Publication Announcement by Emily Kuriloff (USA)

(2022). Psychoanalytic Dialogues. 32(5): 505-517.

This paper concerns a psychoanalytic conference in Germany in 2017, in which the author discusses the enactments and implications of a so-called dialogue between American and German Jews, and non-Jewish Germans of the second and third generations born after the Third Reich. Problematizing interactions between longtime enemies, the discussion identifies an interpersonal hysteria (Sullivan, 1953) that obfuscates communication in anticipation of disapprobation and rejection. Kristeva’s notion of the abject (1982), a similarly pre-discursive effort to protect identity and esteem, at the same time fosters a reductive binary between the pure vs. the corrupt. Winnicott’s concept of potential space (1971) is offered as an alternative area of overlap, a creative space within which literal and symbolic “not quite conversations” develop between polarized nemeses, a movement toward dialogue and mutual recognition. Commentaries on the paper are written by Orna Guralnik and Rachel Kabasakalian-McKay.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10481885.2022.2106137

Emily A. Kuriloff, Psy.D.
New York, NY, USA
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