International Psychoanalysis

I am sure that all will join me in wishing Happy Birthday to our editor-in-chief: Arnie Richards. Founder and most enthusiastic contributor to the International Psychoanalysis Blog, Arnie has given us a gift! Where else could we read such diverse, fascinating, and relevant articles with just one click on the computer? Arnie not only keeps us up to date, but he also gives us amazing historical perspectives. From Arlow to Python; poetry to photography; movie reviews to mothering; LeBron to Lewis; Freud to Monroe; yesterday to tomorrow – Arnie’s blog gives us everything we could wish for and more.

Arnie’s openness, his curiosity, his generosity, and his creativity – not to mention his persistence and his energy – combine in rare combination to make him a man for all seasons – a man to emulate – and a man to appreciate.

So Happy Birthday Arnie – and thank you from all who enjoy your gift to us.

Click Here to Read:  The Medium Is the Medium By David Brooks in the New York Times on July 8, 2010.

Click Here to Read:  A nation under post-traumatic stress, editorial by James Carroll in the Boston Globe on June 28, 2010.

Click Here to Read:  Now Don’t Hear This  by George Prochnik, OpEd Article in the New York Times on May 1, 2010.

George Prochnik is the author of Putnam Camp: Sigmund Freud, James Jackson Putnam, and the Purpose of American Psychology.

Click Here to Read:  Reviews of Putnam Camp on this website.

George Prochnik

Click Here to Read: The President’s Corner: Finding Psychoanalytic Values in Unexpected Places: Dr. Donald Berwick and the CMS by Prudence Gourguechon ont the American Psychoanalytic Association website on April 21, 2010.

Click Here To Read: Mind-altering drugs and the problem child  By Claudia Meininger Gold in the Boston Globe on June 30, 2008.

Click Here to Read: Medication can’t fix a broken childhood By Claudia Meininger Gold in the Boston Globe on January 26, 2009.

Click Here to Read:  Backed into a treatment corner By Claudia Gold in the Boston Globe on March 30, 2009

Click Here To Read:  In autism, medication is only a partial answer by  Claudia M. Gold in the Boston Globe on December 14, 2009.

Click Here to Read: A dose of common sense:  U.S.-style health care involves a lot of costly procedures, but not enough thought by Lawrence D. Blum,  OpEd in the Philadelphia Inquirer, on September 30, 2009.

 Click Here ro Read: Freud’s Adirondack Vacation by Leon Hoffman, OpEd Contributor, in the New York Times on August 29, 2009.

Click Here To Read: Putnam Camp : Sigmund Freud, James Jackson Putnam, and the Purpose of American Psychology By George Prochnik, Reviewed By Arnold Richards.  

Click Here To Read: Adirondack Couch by Peter D. Kramer in the New York Times on December 24, 2006.

Leon Hoffman

Click Here To Read: Obama’s Style Problem as Procedural Memory by Norman Holland on the his is Your Brain on Culture Blog ont the Psychology Today website on August 27, 2009.

Barack Obama

Click Here To Read:  Reframing the Relationship of Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience, an OpEd Article by Elio Frattaroli.

Elio Frattaroli

Click Here To Read: Brain Gain: The underground world of “neuroenhancing” drugs by Margaret Talbot in the New Yorker on April 27, 2009.

Click Here To Read: Leon Hoffman’s Letter to the editor about Brain Gain: The underground world of “neuroenhancing” drugs.

Every era has its defining drug. Neuroenhancers are perfectly suited for our efficiency-obsessed, BlackBerry-equipped office culture.

Click Here to Read: Dinosaur at the Gate By Maureen Dowd in the New York Times on April 14, 2009.

Click Here to Read: The Debate Over Online News: It’s the Consumer, Stupid by Arianna Huffington on the Huffington Post website on April 10, 2009.

Maureen Dowd

Click Here To Read: How Words Could End a War, OpEd piece by Scott Atran and Jeremy Ginges in New York Times on January 24, 2009.

Click Here To Read: Counting the Walking Wounded By Lawrence M. Wein in the New York Times on January 25, 2009.

by Jane S. Hall

Measuring each other is, more often than not, a fruitless exercise and breeds strife where there should be encouragement, ill will where there should be generativity, falsification of material due to perceived requirements, and mistrust where there should be trust.

If we can agree that the practice of psychoanalysis includes intensive work with patients who suffer from both pre oedipal and oedipal conflicts, object hunger, developmental lags, mood disorders, character problems, anxiety inappropriate to the occasion, using the psychoanalytic techniques that include recognizing and using transference, counter transference, and projective identification to inform; action and enactment to explain; awareness and modification of resistance to proceed; and listening for fantasy that clouds wished for functioning; in a safe and consistent atmosphere, we should be able to know and explain just exactly what psychoanalytic work is. (more…)

The following editorial on the crisis in pediatric psychiatry (e.g., there has been at least a 40 fold increase in diagnosing pediatric bipolar disorder in this country, unlike other countries such as Puerto Rico) was published in a recent issue of Nature Neuroscience (a basic science journal relevant for anyone interested in what neuroscience has to offer psychoanalysts). Fairly recently, the Hastings Center (a bioethics think tank) held a conference on child psychiatry and psychopharmacology with Steve Hyman (former NIMH Director and Provost at Harvard) as one of the speakers. Hyman, a representative of what became known as the molecular biological approach to psychiatric neuroscience, gave an excellent review of the problems in the field. Parenthetically, Hyman underscores a nonreductionistic approach which includes the value of psychotherapy in mental illness. The Hastings Center’s website has interesting information on children and psychopharmacology.

Brian  Koehler

Click Here To Read:  Credibility crisis in pediatric psychiatry, an editorial from Nature Neuroscience 11, 983 (2008).

The Well is Running Dry
by Jane S. Hall

Barrier busting is a business term recently used by Amory Lovins, an energy wizard and CEO of the Rocky Mt. Institute. He was referring to the need for all those concerned with oil consumption and alternative energy to work together towards finding solutions. Psychoanalysis needs to bust barriers too.

Since my essay on Barrier Busting (link) www.internationalpsychoanalysis.net I have been thinking about an equally and related serious problem that must involve all post-graduate psychoanalytic institutes: universities and colleges are no longer teaching psychodynamic theory. Medical schools, psychology departments, and social work schools (both masters level and doctoral level) have turned almost completely away from Freud’s ideas to the point that a recent graduate might not have read one paper by him or by anyone interested in the human psyche in terms of the unconscious. It looks like a generation will have been skipped and that the next one will be mesmerized and inspired to study the brain and genetics, completely ignorant of psychoanalytic theory, let alone psychoanalysis.

It is as though we psychoanalytic thinkers and clinicians have broken off the polar ice cap and are both drifting and melting away. (more…)

I think this short opinion piece in the New York Times has relevance for all psychoanalysts, in our consulting rooms, in our societies, and in the world in general. We are trained to listen and there is so much that we don’t hear for one reason or another. (click here to read Two Silences)
Jane S. Hall
op-ed editor

The IP Blog is pleased to bring to your attention an important article on fighting cancer, a problem that touches us all. Click here to read David Servan-Schreiber’s opinion piece, “We can stop the cancer epidemic” published in the Herald Tribune, September 19, 2008. Thank you, David, for letting us know about it.

Jane S. Hall
op-ed editor

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.