Dear Colleagues,
I write from the midst of “this winter of peril,” as Joe Biden, the new US president, aptly put it in his Inaugural Address last month. I trust that most of the world experienced relief over the defeat and disappearance of our infamous ratings juggernaut, that #trending homegrown product – Made in the USA! – our sociopathic narcissist in chief, whose dark nihilism is as American as the shining optimism that blazed forth from our National Youth Poet Laureate, Amanda Gorman, a bright yellow vision that chilly Washington noon.
Perhaps the world now begins to right itself, at least a little bit. Maybe more than a little – yet the virus and its new variants continue to flourish despite the gradual introduction of the long-awaited vaccines.
Earlier last month I waited in front of my computer screen – along with roughly 700 of you – for IARPP’s Online Symposium to begin. Behind the logo, some murmurs in Italian promisingly set the scene; then, suddenly, che cosa? There I was, in the sumptuous, well-appointed living room of the Nebbiosis! Fireplace, piano, crimson red chairs, matching drapes, books and papers, objects and objets, the Nebbiosis themselves. A cup of coffee, some puttering. I felt my body relax, my breathing slow and deepen. Such a welcoming home; I was so grateful to be a guest; I knew just where I’d like to sit. Then Sharon Ziv-Beiman, all good-humored pragmatism before a no-nonsense backdrop in Israel, and Hazel Ipp, giggling gamely from her leafy white loft in Canada. Familiar faces, poised to begin. An international community, working from home – also familiar. Nervous anticipation; waiting. More waiting. “Il bello della diretta,” Susi says, “The wonderful stress to be on the video.” Si.
As I settle in, excitement softening the edges of my loneliness, my grief, my alienation, the drama unfolds: Where is Steve Kuchuck? A vastly different sort of outgoing president, missing in action.
Wifi problems.
Ah, yes. I know the feeling, the panic. Poor Steve. My heart races; mirror neurons indeed. He’s worked so hard on this event. His swan song. There’s a schedule; we’re waiting; the world is waiting. How could this go wrong? How now? He’s hustling, somehow, from one apartment to another. How human; how technological; how of this moment; how apt. I giggle, with Hazel. Plan B, says Sharon. Steve appears. Alright! Bellisimo! Yofeh! He’s done it! He’s home. We’re home. I’m home. I’m ready. He’s ready. We’re ready.
And so it begins, IARPP’s first Online Symposium.
The latest announcements of members’ books, chapters, papers and presentations will follow in this edition of the Bookshelf, along with a series of reflections on the Symposium collected from participants all over the world, ranging from those who have been with IARPP since its inception to those for whom the Symposium marked their first encounter with our organization. I thank Sally Bjorklund, Margaret Black Mitchell, Rocky Chu, Gabriela Gusita, Patricia Minjares, Valentin Miu, Marie Saba, and John Sloane for generously sharing their experiences with us.
If you were otherwise engaged on the weekend of January 9-10, I hope these words give you a taste of what you missed. If you were there, here’s your opportunity, apres coup, to hear from fellow attendees what they made of the offerings – an important aspect of an in-person conference that the limitations of Zoom largely deprived us of, the discussion groups notwithstanding. A chance to rub shoulders, compare notes, exchange gossip, and encounter other idiosyncratic takes both familiar and distinct. Did you attend that talk? What did you think?
Cynthia Chalker’s call – “Where are you?” – reverberates. Were you there? What did you think? What are you thinking? How are you doing? Where are you? Wherever you are as you read this note and the pieces that follow, I hope they allow you to connect in some small way with this warm, thoughtful, consoling and generative community that goes on being, for all of us, in spite of every variety of glitch.
On to the précis:
In this Bookshelf edition, Carlos Nemirovsky (Argentina) brings a Latin American perspective to his in-depth exploration of Winnicott and Kohut, two seminal analytic writers whose outlooks, Nemirovsky contends, are particularly useful in helping clinicians navigate the treatments of patients with “complex disorders” who present as unreal, empty, non-desiring, beset by feelings of futility, apathy and numbness.
From Virgil and Dante to Blake and Dickinson, and on to Celan, Milosz and Rankine, David Shaddock (US) provides a guide to apply a poet’s imagination and precision of language to the work of psychoanalysis. His new book posits that “the imaginative space that opens between poem and reader or therapist and patient” offers great potential for understanding and healing.
In parallel, Joye Weisel-Barth (US) refracts psychoanalytic understanding and clinical work through another facet of literature, in this case a focus on stories. Flowing from the tradition of narrative theory and representing “a lifetime of analytic practice,” Weisel-Barth’s psychoanalytic tales “seek to recast the creation of analytic narratives in social contexts and contemporary relational theories.”
Hannah Hahn (US) shares immigration stories of trauma and loss, silence and denial among early 20th century Eastern European Jews who came to America. Utilizing an intergenerational transmission of trauma lens, she surveys the impacts of these largely disavowed histories on the ensuing generation in this personal and theoretical investigation of what is, and isn’t, “left behind.”
Ruth Lijtmaer (US) continues to explore traumatic immigration stories as well, in her case focusing on the plight of contemporary refugees whom, she argues, face abject journeys “under extreme conditions, more dangerous than in the past.”
Home is the focus of a paper by Sigal Eden Almogi (Israel). For the readership of an architectural journal, she explicates an object relations perspective of the psycho-geographics of domestic space.
From Irwin Hirsch, Phillip Blumberg and Robert Watson (all US) comes a co-edited volume that offers a deep analytic dive into “intense involvement in sports,” among both athletes and fans. A dream team of relational analysts, most of whom are themselves avidly engaged with sports, contribute chapters that examine the many psychological functions of sports and explore ways this material can be used to benefit clinical work.
Finally, Sean Meggeson (Canada) brings a unique dimension to the concepts of implicit relational knowing and kinesthetic empathy with a chapter essaying the non-verbal intersubjectivity that instantiates for him, his patients and Tao-Tao – his “canine co-therapist,” an 11-pound Swedish Vallhund herding dog. You’ll forgive me, it’s quite a tale.
It did me good to see so many of your faces in your boxes at the top of the year. As we lean into the future, I wish you all well in these challenging times.
Matt Aibel, LCSW
New York
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