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This article, through four sections, looks at the philosophical and social backdrop to the relational turn, the particular pressures on psychoanalysis in the Second World War and post-War years. Drawing on Gampel's ideas of radioactive identifications, the force of political and social experience on theory and practice in psychoanalysis is considered in the current political climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An examination of a clinical case in which severe demands on the analyst were made to bear silence and trauma unprocessable by the analysand. This discussion draws on the work of Coltart and Ferenczi to consider the demands of such work on the analyst. Intergenerational transmissions of trauma are also considered in the understanding of this case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents author's views on effect of political regimes on intimate life including involvement of gendered subjectivity and intimacy. Topics discussed include recovery psychoanalytic work by contemporary analyst Martin Mahler, traditions in the U.S. psychoanalytic work, and radioactive identifications.

In this essay I recall a 40-year experience knowing and working with Muriel Dimen. This is a reminiscence of a shared activist life in the late 1970s and 1980s and later our lives emerging in psychoanalysis and relational psychoanalysis after the mid-1980s. It is an appreciation of the particular turns and potent hot spots in Muriel Dimen’s evolving theorizing of sexuality and power, body and gender and culture from this point in the mid-1980s to her death in 2016. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay draws on Winnicott's deep insights developed in a series of texts over the last decade of his life and addressing questions of gender and sexuality, as these phenomena shape and are shaped by core experiences in the evolution of intersubjectivity. Interweaving Winnicott's work with that of Loewald, Laplanche and Matte Blanco, the essay speculates about possible developmental processes through which complex and shifting gender identifications intersect and interact with experiences of sexuality and desiring. The essay tracks Winnicott's evolving ideas about gender and madness and opens a way of thinking about one process by which gender may emerge, in a complex, 'softly assembled' encounter with desire and being desired. This approach also seeks to reframe and expand the current move in gender theory 'from etiology to teleology'. The term 'etiology' locates us in causation, diagnosis and the sites of pathology, and I think we should continue to be wary of the intrusion of these socially driven biases and ideas into reflections about sexuality and gender in development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on notions of primal scene and Bion’s theorizing of groups, this essay looks at the elements in institutional groups where transgressions and corruption may appear and develop and examines the difficulties group members have in working through the violations and potential disruptions to the institution’s functioning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Relational psychoanalysis is a relatively new but increasingly present school in contemporary psychoanalysis. Lacanian psychoanalysis is a dominant presence in France and South America but far less so in the English-speaking clinical world. And there is little contact between them. Adrienne Harris, one of the founders of relational psychoanalysis, and David Lichtenstein, a prominent New York-based Lacanian-influenced psychoanalyst, came together in the spring of 2012 for a rare conversation about the differences, similarities, and potential meeting points between these two psychoanalytic movements. The conversation spanned a wide psychoanalytic landscape from the origins and influences of these two movements to their conceptualization of basic psychoanalytic notions such as the unconscious, the self, the process and purpose of the psychoanalytic project, the nature of trauma, the work of interpretation, and the role of the analytic relationship. Ferenczi, Winnicott, and Bromberg offered common theoretical ground for this comparative conversation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This discussion explores the far-reaching consequences of betrayal of patients, both at the individual and at the social level. Considering the variety of betrayal’s Elise describes, there are many deep effects on patients, on the field, on institutions, on a sense of the ethics of the profession and public trust. Particularly interesting and important in Elise’s paper is the long-ranging effect on many treatments beyond the original dyad. I would argue that betrayal is among the most profoundly important and damaging situation psychoanalysts and psychoanalysis faces. This discussion notices Bleger’s theory of the setting to consider how deeply events outside a treatment but connected to institutions and communities can impact psychoanalytic work. Crises and betrayals in the field (large and small) deserve our most careful attention. In this discussion the role of shame in the context of betrayals and damage to patients is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction presents the work of three colleagues—Stephen H. Cooper, Ken Corbett, and Stephen Seligman—writing on the importance of reverie, silence, internal work in and by the analyst as a crucial interface with relational and intersubjective analytic work. All three consider their work an engaged critique of the focus on action and interaction in relational accounts of process. The panel includes commentary by Anthony Bass and Donnel B. Stern and a collective response to the discussions by Cooper, Corbett, and Seligman. This introduction considered the potential for internal critique within a relational community, considers the group process in which critique may be produced, and encourages the development of ways of exploring difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion reviews the psychoanalytic and developmental psychological theories that utilize nonlinear dynamic systems theory to situate Sperry's paper in its theoretical and historical context. The power of such nonlinear models for clinical work and theories of mind is argued. The essay then argues that the shift in theory entails a shift in ways of clinical writing and that the clinical discussion in the paper does not always feel consonant with the theory. Moving to a model of nonlinearity, intersubjectivity, and uncertainty is likely to entail shifts in conceptualizing and conveying clinical material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I track three ways of confronting the question of whiteness and its attendant problematic of racism. I look at two personal episodes one involving inheritances from white explorer forebearers and the place of racism in fetishized objects and second in the institutional difficulties within psychoanalysis in finding ways to speak about race and the dilemma of being a beneficiary of racism. Finally I look at the hidden racism in a much lauded psychoanalytic article, Joan Riviere's (1929) “Womanliness as a Masquerade,” and in the light of these three problems speculate on “whiteness.” I argue that the intergenerational transmissions of guilt and disavowal together leave a blank psychic space that makes an authentic expression of racial consciousness and genuine reparation currently difficult and certainly, even if well intentioned, partially compromised. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On May 6, 2011, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis presented a special colloquium on the maternal body. This colloquium featured a public dialogue, a semistructured conversation between Rosemary Balsam and Adrienne Harris, exploring psychoanalytic understandings of images and experiences of the maternal body. The conversation wove chaos, gender, feminist and psychoanalytic theories with the speakers’ respective intellectual autobiographies. Asking each other questions about culture, generation, medicine, politics, and ideology, the dialogue took shape around how these categories were lived by the 2 analysts and how they helped form how Balsam and Harris conceptualized femininity, gender, and embodiment. This format highlighted differences and spaces of integration. We are delighted to provide the transcript of this stimulating public dialogue here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this brief introductory essay, Harris and Bass consider the historic correspondence between Merton Gill and Philip M. Bromberg (1979-1981) in light of psychoanalytic developments over the past 30 years, which have included the emergence of Relational Psychoanalysis. The authors consider the ways in which the issues engaged by Bromberg and Gill in the correspondence stimulated by the publication of Bromberg's (1979) 'Interpersonal Psychoanalysis and Regression' helped shape the development of Relational Psychoanalysis as it emerged, and how the development of Relational Psychoanalysis has provided a new vantage point from which to view these early discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay develops several perspectives on Bion’s concept of primal scene and introduces a series of sex papers on aspects of the primal scene: its developmental implications, implications for thinking, a way of examining the forces of silence and transgression in psychoanalytic institutions, the mythic dimensions of the primal scene and its lens into considerations of race and racism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This introduction outlines a paper by Rina Lazar and discussions by Anthony Bass, Sam Gerson, and Stephen Seligman. The target paper, an extensive clinical case, is described: a case where regression, countertransference dilemmas and opportunities, and intergenerational trauma are all in play. I consider the contribution of the discussants: their unique interpretations of relational work, the distinct focus on intersubjectivity, shifting self states (Bass), intergenerational trauma (Gerson), and regression and the role and status of development (Seligman). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a reaction to the clinical report of Alvarez of a treatment of an anxious, somatizing late adolescent. Approaching this clinical dyad from a relational perspective, transference elements, projected identifications to analyst and to reader are considered. The issues of intergenerational transmission of trauma in work with children from histories of migration and separation are considered, the roles of class and money as barriers to treatment engagement are considered. The disguised hostilities and envies in the treatment are also explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this discussion I consider several influences on the contemporary project of deconstructing racism and the concept of racialized subjectivity. This discussion applauds the turn in Suchet's work toward self-examination in a consideration of the experience of race and racism. Suchet's work moves the debates about racialized subjectivities into a deeper and more complex understanding of all the ways in which identifications and attachments cross race and class lines for many individuals. This discussion focuses on Suchet's treatment of the power of hybridic and biracial identifications, beginning with autobiographical material from Suchet's own childhood in South Africa. In this discussion of "Unraveling Whiteness" I integrate psychoanalytic concepts of enigmatic signification (the work of Laplanche) into a discussion of early attachment, and relational configurations with children and nonparental caretakers. The question of trauma or potential transformation in interracial experience is discussed, and some distinctions between American and South African experience are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this commentary, I discuss two papers, one by Sandra Silverman and one by Maureen Murphy, each in different ways charting the challenges and possibilities in work where the analyst's subjectivity and the patient's cross or merge in demanding, sometimes tragic, sometimes brutally difficult ways. I consider the role of shame and mourning in the analyst's work to contain material with patients in profound distress and in important identificatory links to the analyst. I explore the demands on the analyst in these extreme situations and the dilemmas around analytic self care, a process I argue that is insufficiently theorized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces two papers and a discussion focusing on the theoretical innovation in working on a new organization of body-mind and surface-depth. Papers by Roth and Freedgood are discussed and linked to feminist work on the body and on domestic work in gardening and décor, and in relation to emblematic adornments to the body. Connections are made to feminist psychoanalysis. Elise's discussion and its developmental implications are also discussed. It is suggested that this set of papers addresses new clinical and theoretical ideas in female subjectivity, psychoanalytic studies of the body and materiality, as well as relationships among women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, we pose the question of psychoanalysis and national character. We explore the Americanness of psychoanalysis in this country through an examination of the history of its emergence in the early and mid-20th century, and through an examination of the impact of pragmatism on the formation and evolution of psychoanalysis in the United States. We consider American models of change and the impact of theoretical movements such as feminism and queer theory. We explore a particular quality and meaning of unconscious phenomena through an examination of American visions of nature over the past century and a half. The impact of elements of national identity and dominant American ideas and practices on relational psychoanalysis is also addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion addresses key points of contact and difference in the work of Eigen and Grotstein, each of whom holds unique and highly dramatic and enigmatic views of unconscious life. Their views can be framed as relational. They each cite Bion as an important influence but develop distinct sensibilities. In conceptualizing the unconscious, each author must tangle with difficulties with language and representation. Using a clinical example, I point our four aspects of my work on the unconscious: that unusual links of body and mind are posited; that the unconscious is historical; that the unconscious also contains transhistorical forces and processes; and, finally, that unconscious life handles time in unusual and nonrational ways. Eigen's interest in process and Grotstein's interest in mental structures are contrasted. The ethical implications of work on the unconscious are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I respond to Ruth Fallenbaum's account of clinical work with a group of women postal workers. I raise questions about the intersect of political analysis and psychoanalysis, the particular dynamic and structural demands on women workers, as well as the dynamics of precocity in relation to poverty and striving. The work Fallenbaum reports is a wonderful exemplar of clinical work that must remain sensitive on its own terms while the clinician keeps an eye on matters of class, race, and gender. Her essay makes a good argument for the importance of interdisciplinary thinking in clinical psychoanalysis as well as the importance of models of subjectivity in which multiple narratives, loyalties, and experiences are normative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this commentary I address the functions of gender and of bodily state as a way of managing memory, affect, and interactions. I consider the status of alters as narrative or as historical truths. Graham Bass's case illuminates problems and potentials of touch and the inevitability of intersubjectively constructed enactments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes how a psychoanalytic inquiry coordinates with other ways of understanding terrorism and trauma. Onset of conditions of ongoing uncertainty and shared anxiety.

Presents a commentary on the studies by Robert Weinstein and Ubaldo Leli which attempted to work outside the frame of conventional approaches to analysis of sexuality, character and homosexuality. Presentation of the patient's background and dynamics by Leli; Reaction to the paper of Weinstein regarding the shifting and dramatic history of the case presented; Need for further discussion on the therapeutic impact of love.

Discusses the conventional relationship of biography to psychoanalysis. Presence of biography and autobiography in analytic writing; How conventions of biographical writing have entered and shaped analytic writing.

We introduce our duet of articles placing relational psychoanalysis in the political-historical contexts that preceded and accompanied its inception. These include the shift toward the ego psychological adaptationist orientation in the wake of the emigration of leading psychoanalysts from Central Europe and Cold War domestic anticommunism, and the subsequent emergence of an insurgent generation in social movements for civil rights, against the Vietnam war, women's and gay rights, and other causes. The transactions between personal, professional, and socio-historical identities and identifications are considered throughout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this Introduction we set the project in a particular moment of mourning. We describe the experience of engaging with Nina Farhi to publish her paper, recounting and reworking an early and famous analysis conducted by Marion Milner. Farhi's unexpected and untimely death just at the point of developing this extended project has cast a pall over the subsequent work. We detail the history of Farhi and Milner's contribution; her influences from Winnicott, Klein, and Ghent; and her radical extension of Milner's own ideas. We survey, in this Introduction the dialogue, in two iterations, of Jeanne Wolff Bernstein, Dodi Goldman, and Avgi Sekatepoulou. We describe the distinct but interwoven dialogues among these three writers, each concerned in different ways with aspects of Farhi's and, earlier, of Milner's project. We record also the work of Jean White, who stakes out a less mournful and more celebratory aspect of Nina Farhi's and Marion Milner's work and the tradition in psychoanalysis that they represent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this transcript of a panel on the exhibit of Robert Giard’s portraits, Just as You Are, at the University of Toronto on May 4, 2012, 4 panelists approach the work politically and personally, aesthetically and psychoanalytically. Harris considers the tension in queer portraiture between intelligibility and liminality; Corbett discusses the artist’s and subjects’ frank engagement; Goldner addresses safety, vulnerability, and mutuality in the portraits; and Dimen recounts the experience of having sat for Giard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]