He is currently the BPA's Director of Curriculum Subcommittee. He is also the Course Lead for Adult Psychotherapies at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, overseeing programmes in London and the North of England. He previously lectured in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies at Essex University, where he continues to supervise PhD students and pursue research. For seven years, Rodrigo worked extensively with individuals experiencing homelessness and complex needs, integrating psychoanalytic approaches into multidisciplinary care. He now maintains a private practice in Leeds, alongside his teaching and leadership roles.   Recommended Readings:   Winston, A., Rosenthal, R. N., & Roberts, L. W. (2020). Evolution of the concept of supportive psychotherapy. In Learning supportive psychotherapy: An illustrated guide (pp. xx–xx). American Psychiatric Association Publishing.   Winston, A., Rosenthal, R. N., & Roberts, L. W. (2020). General framework of supportive psychotherapy. In Learning supportive psychotherapy: An illustrated guide (pp. xx–xx). American Psychiatric Association Publishing.   Hellerstein, D. J., Rosenthal, R. N., Pinsker, H., & Klee, S. (1994). Supportive therapy as the treatment model of choice. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 48(1), 80–93.   Sanchez Escandon, R. (2025). Introduction to the fundamentals of supportive therapy. In Contemporary developments in supportive therapy: Principles and Practice. Palgrave.   Sanchez Escandon, R. (2025). Active and passive use of the transference. Contemporary developments in supportive therapy: Principles and practice. Palgrave.    
• Teaching About the Dynamic Mind: Then and Now with Jonathan Shedler, PhD (San Francisco) 30.11.2025 1ชม. 7นาที

  "We bring our patterns with us wherever we go, into every relationship, and we necessarily and inevitably bring them into the therapy relationship or the psychoanalytic relationship, because that's a relationship too. It's not a matter of choice. It simply happens. It happens everywhere. The therapist doesn't do anything to make it happen. This is the human condition. We bring our patterns. The thing that makes psychotherapy, psychotherapy, and not just another relationship, is that we do something different. What we do that's different is, instead of just repeating our same old patterns with a new person, we create the conditions where it becomes possible to notice the patterns, to recognize them, to put words to them, and understand them and discuss them. Out of that experience and that understanding comes the freedom to do things differently, to not have to repeat the same patterns. I always make a point, is that true for everyone? Does everybody need therapy? Well, everybody repeats earlier characteristic patterns. For some people, those patterns allow you to live a satisfying and rewarding life, with pleasure and connection and meaning and intimacy. So if that's the case, you're still repeating early patterns, but that's what it means to be human. However,  some people are living out patterns that cause distress or limitation, that get in the way of living the life they could lead, and that's what we work with in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis." Episode Description: We begin our conversation on the importance of communicating our basic concepts in jargon-free language. Jonathan shares with us the limitations he finds in academic psychology, where analytic ideas are meaningfully misunderstood. We work our way through his paper discussing 'unconscious mental life', the 'mind in conflict', 'disavowal' (instead of 'repression') and 'psychic continuity' (instead of 'psychic determinism') to name but a few of the topics we cover. We recognize the analytic opportunity to discover the ways that we live in the childhood 'then' as opposed to the novel 'now'. Jonathan presents clinical material to demonstrate these concepts, including his own 'disavowal' as he began his analysis. We close with an appreciation of the importance of one's own affective discovery of these otherwise unconscious forces. I also note Jonathan's passion and clarity about our work.   Our Guest: Jonathan Shedler, PhD is an author, consultant, and teacher. His article The Efficacy of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy helped establish psychoanalytic therapy as an evidence-based treatment. He's the author of over 100 scholarly articles, creator of the Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure (SWAP) for personality diagnosis and case formulation, and co-author of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual. He is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCSF and a Training and Supervising Analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. Follow Jonathan at: https://jonathanshedler.substack.com/.   Recommended Readings: Schopenhauer's Porcupines by Deborah Luepnitz offers a series of case studies that read like short stories. They will give you a "feel" for what goes on in the clinical consulting room & in the mind of the clinician.   Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: A Practitioner's Guide by Nancy McWilliams offers a readable introduction to psychodynamic concepts and thinking.    Freud and Man's Soul by Bruno Bettelheim offers real insight into the origins of psychoanalytic theory and how and why it is personally relevant to everyone.    Therapeutic Communication by Paul Wachtel offers answers to the perennial clinician question, "What do I say and how do I say it?"   Long-term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy by Glen Gabbard is the closest thing to a comprehensive course in doing psychodynamic therapy.  Introduction to the Practice of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy by Alessandra Lema   That Was Then, This Is Now: An Introduction to Contemporary Psychodynamic Psychotherapy by Jonathan Shedler, PhD
• On Transience and the Cycle of Time: Freud and Ecclesiastes with Paul Marcus, PhD (Great Neck, New York) 16.11.2025 41นาที

  "The similarity between Freud and Kohelet [Ecclesiastes] is that both of them believe that there's no overarching totalistic system that  integrates all the disparate experiences that one has. You have that, Freud says, in psychotics, and you have that in philosophers, and you have that in devout people -  they look for systematicity. They try to cram everything into a framework of meaning. Both Freud and Kohelet reject that. They don't have a worldview in that way. However, in order to flourish, you do need a meaning-giving, affect-integrating and action-guiding set of considerations. You can't just be out there like a windowless monad floating around. There are some core beliefs and values that anchor a person, that give them footing. So there's a difference between a totalizing worldview and a workable framework that's open to critique."  Episode Description: We begin with a brief reading from On Transience and Ecclesiastes and consider how they both belong to 'Wisdom Literature' while separated by over 2000 years. Paul points out that while Freud works from a linear sense of time, Ecclesiastes (Kohelet) is drawn to the cycles of nature and human experience. He provides clinical examples that he feels are enriched by considering the teachings of Ecclesiastes which are very similar to the psychoanalytic way of thinking - "one must learn to live with what cannot be altered," the importance of the "downsizing of infantile narcissism," and  recognizing that "pleasure and joy are palpable, sensual and concrete experiences." We discuss the importance of an object-related life that includes forgiveness and gratitude as well as "embracing resignation without despair." We conclude with the deeply moving time poem "To every thing there is a season/ and a time to every purpose under heaven..."   Our Guest: Paul Marcus, PhD is a training and supervising analyst at the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis in New York and Co-chair of the discussion group Psychoanalysis and Spirituality in the American Psychoanalytic Association. He is the author/editor of 25 books including The Spiritual Resistance of Rabbi Leo Baeck: Psychoanalysis and Religion. He is the editor of Psychoanalytic Review.   Recommended Readings: Seow, C.L. 1997, Ecclesiastes: A New Translation. New Haven: Yale University Press   Fox, M. V., 2004, Ecclesiastes, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society   Heim, K.M., 2019, Ecclesiastes, Downers Grove: IVP Academic   
• A Memoir of Transformation: a patient examines two analyses at two stages of life with Joan Peters, PhD (Ojai, California) 03.11.2025 1ชม. 8นาที

  "With Kristi [second analyst], it was much, much deeper. This whole dependent and infantile part of me was coming out. This is psychoanalytic language - I was moving into a regression that was terrifying, because I had been trained by my mother, and it was my nature, and it was what had worked for me to really approach things as an 'independent person' ie I don't need anybody; I don't need anything; I can function whatever happens. While I explored a little bit of that with Lane [first analyst], it was only very slight, and we never talked about it. With Kristi, she would actually make me aware of it, and I would become aware of my own need for her and withdraw. With Kristi, it was immediate that I knew there was much greater complexity going on, a level of complexity that I couldn't have handled in my 20s. And we locked horns almost immediately." Episode Description: We begin with describing the various psychotherapy journeys that individuals undergo in search of healing. In her memoir, Joan describes two intense yet fundamentally different psychoanalyses at different points in her life. The first analysis was focused on uncovering the unrecognized story of her early family life. The second demonstrated how she was unknowingly replaying that family life in her relationship with her analyst, "I was reliving my whole childhood in our relationship." She came to recognize the "unacknowledged parts of myself" that her analyst "coaxed from its psychic den." She invites us into the frenetic 'regressive' periods where she both desperately craved the affections of her analyst and simultaneously refused to accept the care that was being offered. Multiple episodes of rupture and repair led her to come to terms with the human condition, both her own and her analysts. She closes with "As minutely as I've described these two analyses, I feel as if I've left half unsaid. And yet, as Kristi might say, it's enough."   Our Guest: Joan K. Peters, PhD, is a Professor Emeritus of Literature and Writing at California State University at California. She is the author most recently of Untangling: A Memoir of Psychoanalysis. At last year's meeting of The American Psychoanalytic Association, she gave a talk on memoir and psychoanalysis, and in the upcoming one, her book will be the subject of a panel discussion. In addition to her blog for Psychology Today, she's contributed an essay on dream interpretation for Psychoanalytic Inquiry, and is guest editing a special issue of that same journal on "The Patient Experience."   Recommended Readings: Patient Narratives – an annotated list  The Classics These few analysands who wrote (later on) about their analyses in the 1930's – 1950's offer brief and impressionistic overviews:   H.D.'s Tribute to Freud (New Directions, New York: 1956).   Nini Herman, My Kleinian Home: A Journey Through Four Psychotherapies (Free Association Books, London: 1988)   Margaret I. Little, Psychotic Anxieties and Containment: A Personal Record of An Analysis with Winnicott, (Jason Aronson Inc., Northvale, New Jersey, London: 1985)   Contemporary Memoirs:   Marie Cardinal, The Words To Say It, in French, 1975; English, (VanVactor & Goodheart, Cambridge, Mass.: 1983), introduction by Bruno Bettelheim.   Emma Forrest, Your Voice in My Head: A Memoir (Other Press, New York: 2011)   Andrew Solomon's beautiful essay, "Grieving for the Therapist Who Taught Me How to Grieve," The New Yorker, May 10, 2020, is more of a tribute to his therapist than an account of the process.   Best-sellers   Solomon's The Noonday Sun: An Atlas of Depression   Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (Vintage Books, New York: 1995)   Elyn R. Saks' The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (Hachette Books, New York: 2007) are records of triumph over mental illnesses more than accounts of the therapies the authors underwent.   Fuller contemporary accounts of analysis   Kim Chernin, A Different Kind of Listening: My Psychoanalysis and its Shadow (HarperCollins, New York City: 1995)   Kate Daniels, Slow Fuse of the Possible: A Memoir of Poetry and Psychoanalysis (West Virginia University Press, Morgantown: 2022) offer severe critiques of the authors' analyses.  
• Psychotherapeutic Aphorisms: Reflections from a Lifetime of Listening with David Joseph, MD (Washington DC) 19.10.2025 1ชม. 5นาที

  "Some time ago, I realized that there was such a thing for me as experiencing my patients as being friends, but they were psychoanalytic friends. It was a psychoanalytic friendship that was quite unique and unlike any other friendship. I think that's what people are talking about when they write about psychoanalytic love. It's not love like any other kind of relationship, because the psychoanalytic relationship is so unique. And I feel the same way about psychoanalytic parenting. It's like it's close to mentoring, but it's different because the structure of the relationship is different than from a mentor or an esteemed and loved teacher. It really is helping somebody with the whole process of development and helping them grow, mature, and become more comfortable with themselves and to know themselves better. That seems to me the essence of parenting, and I don't think we should feel defensive about thinking about it that way. That doesn't seem to me that it's my counter-transference in needing to be a good mother, a good father, a good parent to my patients."  Episode Description: We discuss the challenge of transmitting the experiential knowledge of the dynamic therapies to new generations. David's book on therapeutic aphorisms demonstrates a number of key elements of this unique relationship - symbolic meanings in symptoms, 'psychotherapeutic parenting', the simultaneous use of medications and working with the unlikable patient to name but a few of the topics he brings forward. He describes the challenges of the negative therapeutic reaction, how "transference reactions are the creative soul of the patient's story" and what it was like for him to admit to a patient that he lied to her. We close with his reflecting on the meaning to him of retiring from full time practice, noting "I haven't retired my psychoanalytic mind."   Our Guest: David Joseph, MD is a supervising and training analyst at the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis where he served as chair of the board and director of the Institute Council (education committee). For many years he was the Director of Residency Training at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, DC.  He has a long-standing interest in ethics and has written and spoken about a number of ethical issues in the practice of psychoanalysis. He closed his clinical practice several years ago, at the age of 82. In June 2025, his book: Listening for a Lifetime: The Artful Science of Psychotherapy, was published by Mission Point Press.    Recommended Readings: Freud's technique papers.   Greenson, R. (1952) The Mother Tongue and the Mother. JAPA, 1   Zetzel. E. (1956) Anxiety and the Capacity to Bear It.    Schafer, R. (1976) A New Language for Psychoanalysis. Yale University Press. New Haven   Wachtel, P. L.(1977) Psychoanalysis and Behavior Therapy. Basic Books, NY.   Greenberg, J. and Mitchell, S. A. (1983) Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory. Harvard University Press.   Arlow, J. (1995) Stilted Listening: Psychoanalysis as Discourse. PQ, 215-233.   Schafer, R. (1999) Disappointment and Disappointedness. IJP, 80: 1093-1104.   Pine, F. (2011) Beyond Pluralism: Psychoanalysis and the Working of Mind. PQ: 80, 823-856.   Poland, W. (2018) Intimacy and Separateness in Psychoanalysis. Routledge, NY.   Holmes, D, (2022). Neutrality is not Neutral. JAPA, 70: 317-322  
• An Analyst's Reflections on Her Treatments and Her Life with Beverly Kolsky, MSW (Tupper Lake, New York) 05.10.2025 55นาที

  "This really is the full motivation for my having written the memoir. I want people to know what the process is like; not only what the process is like but what the feelings are that don't really make you think of psychoanalysis as a way of changing your life. We're just living and hoping that things will change without really taking account of the fact that we could be living better lives and in a better way. I began to think of the ways of the world and the wickedness in it. There's so many things that we do to keep us going - me and my aphrodisiacs, and I think other people doing other things just to divert them from the misery and unhappiness that they feel.  I don't know how often that's looked at or discussed, so I hope the book does open that up a little bit."  Episode Description: We begin with Beverly's description of her early years of feeling lost and the consequent self-destructive patterns she replayed. Years of sensation-seeking led her to become "exhausted, limp, tarnished, and each time, more profoundly lost." She "landed on an analyst's couch in Little Venice, a section of London. I was paying for someone to recognize me. She did." Beverly shares her analytic journey with us and how vital her discovery of 'kindness' was, first from the outside and then from within. We discuss the early death of her father, her mother's depression and the devotion of her older brother.  She closes with "Like life, psychoanalysis is a continuing process. It doesn't stop...issues crop up, new feelings arise...we better understand what those feelings are telling us, and how to make use of them in an environment we have been able to choose for ourselves. And so it goes…"   Our Guest:  Beverly Kolsky, MSW has worked as a psychotherapist for more than forty years both in America and in England.  She trained as a psychoanalyst with the New York Institute for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology also and received training in London where she worked under the auspices of the Tavistock Clinic and the Institute of Marital Studies. Her work has been published in two journals:  Mind Consiliums and Voices: Art and Science of Psychotherapy. She had two psychoanalytic experiences in two countries with analysts of two different orientations. Her motivation for writing the book as a memoir was to let others in the community know the transformative and enduring power of psychoanalysis. She was in private practice in Englewood, N.J. and now lives, mostly retired, in the northern Adirondacks.   Recommended Readings: Jung, C.G. 1963. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. London: Collins and Routledge and Kegan Paul.   Kohut, H. 1984.  How Does Analysis Cure? Chicago: University of Chicago Press.   Kolsky, B. 2015  Mind Consiliums 15(10), (1-10).  Empathy and Secrecy: Discovering Suicide as a Form of Addiction."   Kolsky, B. 2019  "The Ghost in You: Psychotherapy and Grief" (Voices: The Art and Science of Psychotherapy.) Paperback The American Academy of Psychotherapists.   Kolsky, B. 2019  Voices: Journal of the American Academy of Psychotherapists. Vol 55 No 2 "To Be or Not To Be: A Patient's Search for the Lost Mother."    Kuchuck, S. 2021. London: Confer Books. The Relational Revolution in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. Confer Books.    Malan, D, 1979.  England. Butterworth & Co Ltd. Individual Psychotherapy and the Science of Psychodynamics.   Taylor, K. 2002. U.S. Kevin Taylor M.D. Seduction of Suicide: Understanding and Recovering From Addiction to Suicide.  
• When We Feel Provoked by the Politics of Our Patients with Heribert Blass, Dr. Med. (MD) (Dusseldorf, Germany) 21.09.2025 46นาที

  "I think that the comparison [between political and erotic passions]  is related to the danger of transgressing boundaries from the side of the analyst. It's not totally the same, but it's because of the emotions and the danger of being too much involved as an analyst, if you don't pay attention to what is happening in ourselves with our own emotions, then it can be similar. I think both are important for the psychoanalytic process, to see it as a real relationship - there is this setting where two people in the room meet. They are real persons, but at the same time, a kind of dramatic play fantasy creation coming up from fantasies of the patient, and our own reactions as analysts come into play and gradually just build up the story that is mainly related to the patient's biography, the patient's relationships, and what's going on in her or his life at the moment, but now in relation with us."   Episode Description: We recognize the passionate political world we are living in and the challenges it introduces into the psychoanalytic relationship. Such moments of intense personal conviction challenge the clinician's capacity to hold those convictions, allow the same for the analysand and still locate an analytic surface with which to find additional meanings. Heribert feels that this creates opportunities for intensity akin to "erotic-sexual impulses." He discusses clinical encounters that include his "revealing my assessment of reality" as an aspect of his authentic self living in relation to the patient. He presents the case of a young man whose effort to locate his analyst's "soft spot" entailed provoking him with his idealization of Hitler. Unlike the patient's father who turned away from him at such times, his analyst  tolerated "my required countertransference" which enabled the patient to recognize and tolerate his  tender longings that had lived disguised in his sado-masochistic preoccupations. We close with Heribert, the new IPA president, sharing his vision of  psychoanalysis having a presence beyond the couch in universities and the community at large.   Our Guest: Heribert Blass, Dr. Med. (MD), Psychoanalyst and training analyst for adults, children and adolescents, member of the German Psychoanalytic Association and IPA (DPV/IPA), also specialist of psychosomatic medicine and psychotherapy, psychiatry, working in private practice in Düsseldorf, Germany. Since August 2025 President of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). From 2020 to 20204 President of the European Psychoanalytical Federation (EPF). He has published on the image of the father, male identity and sexuality, gender dysphoria and transidentities, aspects of thought function in the psychoanalytic process and in the institution, psychoanalytic supervision, psychoanalysis in society and as editor of a book on Time and the Experience of Time (first in German, the English publication will follow soon) about the exchange of psychoanalysis with other sciences.   Recommended Readings: Blass, H. (2023). La actitud analítica en un contexto de creencias polarizadas en la consulta. In: La Cultura del Odio. El Odio a La Diferencia. Revista de Psicoanálisis de La Asociación Psicoanalítica de Madrid, Vol 38, Nr. 98, p.439-458 (ISSN: 1135-3171) Blos, P. (1962). On Adolescence. A Psychoanalytic Interpretation. New York: The Free Press Blos, P.  (1985). Son and Father. Before and Beyond the Oedipus Complex.  New York: The Free Press  Freud, S. (1915). Observations on Transference-Love (Further Recommendations on the Technique of Psycho-Analysis III). S.E. 12:157–171.  Gabbard, G. O. (1995). Countertransference: The Emerging Common Ground. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 76:475-485  Greenson, R.R. (1974). Loving, Hating and Indifference Towards the Patient. International Review of Psychoanalysis 1:259-266  Heimann, P. (1950). On Counter-Transference. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 31:81-84  Loewald, H. W. (1975). Psychoanalysis as an Art and the Fantasy Character of the Psychoanalytic Situation. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 23:277–299.   Tuckett, D. et al. (2024). Knowing What Psychoanalysts Do and Doing What Psychoanalysts Know. London: Rowman & Littlefield    
• Analysts' Reflections on Their Parenting with Andy Cohen (Johannesburg) 07.09.2025 51นาที

  "I was quite protective of the parent reader while I was editing this. I feel that so many of the books out there on the shelf have a real kind of finger wagging quality to parents. They kind of tell parents what to do, what not to do, mostly what they're doing wrong. I  felt like I wanted to create a resource that empathized with the parents' position, and that protected them, because this is literally the hardest thing in the world. So the protectiveness felt important to me, and it was one of the things that was really quite important that we always held the parent in mind, which is why every letter starts with 'Dear Parent'."    Episode Description: We begin with acknowledging the 'profound ordinariness' of the parenting experiences that these thirty-nine psychoanalysts share with the reader.  They openly reveal their vulnerabilities, childishness, ambivalences and sorrows.  They also share their delights, pleasures and feelings of accomplishment. The letters that we read include those on parental protectionism, feelings of being excluded, rivalries and erotic feelings. All the contributors acknowledge the presence of their pasts in their parenting present. Andy speaks of her journey as a mother and how vital her finding psychoanalysis was for both her and her family. She concludes the book "I hope that you close this book with a deep sense of respect for yourself, a healthy curiosity and a few more questions than answers."   Our Guest: Andy Cohen is a psychoanalyst with the South African Psychoanalytical Association (SAPA). Her TEDx Talk, "A Mom Can't Always Act Like a Grown-Up – Here's Why", explores the unconscious forces between mother and child. She holds an MA Fine Art and has worked as an Art Counsellor using psychodynamic art-based interventions in at-risk communities. She currently lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa.   Recommended Readings: TED Talk by Andy Cohen: "A mom can't always act like a grown up - here's why" When Mothers Talk - Magical Moments and Everyday Challenges from Birth to Three Years by Ilene S. Lefcourt Doing Psychoanalysis in Tehran by Gohar Homayounpour Psychoanalysis from the Inside Out by Lena Ehrlich Intimacy and Separateness by Warren Poland Dear Candidate: Analysts from around the World Offer Personal Reflections on Psychoanalytic Training, Education, and the Profession by Fred Busch