Credo: Mutuality and Asymmetry*

Abstract

In this chapter taken from a video interview of Lewis Aron three years before he died, Aron openly discusses his family life Jewish background as the early roots of his interest in mutuality and asymmetry. He recognizes how his own religious and intellectual movement from orthodoxy to rebellion and back is a binary that infuses his psychoanalytic work as well as the field of psychoanalysis. He compares the Talmudic approach of study partners disputing over text to the way conversations in psychoanalysis move ideas forward. He describes his friendship and deep appreciation for Stephen Mitchell and his influence in the field as well as on his own development. He discusses leadership as an important facet of working in the field of psychoanalysis and of the many positions he had taken on, most importantly his work as Director of the NYU Postdoctoral Program for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis for nearly 20 years by the point of his untimely death.