International Psychoanalysis

Below are two articles about Franz Kafka’s papers being made public.  

Click Here To Read: End of a Kafkaesque nightmare: writer’s papers finally come to lightDocuments hoarded for 40 years in Tel Aviv flat by executor’s secretary by Kate Connolly in Berlin in The Guardian, Wednesday July 9 2008.

 Click Here To Read: A Kafkaesque battle for writer’s papers by Ethan Bronner, New York Times, Monday, August 18, 2008 which appeared on page A-12 of the San Francisco Chronicle.

See below for two related conferences:

Click Here To Read: Judaism and Psychoanalysis: A Continuing Dialogue Conference Chicago, IL on Sunday, October 5, 2008.

Click Here to Read:  A Standing Interdisciplinary Forum: Psychoanalysis, Belief and Religious Conflicts: Conference in Israel, Freud Center for Psychoanalytic Studies and Research, Israel Psychoanalytic Society on November 20-21, 2008.

A quiet stranger came into town one day . . .

Every now and then in practice, we see a patient who captures our attention with a dramatic childhood memory within the first few visits; then, defenses set in and the treatment settles into a focus upon the external details of day to day life until something triggers the return of the repressed memory.  Billy Bob Thornton’s film, Sling Blade, is like such a patient.

(more…)

Click Here to Read: Psychoanalysts Urge Members of House Energy and Commerce Committee to Recognize and Protect the Right to Health Information Privacy in the PRO(TECH)T Act which appeared on Explain Health on August 15th, 2008.

Click Here To Read: Press Release: Military Psychologist Refuses to Testify About Abusive Treatment of Detainee at Guantánamo by Stephen Soldz which appeared on Psyche, Science, and Society, the Blog of Stephen Soldz on August 15th, 2008.

Click Here to Read: Psychologists Clash on Aiding Interrogations By Benedict Cary which appeared in the New York Times on August 15, 2008.  

Click Here to Read: Knowing me, knowing you By Salley Vickers A review of the book Intimacies by Leo Bersani and Adam Phillips by which appeared on the Financial Times website on  August 16 2008 03:00

 
 
 
 
Click Here To Read: Elizabeth K. Mahon Interviews Francis Levy about his novel, Erotomania: A Romance on Blogspot on Thursday, August 14, 2008. 
  
 
 
 
 
    

Click here To Read:  Why Soldiers Rape by Helen Benedict from In These Times and posted on TruthOut on August 13 2008.

Click Here To View:  ”Wild Signals: Artistic Positions between Symptom and Analysis” Exhibit to take place at Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, September 13-November 9, 2008.

 
 
 
Click Here to Read: The Inner Life of Leaders: Q&A with Abraham Zaleznik  by Sean Silverthorne in the Havard Bussiness School Newsletter on August 13, 2008. 

Click Here to Read:  A Neglected Problem About Clinical Evidence By Dale Boesky, M.D. on the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute and Society Website.

John Fiscalini, PhD, born on January 10, 1938 died on August 3rd, 2008.  Dr. Fiscalini earned his Ph.D. from Yeshiva University and completed his post doctoral training at the William Alanson White Institute.

Click Here to Read: A Synopsis of Dr. Fiscalini’s work.  

Click Here to Read: Think Again by Stanley Fish in the New York Times on August 10. 2008 which is a response to Charles Van Doren’s account in the July 28 issue of The New Yorker of his participation in the TV Game Show cheating scandal.

Click Here To Read: Chronicle of Higher Ed: Psychology and Torture by David Glenn from Psyche, Science, and Society, Blog of Stephen Soldz on August 11th, 2008.

Racism and anti-Semitism are highly complex human phenomena, having multiple causes including psychological ones. The latter are of paramount importance for understanding anti-Semitism. Over the past few decades, the focus of the psychoanalytic study of anti-Semitism has gradually shifted from the individual to the group. The earlier emphasis on unconscious individual defensive processes has been augmented by a new emphasis on the large group’s psychological processes - for example, its conscious and unconscious needs for identity, boundaries, allies - and enemies. Although, like social-science and human-science theories in general, psychoanalytic theories cannot be tested with the same rigor as natural-science theories, they can help illuminate such crucial human issues as war and peace, politics, racism, anti-Semitism, and genocide.

Click Here to Read: Collective Psychological Processes in Anti-Semitism by Avner Falk.  From Jewish Political Studies Review 18:1-2, Spring 2006 .

Click Here to Read: Ending the psychological mind games on detainees By Stephen Soldz in the Boston Globe on August 10, 2008.

Click Here To Read:  Torture and the Strategic Helplessness of the American Psychological Association by Stephen Soldz, Brad Olson, Steven Reisner, Jean Maria Arrigo, and Bryant Welch, previously posted on this website.

Click Here To Read: Houston scientists develop test for personality disorder: Malfunction is identified by brain imaging devices during game play by Todd Ackerman from the Houston Chronicle on August 9th, 2008.

CAPA (China American Psychoanalytic Alliance) is coming down to the wire. We have filled 52 of 55 teaching positions in our Two-Year Psychotherapy Training Programs in 5 Chinese venues. These three positions remain to be filled. Everyone who has done this work has enjoyed it immensely. Please contact me. Play a role in the Psychoanalytic Olympics,

1. Development 5 Sessions: Tuesday nights: 3/10,3/17,3/24,3/31,4/21
East Coast Time: 9:45-11:00 PM
Central Time: 8:45-10:00 PM
Mountain Time 7:45- 9:00 PM
West Coast Time 6:45-8:00 PM
Topics: Oedipal and Latency periods

2. Assessment 5 sessions: Tuesday nights: 2/3,2/10,2/17,2/24,3/3
East Coast Time: 8:15-9:30 PM
Central Time: 7:15-8:30 PM
Mountain Time 6:15-7:30 PM
West Coast Time 5:15-6:30 PM
Topics: Taking a history, Helping patient tell his story, Evaluating ego functions,
Selecting patients for exploratory psychotherapy, Supportive psychotherapy, Couples therapy, Marital therapy

3. Early Development 10 sessions: Tuesday nights: 12/9,12/16,1/6,1/13, 1/20,
2/3,2/10,2/17,2/24,3/3
East Coast Time: 10:10-11:25 PM
Central Time: 9:10-10:25 PM
Mountain Time 8:10-9:25 PM
West Coast Time 7:10-8:25 PM
Topics: Inborn capacities & environmental influences, The importance of mothers & fathers, The development of psychic structure, Early object relations, Infancy & early childhood, Toddlerhood

Please contact me elise.snyder@yale.edu

并颂夏安
wish you a tranquil summer day

Elise

POETRY MONDAY

 Richard Berlin

Although Richard Berlin is a psychiatrist in private practice in the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and the author of many scientific papers, I know him as a poet – and a fine one, at that.  I first encountered his work when he read from his newly published chapbook of poems, Code Blue, at a local bookstore some years ago.  There were other poets reading, but his poems stood out for their honesty, direct language and subject matter that was rarely dealt with in poetry. We are still lacking, to a large degree, poetry from the world of work, and here was someone who was writing it out of necessity and urgency.

Since then, Berlin has gone on to publish a full-length collection, How JFK Killed My Father, which was published by Pearl Editions and won the Pearl Poetry Prize.

His most recent book is not his own poetry but a collection of essays by other poets, Poets on Prozac (Johns Hopkins University Press), which, despite its pop title, is a serious look of the effect of mental illness and treatment on the creative process.

Here, by Richard Berlin, are two new, unpublished poems, “Freud” and “While Talking to a Psychoanalyst at a Party” and a third, “What a Psychiatrist Remembers,” which received a Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.

 Irene Willis
 Poetry Editor
  (more…)

In this lastest op ed piece, Jurgen Reeder, author of Hate and Love in Psychoanalytic Institututions the dilemma of the profession, gives us his thoughts about the three models of training sanctioned by the IPA and makes a good argument for less rigidity and more flexibility. Psychoanalytic education is not thriving, as we all know, and I am grateful that Dr. Reeder is keeping this important topic in the forefront of our minds.

–Jane S. Hall, Website OpEd Editor

Click Here to Read: The Potenial Repressive Power of Defining Models of Education, An Op-Ed Piece by Jurgen Reeder.

Click Here To Read: Doing Mental Healthcare Right the First Time By Maurice Preter and Jeffrey Kahn which appears on the website Risk and Insurance.