International Psychoanalysis

In Clint Eastwood’s film, Unforgiven, he plays a familiar role, a psychopathic killer hero.  In this film, however, he appears to take an introspective approach to his character and those who admire his character.  In the process, the film allows us an opportunity to examine some of the dynamics of killing and of our interest in seeing it on the screen.  Ultimately, it provides us with another fantasy designed to defeat death.

The film centers around William Munny, played by Eastwood.  In a prologue, and in the early scenes of the film, we learn that he had been an outlaw and killer, but had been reformed by his wife, Claudia.  She had died in 1878 of small pox, two to three years before the action of the film, leaving Munny with the care of his young son and daughter.

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Dear Colleagues

A very quick update: Things in Sichuan are still awful. People in Chengdu are sleeping out of doors in parks, university playing fields etc because of the aftershocks Some are returning to their homes, but colleagues who live in hi rises are sleeping at the houses of their colleagues in ground floor apartments. I have been speaking with them daily. They are very appreciative of our support.

Adults
I have had requests from many institutions for Disaster Training including: Chinese Academy Of Science Institute of Psychology, Institute Of Mental Health Peking University, Department Of Psychology Peking University, EAP, Shanghai Linzi Counseling Center, Chengdu CAPA group and many other groups and individuals. At this moment training is being scheduled for about 1200 mental health workers. The training (4-5 hour live sessions) will be provided by American Psychiatric Association International Center for Psychosocial Trauma, Disaster Psychiatry Outreach and several individual Disaster specialists. CAPA plans to provide mentoring and consultation for these disaster workers as they go into the field. They will need help for the next year as they deal with late effects of the disaster Volunteers?

The Shanghai Mental Health Center will pay airfare for two experienced disaster people come to Shanghai and the APA will supply them. The group in Chengdu has asked that someone come and Jeff Taxman, a CAPA person, has volunteered to go. He will go in any case but we are trying to raise funds to defray his costs. Please send contributions to
CAPA C/O Barbara Campbell 2621 Spring Grove Drive Brighton MI 48114

Children
I am working closely with the Mercy Corps, an American Foundation, already in China and with Gil Kliman and the Children’s Psychological Health Center. We have found a publisher for the children’s workbook. About 20 publishers have been vying for the opportunity to help and it will be available at cost—or less. Mercy Corps may order 50,000 copies. The Sichuan Red Cross will order another 50,000 and the Education Department of Chengdu will order “hundreds of thousands” of copies. Gil Kliman has rewritten the workbook. Dong Hong, an English professor at Sichuan University and also by Zhang Jingyan an Art professor are translating it and Zhang Jingyan’s students are making new illustrations. Professors at several Chengdu Universities and others will be trained to train teachers, parents and aid workers in the use of the workbook. A group of child psychiatrists from Beijing who will be working in Sichuan have asked for a mentor and ultimately we will need child people to consult with the teachers and aid workers via Skype or email.

I get about 20-40 emails an hour with various requests. If you have skills that you think would be useful, please email me.

Elise Snyder

Dear Colleagues

I have been coordinating some efforts to provide psychological assistance to people in Sichuan Province . I am the President of CAPA (the China American Psychoanalytic Alliance) and we have many contacts in China.

THINGS IN PROCESS
1. Many groups, hospitals, university departments and individuals in China have written to us asking for advice, training (some wanted volunteers to come to China) from Americans who are knowledgeable about psychological aspects of disasters. We have already arranged for one American volunteer to go to Chengdu and work with a group there.

2. We are arranging for rewriting, translation, and publishing in China of “My Earthquake Story” (a children’s’ workbook with well documented successful results in preventing and ameliorating later effects of natural disasters). Gil Kliman the director of The Children’s Psychological Health Center made it available. We are in touch with three interested Chinese publishers.

3. We will be working with at least two US foundations, maybe more, several branches of the Chinese Red Cross, a major counseling company in China, a major medical supply company in China etc etc etc.

WE NEED VOLUNTEERS
Please email me if you can consult with individuals or groups about working with people affected by disasters using email, phone, Skype
Or if you are available to go to China.
Or if you have other knowledge or skills we and they can use.

Give me information about who you are, your experience with disaster work and what you are willing to do.

Many thanks

Elise Snyder

Over the past 3 months, I have published film essays with a particular focus on the Primal Scene. I began with the recent film, The Lives of Others (February), using Arlow’s paper, “The Revenge Motive in the Primal Scene” as my primary text. In the following months, in commentaries on LA Confidental (March) and the two films, The Crying Game and Mona Lisa (April), I have continued to focus on a sense of exclusion and a wish for revenge as an important dynamic in understanding the primal scene as it is represented in those films. This examination of Bertolucci’s The Conformist continues those themes. In doing so, I have ignored other important themes in this complex work in order to focus on a peculiar aspect of the film as I see it.

The Conformist was the first film that I ever “analyzed”, and doing that got me interested in thinking and writing about unconscious fantasy in film. I would like to point the reader to two extraordinary (to me) features of this film: 1. An unprecedented concentration of primal scene imagery; and, 2. A configuration of imagery that allows us to “reconstruct” a very specific, detailed primal scene fantasy. I have written about this in a much more condensed version in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis (1997: vol. 78:1031-1033). This expanded version was published in Double Feature: Discovering our Hidden Fantasies in Film (Herbert H. Stein, M.D.; 2002, Ereads).

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THE NEW YORK PSYCHOANALYTIC SOCIETY & INSTITUTE
247 East Eighty-Second Street, between 2nd & 3rd 
Tuesday, April 8, 2008, 8:15 p.m.

Charles Brenner, M.D. will speak about Aspects of Psychoanalytic Theory:  Drives, Defense, and the Pleasure Principle.  Arnold Rothstein, M.D. will be the discussant.

 Join us for light refreshments from 7:30 to 8 p.m.

 For information about our training programs please visit us at: www.psychoanalysis.org