Dear colleagues,

Chaos, destruction, foreboding and loss are everywhere I turn these days. Screams, cries, whimpers, tremblings, dread silences. Lives cut short, land flooded or bombed, withered or razed.

We are called to hold hope each session, though sometimes simply to provide witness to its demise.

The clock ticks forward, the planet spins. Our resources diminish, though they are sometimes renewed.

Is this a time of despair only? Is there something more? Dare we locate tendrils of growth, hope, renewal?

Often when I want to capture a mood or an energy, I turn, as Bromberg sometimes did, to – of all things – a showtune.

Here are the lyrics for a great song by John Kander and Fred Ebb (songwriters of Cabaret), written for Liza Minelli for the 1977 film New York, New York, an anthem that later became a cabaret standard. It’s called “But the World Goes Round”:

Sometimes you’re happy
And sometimes you’re sad
But the world goes round
And sometimes you lose
Every nickel you had
But the world goes round
Sometimes your dreams get broken in pieces
But that doesn’t matter at all
Take it from me, there’s still going to be
A summer, a winter, a spring and a fall

And sometimes a friend starts treating you bad
But the world goes round
And sometimes your heart breaks
With a deafening sound
Somebody loses, and somebody wins
And one day it’s kicks
Then it’s kicks in the shins
But the planet spins
And world goes round and round

The spinning world seems to spit up catastrophe after catastrophe these days, paroxysms. Is it ending, are we beholding its death rattles? Though the song embodies pain and sorrow in the key of the blues, it suggests a life-affirming if not triumphant resilience. The world goes round and round; to everything there is a season; tomorrow is another day.

If the world keeps spinning, is life guaranteed? How much more time do we have? In what condition? And how shall we spend it?

The books, chapters, papers, and presentations that our members have recently written, listed below, don’t pretend to answer such crucial inquiries. But they do help us to keep alive our discomfiting questions and to contemplate ameliorative or consoling responses. More, they offer thoughtful, insightful companionship during these dark times.

Avi Berman and Gila Offer (both of Israel) have edited a book entitled Tolerance – A Concept in Crisis: Psychoanalytic, Group Analytic, and Socio-Cultural Perspectives. The contributing authors, including IARPP members Noga Ariel Galor (Israel), Robert Grossmark (USA), Chana Ullman (Israel), Haim Weinberg (USA), Shlomit Yadlin-Gadot (Israel), and the late Lew Aron, explore the origin and functions of tolerance as well as its vulnerability to replacement by moral intolerance or retributive justice in turbulent societies. “Given the radical demographic shifts, inter-ethnic conflicts, and other forms of sociopolitical schisms in our world of today,” notes Salman Akhtar, “Berman and Ofer’s book is of keen and urgent importance indeed.”

The cottage industry of Eigenian commentary continues with two companion volumes by Loray Daws (Canada) and Keri S. Cohen (USA) on Michael Eigen’s (USA) deep and wide-ranging work, Toxic Nourishment and Damaged Bonds in the Work of Michael Eigen: Working with the Obstructive Object and Primary Process Impacts and Dreaming the Undreamable Object in the Work of Michael Eigen: Becoming the Welcoming Object. “Building on the pioneering work of Michael Eigen, this remarkable compendium speaks to the heart of every clinician’s internal and external struggle involving the art and science of sustaining a healing encounter, against the severe toxic agents of trauma and mental/relational conflict,” writes Jack Schwartz.

Joyce Slochower (USA) has published her latest collection, Psychoanalysis and the Unspoken. Here she turns her critical eye to areas of psychoanalytic theory and practice that are often skipped over or simplified, assaying how, when, and why we fail to uphold the professional ideal, and reflecting on what remains unspoken in the evolution of relational theory. Donnel Stern (USA) beams: “Joyce Slochower’s engaging personal presence suffuses every page of this beautifully written volume. You come away from it with a deeply felt sense of the relational/Winnicottian integration that lies at the heart of Slochower’s thinking, and with an appreciation of qualities that are often in short supply: wisdom, unflinching examination of the analyst’s foibles, and—zounds!—humor.”

Malcolm Owen Slavin (USA) offers us The Story of Original Loss: Grieving Existential Trauma in the Arts and the Art of Psychoanalysis. Appreciating the universal human existential trauma of “original loss” – the evolutionary loss of experiencing ourselves as innately belonging to, and instinctively at home within, the larger natural world – the book explores how we mourn this loss in order to create a sense of belonging and identity. Gianni Nebbiosi (Italy) remarks that this volume “reminds us that the study of the psyche is much broader than any strictly psychoanalytic or psychotherapeutic approach. Intimately linked to evolutionary anthropology, visual arts and music, the book connects the wisdom of these disciplines to our theoretical and clinical work in a way that we will refer to for many years.”

As for recent chapters, papers, and presentations:

Julie Gerhardt (USA) has co-written a paper on Victor Erice’s film, The Spirit of the Beehive, a coded exposé of Franco’s regime that also serves as a warning with disturbing relevance for our current world. Ruth Lijtmaer (USA) gave a presentation on the traumatic plight of war refugees whose prior traumas are reactivated by their current ones. Haim Weinberg (USA) contributed a chapter on political correctness and populism to Berman & Ofer’s above-referenced book. And Johanna Dobrich (USA) has authored a paper limning dissociative processes.

If you would like your recent or upcoming publications or presentations to be announced in the next IARPP Bookshelf  (to be distributed in February 2025), please submit the following materials to me, Matt Aibel, by Sunday, January 26, 2025:

• Title of your recent or upcoming publication or presentation
• An abstract or brief description of its content (around 150 words)
• Link to a publisher (if applicable) so that members might access or purchase a copy
• Book cover photo or artwork (if applicable)
• Digital photograph of yourself (jpeg format)
• Professional contact information as you would like it to appear publicly for our readers (city/town in which you work; email address)
• Book authors, please provide a brief bio of 75-90 words.
• Presenters, please spell out organizational acronyms and, if in-person, include location.
• The Bookshelf does not include announcements of IARPP Conference presentations.

Best wishes,

Matt Aibel

Matt Aibel, LCSW
New York, NY, USA
Email Matt Aibel