Search

This paper contemplates two notions that I have been exploring in relation to the frontier between subjects and collectives. The first is what I call homo-nationalis, the subject formed by and along the organizing principles of nationalism. This subject, I argue, reflects the ideology and reality of the nation-state. It is animated by its imaginaries and unsettled by its fragilities in the deepest psychological sense. The second is what I call the trans-subject. I use this notion inspired by, and wishing to extend the sense of, transing as it pertains to trans-gendering to other categories of subjecthood, aiming to capture the subject's potential to re-form the precepts of subjectivity as it is prescribed for them. I engage these two notions as I reflect on my (countertransference) experience while working with an individual moving across various collective-social frontiers in the process of a religious conversion.

This article contemplates the tension between apathy and hope, between the dystopic and the utopian as drivers of the human condition, and our theories about it. I look, more specifically, at how t...

L’objectif de l’article est d'argumenter que l’association entre pulsion de mort, violence et autodestruction peut etre trompeuse et artificielle. Cette association est le camouflage symptomatique de quelque chose de completement different, a savoir la psychologisation qui rend inconscient l'impact des forces sociales. Les forces sociales, lorsque incorporees au sein de la famille et dans notre constitution en tant que sujets, nous font penser qu’il est naturel et souhaitable de vouloir tuer et mourir. Mais une telle representation pourrait etre vue comme une construction ou l’invention d’un pere abandonnique.

L’objectif de l’article est d'argumenter que l’association entre pulsion de mort, violence et autodestruction peut etre trompeuse et artificielle. Cette association est le camouflage symptomatique de quelque chose de completement different, a savoir la psychologisation qui rend inconscient l'impact des forces sociales. Les forces sociales, lorsque incorporees au sein de la famille et dans notre constitution en tant que sujets, nous font penser qu’il est naturel et souhaitable de vouloir tuer et mourir. Mais une telle representation pourrait etre vue comme une construction ou l’invention d’un pere abandonnique.

A while ago, I was asked whether psychoanalysis had anything special to say about tears. Thinking through this question, it became clear to me that we cannot think about tears in psychoanalysis wit...

This is an introduction to a roundtable comprising three papers and a discussion considering the interweave of psychoanalysis and social and political life. Prepared for a 2017 conference in Prague...

Relational Psychoanalysis is by now a large and influential international psychoanalytic school with its own association and publications. For the joy of some and the lament or indifference of othe...

Does being a psychoanalyst imply that one should hold a particular political sensibility? This article aims to approach this question in the aftermath of Donald Trump having become the president of...

Immigration is in the unconscious of the unconscious of psychoanalysis. Immigration as a dramatic instance of the always precarious social and political registers of human living. Immigration as the movement of people from one place to another, across regions and national borders and oceans, by choice or necessity. Immigration as movement across other types of social boundaries, always defining an outside and a way into a desired inside. Immigration as an inverted reflection of our deep need to belong. This paper reflects on immigration as a clinical reality and as a clinical metaphor. It uses the notion of immigration to question the perceived, often if not always illusory settledness of the analytic practice, and its tendency to privilege a sense of well-inhabited center vis-a-vis the margins we all travel through and persist in. My aim is to join Veronica Csillag in deliberating a more uncertain and daring potential for our theory making and practice.

This discussion reflects closely on Dominique Scarfone’s call to consider psychoanalysis as a practice founded on ethics, and to rely on this premise in charting a fundamental common ground such th...

A translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “The Archaic Torso of Apollo” is offered in tribute to the memory of a cherished friend and mentor.

This article attends the intersection of personal and collective memory. Drawing on the author's childhood memories, particularly those of his grandmother, the article explores the ways in which one's past is registered and reexperienced as an ongoing relation between intimate recollections and grand historical narratives. The article contrasts Homi Bhabha's (1994) use of the psychoanalytic concept of Nachtraglichkeit to a parallel conception of past-present interaction in the writings of Franz Kafka (1954), Ernst Bloch (1963), and Walter Benjamin (1955). Reflecting on the heavy charge carried from the past into the future, on what Emmanuel Levinas (1995) called in this context “insoluble problems” (p. 88), the article argues for a notion of agency that reaches beyond the subject, toward a consideration of subjectivity as a focal point, and link, between collective tradition and its potential trajectory.

My reply to the commentaries first addresses the question of the relations between psychoanalytic theory and practice. Drawing on the ancient Greek concept of theoria, I expand on this question by evoking a third register, that of psychoanalysis as a collective that theorizes and practices in a particular socio-historical context. I argue for a view of psychoanalysis as a collective residing at the intersection of general discourse, social power, and subjectivity, a position that should be consciously considered as part of its ethos and its ethics. I examine in this context Stern's notion of clinical philosophy and the potential for a variety of dialogues between clinical psychoanalysis and critical theory. I look at the unique possibilities offered in this domain by relational psychoanalysis, and argue that mining these possibilities may require that we explore new kinds of theoretical narrative. Looking at the history of the psychoanalytic theoria, I raise the question of theoretical and clinical activi...

This paper explores an open frontier between psychoanalysis and critical theory, the relations between subjective experience and collective history. Its drive is a concern with the question of freedom: How might contemporary psychoanalysis help us think about freedom? How could it, as a practice, help us to be free? On the theoretical level, the paper follows the critique of psychoanalysis offered by Foucault and Adorno, particularly the latter's close reading Ferenczi in Negative Dialectics and his notion of “the spell.” I employ their critique in order to articulate the dilemma psychoanalysis faces vis-a-vis the notion of freedom in social context. I argue that, unlike traditional psychoanalytic discourse, relational psychoanalysis can address this dilemma in a generative way. I find this prospect in the readiness of relational psychoanalysis to realize the potential inherent in the psychoanalytic setting: the creation of a mutually constituted intersubjective space. I tell the story of a young woman fo...

In this introduction to the group of essays that follows by Sam Gerson, Jean-Max Gaudilliere, Miri Rozmarin, and Udi Aloni, I trace the inspiration for this project, a collective contemplation of the figure of the biblical Samson using as its springboard David Grossman's book about Samson, Lion's Honey (2005). I write about how the project emerged out of my work with a patient who recommended Grossman's book to me and my effort to grapple with the dilemmas of familial and collective loyalties that transpired as a core aspect our joint endeavor. How does one let go of one's child, in life or in transference? And what kind of letting go should, on the other hand, be resisted? How can we think about this conundrum of freedom and responsibility? This is the crucial clinical and ethical concern underlying the collection of essays published here.

One way to view the relation between mind and politics is to see society as oppressive. But here the author also understands discourse, including interpellation, as facilitative: subjects of ourselves and subjects to social forces, we can have the social context we need only if we find ourselves through it. In relating his work with Dori, like him an Israeli immigrant, Eyal Rozmarin wants to connect the idea of discourse in critical theory to a notion of the collective unconscious. He reflects on the way, separately and together, he and Dori relate to the Third of discourse in the room: how to live out their shared cultural mission to realize their potential for the nation and to realize themselves, an enterprise in which they may lose themselves as well.

Suchet's paper is an inspiring demonstration of the power of openness and vulnerability. It offers a clinically daring and theoretically far-reaching account of the transformation that can sometimes occur in the psychoanalytic relationship. My commentary focuses on two of the paper's major threads: the interplay of subjective experience, intersubjective space, and collective forces, and the ethical dimension of the psychoanalytic project. From the outset, the meeting between Ara and Suchet is not only a meeting of bodies and minds, but also a meeting of collective histories and politics. Suchet finds, and in her account powerfully demonstrates, that addressing her patient's trouble requires an exploration of how collective traumas and political narratives infuse the possibilities of intersubjective exchange and subjective meaning. In my commentary I trace and elaborate on the trajectory of this analytic process, contemplating the ways in which identities and identifications involve both familial and socia...

In my discussion of Janine Puget's deeply thought-provoking paper, I focus on her central argument that the subject's interior world and the world of intersubjective relationships answer to different logics and evolve along separate developmental paths. Puget's argument hinges on a notion of the other, and of otherness as disruptive and traumatic to the subject. My discussion aims to problematize this notion on two fronts. First, I suggest that otherness is not only external to the subject. I point to some ways in which psychoanalysis conceives of otherness and of the other as integral to the constitution and development of the subject. Further, I argue that individuals sometimes desire and actively seek otherness. I engage in this context the question of social displacement and immigration, Puget's other main concern in her paper. Life tourists, as Puget calls them, are a paradox of will and necessity, where the prospect of confronting otherness and being othered is both a threat and a life-affirming rec...

This paper suggests that social and historical forces play an unconscious yet decisive role in our lives. Telling the story of a conversation between Israeli parents about the prospect of their children becoming soldiers, and of an analytic relationship between two Israelis, the paper aims to bring to light a hidden balance of power between family bonds and collective attachments. The paper uses ideas developed by Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari in the field of critical theory to examine the ways in which families function as social agents, that is, as socializing institutions. It suggests that, as a result, in some situations, families may face a conflict of identifications, a dilemma between responsibility to kin and responsibility to the collective. If the dilemma commonly persists unheeded, it becomes painfully evident in extreme situations. Such is the case when parents are asked to allow their children to become soldiers, or when individuals strive to care for themselves against ...

This commentary opens in strong agreement with Annie Stopford's project, to contemplate the prospect of a non-normative psychoanalysis. Reflecting on the complexities inherent in psychoanalysis' dual nature as both a theory of subjectivity and an agent of given social discourses, I focus on the psychoanalytic tendency to conflate the notion of the right with that of the normative; particularly in the context of developmental theory. Elaborating on Stopford's rendering of the relations between the subject and normative collective discourses, I suggest that we think of these relations as less deterministic. We all find ourselves under the sway of a cacophony of different, sometimes conflicting social narratives. Moreover, our relations with these narratives are themselves dynamic. Considering this multiplicity, I suggest that the subject, even as seen in the grip of powerful social forces, has significant power of resistance and agency.

The aim of the study described in this paper was to develop a method for measuring the therapeutic alliance from an intersubjective perspective and to evaluate the efficacy of the measure in predicting psychotherapy outcome. We conducted the study using data from 22 patient-therapist dyads engaged in a 30-session protocol of a brief relational therapy. The alliance measure chosen for this purpose was the short form of the Working Alliance Inventory. We used the subjective patient and therapist versions of the measure and created a correlation index representing the intersubjective congruence between patients and therapists on their ratings of the alliance. We examined the relations among the measures, as well as their predictive relation to an outcome measure. The results showed significant intercorrelations among the three alliance measures, suggesting that all captured aspects of the therapeutic alliance. In addition, all three measures were significantly predictive of outcome, with the correlation index appearing more powerful.

The author comments on several questions raised in Harris's and Reis's discussions of “An Other in Psychoanalysis.” He elaborates on the notion of ambivalence between the general and particular as a theoretical and ethical perspective in psychoanalytic thought and practice. Contemplating ambivalence as active or passive, he argues for a theoretical and clinical stance of ambivalent activism. He raises the question of otherness as something internal and external to the subject in Levinas and in psychoanalysis. Considering the notions of the relational unconscious and the relational third, he suggests the idea of an unconscious-outside. He concludes by pointing to the possibility of thinking a nonsubjective unconscious beyond the intersubjective-relational register. Such unconscious consists of all theoretical and social discourses in which subjectivity is defined.

The paper engages the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, particularly his critique of ontological thought and knowing, to examine some of the basic premises of psychoanalysis. The author argues that, viewed through Levinas's notions of The Other and of ethics, traditional psychoanalysis represents an ethically problematic discursive position since it conforms unambivalently to social-knowledge-power structures. The author suggests that psychoanalysis is inherently a conflicted discourse. He traces the development of psychoanalytic awareness to the concerns of otherness in the shift from one- to two-person psychology and in the thought made possible in the relational school. Bringing together Levinas's critical-ethical considerations and contemporary psychoanalytic conceptions of subjectivity and intersubjective relations, the author argues for more awareness of the ethical implications of different aspects of analytic theory and practice, and against the limitations of Levinas's extreme ethics. He co...

This article reports the relevant highlights of our experience with companies that adopt a forced distribution (FD) system. We describe why they choose it, what impact it has on their organization, and how we help them decide if FD is a good match for their culture. We have included a cultural checklist that we designed with one of our clients to assist in the decision to use an FD system.

In this brief introduction to the collection of essays that follows, I point to what in my mind are some of the most pertinent and powerful aspects of Jessica Benjamin's The Bonds of Love (1988), the author and book to whom this collection is dedicated. I tell of my first encounter with Jessica Benjamin and the impact the encounter had on me. I comment briefly on the book's place in contemporary psychoanalysis. Using Jessica Benjamin's own words, I highlight what in my mind is one of the book's greatest achievements: the reframing of the relations between knowledge and ethics in the light of a feminist critique of gender.

This introduction to a collection of essays by Adrienne Harris, Gregory Tentler, and Laurence Hegarty briefly highlights the main theme explored: central aspects of Forrest Bess's work and their relations with his personal struggles and with the artistic discourse that provided him with points of reference and audiences during the 1940s through the 1960s.