Psychoanalysis On and Off the Couch

"You have to understand the revolution of psychoanalysis as the idea that everything we represent both conceals something about our being-and-becoming as much as it reveals it. Once you are open to that, you, in a way, have entered the world in which free association is necessary, because free association, in my frame of reference, is not just uncensored talking. It's not just that. It's something that very specifically unsettles the rationality and the realism of discourse, such that it allows dimensions that were occluded or more accurately repressed than suppressed to come to the surface to a greater degree. In other words, we practice free association because it's freeing, and it's freeing of something that is essential to our being." Episode Description: Barnaby begins by describing how free association is a process that is not limited to speaking with increasingly less censorship. It is a process that is foundationally disruptive to the "repetitiously-compulsive way in which 'knowledge' has impeded the movement of being-becoming." He sees psychoanalysis less as a process of learning about oneself, an epistemological enterprise, and more as an opportunity of expanding one's sense of self, an ontological experience. As such, Barnaby sees free association as "inherently anti-technical, anti-theoretical and anti-authoritarian." We consider the use of the word resistance as opposed to hesitancy. He, like Pythagoras, emphasizes the role of the analyst as "a friend who accompanies you on a journey, facilitating your perseverance on the road to a happier life." Barnaby elaborates the experience of 'listening to listen', the importance of introductory psychotherapy and where 'reverie' fits into his thinking. He closes with "The psychoanalyst's enjoyment of their patients...is a spiritual praxis of 'finding the joy in' - that is, being steadfastly aware of an exultancy in the liveliness of life that girds even the most tragic of circumstances." Our Guest: Barnaby B Barratt, PhD, DHS is a psychoanalyst, somatic practitioner, sexuality consultant, and student of tantric meditation. He is the author of the "Rediscovering Psychoanalysis" trilogy: What is Psychoanalysis? (2013), Radical Psychoanalysis: An Essay on Free-associative Praxis (2016), and Beyond Psychotherapy: On Becoming a (Radical) Psychoanalyst (2019). Recommended Readings: Free-associating with the Bodymind. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 22: 161-175, 2013. Opening to the Otherwise: The Discipline of Listening and the Necessity of Free-Association for Psychoanalytic Praxis. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 98(1): 39‑45, 2017. Oedipality and Oedipal Complexes Reconsidered: On the Incest Taboo as a Key to the Universality of the Human Condition. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 100(1): 7‑31, 2019. Reconsidering Regression in Psychoanalysis: Notes on a Central yet Controversial Concept and its Relation to Free‑association. Psychoanalytic Review, 107(2): 489‑512, 2020. What is expressed in 'Free‑Association'? Theoretical notes on the Erotic Poetics of 'Freier Einfalle.' Psychoanalytic Review, 109(4): 381-410, 2022. From "polymorphous perversity" to polysexuality: A note on psychoanalytic ideologies and the critique of hegemonic normativity. Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 23: 225‑232, 2022.

Although I believe that transference interpretation is the core mechanism of change in psychoanalysis, I don't believe it's the only mechanism. I think there are other things that go on too. I also think that alongside the transference relationship, there's a real relationship. The final chapter of the book is titled "A Cure by Love", and I do think that in the real relationship between patient and analyst, something happens. People speak of corrective emotional experiences. I believe that they occur, but I also believe that for them to really bring about change, you need to analyze them. You need to understand what has happened between you. This comes back to the question of countertransference enactment. Countertransference enactments are inevitable. They're not a bad thing, they're an inevitability. What would be a bad thing would be if they went unnoticed and unanalysed. So, there are opportunities. This is the sort of thing that my analysis was about. A core part of it was about my desire to connect with my father in a way that I never was able to achieve. This countertransference enactment, it's accurately described as that, but it's also diminished if it's only described as that. That was one of many opportunities for me to understand my own transference, but also it was a real thing that happened between me and him, which made me feel that he cared for me. Then again, this is real, and it's grist for the mill of understanding why it means so much." Episode Description: Mark shares with us aspects of his personal story, his analysis, his neuropsychology research and two clinical examples. He describes how neuroscience has discovered the mind "much like the one Freud sketched out in the first decades of the 20th century...merely by listening closely to what his patients told him." He reports on the impact of his brother's brain injury on his later interest in neuropsychology as well as his childhood conflicts over surpassing him. Regarding the issue of cure, we note both the importance of his identification with his analyst, which reflected his trying to reach his distant father, as well as the value of being able to recover traumatic memories. We consider the centrality of consciousness in the study of the brain, "Unless we adjust our research methods to accommodate subjective experience, we shall never understand how the brain works." Mark shares with us his current efforts to create an AI agent that has access to some version of 'feelings'. We discuss a patient who, through transference reliving of childhood trauma, was able to live a freer life and how dynamic treatment uniquely provides a sleeper effect whereby self-awareness and improvement continues after the treatment is completed. He closes "Looking back over my decades of involvement with psychoanalysis, I believe I can honestly recommend it as a way of thinking and working and being. There's something very powerful about the notion that, simply by attending closely to the feelings and memories of another person - the seemingly inconsequential details of a life - we can gain insights not only into their inner worlds, but into the deep structure of all souls." Linked Episodes: https://ipaoffthecouch.org/2024/10/20/episode-168-psychoanalysis-and-the-working-through-of-a-vineyards-slave-history-with-mark-solms-phd-cape-town/ Our Guest: Mark Solms, PhD is a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society and the American and South African Psychoanalytic Associations. He is Director of Neuropsychology at the Neuroscience Institute of the University of Cape Town and honorary lecturer in Neurosurgery at St Bartholomew's and Royal London Hospital Medical School. He is an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists, the director of the Science Department of APsA and director of Training for SAPA. He has received numerous honors and awards, including the Sigourney Prize. He has published 400 scientific papers, and nine books, the latest being The Only Cure (2026). He is the authorized editor and translator of the Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (24 volumes) and the forthcoming Complete Neuroscientific Works of Sigmund Freud (4 volumes). Recommended Readings: Solms, M. (2026) Did Strachey falsely scientize Freud? Psychoanalytic Psychology, 43: 249-257 Solms, M. (2024) The mechanism of change in the 'talking cure': A neuropsychoanalytic perspective. In S. Gullestad, E. Stänicke, M. Leuzinger-Bohleber (eds.), Psychoanalytic Studies of Change: An Integrative Perspective, London: Routledge, pp. 114-127. Lee, T. & Solms, M. (2023) Managing the clinical encounter with patients diagnosed with personality disorder in a general psychiatry setting: key contributions from neuropsychoanalysis. British Journal of Psychiatry Advances, doi: 10.1192/bja.2023.43 Solms, M. (2023) Freud's error. In F. Busch & N. Delgado (eds.) The Ego and the Id: 100 Years Later. London: Routledge, pp. 1-13. Solms, M. (2022) Revision of Freud's theory of the biological origin of the Oedipus complex. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 90: 555-581. Solms, M. (2021) Revision of drive theory. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 69, 1033-1091. DOI: 10.1177/00030651211057041 Solms, M. (2021) The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness. New York: W.W. Norton, London: Profile Books. Solms, M. (2020) New project for a scientific psychology. Neuropsychoanalysis, 22: 5-35. Solms M. (2019) The Hard Problem of Consciousness and the Free Energy Principle. Frontiers of Psychology, 10: 2714.

"How do we continue doing this work when the socio-political realities are unimaginable? I've been living in Paris the last few years, and I continue to have a full caseload in Tehran and other cities. There was a time that the internet was cut off for our Iranian patients, so there is reality, and then there is a reality that actually affects the frame - they couldn't contact their analyst. But in the middle of all of these things, something very interesting came up, which is, some patients, as soon as there was the possibility of contacting me, they would find a way. There were other things that came up in the supervisions I was doing, particularly if the analysts were outside of Iran and the patients were in Iran. For example, one thing that came up in the supervision was that the analyst would write to the patient all the time, saying, "Are you safe? Are you okay?" That's not something I chose to do. When we discussed this and reflected upon this in the supervisions I felt like the analysts were feeling quite guilty for feeling that they are in a safe place and the patients weren't, or they were at times terrified of the aggression that could be awaiting them in the session. It was in a sense like a little bit of an acting out on the part of the analyst." Episode Description: We begin by acknowledging the ongoing war and Gohar's safety in Paris while many of her patients remain in Iran. We explore what this gradient in danger between analyst and analysand means and evokes for both parties. Gohar notes that many supervisees contact their patients to ask, "Are you OK?" and she invites them to reconsider this response. She also describes working with Russian colleagues, many of whom were abandoned by their Western supervisors after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This leads to a discussion of analytic work with patients whose political views sharply differ from those of their analysts. Gohar reflects on Jonathan Lear's concept of "radical hope" and shares her perspective on the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. She closes by reminding us that, even with those we regard as 'other,' "our emancipation is inherently intertwined, whether we like it or not." Linked Episodes: https://ipaoffthecouch.org/2022/10/15/episode-120-foreignness-the-blues-and-psychoanalysis-in-iran-with-gohar-homayounpour-psyd-tehran/ https://ipaoffthecouch.org/2025/09/21/episode-189-when-we-feel-provoked-by-the-politics-of-our-patients-with-heribert-blass-dr-med-md-dusseldorf-germany/ 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 (NAAP). She is a Training and Supervising Analyst of the Freudian Group of Tehran, of which she is the founder and past president. She is a member of the scientific board of the Freud Museum in Vienna and of the IPA group Geographies of Psychoanalysis. She serves on the editorial board of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Vestigia and Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society. She is also the editor-in-chief of the series Psychoanalytic Notebooks, published in Iran by Ghatreh Publishing House. Her first book, Doing Psychoanalysis in Tehran won the Gradiva Award and has been translated into many languages. Her latest book is Persian Blues: Psychoanalysis and Mourning. Recommended Readings: Homayounpour, G. (2012). Doing Psychoanalysis in Tehran. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Homayounpour, G. (2022). Persian Blues: Psychoanalysis and Mourning. London: Routledge. Lear, J. (2006). Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Busch, F., & Delgado, N. (Eds.). (2024). The Ego and the Id: 100 Years Later. London: Routledge. Lorena Preta (2024). Geographies of Psychoanalysis - Encounters in Tehran. London: Routledge. Bolognini, S., & Nicoli, L. (2024). Freud and the Changing World: Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Its Troubles. Bicester, UK: Phoenix Publishing House.

"I have always been fascinated by the world of animals. What fascinated me about them is that when you pay attention to animals, this is a world beyond words. Words are not part of their world, so you start paying attention to movement, to breath, to reaction, to the pause, all these things, and I found it fascinating…Certainly, in veterinary medicine, as any type of clinical medical practice, if a patient comes to you, there's always things that you can do. You can take a blood sample, you can do a radiograph, you can give oxygen, you can give certain treatments. There's always a solution that you can give, a fix. Psychoanalysis is very, very different. I haven't successfully overcome the urge to fix, but I have come to realize that solutions that are given too early are oftentimes not usable. So, as a clinical veterinarian, most of my solutions were usable. That's not what happens in psychoanalysis." Episode Description: Michele begins with sharing her life-long fascination with animals. As a veterinarian she learned to attend to the nonverbal and to the triadic aspects of veterinary medicine - clinician, animal and owner. She noted that owners often communicate their own distress through their animal's behavior. She learned that "animals don't require you to be brilliant but to pay attention" - certainly relevant to psychoanalysis. In addition to describing her ongoing practice of Zen meditation, she shared with us the challenges of changing mindsets from medical intervening to analytic listening, "This shift - from resolving not knowing to working within it - has been a central aspect of my development." We discuss the role of suffering and mourning, which relates to her Catholic background, and the importance of the body both in her veterinary and psychoanalytic work. She closes with an example of an analysand crying out for help with her acutely ill pet and recognizing that "you can help me." Our Guest: Michele Gaspar is an advanced candidate at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP). She currently has a private psychoanalytic psychotherapy practice in Chicago, provides feline internal medicine consultations to clinical veterinarians through the Veterinary Information Network (VIN) and works with veterinarians and veterinary students who have professional and personal challenges. Michele lectures at national veterinary conferences on psychological issues impacting veterinarians and also teaches Introduction to Psychoanalytic Theory and Introduction to Object Relations in CCP's two-year Adult Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Certificate Program. Recommended Readings: The Other Family Doctor Karen Fine, DVM A thoughtful exploration of veterinary medicine as relationship-centered work. Fine illustrates how veterinarians routinely encounter attachment, grief, caregiving, guilt, and love through their work with animals and the people who care for them. Animals in Translation Temple Grandin, PhD Grandin explores how animals perceive and experience the world, challenging readers to understand minds that communicate differently from our own. The book offers insights into observation, empathy, nonverbal communication, and the challenge of understanding another subjective experience. How Animals Grieve Barbara J. King, PhD Drawing on scientific observations and research, King examines evidence of grief and mourning across species. The book raises important questions about attachment, loss, emotional bonds, and the continuity between human and animal experiences of bereavement. All Creatures Great and Small James Herriot A beloved memoir of rural veterinary practice that captures the joys, frustrations, humor, and heartbreak of caring for animals and their owners. Herriot's stories reveal veterinary medicine as a deeply human profession grounded in relationships, responsibility, and compassion. The Wisdom of Insecurity Alan Watts A classic introduction to Zen-influenced thinking about uncertainty, impermanence, and the limits of control. Watts offers a compelling perspective on living with ambiguity and cultivating a deeper comfort with not knowing. When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, PhD and Susan McCarthy An influential exploration of animal emotional life, including grief, joy, attachment, fear, and affection. The book invites readers to consider the emotional complexity of animals and what their experiences may teach us about our own. The Loss of a Pet Wallace Sife, PhD A foundational work on companion animal bereavement. Sife examines the profound attachment people form with their animals and the often-underappreciated grief that accompanies their illness and death.

"Humanism has been the dominant Western belief system of the last century. It's based on the worship of human wisdom, human creation, human experience, human mind, and psychoanalysis has very much emerged from this humanist tradition. We believe in psychoanalysis, that delving into our feelings, our thoughts, and our shared wisdom will allow us to access truth and meaning and find proper direction for navigating life. AI is changing all of that. Instead of trusting our feelings and our thoughts, people are turning to algorithms to make meaning of our experiences and to offer us direction. We're plugging in our data and allowing the algorithms, or Chat GPT or Claude, to do the thinking and the decision making for us." Episode Description: We begin with Freud in 1930: "Humanity would proceed to create unimaginably great advances in technology so as to increase our likeness to God." Amy outlines the challenge that AI poses to our humanistic tradition and values within which psychoanalysis makes its home. She starts with the 'cult grooming' aspects of smartphones, which introduces our exchanging "human dependence for AI companionship." The question of the subjectivity of AI is a central focus, with some analysts emphasizing its "simulation of human intimacy" and others considering that "is it not also possible for AIs to at the same time be intersubjectively engaged with us?" Regarding using AIs as a therapist, we discuss the clinical implications of "without there being two bodies in a room, the contact is shallow and lacking an essential human component." Amy describes "a desire for transgression" involving AIs as well as the associated search for immortality that they represent. She writes about Bach's prescient 2008 term of "digital consciousness" as contrasted with the "analog watch where one can see the hour from which the hand has come and the hour to which it is going." Amy shares that it was fear that motivated her personal interest in the AI world we are facing, and she closes with, "And how do we address what we are losing from within psychoanalysis?" Our Guest: Amy Levy, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. She chairs the American Psychoanalytic Association President's Commission on Artificial Intelligence, serves on the subcommittee "Artificial Intelligence" for the International Psychoanalytical Association, serves on the editorial board of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, and is Editor of the Substack series, "AI in My Mind," for The Psychoanalytic Quarterly. Along with her fellow CAI chair, Todd Essig, she is producing a documentary film for APsA which examines AI from a psychoanalytic perspective for the general public, entitled: Uncharted Territory: Humans and the Rise of AI. Dr. Levy is in private practice in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She is the author of the 2026 book, The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive. Recommended Readings: Harari, Y. N. (2017). Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. New York: HarperCollins. Knafo, D. (2024). Artificial intelligence on the couch: Staying human post-AI. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 84: 155–180. Lemma, A. (2024). Mourning, melancholia, and machines: An applied psychoanalytic investigation of mourning in the age of griefbots. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 105(4): 542–563. Shelley, M. (2003). Frankenstein. Penguin Classics. Solms, M. (2021a). The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness. New York: W. W. Norton. Suleyman, M. (2023). The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the 21st Century's Greatest Dilemma. New York: Crown.

"I'm not suggesting that repression has lost its place as a fundamental defense mechanism. Repression remains central, coherent, and fundamental to the founding of the unconscious. It is what makes certain contents inaccessible to consciousness, and what we access as psychoanalysts through dreams, play, symptoms, and associations. That remains true. What I was observing, and I'm still observing more now, is something different. When I see children and adolescents that are more capable to work on a task while doing homework, and at the same time listening to music, and at the same time texting with somebody - I don't think that they are real. This is my point. I don't think they are real. This multitasking way of living is part of life today… The clinical question for us becomes this - when does this multiplicity become a symptom? When does it interfere with the capacity for depth, for intimacy, for a sustained emotional contact? I think that this is what we need to see, to study and to differentiate in our consulting room." Episode Description: We consider how changes in our culture may impact the individual's intrapsychic space and from that the nature of the psychoanalytic encounter. Virginia comments on the diminishing of the paternal symbolizing function and with that a change in the 'rites of passage' that adolescents traverse - now the rituals are "created by the young people themselves" as contrasted with those passed down by their elders. This, she feels, has resulted in "intimacy becoming spectacle" and for many, the analytic session is where "the construction of intimacy may begin." She shares clinical material with us from 40 years ago and contrasts the nature of her interventions with her contemporary treatments. Now, "I appreciate the mystery in the process and that we create meaning with the patient." Virginia closes with seeing analytic treatment as "an invitation to a process of thinking that, to remain alive, must be rethought." Our Guests: Virginia Ungar M.D., training analyst at the Buenos Aires Psychoanalytic Association (APdeBA). She specializes in child and adolescent analysis, was the Chair of the IPA's Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis Committee (COCAP) and of the IPA Committee for Integrated Training. She was awarded a Konex of Platinum in 2016. She is the former President of the International Psychoanalytic Association (2017-2021). Recommended Readings: Etchegoyen, H. (1986) The fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique, chapters 25 and 26, Karnac, 1991. Meltzer, D. (1968). A note on analytic receptivity. In A. Hahn (Ed.), Sincerity and other works: Collected papers of Donald Meltzer, Karnac Books, 1994. Meltzer, D. (1988). The apprehension of Beauty, chapters 1, 2, and 4, Clunie Press, Perthshire, 1988. Sontag, S. (1966). Against Interpretation, Against Interpretation and Other Essays, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York. Ungar, V. (2017) Letter from Argentina, Vol 98, 3, IJP, 2017

"In addition to the easy convenience of bathing two children together, or three children together, there are other motivations of bathing them together. Parents are less aware that there is an excitement in seeing the children naked - although convenience is what's stated first, I think other things do go into it. Through development reactions to the genital difference and nudity will change, and I believe that being aware of those changes is very useful for parents to make decisions about what they want to do in their family, about family nudity, toileting, bathing, running around naked." Episode Description: Ilene demonstrates the many influences on mothers' engagements with their daughters which include their own remembered and forgotten pasts, cultural influences and their unique imaginations. She mentions the startling messaging in the famous movie "Gigi", "Thank heaven for little girls...so helpless and appealing, without them what would little boys do." We discuss the power of girls wishing to be like their mothers and how that at times conflicts with their wishes to also individuate from their mothers. The book demonstrates differences among new parents around the blue/pink choices for boys and girls, and she also discusses the many feelings parents have associated with family nudity. A special distinction is made between a three-year-old asking 'Do I look pretty?' vs 'Am I pretty' - each having very different meanings to the child and to her parents. We touch upon 'whining', self-stimulation, and what being a 'girly-girl' means to parents. We close with Ilene sharing with us how real her granddaughters found this work to be. Our Guest: Ilene Lefcourt established the Sackler Lefcourt Center for Child Development in 1982. She was the Director, led the Mother-Baby-Toddler Groups, and provided Developmental Consultation to parents for over 35 years. She taught Child Psychiatry Residents and Parent-Infant Psychotherapy Trainees about her work. She has been a faculty member at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research since 1995. Ms. Lefcourt is currently in private practice in New York City. She is the author of Parenting and Childhood Memories: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Reverberating Ghosts and Magic, Mother-Baby-Toddler Group Guide: A Psychodynamic Approach, When Mothers Talk: Magical Moments and Everyday Challenges, and Mothers and Daughters: The First Three Years. Visit Ilene's website: http://ilenelefcourt.com/. Recommended Readings: 1975, Fraiberg S. Adelson E., Shapiro V., Ghosts in the Nursery, Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 14, 387-421 1993, Lieberman, A ., The Emotional Life of the Toddler, Simon and Schuster 2005, Lieberman, A., Angels in The Nursery, Infant Mental Health Journal. Vol. 26(6) 1995, Stern, D. The Motherhood Constellation, Basic Books

"This came from an experience with a patient. It was early in my analytic training, and I was working with a supervisor who I really admired, and worked with her for a number of years. She was post-Kleinian, and was great at interpretation, formulation, and she was really helpful with just starting to guide me towards a lot of this work. I remember describing to her a patient session, and I was going through my process notes, and I said, 'I feel like the patient is inside of me. I feel like they want something that's in me, and I don't know what it is, and I can't quite access my own self, I don't know what to do'. It was through this initial experience where I really felt why analytic training versus other less intense training, we were also right at the time doing infant development, offered so much. It was early in my training and she suggested I think about an infant or even a toddler when they want something from their parents - they want something from their mother. The mother kind of feels this kind of gripping or this yearning from them, the baby wanting something. I started to think of my patients, not as infants or babies, but that what I was feeling was that there was something that the person I was working with needed, and they didn't have words yet to tell me what that was." Episode Description: We begin by recognizing the unique journeys that lead clinicians to become psychoanalysts. Pam shares with us her initial exposure to dynamic thinking but felt that she was missing some awareness of what was happening in herself and in the patients she was working with - "I was curious...I wanted to go deeper, to know more." This led her to enroll in full-time analytic training. She shares with us her understanding of the 'difficult to reach patients' that she was treating and presents a fictionized case that represents the many countertransference struggles she faced. She noted that "instead of the patient realizing that she wanted something from me, she instead felt attacked by me." Supervision was essential in helping her make sense of her experiences and of learning to 'listen to the music'. We close by noting her open-ended curiosity and interest in learning more - lifelong attributes of analysts who continue to take pleasure in our work. Our Guest: Pamela Polizzi, LCSW maintains a full-time private practice in New York City. She specializes in working with patients struggling with eating disorders, complex personality struggles, anxiety, depression, relational trauma, and life transitions. She earned her Master of Social Work (MSW) in Advanced Standing Clinical Practice from Fordham University at Lincoln Center in 2011. Currently, she is an Advanced Candidate at the Psychoanalytic Training Institute of the Contemporary Freudian Society (CFS) in Manhattan, working toward becoming a psychoanalyst. She completed a 2015 Two-Year Advanced Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Certificate in the Integrated Treatment of Eating Disorders from the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy (ICP), Center for the Study of Anorexia and Bulimia (CSAB). She also completed the Contemporary Freudian Society's (CFS) Two-Year Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program in 2019. Recommended Readings: Readings for Psychoanalytic Candidates: Bach, S. (2011). The How-To Book For Students of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. Karnac. Busch, F. (2021). Dear Candidates: Analysts From Around The World Offer Personal Reflections on Psychoanalytic Training, Education, and The Profession. Routledge. Readings on Clinical Practice with the Patient who is Difficult to Reach: Bollas, C. (1996). Borderline Desire. Int. Forum Psychoanal., (5)(1):5-9. Joseph. B., Feldman, M., & Spillius, M. (1989). Psychic Equilibrium and Psychic Change: Selected Papers of Betty Joseph. New Lib. of Psycho-Anal., (9):1-222. (on Pep-web). Joseph, B. (1975) The patient who is difficult to reach. Joseph, B. (1982) Addiction to near-death. Joseph, B. (1983) On understanding and not understanding: some technical issues. Riesenberg-Malcolm, R. (1999). On Bearing Unbearable States of Mind. Routledge. Steiner, J. (1993). Psychic Retreats: Pathological Organizations in Psychotic, Neurotic and Psychotic Patients. Routledge. Winnicott, D.W. (1974). Fear of Breakdown. Int. R. of Psycho-Analysis. 1: 103-107.

"To come back to this idea of 'groaning' - I really like it because I think it's a good description of the work we do, but particularly because it refers to Antonio Ferro's concept of the absorbency of the frame, which I think is another way of referring to it, that the frame can take a little give and take, that there's something organic about it. It has a structure, but it's absorbent, it can move, it's alive. So that is a very important concept. I think a lot of younger analysts or psychotherapists who want to be inspired by psychoanalysis don't let themselves feel comfortable letting things happen first before they try and immediately intervene and feel that they have to have some kind of magical response to it." Episode Description: We begin by unpacking the meanings contained in the metaphor of the 'groaning' analytic frame. Allannah speaks of flexibility, containment and "the expectation of misunderstanding." She shares the importance of the analyst having a sense of an internal frame which is then introduced to the patient and which contrasts with their assumptions of social relatedness - "Too much comfort in the relationship can lead to a pseudo-analysis." We take up the concept of the 'co-created' frame and touch upon the reflections of Aulagnier, Rothstein and Aisenstein. Allannah shares her thinking on the issue of charging for missed sessions and describes her reconsideration of her personal analytic experience with this. We close with a comment on the analyst's internal frame which enables them to "hear the patient in an out-of-the-ordinary way." Our Guest: Allannah Furlong, Ph.D., a psychologist and psychoanalyst, is a member of the Société psychanalytique de Montréal. After serving on the IPA North American Editorial Committee, she was one of the original members of the IPA Committee on Confidentiality and organizers of the first interdisciplinary Inter-Regional Conference on Confidentiality. These collaborations led to the co-editorship of two books on issues of confidentiality in psychoanalysis. In addition, Dr. Furlong has written on the frame, missed sessions, informed consent in psychoanalysis, and the use of clinical material for teaching or publication. She has also written about the temporality of lovesickness, unconscious choice, and dehumanization as a shield against helpless openness to the other, for which she received the JAPA Prize for excellence in psychoanalytic scholarship. Her current research is on the subject-creating function of baby talk. Recommended Readings: M., Baranger, W., & Mom, J. 1983. Process and Non-Process in Analytic Work. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 64:1–15. Bass, A. 2007a. When the Frame doesn't Fit the Picture. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 17:1–27. Bleger, J. 1967. Psycho-analysis of the psychoanalytic frame. In Symbiosis and ambiguity: a psychoanalytic study, 1–13, trans. S. Rogers and edited by J. Churcher & L. Bleger. London: Routledge, 2013. Caper, R. 1992. Does Psychoanalysis Heal? A Contribution to the Theory of Psychoanalytic Technique. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 73:283–292. Donnet, J.-L. 2001. From the Fundamental Rule to the Analysing Situation. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 82:129–140. Ogden, T. H. 1992. Comments on Transference and Countertransference in the Initial Analytic Meeting. Psychoanalytic Inquiry 12:225–247. Roussillon, R. 2015. An Introduction to the Work on Primary Symbolization. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 96:583–594. Stern, S. 2009. Session Frequency and the Definition of Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 19:639–655

"This patient taught me a lot. The context was that I just finished my second training as a psychodynamic psychotherapist and I felt I needed to prove a lot, and I clearly arrived with the wrong agenda. It was that if I was good enough and smart enough, a clever enough just graduated psychodynamic psychotherapist, I would manage to get into why the patient is struggling so much with the realization of his mother's cancer. That is a resistance, he didn't want to touch the topic at all. I thought that if I uncover the underlying reason why the cancer of his mother was so extremely distressing, and be able to explore with him how he's processing this, I would be helping him. I was extremely wrong. The patient was really generous with me. What I meant is he was forgiving. He clearly was tolerating me trying to push for something he really had no appetite for." "Psychoanalysis is not only about clever interpretations. Psychoanalysis can be about the tools to help us feel what we are experiencing. And in those radical settings, you become almost the object you are projected to be and you need a frame of mind to ground you that you are not that and can offer something different. So that is why I thought it was really useful." Episode Description: We begin with a description of the distinction between supportive and exploratory psychotherapy. Rodrigo presents clinical examples of individuals who were in crises and their capacity to be aware of their inner experiences was not available to them, hence supporting their defenses was vital. In addition, "being with them" became a key aspect of the therapeutic benefit they gained. We consider patients who are phobic about intimacy and have backgrounds where trusting others proved to be actually dangerous. He also spoke of therapists who unknowingly privilege their own need to feel like an interpretive healer in the face of their patients' more immediate need to be listened to. Rodrigo alerts us to the risks of colluding with patients' binary view of the world and recommends helping them recognize that "the therapist may not always be on their side or share their perspective" - this is the creative challenge of supportive work. We close with his sharing with us his personal journey and his appreciation that psychoanalysis can be meaningful as well in settings 'off the couch'. Our Guest: Rodrigo Sanchez Escandón Trained as a Clinical Psychologist in Mexico City and completed his Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy training at the Mexican Psychoanalytic Association before moving to London to undertake further psychoanalytic training at the British Psychoanalytic Association (BPA). He is currently the BPA's Director of Curriculum Subcommittee. He is also the Course Lead for Adult Psychotherapies at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, overseeing programmes in London and the North of England. He previously lectured in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies at Essex University, where he continues to supervise PhD students and pursue research. For seven years, Rodrigo worked extensively with individuals experiencing homelessness and complex needs, integrating psychoanalytic approaches into multidisciplinary care. He now maintains a private practice in Leeds, alongside his teaching and leadership roles. Recommended Readings: Winston, A., Rosenthal, R. N., & Roberts, L. W. (2020). Evolution of the concept of supportive psychotherapy. In Learning supportive psychotherapy: An illustrated guide (pp. xx–xx). American Psychiatric Association Publishing. Winston, A., Rosenthal, R. N., & Roberts, L. W. (2020). General framework of supportive psychotherapy. In Learning supportive psychotherapy: An illustrated guide (pp. xx–xx). American Psychiatric Association Publishing. Hellerstein, D. J., Rosenthal, R. N., Pinsker, H., & Klee, S. (1994). Supportive therapy as the treatment model of choice. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 48(1), 80–93. Sanchez Escandon, R. (2025). Introduction to the fundamentals of supportive therapy. In Contemporary developments in supportive therapy: Principles and Practice. Palgrave. Sanchez Escandon, R. (2025). Active and passive use of the transference. Contemporary developments in supportive therapy: Principles and practice. Palgrave.

"The similarity between Freud and Kohelet [Ecclesiastes] is that both of them believe that there's no overarching totalistic system that integrates all the disparate experiences that one has. You have that, Freud says, in psychotics, and you have that in philosophers, and you have that in devout people - they look for systematicity. They try to cram everything into a framework of meaning. Both Freud and Kohelet reject that. They don't have a worldview in that way. However, in order to flourish, you do need a meaning-giving, affect-integrating and action-guiding set of considerations. You can't just be out there like a windowless monad floating around. There are some core beliefs and values that anchor a person, that give them footing. So there's a difference between a totalizing worldview and a workable framework that's open to critique." Episode Description: We begin with a brief reading from On Transience and Ecclesiastes and consider how they both belong to 'Wisdom Literature' while separated by over 2000 years. Paul points out that while Freud works from a linear sense of time, Ecclesiastes (Kohelet) is drawn to the cycles of nature and human experience. He provides clinical examples that he feels are enriched by considering the teachings of Ecclesiastes which are very similar to the psychoanalytic way of thinking - "one must learn to live with what cannot be altered," the importance of the "downsizing of infantile narcissism," and recognizing that "pleasure and joy are palpable, sensual and concrete experiences." We discuss the importance of an object-related life that includes forgiveness and gratitude as well as "embracing resignation without despair." We conclude with the deeply moving time poem "To every thing there is a season/ and a time to every purpose under heaven..." Our Guest: Paul Marcus, PhD is a training and supervising analyst at the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis in New York and Co-chair of the discussion group Psychoanalysis and Spirituality in the American Psychoanalytic Association. He is the author/editor of 25 books including The Spiritual Resistance of Rabbi Leo Baeck: Psychoanalysis and Religion. He is the editor of Psychoanalytic Review. Recommended Readings: Seow, C.L. 1997, Ecclesiastes: A New Translation. New Haven: Yale University Press Fox, M. V., 2004, Ecclesiastes, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society Heim, K.M., 2019, Ecclesiastes, Downers Grove: IVP Academic

"Some time ago, I realized that there was such a thing for me as experiencing my patients as being friends, but they were psychoanalytic friends. It was a psychoanalytic friendship that was quite unique and unlike any other friendship. I think that's what people are talking about when they write about psychoanalytic love. It's not love like any other kind of relationship, because the psychoanalytic relationship is so unique. And I feel the same way about psychoanalytic parenting. It's like it's close to mentoring, but it's different because the structure of the relationship is different than from a mentor or an esteemed and loved teacher. It really is helping somebody with the whole process of development and helping them grow, mature, and become more comfortable with themselves and to know themselves better. That seems to me the essence of parenting, and I don't think we should feel defensive about thinking about it that way. That doesn't seem to me that it's my counter-transference in needing to be a good mother, a good father, a good parent to my patients." Episode Description: We discuss the challenge of transmitting the experiential knowledge of the dynamic therapies to new generations. David's book on therapeutic aphorisms demonstrates a number of key elements of this unique relationship - symbolic meanings in symptoms, 'psychotherapeutic parenting', the simultaneous use of medications and working with the unlikable patient to name but a few of the topics he brings forward. He describes the challenges of the negative therapeutic reaction, how "transference reactions are the creative soul of the patient's story" and what it was like for him to admit to a patient that he lied to her. We close with his reflecting on the meaning to him of retiring from full time practice, noting "I haven't retired my psychoanalytic mind." Our Guest: David Joseph, MD is a supervising and training analyst at the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis where he served as chair of the board and director of the Institute Council (education committee). For many years he was the Director of Residency Training at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, DC. He has a long-standing interest in ethics and has written and spoken about a number of ethical issues in the practice of psychoanalysis. He closed his clinical practice several years ago, at the age of 82. In June 2025, his book: Listening for a Lifetime: The Artful Science of Psychotherapy, was published by Mission Point Press. Recommended Readings: Freud's technique papers. Greenson, R. (1952) The Mother Tongue and the Mother. JAPA, 1 Zetzel. E. (1956) Anxiety and the Capacity to Bear It. Schafer, R. (1976) A New Language for Psychoanalysis. Yale University Press. New Haven Wachtel, P. L.(1977) Psychoanalysis and Behavior Therapy. Basic Books, NY. Greenberg, J. and Mitchell, S. A. (1983) Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory. Harvard University Press. Arlow, J. (1995) Stilted Listening: Psychoanalysis as Discourse. PQ, 215-233. Schafer, R. (1999) Disappointment and Disappointedness. IJP, 80: 1093-1104. Pine, F. (2011) Beyond Pluralism: Psychoanalysis and the Working of Mind. PQ: 80, 823-856. Poland, W. (2018) Intimacy and Separateness in Psychoanalysis. Routledge, NY. Holmes, D, (2022). Neutrality is not Neutral. JAPA, 70: 317-322

"I think that the comparison [between political and erotic passions] is related to the danger of transgressing boundaries from the side of the analyst. It's not totally the same, but it's because of the emotions and the danger of being too much involved as an analyst, if you don't pay attention to what is happening in ourselves with our own emotions, then it can be similar. I think both are important for the psychoanalytic process, to see it as a real relationship - there is this setting where two people in the room meet. They are real persons, but at the same time, a kind of dramatic play fantasy creation coming up from fantasies of the patient, and our own reactions as analysts come into play and gradually just build up the story that is mainly related to the patient's biography, the patient's relationships, and what's going on in her or his life at the moment, but now in relation with us." Episode Description: We recognize the passionate political world we are living in and the challenges it introduces into the psychoanalytic relationship. Such moments of intense personal conviction challenge the clinician's capacity to hold those convictions, allow the same for the analysand and still locate an analytic surface with which to find additional meanings. Heribert feels that this creates opportunities for intensity akin to "erotic-sexual impulses." He discusses clinical encounters that include his "revealing my assessment of reality" as an aspect of his authentic self living in relation to the patient. He presents the case of a young man whose effort to locate his analyst's "soft spot" entailed provoking him with his idealization of Hitler. Unlike the patient's father who turned away from him at such times, his analyst tolerated "my required countertransference" which enabled the patient to recognize and tolerate his tender longings that had lived disguised in his sado-masochistic preoccupations. We close with Heribert, the new IPA president, sharing his vision of psychoanalysis having a presence beyond the couch in universities and the community at large. Our Guest: Heribert Blass, Dr. Med. (MD), Psychoanalyst and training analyst for adults, children and adolescents, member of the German Psychoanalytic Association and IPA (DPV/IPA), also specialist of psychosomatic medicine and psychotherapy, psychiatry, working in private practice in Düsseldorf, Germany. Since August 2025 President of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). From 2020 to 20204 President of the European Psychoanalytical Federation (EPF). He has published on the image of the father, male identity and sexuality, gender dysphoria and transidentities, aspects of thought function in the psychoanalytic process and in the institution, psychoanalytic supervision, psychoanalysis in society and as editor of a book on Time and the Experience of Time (first in German, the English publication will follow soon) about the exchange of psychoanalysis with other sciences. Recommended Readings: Blass, H. (2023). La actitud analítica en un contexto de creencias polarizadas en la consulta. In: La Cultura del Odio. El Odio a La Diferencia. Revista de Psicoanálisis de La Asociación Psicoanalítica de Madrid, Vol 38, Nr. 98, p.439-458 (ISSN: 1135-3171) Blos, P. (1962). On Adolescence. A Psychoanalytic Interpretation. New York: The Free Press Blos, P. (1985). Son and Father. Before and Beyond the Oedipus Complex. New York: The Free Press Freud, S. (1915). Observations on Transference-Love (Further Recommendations on the Technique of Psycho-Analysis III). S.E. 12:157–171. Gabbard, G. O. (1995). Countertransference: The Emerging Common Ground. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 76:475-485 Greenson, R.R. (1974). Loving, Hating and Indifference Towards the Patient. International Review of Psychoanalysis 1:259-266 Heimann, P. (1950). On Counter-Transference. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 31:81-84 Loewald, H. W. (1975). Psychoanalysis as an Art and the Fantasy Character of the Psychoanalytic Situation. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 23:277–299. Tuckett, D. et al. (2024). Knowing What Psychoanalysts Do and Doing What Psychoanalysts Know. London: Rowman & Littlefield