Beatrice Beebe
Janine DePeyer
Mary Lynne Ellis
Edie Boxer
Andrew Samuels
My Journey in Infant Research and Psychoanalysis: Microanalysis, a Social Microscope
by Beatrice Beebe (USA)
Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol. 31, No. 1, 2014.
In this paper I describe my personal journey in infant research and psychoanalysis. I describe my work with Daniel Stern and Joseph Jaffe in infant research, and with Frank Lachmann in psychoanalysis. I note some of the people andideas that influenced me along the way. Video microanalysis taught me to see how the intricate process of mother-infant moment-to-moment communication works. It is a powerful research, treatment, and training tool.
Link: http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/pap-a0035575.pdf
Beatrice Beebe, Ph.D.
Clinical Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry
College of Physicians and Surgeons
Columbia University
http://nyspi.org/ Communication_Sciences/index. html
Mailing Address:
NYS Psychiatric Institute #108
1051 Riverside Drive
New York, NY 10032
Telepathic Entanglements: Where are we Today?
Commentary on a Paper by Claudie Massicotte
by Janine De Peyer (USA)
Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Vol. 24, No. 1, 2014.
This commentary is based on Massicotte’s article, Psychical Transmissions: Freud, Spiritualism, and the Occult, which examines Freud’s controversial reflections on telepathy. This discussion surveys contemporary views on telepathy, relating findings from parapsychological research to contemporary theories from neuroscience and quantum physics. The controversy over the non-locality of mind is engaged along with speculations about clinical conditions that might promote or inhibit the possibility of telepathic receptivity. The influence of the analyst’s predisposition and belief system is considered, along with evolutionary practice methods that might facilitate potential attunement to anomalous forms of unconscious transmission.
Link: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10481885.2014.870842#.VDGmulbiIds
IARPP Member access: http://iarpp.net/online-hub-page/iarpp-psychoanalytic-dialogues-archive/
Janine de Peyer, LCSW
50 East 78th Street, Suite 2B
New York, NY 10075
email Janine de Peyer
Languages of Trauma: Towards a Phenomenological Response
by Mary Lynne Ellis (UK)
Psychodynamic Practice, Vol. 20, No. 4. London: Taylor and Francis (Routledge), 2014.
In this article I explore the possibilities of a phenomenological/relational perspective on trauma in psychoanalytic practice. I highlight the problem of interpretations which universalize experiences of trauma, provide explanations in terms of “causes,” and assume particular processes/stages of “recovery” from it. The notion of trauma challenges dichotomies of “internal” and ‘external’ worlds. Traumatic experiences always have a context – that of the immediate relational circumstances of the individual suffering from the trauma, including the wider social/relational context, and the person’s history. I argue for an attunement to the language and specificity of the meanings, verbal and non-verbal, conscious and unconscious, of the client’s suffering within the analytical relationship. This requires the therapist to avoid “ready-made” interpretations from psychoanalytic theory and to be open to the poiesis of the speech which emerges between therapist and client. My discussion of my reading of the Chilean documentary film Nostalgia for the Light, which focuses on the traumatic experiences of those who survived Pinochet’s military regime (1973 – 1989), highlights how diverse responses to trauma are. The originality of the language of the film calls on us as therapists to discover new ways of listening and speaking to our clients’ suffering.
Link to online publication of article: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14753634.2014.950497#.VDHH3VbiIds
(September 2014)
Hard copy available November 2014.
Mary Lynne Ellis is a relational analytical psychotherapist and art psychotherapist in private practice in North London. She has also worked in the NHS and the voluntary (NGO “not-for-profit”) sector in Britain. She has taught, supervised and been a training therapist for both art and psychoanalytic psychotherapy trainings for many years. Mary Lynne has an M.A. in Modern European Philosophy. She has lectured in Britain, Ireland, and Chile and published widely on phenomenological perspectives in psychoanalysis. Her publications include Time In Practice, Analytical Perspectives On the Times Of Our Lives (Karnac: 2008)) and, co-authored with Noreen O’Connor, Questioning Identities; Philosophy in Psychoanalytic Practice (Karnac: 2010). She is also a practising artist.
The Porcupine and Me
by Edie Boxer (USA)
Edie Boxer, MSW, PsyD, with offices in Santa Monica and Woodland Hills, California, has had her piece, “The Porcupine and Me,” published in Voyages in Psychotherapy, an online magazine containing essays, fiction, and poetry about the experience of psychotherapy from the perspectives of both therapist and client.
From the Journal: “Edie has shared an honest and insightful look at how a therapist’s own childhood vulnerabilities can surface in a therapy relationship.” The abrupt termination of a patient leads the analyst to examine her own shameful feelings that she was not the right therapist for this woman. This sudden realization leads to Dr. Boxer’s musing on childhood moments of shame and her process of self-healing throughout the years since the original traumas. In this way she comes to manage reactions that always have the potential to reoccur depending on the therapeutic dyad.
Link: http://voyagesinpsychotherapy.com/the-porcupine-and-me/
Political and clinical developments in analytical psychology, 1972-2014: Subjectivity, equality and diversity –
inside and outside the Consulting Room
by Andrew Samuels (UK)
Journal of Analytical Psychology, Vol. 58, No. 5, 2014.
Abstract: Utilizing Jung’s idea of theory as a ‘personal confession’, the author charts his own development as a theorist, establishing links between his personal history and his ideas. Such links include his relationship with both parents, his sexuality, his cultural heritage, and his fascination with Tricksters and with Hermes. There follows a substantial critical interrogation of what the author discerns as the two main lines of clinical theorizing in contemporary analytical psychotherapy: interpretation of transference-countertransference, and the relational approach. His conclusion is that neither is superior to the other and neither is in fact adequate as a basis for clinical work. The focus then shifts to explore a range of political and social aspects of the clinical project of analytical psychology: economic inequality, diversity within the professional field, and Jung’s controversial ideas about Jews and Africans. The author calls for an apology from the ‘Jungian community’ for remarks about Africans analogous to the apology already issued for remarks about Jews. The paper is dedicated to the author’s friend Fred Plaut (1913-2009).
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Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Therapy
(But Were Afraid to Ask): Social, Political, Economic, and Clinical Fragments of a Critical Psychotherapy
by Andrew Samuels (UK)
European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling, Vol. 16, No. 3, 2014.
Abstract: Three seemingly consensual propositions concerning psychotherapy and counselling are examined critically. All turn out to be unreliable, tendentious and even damaging: (i) Psychotherapy and counselling can be free and independent professions provided therapists, acting together, fight for them to be that way. (ii) Psychotherapy and counselling are private and personal activities, operating in the realms of feelings and emotions – the psyche, the unconscious, affects rooted in the body. Above all other factors, the single most important thing is the therapy relationship between two people. (iii) Psychotherapy and counselling and psychotherapy are vocations, not jobs. Therapists are not only motivated by money. In developing his critiques of these propositions, the author utilizes social, political and economic perspectives. The author reviews new clinical thinking on the active role of the client in therapeutic process and suggests that a turn to the legendary figure of the Trickster might be of benefit to the field. The author locates his arguments in his experience of the politics and practices of psychotherapy and counselling and engages in self-criticism.
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Economics, psychotherapy, and Politics
by Andrew Samuels (UK)
International Review of Sociology, Vol. 24, No. 1, 2014.
Abstract: The paper explores the application of ideas derived from psychotherapy to questions of economic and social policy. It is argued that disputes concerning human nature underlie many debates on economic theory. Class is reviewed from internal and emotional perspectives. Psychological obstacles to the achievement of economic inequality are explored and ways of overcoming them critically discussed. Particular attention is paid to the operation of economic sadism in the behaviour of individuals and societies. A range of possible gender differences in relation to money is reviewed. Inherited wealth is explored from the perspective of ‘therapy thinking’. The paper proposes that we reconsider what is deemed to be realistic and what is deemed to be (hopelessly) idealistic in thinking about economics. The paper concludes by proposing a deeper discussion of the problematic of sacrifice in connection with sustainable economics.
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Appraising the Role of the Individual in Political and Social Change Processes: Jung, Camus, and the Question of Personal Responsibility – Possibilities and Impossibilities of “Making a Difference”
by Andrew Samuels (UK)
Psychotherapy and Politics International, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2014.
Abstract: The paper is an attempt to open discussion on the role of ‘the individual’ in contemporary progressive and radical political discourse and criticism. Academic stress on the contexts in which individuals operate whilst necessary and useful, cuts us off from sources for thinking about such a role. Jung’s ideas about the relations of individual and social/collective are important and suggestive yet require extensive revision. Camus’s book The Rebel is useful in making such revisions. Centrally, the paper proposes new thinking about ‘broken’ and fractured’ individuals as it probes the limits of personal responsibility. Questions of individual political ‘type’ or ‘style’ are posed, intended to provide a novel account of how political attitudes, engagements and behaviours may be conceptualised.
