Four Papers and a Presentation
Publication Announcement by Joyce Slochower (USA)
Ending, Not Quite Ending, and Not Ending at All
Slochower, J. (2025). Ending, not quite ending, and not ending at all. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 94(3): 411-434.
I consider the place of termination in contemporary psychoanalytic practice. A more flexible approach to therapeutic endings represents one dimension of a broader paradigm shift away from rule-boundedness and toward clinical flexibility. In any event, final, less-than-final, and absent goodbyes have always been part of psychoanalytic reality despite the power of our termination ideal. I first describe the broader move toward flexibility within the field and then address its complex implications for psychoanalytic endings. In that context, I explore the varied ways in which we don’t always end treatment relationships. The implications of not entirely ending a treatment are also addressed.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00332828.2025.2522115
Quarterly Conversations: Joyce Slochower and Steven H. Goldberg
Psychoanalytic Quarterly. (2025, August 15). Quarterly conversations: Joyce Slochower and Steven H. Goldberg [Video].
YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqDD0EXKlXE&t=48s
A video interview with The Psychoanalytic Quarterly’s editor in which Slochower discusses her recent Quarterly paper, “Ending, Not Quite Ending, and Not Ending at All.”
Inside Out and Upside Down: Winnicott’s Fear of Breakdown
Slochower, J. (2025). Inside out and upside down: Winnicott’s “Fear of Breakdown.” Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 34(5): 634-636.
Winnicott had a delightfully idiosyncratic way of engaging paradox and playing with ideas. Indeed, it was his wont to turn clinical phenomena on their heads; he regularly surprised us by introducing the unexpected as he reconceptualized psychodynamics. Winnicott’s clinical formulations were at once refreshing, wise, and unexpected. What at first examination appears pathological or regressive is instead a complex unconscious emotional communication that, when named and understood, has enormous therapeutic potential. This way of inverting psychopathology is evident across much of his thinking.
“Fear of Breakdown” was a particularly important version of this kind of re-invention. Fear of a future breakdown is actually the sequelae of unprocessed historical trauma: what looks like fear of a yet-to-be experienced event is an expression of unremembered primitive agonies. Encoded – if at all – procedurally, those terrors lack the verbal links required to process, no matter work through, their impact. A frightening future resonates – indeed, reevokes – unbearable past experiences. Because this early breakdown cannot be consciously accessed, no matter named, it is evaded (sometimes by analyst as well as patient); the analytic couple may even retreat to a false self analysis in an unconscious attempt to occlude what lies beneath.
Holding On and Letting Go: Discussion of Robert Grossmark’s Essay
Slochower, J. (2025). Holding on and letting go: Discussion of Robert Grossmark’s essay. Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 22(2): 125-132.
Robert Grossmark invites us to interrogate the implications and meanings of home for us and for our patients. We carry home with us across time. Our connection to home can be grounding; it creates a sense of continuity, sometimes nostalgia and longing. But when home was less a place of comfort and grounding than of trauma, remembrances threaten to destabilize us. Grossmark illustrates this in a narrative about his patient and their relationship. That narrative stimulated my own remembrances, which I describe and illustrate. We need to find ways to remember, even mourn the loss of home and to move beyond it.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1551806X.2025.2481836
Adoption: Encompassing Loss and Absence: Introduction to Friedman’s Essay
Slochower, J. (2025). Adoption: Encompassing loss and absence: Introduction to Friedman’s essay. Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 22(3): 416-418.
Diane Friedman’s essay challenges a core cultural assumption concerning the experience of adoptive mothers. Revisiting the kinship binary (the idea that blood is thicker than water), she underscores the problematics of being an adoptive parent and argues for a both/and perspective that recognizes the complexities of that role.
Joyce Slochower, Ph.D., ABPP
New York, NY, USA
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