The February 2023 Psychoanalytic Inquiry Meeting: A New Synergy

What joyous sounds we heard from our publisher’s representative, Adam Burbage, at our Feb 23rd Psychoanalytic Inquiry (PI) Editors’ Meeting! Adam told us we’ve emerged from Covid stronger than when we entered! We had more than 20,000 downloads and a 40% increase in our growth this past year.

In addition, this year’s meeting was unusually spirited as well as intensely collegial and collaborative as we productively questioned old ideas. While that’s not something new for PI, somehow this year’s spirit was more active, more bonding than any other time I recall. After the meeting, intrigued by what made this year special, I asked Mel what he thought. His immediate ebullient answer was, “That’s what freedom brings!”

Hallelujah!!!

The Hallelujah is mine, not Mel’s, although I know he feels the same.

Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” is a quizzical piece, so why did I choose this oxymoronic tune to announce our joy? And why did Cohen even call such a pensive, trance-like, moody — even pissy at times — piece by the name synonymous with joy of biblical proportions. We’re unable to know Cohen’s intentions, but I’m able to share mine.

We lost our Joe and we suffered Covid, each at the same time. A terrible loss ×2, yet we did survive! Hallelujah!!!

I’m sure you noticed the woman, whom, I assume, was Bocelli’s wife and Virginia’s mother, sitting on the edge of the balcony. That seemed an unusual statement of, “I’m with them.” I found it a bit distracting, but I stuck with this clip because, the duet and the comfort of Bocelli and Virginia sitting together cross-legged on the stage floor was its own kind of quiet iconoclastic joy. I don’t want to get too “brainy” about this: the clip just seemed to fit.

I’ll now try to convey the overarching tenor of our meeting that, according to Jackie Gotthold’s articulation, was a conversation she characterized as synergistic. Before I present the individual issue topics, though, I want to describe the contextual underpinnings onto which those topics were cast.

The meeting, our first face-to-face experience since Covid joined us, began with Mel setting the meeting’s conversational tone, free of obfuscational psychoanalytic nuance. In his introduction, Mel simply described the journal as “an approach to understanding how people operate, especially when they are ill.”

How’s that for a free, clear, broad, inclusive definition?

Something unusual also happened in an unplanned and organic way. We were 23 in a large room meant to hold 40 at 4 tables of 10. We occupied only 2 tables, set across the room at some distance from each other.

During the first few minutes of the meeting, unbeknownst to me since my focus was on my notes rather than on the room, the people at the ends of each table moved their chairs so that in effect we formed a continuous circle of people sitting around two distant tables. No one had their back toward anyone else. We never before had that communal configuration, and it must have been a facilitator for what followed.

Linda Michaels was an early speaker. She represents PSIAN, the Psychotherapy Action Network, an organization that bridges the gulf between the community’s treatment needs and the broad treatment-offering world. PSIAN represents and supports the relational and analytically-oriented perspective and defends it against the many glittering “get well quick” schemes that entice people away from what we offer.

Linda, speaking from her experience base of talking with ”regular” people, suggested perhaps since psychoanalysis is an unclear and confusing word, we need to rehabilitate the term for the general community. It’s associated with many misconceptions based on well-ensconced historical clichés such as the “old fashioned analytic couch” of New Yorker cartoon fame (as well as the accompanying silence on the part of the anonymous analyst).

At this point, Art Gray, sitting at the other table within what had now become a circle, raised an issue about the oft-used adjective depth to describe therapy. Art noted the idea of depth is a historical remnant of Freud’s old structural model wherein the real gold of treatment lay hidden in the depths of the System Unconscious, contained beneath a repression barrier. In that model the therapeutic effort was designed to present the unpleasant truth of the civilization endangering drives to a moderating ego. Art then reiterated Linda’s idea about rehabilitating the term psychoanalysis. Jackie’s synergy evolved as we talked enthusiastically about how the old analytic ideas of uncovering, undoing and disassembling no longer are what we do in contemporary treatment. Instead, our inquiries are oriented towards learning about a person’s ancient toxic affective experiences so repair and “building up” may occur safely within the containment of a helping relationship.

A bit later, Susana Martinez told about her coming iconoclastic issue, edited with Art Gray, and temporarily titled, A Requiem for Narcissism?

In this issue, Susana and Art ask their contributors to explore the following questions: Given what we know today about infant development, the dyadic nature of the mind, and the co-construction of interactions, does it make sense to maintain the concept of narcissism?

Susana and Art also asked, is narcissism a helpful notion for understanding the complexity of unconscious motivation? Can this concept be maintained from a developmental perspective? Is it useful clinically, and if so, how else can we understand the clinical phenomena narcissism is meant to describe and explain?

Further, they raised the quintessential PI question: does this old, complex, highly misunderstood, oft-misused term still have value to us in our work? Does it need to be rethought?

We joined the conversation as a group and discussed how narcissism had become synonymous with obnoxious, self-serving, behavior in the general discourse, thanks to the prominent display of tragically immature narcissism by public figures. We also spoke about how narcissism, in our historic psychoanalytic discourse, was tied to Freud’s ideas of the infant’s Primary Narcissism and to the developmental line he created to explain how the goal of growth was to relinquish narcissism (self-love) in favor of object-love, thereby perpetuating an altruistic religious, not psychological, concept of narcissism.

We acknowledged this idea was outdated; Kohut had his own ideas about narcissism he camouflaged because they differed from Freud’s thinking by 180 degrees. Still, we recognized Kohut’s thoughts about self-object needs could be retained even if, in our analytic conversation, they became dislodged from the confusing, even outmoded, label of narcissism.

Openness to rethinking old ideas, even discarding them when they are misleading, emerged as an important PI element within the ideological ambiance of the room. It made perfect sense. Fresh eyes on old thoughts has been a PI trademark since Volume 1, Number 1: Regression: A Broader Understanding of the Concept.

Our first issue spoke to regression being more than a pejorative state, as was our common experience then. Instead, the first PI issue presented regression as foundational to developmental creativity.

In the uninterrupted spirit of inquiry that continues to be the PI legacy, Mady Chalk told us editing a new monograph, A Sense of Power. The focal paper of her monograph was written by Joe and explores, extends, expands, and alters his own psychoanalytic theory of motivation.

This current revision of Joe’s old idea offers new guidance about what an analyst looks for in analytic therapy. Joe and his collaborators, Frank Lachmann and Jim Fosshage, suggest a common thread animating all motivational activity is a sense of power they define as: the experience of can-do and of being a doer doing. Fluctuations in the sense of power have far-reaching, but often unrecognized, consequences for envisioning the relationship between adaptive and maladaptive intentions and goals.

Mady’s monograph explores these issues through three papers.

The first, as noted above, is by Joe: A Sense of Power. The second, written by Frank, is titled, Creativity and a Sense of Power, and the third written by Jim, is Dreaming: Rebalancing One’s Sense of Power. The monograph’s prologue was written by Mady, and the epilogue was authored by Mel Bornstein.

Now, let’s discuss upcoming issues…

This issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry is special. It represents the combined voices of 17 Black psychoanalysts speaking their own experiences from their multiple perspectives. As a result of space limitations, I am sadly unable to list all 17 writers who will be cited in the issue when it’s published.

My further voice here will detract from the power of theirs, so I will have nothing more to say and turn the “pen” over to Paula Kliger who edited this magnificent and historic piece:

I have been able to talk with each of the 17 journal contributors individually, exploring with them their unique human journey and clinical work. So moved about the work they do, that I believe they will bring the knowledge, clarity, insight, and wisdom, that is so deeply longed for, to Psychoanalytic Inquiry’s psychoanalytic communities and beyond. Additional colleagues, not people of color as well as non-psychoanalytic, have been invited to contribute to the Journal to underscore the universal wisdom and application of Black voices’ writings.

The aim of this journal offering to psychoanalysts, to mental health professionals generally and to the public at large reflects the depth and breadth of our diverse lived experiences. Our wish is this will amplify history and our meaning-making, historical wisdom born out of suffering and our resilience, our unyielding vitality and hope, and the creative abilities we have used to survive, to save lives, to uplift humanity, and with humility and dignity to support our own and others' healing.

Black Psychoanalysts Write takes the reader on a journey in three parts:

1. Remembering takes us into the historical landscape of those remembrances that shaped black lives. Questions are explored like: Who are we? Where do we come from? What does it mean to be black? In this first section Black voices share their diverse journeys in Time and those voices supporting Black voices through time, capturing the stories and life-lessons that connect us all.
2. Repeating, Repairing and Bridging asks who are we now? A fresh look at perspectives on seeing and experiencing our differences and commonalities. In a focus on “Me and Not-Me in the World”, Black voices examine their lived experiences in richly interwoven contexts, from inside the mind, to inside family and inside our consulting rooms, as part of groups, community and the World as part of groups, community and the World.
3. Sharing Power asks, where do we go from here? Advancing the human dream of both individual recognition and interconnectedness, the journal explores the concept of Ubuntu from Zulu and the writing of Archbishop Tutu, translated as, “I Am Because We Are.” This section captures Black voices and those supporting Black voices through time, sharing hope and its ever-evolving movement towards Remembering, Repairing, and Transforming Suffering, both historical and current, into Bridging, Sharing Power, and Love.
4. The Journal Appendices continues the exploration into Black lives through Black Scholars / Writers (Fiction and Nonfiction), Black Poets, Spoken Word, and Storytellers, Black Visual Artists, and Black Performance Artists (Musicians and Composers, Classical Music, Theatre and Dance).

The VISION is Black Psychoanalysts Write will reflect empowered VOICES, All People of Color, models for a future of dignity and strength, of courage and transformative activism that leads to shared realities, shared resonances, and sharing power.

This issue will cover an assortment of psychoanalytic methods, as pan-theoretical as possible, as treatment for children and adolescents has moved to the computer screen from the office as a necessary response to the Covid pandemic.

We include a discussion of playfulness and imagination, necessary for any treatment, but especially necessary in what we have come to call a “zoom treatment.”

• When the Play Stops: A Child, Her Analyst and Zoom

  Amy Joelson

  Amy’s article speaks to the loss of a familiar way of being in the child’s treatment and how a sense of vitality in the treatment relationship can be restored in the face of radical redefinition.

• Cultural Disorganizing Influence to Reworking Attachment at Adolescence

  Laurel Silber

  Covid has disrupted all aspects of society and culture. This paper addresses the cultural factors that effect adolescent and child treatment in this remarkably different and difficult situation.

• Interaction Over the Difficulties of “Coexistence Possibility” Revealed by the Pandemic

  Shinichi Yoshizawa

  This paper is a view from Japan during the pandemic. It addresses how the author worked with children whose sense of self was vulnerable as they interacted with ‘social-level’ problems during the pandemic.

• Flying Blind (Working Title)

  Paige LaCava

  This paper will be about Paige’s experiences of engaging a reluctant teenager in treatment during the height of the pandemic. Like a pilot flying without a horizon line who has to maneuver a plane based on intuition and skill, the sudden conditions of lockdown and Zoom made meeting in an on-screen treatment a new process for Paige. It called for reliance on internal resources such as her use of prior training, exploration of theoretical givens, as well as attunement to self and her personal responses in the navigation of their work.

Jackie feels that she needs one more article to bolster this issue. Her hope is that perhaps it could be from outside of the US to present varying experiences. If anyone knows of such a situation please contact Jackie who hopes to complete the issue on the July 1, 2023 deadline.

Two journal issues express Steve Bernstein’s love of being an analytic educator. This first, The Emergence and Education of the Analytic Mind, speaks to how some analysts have reached outward from various analytic institutions to early career clinicians in the community.

In this issue, Janet Noonan will describe highly successful efforts to engage early career clinicians with programs at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. Steven Marans will describe efforts in applied psychoanalysis to issues of childhood trauma, and consultations to governmental agencies about issues such as about Covid, the January 6th attack, Uvalde, and Ukraine and the use of podcasts in highly successful efforts to engage early career clinicians. Additionally, Harvey Schwartz will discuss his use of podcasts to reach analysts and the community at large.

The issue will also explore how other analysts have reached inward to their institutions by describing a case-based method for teaching ethics. Finally, the issue will consider the need to educate analytic faculty in teaching methods and methods of teaching case writing.

In the second issue, Memories and Reflections on My Experience as an Analytic Educator, Steve asks experienced analysts to write short, personal essays on their work in the wider field of analytic education. He hopes to demonstrate to younger clinicians how actively engaged analysts have found meaning and sustenance in the areas of their work.

Dan asserts the burgeoning research into the phenomenology of schizophrenia, including first-person accounts, has put us in a better position than ever to understand madness on its own terms. This issue will attempt to unpack the new scientific findings in an experience-near way. It will explore these new understandings and put them into dialogue with psychoanalytic thinking about psychoses.

• Louis Sass, author of Madness and Modernism, will ask: “Can a Lacanian perspective apply to an understanding of schizophrenia-spectrum illnesses?”
• Gail Hornstein, the biographer of Fromm-Reichmann, will address the intersection of first-person memoir and psychoanalytic theory.
• Christiane Montag, a phenomenological psychologist, will write on the connection between disorders of the basal self and the so-called “psychotic dilemma.”
• Claire Bien will provide a first person perspective through a personal essay.

What is the role of remembering in everyday life? How does interpersonal remembering contribute to therapeutic process? Why do certain forms of remembering diminish the enlivened self?

This issue will explore the relevance to psychoanalysis of recent developmental and phenomenological conceptualizations of memory as an active, embedded, embodied and relational process.

Some included articles are:

• Remembering as a means to the Other by Daniel Goldin
• Salutatory Reminiscing and Nostalgiaizing by Enrico Gnaulati
• Remember Me: Autobiographical Memory and the Autistic Self by Daniel Posner
• Two Perspectives on Remembering, an interview with Mark Solms and Thomas Fuchs

What can psychoanalysis contribute to our understanding of political hate? This issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry will explore the question of hate and its expressions in politics from the perspective of multiple authors living in various divided regions of the world.

Each author will discuss the psychodynamics of hate as it appears in the conflicts and divisions that exist in her or his particular country or region.

This issue is in a nascent form. Currently, the issue exists mostly as an idea with significant interest on the part of multiple writers.

It will bring together a number of short pieces to create a psychoanalytic perspective of Biblical and other ancient mythic beginnings.

Daniel Goldin, Melvin Bornstein, Jacqueline Gotthold, Daniel Posner and Allen Siegel have all voiced an interest. Doris and Jon welcome other contributors.

This issue will be a collection of six to eight phenomenological essays by Asian American analysts or psychoanalytically-oriented therapists offering their clinical or personal experiences, observations, and insights.

Kris Yi and Peter Maduro will edit and frame the collection with an introduction from a phenomenological-contextual perspective. At this moment they have commitments from the following contributors:

• Umi Chong on racial enactment during her analytic training
• Kenji Yamamoto on emasculation of Asian American male
• Pratusha Tummala-Narra on a topic yet to be determined
• Krison on the psychic experience of a “model minority.”

Deadline is not yet set.

The topic is inspired by an upcoming conference of the same name aimed at recentering the needs of BIPOC and LGBTQIA2S+ mental health practitioners.

Janna believes the majority of diversity-related training for mental health practitioners is geared toward helping majority-identified practitioners expand their capacity to work with minority-identified patients and contexts.

A gap exists in supporting LGBTQIA2S+, BIPOC, immigrant, and other, psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. They have little support in managing experiences associated with discrimination, bias and micro-aggressions in their clinical work and in professional interactions as well. This issue is meant to be another step toward closing that gap.

Janna is waiting to hear back from invited speakers.