Psychoanalysis On and Off the Couch

"The psychoanalytic frame I have built in myself helps me to find a way to not go too near and not be too distant to a person. It is other than what we learn when we learn to be psychoanalysts. Then we have the opportunity to feel in a room where we are not in danger - it's more the patient that feels in danger. He is coming and he has fears - but we, knowing our room, our couch, we don't have many fears. But if you work as I did in an open field, in different houses, in different hospitals, in different orphanages, you are first full of fear and at the same time very curious about what happens and what can happen. It's not the same as if you are in your own practice. One of the most important things I had was my psychoanalytic setting in myself - in myself, not in the room in which I work. I can find a way that doesn't bring too much fear to the patient and at the same time finds some way to get nearer to him, to his inner problems than if I was just a friend or a religious woman." Episode Description: We begin by discussing the depth of human pain that Barbara encountered in her work in the poorest areas of Eastern Africa. She describes how essential her psychoanalytic sensibility was to enable her attunement to the closeness/distance space that was so important for mutual safety and understanding. She gives examples of the all-encompassing role of the Koran in those with whom she worked as well as the lack of a subjective self in many of the individuals she encountered. We learn of the effects of genital mutilation and the various reactions she had in seeing such suffering. We close with her sharing with us a bit of her personal story that has led her to this work. Our Guest: Dr. phil. Barbara Saegesser is a training analyst with the Swiss Psychoanalytical Society and a member of the IPA. She is president of the commission treating ethical problems in the Swiss Society of Psychoanalysis. Since 2005 she has worked part-time in Eastern Islamic African cities: Alexandria, Khartoum, Addis Ababa, Hawassa, Djibouti, Kampala, and Zanzibar. Her work has been in orphanages, with street boys, in baby shelters, psychiatric hospitals, and maternity wards for genitally mutilated women.

"When I first started teaching it was most often done through theory, and teaching these complicated words with hard-to-understand concepts. It never made sense to me, to be honest, as a student myself. So, when I began teaching, I would tell stories whether they were about my own life or about my children as a way to express the idea of whatever the concept was. I found that the students became so engaged and interested, and it made sense to them. I think it also made it less frightening when they heard these diagnoses and different terms that scared them. Whatever the concept was I wanted to normalize it and let everyone know that these are experiences we all have. I think it works well for teaching and it's been fun when I run into a student even 25 years later who says: 'Oh! I remember that story." – KM "Students are overwhelmed with how much they are learning; they want to know what to say - looking for a kind of formula for that. I think the stories help to show how many different kinds of situations one can encounter with the work and what is happening in the course of a day and how spontaneous an intervention might be. When you are talking about learning to play a musical instrument rather than the theory, we are also learning to listen to the music. I think the stories offer a way of learning how to listen in the layers that an analyst does." – AA Episode Description: We begin by outlining the challenges we face in teaching an affective process while focusing on conceptual abstractions. It's akin to teaching how to play a musical instrument by studying music theory - both are important, but theory won't teach musicality. Kerry and Anne use storytelling as a vehicle to demonstrate the dynamic process as it lives in our everyday lives. We learn from the lessons in the stories as well as from learning to listen to the melodies. They each read their stories and we consider the presence of manifest and latent meanings in what we hear. We are also alerted to the essential role of the therapist's personal responses to the clinical material and with that the childhood memories that are often evoked. We close with their sharing with us something of their backgrounds that have led them to this work as well their involvement in the New Directions in Writing program. Our Guests: Anne Adelman, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and Training Analyst at the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis and the Contemporary Freudian Society. She is the co-editor of the JAPA book review section and launched a feature column called 'Why I write'. She is co-chair of the New Directions in Writing program and maintains a private practice in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Her books include Psychoanalytic Reflections on Parenting Teens and Young Adults: Changing Patterns of Modern Love, Loss, and Longing (2018), The Therapist in Mourning: From Faraway Nearby with Kerry Malawista (2013) and Wearing my Tutu to Analysis and Other Stories, with Kerry Malawista and Catherine Anderson (2011), When the Garden Isn't Eden (2022). Kerry L. Malawista, Ph.D. is a training and supervising analyst at the Contemporary Freudian Society and a Board Member at the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis. She is co-chair of New Directions in Writing and founder of the recent project The Things They Carry – offering virtual writing workshops for healthcare and frontline workers across the country. She is permanent faculty at the Contemporary Freudian Society and teaches widely. Her essays have appeared in newspapers, magazines, and literary journals including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, and The Boston Globe, to name a few. She is the co-author of The Therapist in Mourning: From Faraway Nearby with Kerry Malawista (2013), Wearing my Tutu to Analysis and Other Stories,(2011), When the Garden Isn't Eden (2022), and Who's Behind the Couch (2017,). Her first novel Meet the Moon was released in September 2022.

"It seemed to me in my training, also in my scholarly pursuits, that desire did not have conceptual status in most analytic clinical theory. Most traditions did not have a way of talking about the analyst's motivations with the exception of the well-worn ideas about the analyst's 'blind spots'. But in terms of specific motivations, we just didn't have a way to think about them. Yet it seemed to me that over and over again, especially around the thorny problem of clinical impasses and iatrogenic resistances caused by the analyst's activity, that the analyst's intention and desire was directly at play in those impasses. But we have no way to talk about it." Episode Description: We begin by discussing Mitchell's notion of the analyst's desire. We consider its relation to wishes and healing which leads us to consider analytic listening. He embraces the metaphor of the innkeeper who asks, "What brings you here?" Mitchell shares his thoughts on reverie and projective identification which he feels are overvalued as dependable sources of information on the inner life of a patient. We discuss the usefulness of behavior change preceding insight and Lacan's notion of dual-relation resistance. We close with his chapter on termination and with his sharing poignant aspects of his childhood that open the book in Chapter One. Our Guest: Mitchell Wilson, MD is a psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, writer, editor and teacher. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Dr. Wilson has published fiction, literary criticism, and papers on the history of American psychiatry and the DSM. He has practiced and taught psychoanalysis in the Bay Area since 1990. His psychoanalytic writings have cohered around a theory of ethics, desire, and the psychoanalytic process. His book, The Analyst's Desire: The Ethical Foundation of Clinical Practice, was published in 2020. He is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, and a Personal and Supervising Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California. He is in private practice and leads study groups in Berkeley, California. Recommended Readings: Benjamin, J. (2004). Beyond Doer and Done to: an Intersubjective View of Third-ness. Psychoanal. Q., 73:5-46. Chetrit-Vatine, V. (2014). The Ethical Seduction of the Analytic Situation: The Feminine-Maternal Origins of Responsibility for the Other. London: Karnac. Lacan, J. (1992). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959–1960, ed. J.-A. Miller, trans. D. Porter. New York: Norton. Lear, J. (2003). The Idea of a Moral Psychology: The Impact of Psychoanalysis on Philosophy in Britain. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 84:1351–1361. Wilson, M. (2020). The Analyst's Desire: The Ethical Foundation of Clinical Practice. Bloomsbury Academic Press. JAPA Section: Ethical Implications of the Analyst as Person—December 2016 –– Kite, J.V. The Fundamental Ethical Ambiguity of the Analyst as Person. –– Morris, H. The Analyst's Offer. –– Wilson, M. The Ethical Foundation of Analytic Action. –– Kattlove, S. Acknowledging the 'Analyst as Person': a Developmental Achievement. –– Moss, D. Me Here, You There––Now what? Commentary on Kite, Morris, Wilson, and Kattlove.

"During the treatment they start to think about their family, they want to understand what really happened to their parents that made them such monsters towards their own children? They start to look for the origins of their family and the history of the family and they found transgenerational traumas from both sides - family members who were victims and family members who were persecutors. This is something on the personal level we have to live with all the time. When you can read the memoirs of different people you can also find both sides - the people who realize that in their family were the secrets connected with the fact that they were Jews and they had to hide their identity and until now they are afraid to speak openly about it. And the part of completely delayed history, like what happened to the properties of the family, how the family got this house after the Second World War." Episode Description: We begin with a conversation on the current status of the Polish Psychoanalytic Society. Edyta shares with us encouraging information on the recent increase in analytic candidates and the abundance of patients. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, she describes the awakening of historical trauma from Poland's history of being invaded. We learn of the arrival of 7 million Ukrainian refugees into Poland with over 3 million staying. She feels that the spirit of reparation for past destructiveness has contributed to the considerable generosity that Poles have shown to those in need despite a history of cruelty between Poland and Ukraine. We discuss the presence in patients' minds of secretive pasts from World War II - that of victims and persecutors. She uses the image of the Dybbuk to characterize a common mysterious experience of being possessed by the ghosts of the dead. We conclude optimistically that perhaps we are seeing for this moment in Polish history an improved trajectory of human decency. Our Guest: Edyta Biernacka is a psychoanalyst, vice-president of the Polish Psychoanalytical Society, supervisor and training psychotherapist for Polish Psychoanalytical Psychotherapy Society, therapist and supervisor of Personality Disorders' Treatment Ward in Psychiatric Babinski Clinic in Krakow where she works with adults in private practice.

"Aren't these daughters of Persia retelling that myth [Shahnameh] as we speak - they put their hair down, Rudabeh put her hair down. This time maybe from this union there will now be a baby girl that will be born. This new epic female hero will transform this land. Something has happened - it's an event, and whether we like it or not there is going to be a before and after. We observe the best of Rudabeh's daughter in every single one of these girls. We know in psychoanalysis that these things are not something that can just happen - that the birth of the subject is a process and this birth of Rudabeh's daughter has been long overdue. It has been a long time in the making, and I am sorry…I get very emotional, but I look forward to her becoming." Episode Description: We begin by acknowledging the political turmoil currently surrounding and impacting our conversation about psychoanalysis in Iran. We discuss the nature of foreignness both as a geographical entity and an intrapsychic experience. Gohar recognizes the essential subversive spirit of discovering one's authentic voice and challenges efforts to homogenize one's identity in an artificial search for sameness. Tolerating discomfort is for her a hallmark of analytic maturation. We discuss the Blues which contain sorrow and promise -"it lives on the edge of falling into melancholy." We learn that Freud was translated into Farsi as early as 1906 and that Gohar was a founder of the Freudian Group of Tehran. We close with hopes for a future inspired by the courage of the young women of today with conversations freed from concerns about safety. Our Guest: Gohar Homayounpour, PsyD is a psychoanalyst and author. She is a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association, the American Psychoanalytic Association, the Italian Psychoanalytical society, and the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis. She is a Training and Supervising psychoanalyst of the Freudian Group of Tehran, of which she is also the founder and past president. She is also a member of the scientific board at the Freud Museum in Vienna, and of the IPA group Geographies of Psychoanalysis. Her first book, Doing Psychoanalysis in Tehran (2012) won the Gradiva award and has been translated into many languages including French, German, Italian, Turkish, and Spanish. Her latest book is titled Persian Blues, Psychoanalysis and Mourning (2022). Recommended Readings: Homayounpour, Gohar. Doing Psychoanalysis in Tehran, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,2012). Dislocated Subject, edited by Preta, Lorena (ed.), Geographies of Psychoanalysis, Mimesis International, 2018 Geographies of Psychoanalysis (Encounters Between Cultures In Tehran), edited by Preta, Lorena (ed.), Mimesis International, 2015. Busch, Fred. A Fresh Look at Psychoanalytic Technique, selected papers on Psychoanalysis, Routledge, 2021. Bolognini, Stefano. Vital Flows between the Self and Non-Self: The Interpsychic. Routledge, 2022.

"I started with an analyst right as I was ending residency and starting the fellowship in Behavioral Neurology and Movement Disorders. It was right in this transition time, and over time it transitioned into a psychoanalysis, and I think it served a number of functions. There was something about the way of exploring what was going on, trying to get to the bottom of it, trying to understand it, trying to understand oneself with another person, that I think was closer to what I was trying to get to originally. There was also something about him, my analyst, that seem so…calm… but it's not quite calm, something related to satisfied that I thought I was missing. What I was doing was good, and we can all work hard and do a lot of things, and there are a lot of things you could do. But somehow the fit wasn't right - I was forcing a fit of some kind or trying to turn something into something that would be a better fit and working pretty hard at that. There was something about his way that made me feel like 'maybe I could feel like that in my career.'" — RG "I went to therapy because I thought I needed help. It was with a psychoanalyst, and we met two sessions a week, so it wasn't psychoanalysis yet. The thing that I found most exciting with him was that it was a different kind of thinking. I remember sitting in a session and realized that he was thinking totally different from me, and it was so exciting, so overwhelming, a little frightening but something that I actually found an inclination to think like that. I remember that in one of the sessions I had the image of memory as bits on a line, and I understood that he didn't think like that. For him, memory fragments are a conglomerate of these bits together, like grapes together, it was not linear. I was really amazed and excited by this. During the years when I really started the analysis, I found out that this kind of thinking can really be influential and make a change in my life as a patient and in my life as a therapist." — IB Episode Description: Iftah and Rachel share their pre-medicine life stories and describe those factors that contributed to their pursuing medicine and neurology. They both trained in Behavioral Neurology in an effort to reach more deeply into the personal experiences of their patients. Informed by their own analytic treatments they concluded that they were seeking something deeper than neurology could offer them. Training in psychoanalysis allowed them to integrate their studies of the mind with their prior work with the brain - an integration that had its limitations as well as insights. We discuss the challenges of having differing perspectives on how to encounter clinical phenomena. We close with their sharing with us how they bring their analytic minds back to neurology in leading Balint-type groups for neurology residents - a lovely application of analysis off the couch. Our Guests: Iftah Biran, MD, a psychiatrist, and a neurologist with a subspecialty in Behavioral Neurology. He recently finished his training in psychoanalysis and joined the Israeli Psychoanalytic Association as a member. He works part-time in his private practice where he mainly practices analysis. In the last years, he's been working in the department of Neurology at Tel Aviv Medical Center, a tertiary hospital, as a liaison psychiatrist – neuropsychiatrist, and behavioral neurologist. There Dr. Biran mostly takes care of patients with conversion disorders. He's the co-editor of the journal Neuropsychoanalysis. Dr. Biran is now completing a bachelor's degree in philosophy and literature at the Open University of Israel. Rachel Gross, MD. Prior to becoming a psychoanalyst, Dr. Gross began her career as a neurologist. As a member of the neurology faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, she specialized in the care of patients with Parkinson's disease, dementia, and other neurodegenerative conditions. She also served as co-director of the Penn neurology residency training program. Dr. Gross has a private practice in Philadelphia where she provides psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and medication management. She enjoys teaching, mentoring, and supervising trainees in psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy. She also facilitates a group to support the emotional well-being and professional development of neurology residents at the University of Pennsylvania.

"I feel very often that I can detect when people are doing case presentations, this ubiquitous tendency to not bother about the body. At a very superficial level it is accepted that we run around in bodies. What is actually a slightly deeper idea is that we run around in bodies, but our minds couldn't have any function at all if our other parts of our functional systems weren't also working, So the body and the mind of course are deeply interconnected. We do know that too, that's not news, but it constantly becomes eliminated." Episode Description: We begin with an overview of Rosemary's longstanding interest in the role of bodies and how they make their presence and meaning known in the clinical encounter. She discusses the analytic scotoma when it comes to the woman's body especially when it involves pregnancy and childbirth. We consider conflicts over being aware of and speaking freely about the analyst's body and what that is like for both parties. She shares her deep pleasure in the writings and person of Hans Loewald and what it has meant to her to be a physician. We consider how the sublimated role of a father's sexual arousal serves as an aid in his child's individuation. We close with Rosemary sharing her view of our field's past and some aspects of her personal journey. Our Guest: Rosemary H. Balsam F.R.C.Psych (London), M.R. C. P. (Edinboro), (originally from Belfast, N. Ireland), is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry in Yale Medical School; staff psychiatrist in the Yale Department of Student Mental Health and Counseling, and a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis, New Haven, Conn. Her special interests are female gender developments; young adulthoods; the body in psychic life; the work of Hans Loewald. Dr. Balsam is on the editorial boards of Psychoanalytic Quarterly and Imago and is a past co-editor of the Book Review Section of JAPA with her husband, Paul Schwaber. Her most recent book is Women's Bodies in Psychoanalysis (2012, Routledge); and her latest book review (2021) At the Risk of Thinking: An Intellectual Biography of Julia Kristeva by Alice Jardine. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 102:629-634. She is on the executive board of the newly inaugurated "Loewald Center," a joint organization between IPTAR and the WNEIP. Her honors include 2018, winning the Sigourney Award for excellence in the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (she was the first woman in the USA to receive this prize.) Recommended Readings: Balsam, R.M (2012) Women's Bodies in Psychoanalysis London, New York Routledge Balsam, R. H (2013) (Re)membering the Female Body in Psychoanalysis: Childbirth JAPA Volume 61: 3 pp. 446 - 470. Balsam, R.H. ((2015) The War on Women in Psychoanalytic Theory Building: Past to Present Psychoanal Study Child 69, 83-107. 2015. Balsam, R.H. (2019) The Natal Body and its Confusing Place in Mental Life: J,Amer.Psyoanal.Assn 67.1 pp.15- 36 Balsam, R.H. (2017) Modern Gender Flexibility: Pronoun Changes and the Body's Activities. Ch 4 In Vaia Tsolas and C. Anzieu Premmeurer (eds.) A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body in Today's World: On The Body London, New York Routledge. Kristeva J. (1980) Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. L. S. Roudiez New York: Columbia University Press 1980). Toronto, E, Ponder, J, Davisson, K, KellyM.(eds) (2017) A Womb of Her Own: Women's Struggle for Sexual and Reproductive Autonomy, London, New York Routledge.

"I think that writing also is among the things that help me think this through and get there. When I finished my degree, I was actually very pessimistic - I had no idea that at close to age 55-56 that a psychoanalytic institute would even consider me but I did decide to take the leap and I ended up going to BPSI [Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute] and here I am." — Ellen Pinsky "The training time was a time of discovering - we read the authors I knew, and what was happening to me also at that moment, what kind of an analyst would I be during and after the training? My background encouraged me to go on - when it was difficult to go on searching for the truth, searching for the knowledge, but the knowledge about myself during the training and it went on in my actual training analysis." —Susana Merlo Episode Description: We discuss Susana's and Ellen's first careers in education and what led them "to wish to go deeper." They both describe the formative contributions of their own analyses as well as the influence of analytic writers that they valued. We consider the possible advantages and disadvantages of each of the many backgrounds that we bring to our clinical work and share conclusions about the similarities and differences in how we practice. We discuss some of their favorite writers and we conclude with their perspectives on the future of psychoanalysis both in the States and in Argentina. Our Guests: Susana Ruth Merlo is a member of APdeBA (Asociación Psicoanalítica de Buenos Aires, Argentina) and holds a position as an Associated Professor at IUSAM of APdeBA (Instituto Universitario de Salud Mental de APdeBA), where she teaches Introduction to the ideas of Melanie Klein and English School. She provided school psychological services in school settings for 15 years. At present provides therapy to children, adolescents, and adults in a private clinic setting. Susana holds two university degrees, School Psychology (1986) and Clinical Psychology (2007). Ellen Pinsky came to psychoanalysis as a second profession following 25 years as a middle school English teacher. She says her experience in the classroom with 12 and 13-year-olds taught her most of what she needed to know to become a credible clinician. She is the author of Death and Fallibility in the Psychoanalytic Encounter: Mortal Gifts. About her book, Thomas Ogden writes: "Mortal Gifts is a necessary book—necessary for analysts and necessary for the analyses they conduct. In it, Ellen addresses a long-neglected issue in the practice of psychoanalysis: the analyst's failure to include in the very fiber of the analysis the fact of his or her mortality." In 2014 she was awarded BPSI's Deutsch Prize for her essay "The Olympian Delusion" (JAPA, 2011) Recommended Readings: SM Bion, W. Learning from experience. Aprendiendo de la Experiencia Paidós, (2009) Bs.As. Hustvedt, S. The Sorrows of an American. Elegía para un Americano. Anagrama (2009) Barcelona. Klein, M. Our adult world and its roots in infancy. Nuestro Mundo Adulto y Sus Raíces en la Infancia. En Envidia y Gratitud, OC. Paidós (1991) Bs.As. Meltzer, D. A Psychoanalytical Model of the Child in the Family in the Community. Familia y Comunidad, Spatia editorial (1990) Bs. As. Nemas, C. Strangers in Virtual Land. Toronto Psychoanalytic Society – 22nd Annual day in applied psychoanalysis (2021) EP Freud, Observations on Transference Love (1915) Remembering, Repeating and Working-through (1914) Freud, Fort-Da" from Beyond the Pleasure Principle, (1920, 14-15) Paula Heimann, On Counter-transference (1950) W. Winnicott, The Use of an Object (1969) Hans Loewald, On the Therapeutic Action of Psychoanalysis (1960) James Strachey, The Nature of the Therapeutic Action of Psychoanalysis (1934) Brian Bird, Notes on Transference (1972) Betty Joseph, Transference: The Total Situation (1985) Ida Macalpine, The Development of Transference (1950) Irma Brenman Pick, Working through in the Countertransference (1985); Selma Fraiberg, Ghosts in the Nursery (1975) Hans Loewald, Transference and Love (2000 [1988] 549-563) Ella Freeman Sharpe, The Technique of Psychoanalysis, (on "Qualifying as an analyst," 1930, 256-257).

"The Archive begins in 1940. The Germans themselves do not decide they are going to murder all the Jews, they don't decide on the Final Solution until late 1941. When the archive begins, Ringelblum is creating the archive in order to do what Max Weinreich was doing with the YIVO [Yiddish Scientific Institute] - that was to get people to write about their lives, to get people to describe their experiences so as to use the knowledge gained to help the psychological and the community rebuilding after the war. 'The war will be over, and we will rebuild our lives, what lessons will this experience have taught us?' The way to get that information is to get people to write essays, to do interviews." Episode Description: We begin with the historical background that allowed for the conceptualization and creation of The Ringelblum Archive - the contemporaneous documentation by the inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto. The thread of psychoanalytic thinking is identified in this work through the interest in everyday living, "nothing is unimportant," and through prior contact with Freud and analysts. We discuss the authors' intent to define themselves through their writings to allow their own voices to be heard as distinct from those of the sadists – as in analysis, to own their own history. We consider the concept of "cultural resistance" and what it means to try "to put a stone under the wheel of history." We close by describing the remarkable story of the uncovering of the hidden archive and the tragic end of Emmanuel Ringelblum. In addition, Sam shares with us aspects of his personal story that has led him to this labor of love. Our Guest: Samuel Kassow, PhD, Charles Northam Professor of History at Trinity College, is the author of many studies on Russian and Jewish history including Who Will Write Our History: Rediscovering a Hidden Archive from the Warsaw Ghetto, which was translated into eight languages and made into a film, as well as Volume 9 of the Posen Anthology of Jewish Culture, published by Yale in 2019. He was part of the scholarly team that planned the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and is currently engaged in a project organized by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem to write a history of the Holocaust in Poland. He has been a visiting professor at several universities including Harvard, Toronto and Dartmouth. Professor Kassow holds a Ph.D from Princeton. Recommended Readings: Samuel Kassow Who will write our History: Emanuel Ringelblum and the Oyneg Shabes Archive(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007) Israel Gutman, Emanuel Ringelblum: the Man and the Historian (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2010) Natalia Aleksiun, Conscious History: Polish Jewish Historians before the Holocaust (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2021) Cecile Kuznitz YIVO and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture (Cambridge University Press: 2014) Social Science as a "Weapon of the Weak": Max Weinreich, the Yiddish Scientific Institute, and the Study of Culture, Personality, and Prejudice Author(s): Leila ZenderlandSource: Isis , Vol. 104, No. 4 (December 2013), pp. 742-772. Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society

"I think every encounter with the patient is a potential re-humanizing experience, also for me as a therapist. Because when we are slowly experiencing this kind of positive emotion, especially when it comes to turning points, where the patient realizes that it is possible to trust another human being, that is a really remarkable experience with these patients who have all reasons to not believe that it is possible to trust other people - who have been disappointed, failed and maltreated so many times. So that is a re-humanizing experience that happens between the therapist and the patient - this is the best way to describe the process of a positive outcome of this type of psychoanalytic therapy because they have been dehumanized in so many ways and to such a degree, that for some of them it is a wonder to have normal feeling left." Episode Description: We begin by appreciating Sverre's work on the torture-induced impingements on intrapsychic meaning-making. We also learn about the role of community and culture in supporting renewed meaning-making - a vital aspect of rehuminazation. We consider the case of Hassan and come to understand the impact on him of the horrific abuses he suffered and what it means to the analyst who comes to hear about and 'experience' such depths of depravity. We discuss survivor guilt, mourning, and disillusionment. Sverre shares with us aspects of his own childhood that have contributed to his interest in this work. We conclude with learning about the Norwegian Psychoanalytic Society and its involvement in assisting colleagues in Ukraine. Our Guest: Sverre Varvin, MD, Dr. Philos is a training analyst at the Norwegian Psychoanalytical Society. He is a professor emeritus at Oslo Metropolitan University. He has had several positions in IPA. Currently, he is chair of the IPA China Committee and a member of the refugee subcommittee of the Humanitarian Field committee. He has been working with traumatized refugees for more than 30 years: clinically, with research, and in the humanitarian field. He has done human rights work as chair of the Norwegian Medical Association's committee on human rights in the Balkans (former Yugoslavia), Turkey, and China. He has tried to understand the impact of atrocities on individuals and groups and has been specially occupied with dehumanization and re-humanization. Dr. Varvin will be a keynote speaker at the IPA Congress in Cartegena, Colombia in July 2023. The Congress website is www.ipa.world/cartagena Recommended Readings: JOHANSEN, J. & VARVIN, S. 2019. I tell my mother that … sometimes he didn't love us— Young adults' experiences of childhood in refugee families: A qualitative approach. Childhood, 26, 221-235. VARVIN, S. 2020. Gender, family, and intergenerational transmission of traumatization. Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in China, 3. VARVIN, S. 2021. Psychoanalysis in Social and Cultural Settings: Upheavals and Resilience, New York, London, Routledge. VARVIN, S. & LÆGREID, E. 2020. Traumatized women—organized violence. Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in China, 3. VARVIN, S., VLADISAVLJEVIĆ, I., JOVIC, V. & SAGBAKKEN, M. 2022. "I have no capacities that can help me". Young asylum seekers in Norway and Serbia. Flight as disturbance of developmental processes. Front. Psychol. , 12. JOVIC, V. 2018. Working with traumatized refugees on the Balkan route. International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 15, 187-201. ROSENBAUM, B., JOVIC, V. & VARVIN, S. 2020. Understanding the refugee-traumatized persons. Semiotic and psychoanalytic perspectives. psychosocial, 43.