Sally Rudoy

Sharon Ziv Beiman

Dear Fellow IARPP Members,

It’s winter in the southern hemisphere and summer in the northern.  We send warm greetings to our members in all parts of the globe.  It never ceases to amaze us how IARPP has connected so many lives and minds across borders and across seasons.

Keeping those connections strong we bring you:

• Information about IARPP’s next conference The Relational Pulse: Controversies, Caricatures, and Clinical Wisdom, June 25-28, 2015 in Toronto, Canada
• The Candidates’ Panel Call for Papers for the Toronto Conference
• A report on IARPP’s online Spring Colloquium
• An announcement about an upcoming webinar hosted by the Child and Adolescent Interest Group
• A synopsis of a recent conference, The Immigrant in the Consulting Room
• Links to the IARPP Bookshelf interviews with Aaron Balick & Sophia Richman
• A special feature on Japan as part of our ongoing, “Members in the Spotlight” series

As always, IARPP president, Susi Federici-Nebiossi keeps us up-to-date on IARPP business, elections, and goals.

After this issue, we will be handing over the reins of editorship to

Maria Tammone

Christina Emanuel

Maria Tammone and Christina Emanuel. Two dynamic and intelligent clinicians, Maria from Italy and Christina from the USA, have been “shadowing” us via email for months to learn the ropes of putting these newsletters together.

We know these publications are in very capable hands. We can’t wait to see how they bring their unique creative sensibilities to shaping the Bookshelf and eNEWS.

Co-editing via the Internet across time zones  (Sally in NYC, Sharon in Tel Aviv) has been a wonderful connection for us personally.   Between emails about grammar and editorial content, we have shared concerns about each other’s well being in the face of disasters both natural and man-made. Co-editing has been truly a relational opportunity – a co-creation, if you will, of growth, learning, and fun.  We are grateful to IARPP for connecting us.

All our best,

Sally and Sharon

The deadline for our next eNEWS is September 22, 2014.

How to submit:

1. Your announcement or article in full sentences.  Please submit in English and in your native language if you desire.
2. Any relevant links; publisher, website…
3. Artwork or a photo (JPEG) of book cover if applicable
4. A JPEG Photograph of yourself
5. Include your professional contact information for our readers as you would like it to appear publicly.
6. Please send all submissions to both Maria Tammone: irene97@libero.it
   and Christina Emanuel at: christinaemanuel@sbcglobal.net

Interview by Christina Emanuel

Christina Emanuel:  Thank you, Aaron, for your willingness to participate in this interview for the IARPP eNews.  And congratulations on the publication of your new book.  Could you share a bit about how you became interested in writing about psychoanalysis and social networking?

Aaron Balick: I have always been interested in applications of psychoanalysis outside the clinic, particularly on popular media like film and TV. Before writing the book I began to notice the growing ubiquity of social media and how it was being used in my own broader (real) social network. I also noticed that psychotherapists were less likely to be engaged in social networking than their patients.

Around this time I had my first “virtual impingement” – an experience in which the digital world invaded the privacy of my consulting room. The results of a patient’s Google search of my name provoked an intense clinical enactment. After resolving this, I wrote a clinical paper about it (Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society 2012 Vol.17 No.2) in an effort to better understand what happened and share that experience with others in the field.

On reflection it occurred to me that such events were happening all the time between individuals who did not have the luxury of psychotherapy to work out the details. So I decided that rather than writing a clinical book about social networking, I would investigate this cultural phenomena from a relational perspective to better understand its socio-cultural consequences.

What do you hope the reader will take away as the most important message of this book?

Primarily social media provides a technological extension of the self, and because of this, we can use applied psychology to understand it. Unconscious motivations to relate to others, to recognize and be recognized are absolutely central not only to the ubiquitous use of social media, but also to its development and popularity. In this sense, social media is a profoundly human technological development.

Technology has become an object onto which we project both our fears and desires. Because of this, we can lose sight of our thinking and respond out of anxiety or fantasy – producing dystopian or utopian visions instead of clearly articulated critical thinking and working-through.

Historian Melvin Kranzberg is noted for his first rule of technology: “Technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral.” The non-neutrality of social networking rests in the architecture of the sites that mediate our relating to each other, enabling some forms of relating, and disabling others. For example, a social network like Facebook, in which your profile is linked to your real identity, primarily invites outward facing, socially compliant ego expression (Winnicott’s false-self or Jung’s persona) and expression of the ego ideal. An anonymous social network may enable more id-like expression (projection for example), to use a shorthand.

You mention that you have been aware of your own use of social networking when writing this book.   How has your use of social media evolved during this period of study and writing?

When I started writing the book, I became more conscious of my use of social networking use in an effort to be a reflexive researcher drawing on some principles of auto-ethnography. I already had a private Facebook account, but I felt I needed to play around on Twitter too, to get a closer understanding of what it was all about – it has been really enlightening, and fun too.

Therapists who choose to tweet need to do so ethically and thoughtfully (more here: http://www.mindswork.co.uk/wpblog/should-shrinks-tweet-public-personas-in-the-context-of-private-work/).

The theories I propose about recognition deployed by social media as being “relational lite” is certainly something I experience myself. Bits of recognition achieved over social networks are like relational donuts – tasty treats, but ultimately unsatisfying. In all honesty, I enjoy donuts (both kinds), and struggle equally to know how many is enough. Mobile technology enables the donut shop to be in your pocket 24 hours a day, and I do find that temptation a challenge (my partner would agree).

Many psychoanalysts are understandably worried about their online reputations and their privacy.  What advice do you have for those of us interested in managing these? 

There is a lot of anxiety amongst practitioners about their potential exposure via online presence. Unfortunately many have responded to this anxiety by keeping their heads down, feeling like the less they know, the better, when of course the opposite is true. I recommend that all clinicians think through their own “digital policy”. Some may choose to make this explicit and share it with their patients at intake; others (like myself) put it on their website and ask patients to familiarize themselves with it; and some will choose to just formulate a policy in their minds.

Each policy will be individualized but primarily they should deal with how to keep the therapeutic relationship “in the room.” For example, how to deal with clinical material sent via email, which not only extends the therapeutic relationship outside the room, but may also compromise confidentiality by way of viruses or accidental release. It should make clear that the therapist will not engage with patients over social networks, and request that if there are any issues raised by information gained online, it’s best discussed in person.

While one cannot write a policy to cover every eventuality, on can set a framework that deals knowingly with the virtual world.

What response have you received upon the publication of your book?  In particular, I’m curious to know how it has affected your clinical relationships.

The greatest response to the book has been from psychotherapists who have welcomed a thoughtful psychoanalytic approach to this complex and difficult phenomenon. Additionally, people in the tech industry have been extremely interested in my work as well. While there is a great deal of (experimental) psychology in the tech sector, it is not depth psychology.  When confronted with dynamic psychology, interpersonal human motivation, and meaning making, the techies eat it up because they can relate to it. I also get a certain mischievous kick out of dropping Freud into my talks with this demographic; they are often surprised to find that, conceptually at least, some of his turn-of-the-19^th-century ideas are applicable to today’s technology.

Since the book is not a clinical study about psychotherapy and the Internet, it has not affected my clinical relationships as far as I can tell. It has, however, changed my professional profile. I have noticed that people tend to conflate my theoretical perspectives on social media with working therapeutically online (email, skype, instant messaging, etc.). Though my research is applicable to this field, people are often surprised to find that most of my clinical work is traditional face-to-face therapy. I do not run an online practice and online therapy is not something I am pursuing in practice.

In your book you demonstrate that social media are changing the way we interact, suggesting further research to understand the psychodynamics of social networking.  If you were to conduct such research, what might that look like? 

Without a doubt any such research would be qualitative, aiming to access the psychodynamics, emotional states, and meaning-making underlying social networking use. Hence, it would be productive to observe a set of individuals as they engage in social media while enabling an interrogation of the thoughts, feelings, and fantasies that accompany their use.

One can imagine using technology itself to assist in this process, for example, a bubble that pops randomly when individuals are engaged in online activities. It may ask, “What motivated you to engage in this activity?” or “What feelings do you have now that you’ve posted a comment?” Further data could then be collected by way of semi-structured interviews and/or focus groups, and a psychoanalytic approach in relation to non-explicit material could then be employed.

Please tell us a bit about your practice and other writing projects you are working on

It was my hope that this book would crossover and be read by those outside the field of psychotherapy; there is a lot that society as a whole needs to be mindful of in relation to social media use – not just those interested in mental health. I took great pains to explain all my terms so those outside psychoanalysis could benefit from its conclusions.

While there has been some crossover, it hasn’t been nearly as much as I would have liked, and I have found that those outside our field find the psychoanalytic application quite difficult to grasp and apply. So this has been a learning experience for me. I am currently researching another book that I hope to publish more widely that explores the nature of the self 14 years into the 21^st century. It will be another application of psychological thinking to culture, but will be written in a less academic style and hopefully appeal to a wider readership. I will continue to address social media and technology, but roam more widely into television, cinema and other media, fundamentally asking what is happening to the self today.

Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions.

Click here for review of The Psychodynamics of Social Networking: Connected-up Instantaneous Culture and the Self in IARPP February Bookshelf

aaron@mindswork.co.uk
Aaron Balick
Mindswork
55 St. John Street
London EC1M 3AN
Contact Phone: 07795 398 627
Web: www.mindswork.co.uk

Mended by the Muse: Creative Transformations of Trauma

Interview by Maria Tammone

Maria Tammone: Below you will see some phrases that I found in your book: “The creative process can be immensely reparative…” and “the creative action is one of the most effective ways of coping with trauma and its aftereffects…” This is the core of your work. Although I realize that the subject is enormous and complex, I wonder if you could illustrate some essential points of your thoughts about this.

Sophia Richman: Trauma results in a profound sense of chaos. Creating art, in its different forms, holds the possibility of organizing one’s internal experience, making sense of it, finding meaning in it. In the book I give many examples of survivors who after their ordeal had a powerful need to express what they had been through. In the process of writing their memoir they could turn a situation where they had been rendered helpless into one where they had control. Also trauma tends to isolate the victim from others and through the creative process one is able to bear witness as well as find witnesses in others providing an opportunity to reconnect. For instance Primo Levi’s biographer Ian Thomson writes that upon his return, Levi’s need to express himself was so intense that he talked to anyone who was willing to listen, to strangers on the street, on trains, and buses about what had happened to him in Auschwitz. His memoir, which he wrote in just 10 months from notes on scraps of paper, back of train tickets, and flattened cigarette packets, represented what Levi called “an interior liberation.” Thomson described how the words poured out of him ceaselessly as if he was in a trance-like state.

Emerging from your experience through painting and in becoming a psychoanalyst (in which the “spoken word” is the main way of expressing oneself.) What led you to become a psychoanalyst?

No doubt my choice of psychoanalysis as a profession was multiply determined, but I believe that my early trauma history was an important factor in that choice. In the book, I point out that early experiences, particularly troublesome ones, function as a powerful inner force that draws us like a magnet to situation and events that provide an opportunity to work through and hopefully to come to terms with what we had to passively endure when we had no control. Trauma cries out for expression selectively influencing our perception and determining our interests and preoccupations. This is part of a healing process that goes on in myriad conscious and unconscious ways throughout our lives.

For me psychoanalysis as a choice of profession makes great psychological sense and this is probably why I find it is so fulfilling. My early trauma history of living in hiding during the Nazi occupation of Poland has found its way into a profession that creates the opportunity for both its reenactment and its repair. As a toddler and young child I lived under the constant threat of death that was communicated to me by my terrified parents, not by words but by their strange behavior. My mother, who passed as a Catholic, smiled and was friendly to outsiders, but she could abruptly shift into a state of terror once inside of our apartment. Hidden in our attic was my father who had escaped from a concentration camp. At the age of 3, it was impressed upon me, that his presence was a secret to be kept from the outside world. My need to be on my guard constantly and to make sense of behavior that defied understanding was pervasive and profound.

Eventually, through my own analysis and through the writing process, I came to see how some aspects of these early themes found their way into my adult choices. Psychoanalysts are the keepers of secrets. Psychoanalysts choose their words very carefully; they tend to speak little and listen intently for what is said and what is not said. Psychoanalysts are attuned to the nonverbal and psychoanalysts are constantly struggling to understand what is going on. All states which I am intimately familiar with. My profession gives me an opportunity to face what was once thrust upon me and unbearable, but this time from a position of choice and strength. Helping others to face what has been hidden in their lives resonates with my own struggle and gives me a sense of connection and meaning.

Your personal experience as a” hidden child” during the war was the creativity which saved you. Would you like to share with us in what way the idea of painting emerged as a form of your personal “safe” world?

One of the few avenues to self-expression during my years in hiding was drawing. There were no toys, there was no money to buy them, but paper and pencils were usually around. I drew pictures on the back of envelopes, on lists, on old calendars, any discarded pieces of paper I could find. My mother encouraged it; she admired my drawings and occasionally would engage me in a drawing game, something akin to Winnicott’s Squiggle game. One of us would draw something, the other had to guess what it was, and make her version of it or elaborate on it. It was one of the few activities that we could do together, and it was safe. It was also something that I could do alone since my mother kept me home and away from other children, probably because there would be less chance of inadvertently betraying my father’s presence.

I find very interesting and “creative” your perspective about creativity as “a potential that exists in all of us to some degree” and “changes or influences an existing situation.” Can you tell us more?

In this book I use the concept of creativity broadly.  I am not limiting it to the expression of a special artistic talent or to the creation of a unique and novel product of lasting value for society. I am not addressing the talented and famous, although some of the people I write about are in fact very talented and well known. I also use the term “artist” loosely, referring to the individual engaged in the process of making art, without judgment regarding the quality of the product. Engagement in the process of making art can be gratifying and reparative regardless of level of ability. My emphasis here is on creativity as a potential that exists in all of us to some degree – the ability to find unique ways to express ourselves and to solve the problems that we face by shifting our perspective. Everyday creativity refers to a problem solving ability associated with flexibility of thought and lack of what we used to call “functional fixedness” that allows people to improvise, to be open, curious, and tolerant of ambiguity and unpredictability.  Attempts to master traumatic circumstances and to cope with their aftermath can be ingenious and inspired; desperate times often lead to heightened creativity and innovation as the proverb “necessity is the mother of invention” reminds us.  Creativity under those circumstances is associated with flexible adaptation to changing circumstances and is part of a survival capability (Richards, 2007).

Regarding the title. “Mended by the Muse” How did you come about this title and can you tell us a little more about the significance?

A writer once told me that to sell a book you need a great title, so I spent many months obsessing about titles and trying them out on Spyros – poor man! I knew that I wanted to use the Muse metaphor in the title since it communicated my essential ideas about witnessing. As I conceptualize it, the Muse is a relational presence in what would otherwise be a solitary activity of making art.  It is a dissociated self-state; an embodied image of an “other” who serves an inspiring, mirroring, and witnessing function for the artist. Like an imaginary friend, the Muse exists in the intermediate area of experience – the potential space between psychic reality and the outside world (Winnicott, 1967). The other concept, which I wanted to include in the title, was the healing function of creativity.  Eventually I came up with the idea of “Rescued by the Muse.” When I ran that title by Donnel Stern, the series editor and my friend, who incidentally loves playing with titles as much as I do, he suggested the word “Mended” instead of “Rescued.” And so I had my perfect title. Mended was a much better choice; besides the fact that it has a melodic sound when paired with the word muse, more importantly, its connotations are in keeping with my ideas about the recovery process. Although I speak of healing in the book, I am aware of the limitations of the idea that it is possible to fully heal from catastrophic trauma. In many cases, it is questionable that psychic pain can ultimately be “healed.” In my view, healing is more of a goal to be approximated than a result reached. Intense suffering can be lessened with time, with therapy, or with artistic expression – but scars do remain even after wounds have healed, and the pain of past losses can be triggered by current events. Mending, to me, suggests that a tear has been repaired, but the damage can still be observed if one looks closely.

What can you add regarding the role of dissociation in the creative process?

One of my goals in this book has been to introduce a relationally informed theory of the creative process. I have taken relational concepts of dissociation and witnessing and extended them to the artistic realm, an area that has been relatively neglected by relational thinkers. Previously, a couple of theorists had identified dissociation as a predominant feature in the creative process but these formulations remained within the drive theory model.

One of my goals in this book has been to introduce a relationally informed theory of the creative process. I have taken relational concepts of dissociation and witnessing and extended them to the artistic realm, an area that has been relatively neglected by relational thinkers. Previously, a couple of theorists had identified dissociation as a predominant feature in the creative process but these formulations remained within the drive theory model.

In my interviews with artists and from personal experience with writing and painting, I have noted that when engaging in the artistic process one enters a state that has been referred to alternately as surrender, trance, or flow (Csikszentmihalyi (1990), all aspects of dissociation. This altered state is characterized by a high level of absorption, intense focal concentration, a loss of awareness of one’s surroundings, time distortion, and a suspension of reality constraints. In that state one is able to temporarily put aside evaluative judgment and allow emotionality and imagination to hold sway.  When the artist is in the inspirational phase of the creative process, she enters a dissociative state in which she experiences more vivid imagery, a lessening of anxiety and tension, and a greater receptivity to new ideas.

During the creative process, when the individual surrenders to the experience, there is a temporary dissolution of self-boundaries and a greater psychic fluidity between self-states. It is my contention that the normal need for the unity of self is set aside during states of altered consciousness allowing for greater access to a range of self-states, to more fluid communication between them, and a greater freedom to explore the different voices coming from within. The suspension of boundaries between self and not-self and between the inside and the outside world not only facilitates shifts in self-states but also the possibility of regression into more primitive emotional states and progression into future fantasy.

Regarding “Witnessing”. You mention the perspective of Donnel Stern about the function of “witnessing” and the need for witness, especially for the trauma survivors. Can you give us your deeper thoughts on the witnessing function of art?

Art serves the witnessing function on multiple levels including bearing witness (to self and to cultural tragedy) and being witnessed by others; I believe that both of these aspects of witnessing – bearing witness and being witnessed – are essential to the healing process.  Memories of trauma are often unmentalized and cannot be contextualized in the present. Art can stimulate and assimilate potentially dangerous degrees of affect, thereby extending the limits of what is bearable, allowing progressive integration within the safe holding presence of aesthetic structure. By expressing the internal pain, the artist externalizes it, organizes the chaotic experience, fashions a container for it, and invites others to become witnesses to his suffering. Trauma often ruptures ties with others and leads to a sense of isolation. By eliciting the witnessing of others in their role as audience or readers, the trauma survivor lets others into his world in his own terms and from a safe distance. Being known and recognized and appreciated can be a source of self-esteem, a quality in short supply in the life of a trauma victim.  Finally, when the artist’s work memorializes a catastrophic tragedy, he also bears witness to the trauma that has taken place. For countless survivors of genocide this is one of the powerful motivating forces for giving testimony and creating artistic products such as memoir, sculpture, and other forms of memorializing art.

One of my favorite examples from the book is the story of Vedran Smailovic, the ‘cellist of Sarajevo,’ who during the Bosnian war daily played his cello in the center of town while bombs went off around him. Through his cello (his weapon as he called it) he found a way to express his anger and his sorrow about the tragedy that was taking place. His was an anti-war statement and a memorial to those who had been killed; it was a creative act that stood in direct opposition to the destruction around him.

Can you tell us more regarding the creativity and art in the context of life-threatening illness and aging?

The notion of a last chance to fulfill what has been set aside before it’s too late is a powerful theme in the life of those who are confronting their mortality, either as a result of life-threatening illness or of aging or both. In illness or in old age, existential concerns such as death, isolation, and meaninglessness, take center stage. Both physical illness, and the gradual deterioration of the body associated with aging, can be seen as potentially traumatic events – with an attendant sense of irreparable loss, helplessness, and disturbance of self-image and identity. Old age is a time of decline and a time of endings. The body shows signs of deterioration, losses accrue, contemporaries die, and memories begin to fade. With retirement, there is more time to contemplate one’s life and the inevitability of death. Simonton (1989) has noted that creativity tends to undergo resurgence in the later years of life; a pattern that he believes is related to the contemplation of death. Stage theorists, Jung and Erikson wrote about this stage of life as presenting specific challenges as well as opportunities for growth and renewal. Knowing that one will cease to be, stirs a desire for generativity; a way to leave a mark on the world – a sign of one’s existence. The tasks at this stage of life include life review and retrospective evaluation; the maintenance of a sense of continuity over the life span; an acceptance of limitations; and a creative adaptation that holds some possibility of transcendence as well as the potential for fulfillment of interrupted or submerged aspects of self.

In this last chapter entitled “Confrontation with Mortality” there is a brief section on data from neuroscience about the effects of aging on the brain. We know that diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s selectively affect different parts of the brain and that the parts involved in creativity can remain relatively intact for a long time.  Case examples of severe illness and aging including a clinical one from my practice illustrate how art can facilitate the working through process of major losses and help to restore a sense of control and connection with others.

In your book there is a chapter dedicated to music as a form of therapy. In our IARPP community, as you know, one of our colleagues uses music and “opera” to represent and share psychoanalytical themes. What do you think about the similarities and differences among these different forms of art (painting but also writing for you) in your works?

Actually I am familiar with several psychoanalysts in our IARPP community who are interested in the interface between music and psychoanalysis in addition to Gianni Nebbiosi whom I assume you are referring to. Frank Lachmann has written about this subject as has Stefanie Glennon, Steven Knoblauch, and Malcom Slavin, and of course Spyros D. Orfanos, my favorite who wrote the chapter in this book “Music and the Great Wound” which you refer to.

As to your important question about the similarities and differences among the different art forms, it is an area I have given a lot of thought to, particularly as it relates to my own experience with painting and writing. Although I find the creative process similar in both modalities with regard to the dissociative aspect which I referred to earlier in this interview, the function which each of these art forms has served for me is quite different.  It is through writing that I am able to best express my sorrow and to organize my experience, searching for just the right words to capture my complicated emotions and complex ideas. This is where I struggle to make sense of my feelings and of my personal history. In contrast, painting is primarily an aesthetic activity that has a powerfully soothing effect on me even as I struggle with the challenge of mastering the task I am engaged in. I am guided by a powerful desire to create a product that matches my internal experience or perception of a landscape or a still life that I find interesting or beautiful or meaningful. In both modalities, writing and painting, when I have met the challenge, I know it deep inside, and have a sense of completion and wholeness as well as a sense of fulfillment.

All forms of art impose a certain form upon unruly or chaotic feelings and all forms of art pose a challenge to master and organize complex feelings and ideas so that the external product captures the internal experience. Daniel Stern (2010) distinguishes between various arts in terms of the forms of vitality that they elicit.  According to Stern it is the “time-based” arts such as music, dance, theater and cinema that are most relevant in giving rise to the experience of vitality. Among the arts, music has a strong and basic connection with the emotions; it is first experienced in the womb when the fetus is exposed to maternal sounds. My husband Spyros writes that music is often what affects and emotional experiences feel like. Music possesses unique properties in its potential to evoke and convey a range of affects connected with grief and consequently plays a special role in mourning serving the mourning process for composer, performer and listener as well.

What next? Do you have any new books or projects planned in the future?

As gratifying as this experience of writing has been for me, I am ready to take a break from it. When I was writing my book, I had to give up painting and at this point I am eager to return to it.

by Rachel Sopher (USA)

The National Institute for the Psychotherapies’ annual conference, entitled The Immigrant in the Consulting Room took place in May 2014, in New York City.  The daylong exploration focused on the unique challenges facing the immigrant to the United States and the kinds of impact the immigration status of both patient and psychoanalyst can have on therapeutic treatment. As co-director of the conference, Susan Obrecht, LCSW stated in her opening remarks, America is a land of immigrants and as such we have a responsibility to be sensitive to the unique dilemmas they face. Due to ease of travel and access to technology such as Skype, text, and email, the contemporary immigrant is faced with a new range of challenges, including ambiguous loss, split loyalties, and hybrid identities. The question remains of how to help patients to “stand in the spaces” between mother country and new land—and if this outcome is even possible, or desirable.

In her keynote address, Ghisalaine Boulanger, Ph.D., oriented the audience to the predicament of many immigrants who must face the psychic dilemma of yearning for a sense of belonging while simultaneously feeling perpetually estranged. An immigrant can often feel forced to choose between two disparate self states, one representing the country of origin and another eager to adopt the values of the new country.  She advocates that psychoanalysts attempt to build a transitional home for the immigrant by ‘seeing double’—recognizing and holding various identities in dialectical tension with each other without losing the complexity of the patient’s experiences or cultural allegiances.  Dr. Boulanger concluded that immigrants must come to accept their experience of living life as a ‘chronic other’ and come to understand that belonging is not defined by citizenship or status but a feeling of being deeply recognized and understood.

Shifting gears to the personal experiences of an immigrant analyst, Lama Khouri, CAPC, LMSW described what it has been like for her to live in the United States for 24 years under the status of “temporary visitor.”  She elaborated the impact of this status on her sense of self through the organizing influence of the social third and internal recognition of her culturally-defined self.  She described her personal journey in which the treatment of groups of Arab-American boys and girls brought her into contact with feelings about her own ‘Arab self’ and made her realize the ways she, and immigrants like her, often subtly take on the dominant culture’s biases towards foundational parts of their own identities.

The second half of the day centered on the analysis of an episode of HBO’s In Treatment that portrayed complex relational family dynamics involved in settling an immigrant father into his grown son’s home.  Usha Tummala-Nara, PhD used this narrative as an example of the unbounded nature of immigrant identity and the kind of endless melancholia that can arise from the fantasy of assimilation as an impossible, longed-for hope and unreachable ideal.  Her presentation highlighted several of the potential emotional sequelae of immigration including the impact of social stigma, the loss of contextual continuity and the dissociation or disavowal of critical parts of the self in order to avoid painful conflictual feelings.  Robert Grossmark, PhD followed with his own commentary, addressing the experiences of dislocation, loss of self-continuity, and alienation experienced by many immigrants.  He reminded us that many immigrants feel robbed of their subjectivity and sense of agency, and feel they live in a world shaped by others.  As such, Dr. Grossmark asserts that immigration is an intersubjective event that can be held and repaired through recognition and companioning from within an interpersonal relationship.

The daylong conference ended with a discussion among the entire panel, which touched on global themes of recognition, mourning, and loss.  The panel agreed that the conference raised questions for further exploration and called on the psychoanalytic community to further investigate these important issues.

Rachel Sopher is the co-director of NIP’s annual conference and associate editor of Psychoanalytic Perspectives.  She is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Manhattan.

The Relational Pulse: The Candidate on the Wave of the Enactment

Hillary Offman
Co-Chair Candidates Committee

Alioscia Boschiroli
Co-Chair Candidates Committee

Dear IARPP Students, Candidates, and early-career Analysts,

Our next conference is approaching: From June 25-28, 2015, the members of IARPP will be gathering in TORONTO, CANADA for “The Relational Pulse:
 Controversies, Caricatures and Clinical Wisdom.” We are all very excited about this wonderful opportunity to meet with colleagues and explore relational perspectives from around the world.

The IARPP Candidates Committee—whose members represent Australia, Canada, Chile, Israel, Italy, Spain, and the USA—works to provide a “home base” for analytic candidates within the association, facilitating their contact with colleagues throughout the world, and supporting their professional development. (To clarify: For this Call for Papers and all IARPP Candidate Webinars the committee considers a candidate to be someone who is either currently in analytic training or within five years of graduation, certification, or registration.) Over the years, the committee has honored outstanding work by candidates through its sponsorship of the Stephen A. Mitchell Author’s Award and, more recently, panel presentations at our annual conference. Last year’s panel, “Working Interculturally: Unique Challenges of and Possibilities for Intercultural Treatment,” featured four outstanding presentations by Edna Bor (Israel), Cynthia Chalker (USA), Margarita Khan (Italy/Argentina), and Rachel Sopher (USA).

This year, in keeping with the conference’s theme of exploring international crosscurrents in relational psychoanalysis, the Candidates Committee is creating a panel entitled “The Relational Pulse: The Candidate on the Wave of the Enactment.” Many important theoretical issues in relational thinking are hard to fully understand and know how to implement when one is beginning clinical practice. One of these issues is the concept of enactment. It is a key element in thinking about relational theory and clinical process, often distinguishing this approach from others. Yet for the newer clinician it can seem conceptually complex and clinically intimidating.

For this panel, we invite papers on the subject of enactment from a relational perspective. Some questions that may be considered (although you may have others you would like to use) include: How do you use the concept of enactment clinically? Is it a central or peripheral concept in your thinking and practice? How can we teach candidates to manage this relational, affective, cognitive, behavioral, interpersonal, and intersubjective concept? What is the relationship between enactment, spontaneity, and authenticity in clinical practice? And how do candidates and early-career analysts manage this complexity?

In an effort to encourage broader participation in the conference by those who have more recently joined our profession, our panel will feature three presenters (15-minute presentations) followed by a response from a senior analyst in the field, which should make for a very engaging discussion.

All submissions must be explicated within clinical work and examples.

Through the exploration of these and other questions, we hope to bring out “the relational pulse” from analysts in training and those relatively new to the field, as we strive to expand our capacity to cope with the complex theoretical and clinical concepts that make our work so rich and so challenging.

Interested? Then let us hear from you! To be considered for the panel, please submit a proposal no longer than one typed, double-spaced page (or roughly 250 words). Presentations should be written (and given at the conference) in English. THE DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS IS SEPTEMBER 7, 2014.

Please send all questions and proposals to the Candidates Committee co-chairs:

alioscia.boschiroli@gmail.com and offmanh@rogers.com

See you in Toronto!

The IARPP Candidates Committee:

Alioscia Boschiroli (Italy), co-chair
Hilary Offman (Canada), co-chair
Kim Bernstein (USA)
Maria Jose Mezzera (Chile)
Gadit Orian (Israel)
Gerard Webster (Australia)
Sandra Toribio Caballero (Spain)
Margaret Black (IARPP Board Sponsor)