Dominique: the Case of an Adolescent interview with Jamieson Webster

Steven Kuchuck converses with NBiP about his newly edited book Clinical Implications of the Psychoanalyst’s Life Experience: When the Personal Becomes Professional (Routledge, 2013). It focuses on the impact of the analyst’s life experiences vis a vis their clinical mode and mien. The book, with 18 essays, (written by mostly relational or interpersonal analysts with the notable exception of the venerable Martin Bergmann) covers a lot of terrain. It is divided loosely into two parts, with the first section focusing on early life events and the second on later ones.  So we read about the impact of surviving Auschwitz and how it colors Anna Ornstein’s clinical demeanor. And how Susie Orbach, growing up in a family full of both fiery left-wing passions and a plethora of secrets, found herself in possession of a heightened desire to bring things hidden out into the light.  Eric Mendelsohn describes the end of his marriage and explores his work with patients during that time. Philip Ringstrom reviews certain familial themes regarding ecumenism and improvisation and iterates how they play out in his work as an analyst.  Galit Atlas explores her interest in the vicissitudes of sexuality as derived from many sources, prominent among them her Mizrahi outsiderness.  Noah Glassman and Steven Botticelli think through their becoming fathers together of a son and how their clinical listening was impacted.  Variety abounds. Many of the essays are deeply autobiographical. The reader is given a moment to peek into the analyst’s oft’ hidden inner workings. As such, the book satisfies something perhaps prurient. But what is discussed in the interview largely concerns what this book is also symptomatic of; it is no mistake that many writing herein are self-described refugees from what they perceived to be a more austere classical training where what the analyst brought into the clinical encounter was to be redacted.  Additionally, the rigors of analytic work are myriad. In a culture that does not embrace the work of analysis, but rather sees fit to attack it, are analyst’s suffering from certain forms of deprivation? Certainly this book indicates a wish to be seen more fully. And the move towards analytic self-disclosure reaches a kind of apex in this publication. It is one thing to self-disclose to a patient in a session but this book can be read by all and sundry. So in the interview we also discuss the analyst’s needs and what stands in the way of their being met and how the psychoanalytic culture might begin to more frankly acknowledge their existence.  The need to be seen stands in stark contrast to the ideal of neutrality.  This book is reflective of the ever-swinging pendulum, and also the never-ending tension within 21st century psychoanalysis, regarding the now-perpetual lure of exploring the analyst’s subjectivity alongside the extreme importance of leaving room for the patient to elaborate, in an unimpeded way, fantasies, transferences and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

26 Apr 201456min

Renewing and traversing the never-ending debate as to whether psychoanalysis is a science, R. D. Hinshelwood, British and on the Kleinian side of life, prompts listeners to consider how we might produce and buttress our knowledge base via implementing scientific methods. By discussing research as an offensive tactic, as opposed to a defensive one, in a world where psychoanalysis finds itself derided as lacking “evidence,” Hinshelwood’s Research on the Couch: Single-Case Studies, Subjectivity and Psychoanalytic Knowledge (Routledge, 2013) teaches us about the single case study and its usefulness for inquiring into the value (or lack) of particular metapsychologies and clinical theories. Questions emerge: Will research on psychoanalysis, proving its usefulness, catch the attention of insurance companies and governmental policy makers, opening currently shut doors? Will affiliating ourselves with science strengthen us? In what ways might research be helpful? Hinshelwood takes us on a tour as he responds to these and other questions in the interview and in the book. In the end we are left with an awareness that research borne of the clinical encounter can yield powerful data. For Freud the consulting room was also a laboratory, and the psychoanalytic method itself a form of research in and of itself. Yet, when it comes to research in the field, we seem to be up against something that at times feels tinged with the impossible. As Hinshelwood writes, “it appears that an extreme standard of mental health is often expected of psychoanalysts, and a suspicion is visited upon us if we are just ordinary.” The implications of this statement for the nature of our researches is plain to see. However, by placing psychoanalytic research adjacent to research in the natural sciences yet apart from research in psychology and medicine, Hinshelwood protects the uniqueness of the method we call the talking cure. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

2 Mar 20141h

In this interview with one of the founders of intersubjective psychoanalysis, Robert Stolorow discusses his interest in Heidegger and the implications of that interest for the psychoanalytic project overall. What do “worldness”, “everydayness”, and “resoluteness” bring to the clinical encounter? What is the role of trauma in bringing us to a more authentic place? Stolorow is interested in pursuing both what Heidegger can do for psychoanalysis and what psychoanalysis can do, in a sense, for Heidegger. The development of “post-cartesian psychoanalysis” has embedded within it a critique of Freud’s intrapsychic focus. Analysts of the post-cartesian stripe seek to unearth “pre-reflectivity”, those modes of being that are part and parcel of us but remain out of our awareness. There is also expressed an interest in contextualism–and towards that end this book looks at Heidegger’s forays into Nazism as evidence of his own limits, precipitated perhaps by the loss of Hannah Arendt’s love and admiration. But for Stolorow, analytic work is best done by employing the tripartite perspective of phenomenology, hermeneutics and contextualism. Whereas Descartes separated mind and body, psyche and world, Stolorow argues for the importance of bringing those very same things back together. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

6 Jan 20141h 6min

Erich Fromm, one of the most widely known psychoanalysts of the previous century, was involved in the exploration of spirituality throughout his life. His landmark book The Art of Loving, which sold more than six million copies worldwide, is seen as a popular handbook on how to relate to others and how to overcome the narcissism ingrained in every human being. In his book The Lives of Erich Fromm: Love’s Prophet (Columbia University Press, 2013), Harvard professor Lawrence J. Friedman explores the life of this towering figure of psychoanalytic thought, and his position in the humanistic movement, which he belonged to. He gives an overview of the religious thought Fromm was inspired by, from Judaism to the Old Testament to Buddhist philosophy. Fromm’s credo was that true spirituality is expressed in how we relate to others, and how to bring joy and peace to the global community. His plea that love will be the vehicle to realize one’s true purpose was the central message of his view on spirituality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

2 Jan 201452min

In this interview, held before a live audience at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies in New York City, Lewis Aron and Karen Starr discuss their wide ranging history of the roots of conservatism in American psychoanalysis, A Psychotherapy for the People: Towards a Progressive Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2013). Beginning with the nefarious impact of anti-semitism on Freud’s theorizing, the authors argue that in an attempt to protect his ideas from being devalued as emanating from the mind a Jewish thinker, he phallicized them, leading to his famous maxim regarding the repudiation of femininity as the bedrock of sexuality and civilization. Adding to the mix of what has made psychoanalysis in America less than radical, Aron and Starr argue that the impact of the Holocaust may have fomented the development of a kind manic defense which took the form of ego psychology (with its idea of the autonomous and unassailable ego). What becomes clear is that a tendency towards binary thinking (male/female, autonomous/dependent, permeable/impermeable) within the profession has demanded the repression of certain modes of understanding the psyche. Aron and Starr suggest that among the most prominently disavowed of ideas is that we are susceptible to the influence of other minds upon our own. In one of the more compelling arguments made, the authors argue that in the center of the split between what is considered psychotherapy and what is considered psychoanalysis, resides one of the biggest and most menacing fissures to the well being of the talking cure in this day and age. If psychotherapy is seen as the province of care and psychoanalysis as the province of interpretation, rather than that the two are frequently blended into many analytic treatments, who (besides big pharma) is the winner in the end? For Aron and Starr, this split is where psychoanalysis American-style, displays an at-times spectacular self-destructiveness. What is the RX for this dilemma? Listen to the interview and, if you are so moved, write in to describe how you are influenced by what you hear. The authors are game to engage in a conversation about their work and looking forward to hearing from the listenership so that we might strategize together a progressive future for psychoanalysis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

29 Nov 20131h 46min

Here at New Books in Psychoanalysis we are celebrating the Summer of Men! We continue our inquiry into the topic of masculinity in psychoanalytic thought as we converse with Robert Grossmark and Bruce Reis about Heterosexual Masculinities: Contemporary Perspectives from Psychoanalytic Gender Theory (Routledge, 2009). The book is devoted to rethinking notions of male heterosexuality from within a psychoanalytic standpoint. Often in the field we think of boys as becoming masculinized by repudiating their identification with their mothers and the female world. This collection of essays begs to differ; boys never give up those identifications and it may be to their benefit that they do not do so. This collection argues that straight guys have been, in a certain way, fall guys–the ones in which other, more marginalized identities, define themselves in opposition to. So what happens when the known quantity proves to be less knowable? This is some of the terrain taken up by this book. Also discussed here are the pre-oedipal father, as well as the fate of the father’s body and its erotic components, alongside a discussion considering the possibility of the development of interiority and inner genital space in men. In this interview, the authors explore the paradigm shifts afoot in the field and the ramifications for clinical work that are expectable as a result. The authors exude both seriousness and playfulness as regards their subject matter, making for a perfect August respite (for the analyst on hiatus) and for some pleasurable and moving listening for the rest of us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

12 Aug 201358min

Before the Second World War, very few Americans visited psychologists or psychiatrists. Today, millions and millions of Americans do. How did seeing a “shrink” become, quite suddenly, a typical part of the “American Experience?” In his fascinating book Shrink: A Cultural History of Psychoanalysis in America (Nebraska University Press, 2013), Lawrence R. Samuel examines the arrival, remarkable growth, and transformation of psychoanalysis in the United States. As Samuel shows, Americans have a kind of love-hate relationship with their “shrinks”: sometimes they love them and sometimes they loath them. The “shrinks” seem to know that their clients are fickle, and so they “re-brand” their technique with some regularity. Sometimes it’s “analysis,” sometimes it’s “therapy,” sometimes it’s just “counseling.” But, regardless of what it’s called, it’s always some variation on the “talking cure” and it can always be traced to Freud. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

20 Jun 201344min

Psychoanalysis, beginning with Freud, has been, albeit perhaps implicitly, a theory of masculinity. Freud’s Oedipus Complex, for example, charts the development of masculine identity in the boy while leaving the girl’s pathway to femininity less fully explicated. And let yourself recall that Freud’s immortal question was not “what do men want” was it? Nevertheless, according to Donald Moss, contemporary psychoanalysis has many glaring blind spots when it comes to thinking about men. Part of what Moss addresses in this interview is the experience of being a male analyst looking at and listening to men. He argues that this kind of male-male analytic pairing has ended up somehow sidelined and so remains under-thought and under-theorized by analysts. His book is an attempt to open an apparently tightly shut if not hidden door, (think “The Cask of Amontillado”) in the hopes of both shedding light and broadening our conceptual frameworks for thinking about manhood, masculinity and maleness. Moss draws our attention to some uniquely masculine dilemmas, He argues that on the road to manhood, the boy must pass through the feminizing process of identification. In a sense he is enlarging the popular idea put forth by Greenson, Stoller and Chodorow, each separately, that boys must peel away an initial feminine identification with their mothers in order to become men. Moss argues that to become a man, a man needs a man. “We ‘know’ we are ‘men’,” writes Moss, “when we ‘know’ we are, in some way, fashioning ourselves in the likeness of a predecessor.” This need for a predecessor demands that the boy be receptive and open to the influence of the man he most wishes to resemble.  Thus the process of being masculinized demands the boy assume a feminine position. Moss asks us to consider then the impact of internalized homophobia on all men. He wonders if, under the influence of homophobia, many boys defensively turn away from the men they need? And how does this turn away impact the development of a masculine identity? When considering these and other questions, Moss identifies a certain vexatiousness seemingly at the heart of manhood. Somehow, as well, masculinity is often enough a source of disappointment. We hope it will be an incredible resource, a fount of strength, protectiveness and security yet, given our expectations, it often falls far short. Moss argues that, at some level, we had best get comfortable with that chasm. Following Lacan’s dictate to never give up on your desire, Moss suggests that we see masculinity as a site of aspiration. But we had also best keep in mind that masculinity can take on elements of a Riviereian masquerade, and by doing so, it reveals its feminine aspect once again.  Repeatedly in this interview, Moss deftly points out the plethora of paradoxes surrounding masculinity, and in so doing, invites the listener to rethink “common sense” notions of manhood and maleness.  Of course, it takes a certain kind of man to expose his own weaknesses–and listening to Moss, the strength and fortitude it takes to do so make for compelling listening–and so with his displays of candor and vulnerability, Moss returns us again to the paradoxical nature of masculinity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychoanalysis

10 Jun 20131h