REMINISCENCES OF GERALD J. ARONSON, M.D. (1922-2022)  By David James Fisher, Ph.D.
By Categories: Psychoanalysis

REMINISCENCES OF GERALD J. ARONSON, M.D. (1922-2022)   By David James Fisher, Ph.D.

I was neither an analysand nor supervisee of Gerry Aronson.  I was a student in his L.A.P.S.I.

Seminar on “Resistance” in the early 1980’s and a friend for the remainder of his life.  I found Gerry to be consistently brilliant, with an encyclopedic knowledge spanning Einsteinian theoretical physics, to mathematics, to philosophies of religion, to literature ancient and modern; he possessed an acute, insider view of the history of psychoanalysis.   Gerry was endowed with a unique sense of humor; It was a Jewish sense of humor, marked by improvisation, wise cracking and one-liners; he possessed tons of stories, ad-libbed rapidly, and hit hard with his jokes.  For my taste, his humor was intelligent and irreverent, puncturing pretense and debunking established pieties.    In speaking the unspeakable, there was some aggression and some malice in his jokiness. But mostly, he was hilarious.  Let me provide a few examples.

L.A.P.S.I. invited Adolf Grunbaum to conduct an all-day program on his book, The Foundations of Psychoanalysis: A Philosophical Critique (1984). Grunbaum was temporarily running out of steam by the late afternoon, catching his breathe, saying out loud “What am I thinking? what am I doing?”  Gerry bellowed from the auditorium, “A lot of damage.” The audience cracked up, including Grunbaum. Continue reading REMINISCENCES OF GERALD J. ARONSON, M.D. (1922-2022)  By David James Fisher, Ph.D.

Cancer and Death Anxiety Webinar
By Categories: EVENTS

DISCUSSION AND INSIGHTS
Death anxiety is neglected in psychoanalysis, in theory and practice. This webinar brings together a group of experts in the psychoanalytic treatment of death anxiety. The audience will be initially introduced to a patient with a three-month prognosis by Norm Straker, MD to reflect on how they would respond to this referral. Prior to a description of the treatment of this patient, Sheldon Solomon, PhD will describe his research on the unconscious defenses against death anxiety, which he has termed “terror management”.
Dr. Straker’s description of his treatment of the patient prominently illustrates the clinical application of Solomon’s research and should help the clinician lessen death anxiety in their
treatment of terminally ill patients.
Linda Emanuel, MD a palliative care specialist, will describe “existential maturity “a term she has designated from her clinical work in palliative care. Finally, Jeffrey Guss, MD will describe his research on the use of psilocybin-assisted therapy in cancer patients with existential distress or demoralization syndrome, and how substance assisted therapy may reduce death anxiety.
Harvey Schwartz, MD will be our moderator. After the presentations, we will move into breakout rooms, each led by one of the
speakers, for small group discussion, and then reconvene to end the webinar in a large group discussion with all participants and speakers.

Voices from ROOM
By Categories: Psychoanalysis

Click Here to Listen to: Voices from ROOM: A Podcast for Analytic Action, Episode 1 and 2.
Dear ROOMmates,

Episode 2 of Voices from ROOM: a Podcast for Analytic Action is now available wherever you listen to podcasts. We’ve been thrilled with the enthusiasm of our early listeners and hope you will consider subscribing today!

This week, Isaac and Aneta interview psychoanalyst Karim Dajani about writing autobiographically and how those on the margins find a sense of belonging in psychoanalysis.

Karim G. Dajani, PsyD, is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice with a specialization in treating bicultural individuals. His research and writing include publications on psychological resilience and culture. He focuses on the role culture plays in determining an individual’s role within a collective and on the experience of cultural dislocation.

Dr. Dajani deepens the discussion he began in his essays from ROOM, “The Culturing of Psychoanalysis” and “From Beirut to San Francisco” as he speaks about the societal and political implications he has experienced in the rapidly changing field of psychoanalysis.

New episodes will be released twice a month on Thursdays!

POETRY MONDAY: October 3, 2022
By Categories: Literature, Poetry Monday

                     Hilary Russell

Good morning, everyone.  Fall is upon us, it seems.  Apples are ripe and abundant, and so does nature nourish and sustain us.

Our poet today, Hilary Russell, has had an interesting life.  Having grown up outside of New York City, he now lives in the Berkshires, in Western Massachusetts.  He holds a bachelor’s degree from Villanova University and a master’s from Wesleyan University.  But what is interesting is what he now does for a living.  After teaching high school English for many years, he took up small boat building and, through his company, Berkshire Boat Building School, he teaches classes in boat-building.  While many, if not most poets have college and graduate school degrees, few, if any, build boats.

His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Boulevard, The George Washington Review, and other well-known journals.  He is the author of Giving up the House, a chapbook (Mad River Press); The Anthology of American Poetry (Wayside Press), and The Portable Writer (Wayside Continue reading POETRY MONDAY: October 3, 2022

The Developmental Lens by Gwyneth Kerr Erwin, Ph.D., Psy.D. from IPBooks
By Categories: Books, Psychoanalysis

Click Here to Purchase: The Developmental Lens by Gwyneth Kerr Erwin, Ph.D., Psy.D.

Advance Praise for The Developmental Lens: A New Paradigm for Psychodynamic Diagnosis and Treatment by Gwyneth Kerr Erwin, Ph.D., Psy.D.

In the nearly thirty years I’ve known her, Dr. Gwyn Erwin’s passion has been to formulate, teach, and integrate contemporary relational psychoanalytic thinking, infant (and adult) development, and caring and effective treatment of trauma. This beautifully articulated and case-illustrated book accomplishes that goal in spades! A must-read for every therapist, teacher, student, and patient who is working and/or living with the debilitating effects of trauma in search of revitalized development.
—Alitta Kullman, Ph.D., Author of Hunger for Connection: Finding Meaning in Eating Disorders

Finally, a book that brilliantly weaves together multiple theories of trauma to create an integrated and comprehensive, easy to understand, narrative of Continue reading The Developmental Lens by Gwyneth Kerr Erwin, Ph.D., Psy.D. from IPBooks

A Connecting Door by David Glessal Millar new from IPBooks
By Categories: Literature, Psychoanalysis

Click Here to Purchase: A Connecting Door by David Glessal Millar new from IPBooks

Praise for A Connecting Door;

If you pick up David Millar‘s book, you will find it hard to put down.

On the one hand it’s a kind of detective story, reminiscent of Ferdinand Mount’s brilliant Kiss Myself Goodbye. In this case the subject is not an aunt but himself; a boy from Birmingham born in the middle of the Second World War to a gents’ tailor and outfitters assistant and the daughter of a shop keeper. It’s about what happened to them, what happened to him, what happened all around him and what he did to himself.
On the other hand, the boy, now a very experienced psychoanalyst, who writes the book looks back at himself to draw conclusions about fundamental matters in being human and alive in our era of excess and of breaking our planetary boundaries.

Combining the personal and philosophical in an accessible way, Millar’s book creates highly moving, intelligent and unusual analysis providing a powerful antidote to the modern politics of identity, “more more” and ‘someone is to blame”. For those who don’t know how psychoanalysis has moved on, it will be a revelation. Millar uses his depth knowledge of the subject to offer a compelling set of ideas about how we might face and even survive the catastrophe we humans have been bringing on ourselves. —

–Professor David Tuckett. Emeritus Professor of Decision-Making, University College London (UCL), Senior Research Fellow, the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford and Distinguished Fellow, British Psychoanalytic Society.