Psychoanalysis On and Off the Couch

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Childhood Memories: Their Impact on Mothers and Their 0–3-year-old Children with Ilene Lefcourt (New York)
“There are very specific fears that people have that are specifically related to their own childhood, and I'd like to give an example. A mom with twins had a kidnapping fear. She was afraid every time she saw a car drive by her house that her twins would be kidnapped. Now this mother was herself adopted when she was a newborn, but her adoption did not become final until she was one year old. Her twins were approaching one year. I was struck by the anniversary of her fear of kidnapping, and when I asked her who she thought was driving the car that drove by her house, she blurted out, 'my biological mother - adoption was never an issue for me, I have the best parents,' she said, but her fears about her babies being kidnapped were rooted in her own guilty feelings. She said, 'I get to keep my biological babies and my biological mother did not. I can have biological babies and my adoptive mother could not.' Carrie’s fantasy that her biological mother was threatening to kidnap her babies represented both her fears of retaliation for her aggressive victories over both her biological mother and her adoptive mother, and the repair of her disavowed feeling of loss by a reunion with her biological mother. This meaning of the memory, this understanding of the memory, resolved her kidnapping fear. It dissolved.” Episode Description: We begin with an overview of the importance of mothers' childhood memories in their experience of their own children. These memories are of the conscious sort and also the not-so conscious. They are of the loving as well as the misattuned versions. "The challenge for mothers is to understand the complexity of their own childhood memories and to help their babies and toddlers adapt to the everyday ups and downs of life, as well as to the exceptional ones." We discuss typical fears, sleep problems, 'mutually-regulated patterns', naming body parts, nakedness, weaning and screen time. Ilene ran mother-baby-toddler groups for 35 years and shares with us her relentless curiosity for what we all bring to the parenting experience. Our Guest: In 1982, Ilene Lefcourt established the Sackler Lefcourt Center for Child Development - programs for parents and their children from birth to three years. She was the Director, led the Mother-Baby-Toddler Groups, and provided Developmental Consultation to parents for over 35 years. She saw over 1,000 families and taught Child Psychiatry Residents and Parent-Infant Psychotherapy Trainees about her work. She has been a faculty member at the Columbia Psychoanalytic Center since 1995. Ms. Lefcourt is currently in private practice in New York City. She is the author of When Mothers Talk, Parenting and Childhood Memories, and Mother-Baby-Toddler Group Guide. Her forthcoming book is, 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 1975, Mahler, M., F. and Bergman, A. The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant, Basic Books 1985, Main, M. Kaplan, N. Cassidy, J. Security in Infancy, Childhood, and Adulthood: A move to the Level of Representation. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 1991, Fonagy, P., Steele, M., Steele,H., Moran, G. S . The Capacity for Understanding Mental States. Infant Mental Health Journal, 12(3) 201-218 1992, Bretherton, I. The Origins of Attachment Theory. Developmental Psychology, 28(5) 759-775 1993, Lieberman, A ., The Emotional Life of the Toddler, Simon and Schuster 1995, Stern, D. The Motherhood Constellation, Basic Books 1998, Stern, D., Brushwweiler-Stern, N. The Birth of a Mother. Basic Books 2005, Lieberman, A., Angels in The Nursery, Infant Mental Health Journal. Vol. 26(6)
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59:14
Forbidden Intimacy: Marrying the 'Other' with Ashis Roy, PhD (Kolkata, India)
“The amount of guilt and the sense of alienation that people feel when they fall in love with someone who is ‘outside’, and the struggle that they have to undergo to explain that choice which they fully don't understand themselves, is a very deep conflict that my work tries to capture. The title of my book is ‘Intimacy in Alienation’, and alienation is something that is really very pregnant in the identities of these individuals who feel like aliens to their own community because their community cannot imagine why are they seeing the other as something positive but not as how the community wants them to see. So there's a big gap that often gets deeper and it widens and it really forecloses any conversation and imagination.” Episode Description: We begin with considering the nature of 'malignant othering' that Ashis describes in parts of the Hindu-Muslim interface in India. His thesis is that transcending the binary into a 'third' is essential in the "quest for newer foundations defining Hindu and Muslim identities that are freed from historically entrenched definitions." He describes the challenges faced by each community that lacks the imagination of what is positive in the other. We discuss the importance of family support for interfaith couples and how often that is lacking. He describes 'love-jihad' where the autonomous agency of the partners is, through the eyes of fundamentalism, reduced to stereotypes of oppressor-oppressed. Ashis describes his research methodology which borrows from the psychoanalytic method in its recognition of transference and repetition. He closes by sharing with us the impact on him of the riots of 2002 and behind that the latent presence of the atrocities of the 1947 Partition. He bemoans "the erosion of the narratives of harmony" and sees his work as his effort at healing. Our Guest: Ashis Roy (PhD) is a Psychoanalyst at the Delhi Chapter of the Indian Psychoanalytic Society ( IPA London). He works with adults and couples. For more than a decade he was on the Faculty at the Centre of Psychotherapy and Clinical Research, Ambedkar University, where he participated in institution building, taught psychoanalysis, and trained students to become Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists. He is a faculty at CAPA (China-American Psychoanalytic Alliance) and is interested in exploring Asian and South Asian cultures using psychoanalysis. He hosts podcasts on the New Books Network and works with psychoanalysts across the globe. His book, Intimate Hindu-Muslim Relationships: A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Self and the Other (2024) has been published by Yoda Press. Recommended Readings: Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity, youth, and crisis. New York: W.W. Norton. Kakar, S. (1996). The colors of violence: Cultural identities, religion, and conflict. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wahab. G (2021) Born a Muslim: Some truths about Islam in India. Aleph Book Company. Altman, N. (2005). The Analyst in the Inner City. Relational Perspective Book Series Davids, M. F. (2009) The Impact of Islamophobia. Psychoanalysis and History 11:175-191 Green, A., & Kohon, G. (2005). Love and its vicissitudes. London: Routledge.
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56:22
The Making of the Documentary: Outsider. Freud with Yair Qedar (Tel Aviv)
“I belong to the race that in the Middle Ages was blamed for all the plagues and such experiences have a sobering effect, and they do not arouse the tendency to believe in illusions. Much of my life has been devoted to trying to shed illusions. But if there is an illusion worth believing in, at least partially, this is the illusion: that we learn how to divert the impulse of destruction from our own kind, how to stop hating each other because of trivial differences, and stop killing each other for profits. That we stop taking advantage of the achievements of progress to control the forces of nature in a way that will lead to our destruction. Without this illusion, what future awaits us?” Sigmund Freud, Letter to Romain Rolland, 1923 “I found [this letter] in the collection that Eran Rolnik translated into Hebrew. I met it in the Hebrew version, and when I got back to the German, something else happened. In the Hebrew translation it was talking about the ‘hope’. But then the people in Vienna told me in German this is not ‘hope’, this is ‘illusion’. I thought it is even more powerful that he speaks about the power of illusion, the needed illusion. It also brought me back to the beginning of my journey when a friend said the main purpose of the film is to have Freud telling us something like the ‘big father’, how should we live today? A tip and insight from Freud. So this is an insight from Freud, a message from Freud over time to us now. I'm not sure it's prophetic. I think there's no prophecies, but it speaks to us now. It speaks to us now.” Episode Description: We begin with an opening quote from Freud that characterized his sense of being an 'outsider'. Yair then shares with us his own personal journey of discovering Freud as distinct from his father. Having some analytic exposure awakened in him the capacity to, like Freud, ignite his creativity and discover Freud anew. Unique among the many Freud documentaries, Yair utilizes 3D animation techniques as well as dreamlike imagery, newly uncovered archival film and evocative music to invite the viewer to regressively experience the possibilities of the unconscious. We go through four periods of Freud's life which include his struggles with Viennese antisemitism, his discovery of the role of childhood sexuality, his illness and the deaths of his father, daughter, granddaughter and mother and his exile to London. We conclude with his 1923 letter to Romain Rolland where he pleads "that we stop taking advantage of the achievements of progress to control the forces of nature in a way that will lead to our destruction.” Our Guest: Yair Qedar is an Israeli documentary filmmaker, social activist and former journalist. In his project "the Hebrews", he had been chronicling the lives of Jewish and Israeli figures of the modern Hebrew literary canon. Qedar's 19 feature length documentaries have all premiered at film festivals and have won the director over 30 prizes. Also, Qedar is a leading LGBTQ activist and created the first Israeli LGBTQ newspaper. To View the Film: This documentary was first shown at the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna on January 9th, 2025. It is currently being screened at film festivals worldwide. To arrange a viewing, please contact Yair Qedar at [email protected] Website and Trailer: https://ivrim.co.il/en/films/outsider-freud/ Recommended Readings: Adam Phillips (2014): Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst. Yale University Press. Ernest Jones (1953): The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud. Basic Books. Sigmund Freud (1926): The Ego and the Id. Standard Edition, Vol. XIX, Hogarth Press. Sigmund Freud (1937): Letter from Sigmund Freud to Marie Bonaparte Sigmund Freud (1929): Letter to Romain Rolland
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56:14
A Fourth Pillar: Unlocking the Power of Case Writing in Analytic Training with Stephen B. Bernstein, MD (Brookline, Mass.)
“I've had the experience of having some wonderful supervisees, many of whom have done quite fine work and where it has not been an issue of any kind of great concerns. And allowing the candidate to see what's written and also discussing it with them, obviously makes it quite easy for them to get both positive input, but also at times, input that will help them evolve and deepen their work even more.” Episode Description: We begin by exploring the critical role of case writing in psychoanalytic training, discussing Stephen’s concept of "a fourth pillar of analytic training." Stephen introduces the dynamic interplay between writing and self-reflection, arguing that the act of writing illuminates resistances, countertransference, and areas of growth that might elude the analyst in supervision or personal analysis. He shares his innovative "three-minute chess match" technique for identifying the heart of a case narrative and reflects on his journey—from his mother’s poetry to his current work mentoring candidates in the art of case writing. We explore Stephen’s insights on the 're-immersion anxiety' that can inhibit case writing, and how addressing these resistances transforms the writing process and deepens clinical work. We conclude with a discussion of how the process of writing fosters an enduring capacity for self-supervision and analytic insight. Our Guest: Dr. Stephen Bernstein, MD is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and has chaired a discussion group on writing about analytic cases for over 30 years. He is a prolific author, including his recent paper, The Process of Case Writing: A Fourth Pillar of Analytic Training, published in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Dr. Bernstein’s work highlights the centrality of case writing as an essential tool for self-reflection and professional development. Beyond his focus on writing, he has contributed to the field with early research demonstrating the compatibility of preparatory psychotherapy with psychoanalysis and continues to mentor candidates, fostering their growth as analysts and writers. Recommended Readings: Bernstein, S. (2023). The Process of Case Writing: A Fourth Pillar of Analytic Training. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Gabbard, G. O. (2000). Disguise or Consent? Problems and Recommendations Concerning the Publication and Presentation of Clinical Material. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 81, 1071-1086. Kantrowitz, J. L. (2004). Writing About Patients: I. Ways of Protecting Confidentiality and Analysts' Conflicts Over Choice of Method. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 52, 69-99. Stimmel, B. (2013). The Conundrum of Confidentiality. Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis, 21(1), 84-106. Stein, M. H. (1988). Writing About Psychoanalysis: II. Analysts Who Write, Patients Who Read. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 36, 393-408.
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45:01
The Unspoken: Analyst's 'Delinquencies', Post-Treatment Contact and Aging with Joyce Slochower, PhD (New York)
“I feel so strongly about this [collective commemorative ritual]. I think that early psychoanalytic writing overemphasized the value of separation-individuation and pathologized the opposite. It's been through personal experience that I have come to see that in a different way with regard to Jewish commemorative ritual which takes place a couple of times a year. But also some experiences that I have had outside the realm of religion. The one that pops to mind was what President Biden did about a year after the first onslaught of the Covid epidemic. He had candles put all around the reflecting pool in Washington, one candle for every number of people who had died, and this was broadcast on television. I sat there and I wept over thousands of deaths, and then I began to think about the power of the experience of mourning with others. Despite the fact that we didn't all lose the same person, we had all lost somebody to this virus that was not as yet being managed. There was something incredibly powerful about that - in the same way for those who lost someone on 9/11 who go down to the Twin Towers and read the list of names every year. But we analysts have not theorized this stuff and I think it's time that we did.” Episode Description: We begin with Joyce sharing with us her evolution from being a young analyst who was essentially ever available to her struggling patients to now being "more aware of the problematic edge to a kind of responsiveness that once felt simply necessary." We discuss what she calls analyst's 'secret delinquencies' - when the clinician intentionally withdraws from the patient into personal matters "so that the analyst becomes the single subject in the room." We consider post-treatment friendships between analyst and analysand and the nature of the evolution of the transference. Joyce shares with us her reflections on growing older and the mixed blessings it provides in terms of greater experience and clinical wisdom as well as a tempting "disengagement from an earlier sense of therapeutic discipline." We close with her suggestion that we consider the "dynamic function of commemorative ritual" not as a mere enactment but as a fulsome experience for "reworking old connections." Our Guest:Joyce Slochower Ph.D., ABPP, is Professor Emerita of Psychology at Hunter College & the Graduate Center, CUNY; faculty, NYU Postdoctoral Program, Steven Mitchell Center, National Training Program of NIP, Philadelphia Center for Relational Studies & and PINC in San Francisco. She is the author of Holding and Psychoanalysis: A Relational Perspective (1996; & 2014) and Psychoanalytic Collisions (2006 & 2014), and co-Editor, with Lew Aron and Sue Grand, of “De-idealizing relational theory: a Critique from Within” and “Decentering Relational Theory: a Comparative Critique” (2018). Her new book, Psychoanalysis and the Unspoken, was released by Routledge in June 2024. She is in private practice in New York City. Recommended Readings: 2024 Psychoanalysis and the Unspoken. NY, London: Routledge. 2024 Factions are Back. Journal of the American Psychoanal. Assn., 72(4): 561-582. 2018 Deidealizing Relational Theory: A Critique from Within. L. Aron, S. Grand, & J. Slochower, Eds. London: Routledge. 2017 Don’t tell anyone. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 34: 195-200. 2014 Holding and Psychoanalysis: A Relational Perspective (2nd Edition). New York: Routledge. 2014 Psychoanalytic Collisions: (2nd Edition), New York: Routledge.
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