Psychoanalytic Institute Research Articles

Black, indigenous, and people of color's experiences of discrimination in psychoanalytic professional organizations in the USA: Results of a thematic analysis of interview data

AbstractThis article reviews the results of a qualitative study of Black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC)'s experiences of discrimination in psychoanalytic professional organizations (PPOs) in the USA. The authors used thematic analysis to analyze the transcripts of semi‐structured interviews with n = 10 self‐identified BIPOC with prior experience in PPOs, including psychoanalytically‐oriented graduate programs, psychoanalytic institutes and other training programs, and professional membership organizations across the United States. A key finding is that a significant majority of interviewees (n = 9) reported experiencing discrimination in these organizations, per their own definitions of the term “discrimination,” and described these experiences in considerable detail. The authors attempt to triangulate the findings of the present study in relation to the findings of the Holmes Commission and other existing literature on BIPOC experiences in psychoanalysis.

Implicated subjects: Reckoning with individual and collective histories

AbstractDrawing a connection between the “repetition compulsion” and reparations movements' demand for a “guarantee of non‐repeat,” this essay examines some of the psychological workings of implication in systemic racism by highlighting individual, familial, and collective histories, and by looking at some of what is currently taking place in psychoanalytic institutions.

American psychoanalytic institutes: where academic freedom goes to die

American psychoanalytic institutes: where academic freedom goes to die

Splitting as Segregation in the American Psychoanalytic Institution

Splitting as Segregation in the American Psychoanalytic Institution

Aging, Dying, and the Analytic Process.

The panel discussion presented at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute's 1066th Scientific Meeting held on June 8, 2023, takes up aging and dying of an analyst and their impact on patients and on the nature of analytic process. Participants reflect on conflicts and challenges arising with more analysts and patients living to an advanced age, on the unregulated nature of analysts' retirement, and on multilayered meanings of analysts' ethical commitment to their work.

Ethics Education in Psychoanalytic Institutes

ABSTRACT Over the past thirteen years, the Ethics Education Committee (EEC) at Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (BPSI) has engaged in a dedicated, proactive initiative to help trainees, members, and the field at large, address questions of ethics, boundaries, and professional conduct. This endeavor began in the wake of a series of what are often euphemistically referred to as “egregious boundary violations” at BPSI; in other words, sexual transgressions perpetrated by analysts toward their patients. The initiative evolved to address questions including, but also above and beyond, sexual transgressions, in recognition that complex ethical dilemmas are endemic to our work, though often go un-discussed. This paper will describe why the EEC was formed, the techniques used to open-up discussions of ethical decision-making which have been used at BPSI, national meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA), and institutes across the country, and what we have learned about fostering safe environments to grapple with issues around ethical decision-making and professional conduct. Examples of vignettes depicting complex ethical dilemmas, a primary tool in our technique, will also be included.

Faites des parentés psychanalytiques, non des psychanalystes enfants ! De l’institution œdipienne à l’institution affinitaire

ContextPsychoanalytic collectives and institutions that adhere to the psychoanalytic approach seem to be built around a patriarchal Oedipal logic referred to here as “hetero-patriarchal-oedipal.” The emergence of feminist currents in the social sciences and humanities offers new perspectives for understanding the dynamics and mechanisms present in this type of collective structuring exposed to constant conflicts and ruptures. ObjectivesThis work aims to investigate the ways in which psychoanalytic collective bonds of Oedipal essence are constructed and to propose the creation of generative and heterogeneous psychoanalytic kinships that are not solely a reproduction of patriarchal, hierarchical, and defensive family structures subject to the domination of “fathers.” MethodThe author supports her reflection using the qualitative ethnographic method (common in the social sciences and humanities), specifically drawing from her personal experience within psychoanalytic groups and institutions. The data collected from this fieldwork are connected to psychoanalytic theories, critical studies, and feminist perspectives. ResultsThe author's personal experience within psychoanalytic schools and associations attests to the numerous difficulties faced by these training places, which are determined by traumatic “family” fantasies and not, as proposed by Donna Haraway, by symbioses and affinities among the members. Freud turns the Oedipus myth into a familial and social paradigm based on various fantasies: murder, incest, jealousy, rivalry, etc. The laws of the Oedipal father and the structures they generate seem to be reproduced in authoritarian psychoanalytic institutions, resulting in the repression of heterogeneous knowledge. The cyborg model (Donna Haraway) offers a new perspective at the intersection of biology, envisioning institutions that generate new affinities through encounters between different species, implying the breakdown of boundaries between the organic and machinic, human and animal, material and informational, etc. InterpretationThis problematic context suggests the necessary creation of affiliative and generative psychoanalytic connections based on heterogeneous theoretical connections that are not tied to an immutable authority, infantilism, fear of abandonment and exclusion, or the inhibitions of representations trapped within Oedipal complexities.

Curriculum, Education Around Race Lacking at Psychoanalytic Institutes, Report Says

Curriculum, Education Around Race Lacking at Psychoanalytic Institutes, Report Says

The Reception of Lacanian Theory and Practice by American Psychoanalytic Training Programs.

This paper explores the principal reasons for the exclusion of Lacanian ideas from psychoanalytic training institutes in the United States. The history of Lacan's role in the International Psychoanalytical Association, from which essentially he was expelled, occupies a central place in this story. Significant issues arose also from his practice style and technical innovations, whose rationale remains controversial today. Another major obstacle for the reception of his work is the theoretical framework of Lacanian analysis, so different from that of other schools. Inclusion of its unfamiliar vocabulary and concepts poses practical problems for training programs. At a more fundamental level, the strong antihumanist evolution of Lacan's thought runs contrary to the increasingly relational and intersubjective orientation of American psychoanalysis. The incompatibility between the disparate languages of a scientific theory aiming at objectivity and a phenomenology of personal intentionality and meaning greatly limits the possibilities for dialogue. The tension between these perspectives cannot be resolved, but a productive exchange between them is possible if they are accepted as valid and complementary ways of speaking about human behavior.

Group Psychotherapy, Racial and Social Justice

Abstract: Social and racial justice concerns are innately compatible with group psychotherapy. Incorporating justice intentions into group therapy practices ensures the relevance of group work as a form of psychotherapeutic healing. Responding to the Final Report of the Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in American Psychoanalysis 2023 , this article argues that group psychotherapy organizations have a responsibility to offer unique approaches to social and racial justice healing both within group organizations and to other psychotherapy and psychoanalytic institutions. A detailed example from Eastern Group Psychotherapy Society illustrates the multiple group processes that advanced a measure of racial equity.

Interview with Alessandro Bruni

In this interview with Alessandro Bruni, we intend to retrace a part of the history of the Pollaiolo di Roma (CRG), discussing Bruni's encounter with W. R. Bion and collaboration with Francesco Corrao and Claudio Neri. The interview will delve into the generative role of Francesco Corrao, who had the merit of promoting research activity into Bion's thought in Italy, giving rise, through modeling groups, to a fruitful study and multiple theorizing on the small group with an analytic function. Alessandro Bruni is a biologist, psychotherapist, and psychoanalyst, a founding member and training and supervising analyst at the Istituto Italiano di Psicoanalisi di Gruppo, and a full member and training and supervising analyst at the Società Psicoanalitica Italiana, a component society of the International Psychoanalytical Association. He is a Community Member of the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute in Seattle, WA, USA, and a founding member of Synaptica, an Italian mind–body research group.

Talcott Parsons on building personality system theory via psychoanalysis.

This article examines Talcott Parsons's efforts at building the theory of personality system as a special case of his general theory of action and places those efforts in historical context. I demonstrate how, during the middle decades of the twentieth century, Parsons employed elements of classic Freudian thought to advance a new appreciation of the personality system and its relations to other action systems. I begin with an overview of the reception of psychoanalysis at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, the Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Harvard Department of Social Relations, showing how Parsons's thinking on the personality system cannot be understood apart from his association with these three institutions. I then turn to how Parsons endeavored to integrate his particular brand of sociology with his own interpretation of Freud's writings to explain how the personality system functions and develops. I conclude by showing that while Parsons's involvements with psychoanalysis became more intermittent after the mid-1950s, to the end of his life he remained steadfast in his enthusiasm for Freud's theory of personality. In short, Parsons always believed that for sociological theory to progress, it needed to engage with psychoanalysis.

Chances for children: The 22‐year journey of psychodynamic/attachment‐based infant mental health in underserved communities

AbstractThis paper follows the 22‐year journey of a small community‐based program with roots in a psychoanalytic training institute, to the program's current status as an independent non‐profit organization serving families throughout the Bronx with psychodynamic, attachment‐based parent‐infant treatment. The product of an unusual collaboration among a psychoanalytic training institute, a program of the NYC Department of Education and several generous foundations, we aimed to offer teen mothers a dyadic model of parent‐infant intervention based on the principles of psychodynamic theory, attachment theory, and mentalization through the lens of an infant mental health perspective. Underlying the creation, implementation, and expansion of the Chances for Children organization at every level were questions of basic trust and mistrust, class, and culture. With this in mind, we describe the development of the model, collaborations with institutions and communities, and the obstacles we encountered along the way. On a macro level, we consider questions of class, culture, and institution that we encountered on every level in institutional bureaucracy, in community outreach, and in collaborating programs. On a more micro level, we use the contexts of a teen‐parent therapeutic group and a dyadic mother‐child treatment to address issues that arise when white, middle‐class clinicians of privilege work in communities of color that are frequently suffering insufficiencies in food, housing, jobs, and experiencing random violence. Finally, we reflect on what has made the work of Chances for Children possible, successful, and enduring even as we embarked on the telehealth practices necessary during the COVID pandemic.

A Psychoanalytic Institute's Response to Existential threats: A Case Study of Organizational Self-Inquiry and External Consultation.

The term institute is used inclusively here to refer to different organizational structures such as psychoanalytic societies and centers. Those organizations have primary tasks such as providing education and training in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Existential threats covers a range of factors, both internal and external to an organization, that may seriously impair or destroy its capacity to carry out its primary tasks and to survive as a functioning entity. Perceptions and responses relating to those threats are dynamic processes within the organization that shift and evolve over time. This case study explores one institute's use of organizational self-inquiry and external consultation to strengthen its capacity to perceive, make meaning of, and respond adaptively to those threats. The qualitative research for this case study is based on a series of semistructured individual interviews with a representative sample of participants in the consultation, close attention to the intersubjective experiences of interviewees and interviewers, and careful thematic analysis of the interview data. Interviewees shared their understanding of what led up to the consultation, their experience of the consultation, and their perception of its immediate and ongoing impact. Many interviewees felt that the consultation helped strengthen the institute's organizational capacity for resilience and innovation, expressed the desire for additional consultation to ensure the institute's survival and ongoing health, recommended that the institute include the study of organizational dynamics in its curriculum, and thought it should develop its internal capacity for organizational self-inquiry.

The Challenges Before Us: A Response to Noha Sadek’s Paper “Racial Justice in Psychoanalytic Communities”

ABSTRACT This is an attempt to respond to Sadek’s efforts to examine psychoanalytic training institutions’ efforts to diversify its candidate pools while leaving intact their traditional social, economic, and political structures that are foundationally based on a privileging of whiteness and the lack of recognition of the diversity within not-white populations that the institutes wishes to bring into their training environments.

Feasibility of a Psychodynamic School-Partnered Mental Health Service: A Pilot Study

ABSTRACT Despite a long and rich history of psychoanalytically informed interventions in school settings, influencing child guidance and psychotherapeutic services provided to children and families, cognitive behavioral interventions have become the predominant method for working with children in schools. In the last 20 years there has been a reemergence of psychodynamic school partnerships, addressing many of the barriers to the provision of school-based psychotherapy. However, little research exists on the implementation and feasibility of delivering psychodynamic psychotherapy services through partnerships between psychodynamic clinical teams and schools. This pilot study examines psychotherapy outcomes within one such partnership between the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and six New York City public schools during the 2020–21 school year. Therapists provided treatment using Regulation Focused Therapy for Children (RFP-C), a short-term manualized, psychodynamic intervention for children presenting with externalizing behaviors (delivered remotely/online due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and hybrid school formats). After participation in RFP-C, parents reported a significant decrease in children’s symptoms of oppositional defiant disorder and some improvement in secondary attentional problems. This study also assessed the feasibility of implementing a school-based telemental health program in New York City. Strengths and limitations of the study, implications for future research, and clinical implications are also discussed.

A Metodologia na Pesquisa Psicanalítica: Dos Fluxos Transferenciais às Linhagens de Filiação

Abstract The presence of psychoanalytic theory in Brazilian Universities is no surprise; however, the creation of Graduate Programs in psychoanalysis has highlighted the issue of research. This paper comes to join the debate on the legitimacy of academic research in psychoanalysis in Brazil, especially regarding its methodological specificity. In highlighting four historical moments, we sought to identify transference flows, which cross the analyzed texts, and to outline lineages of affiliation related to academic research in this discipline. Although the psychoanalytic method escapes the demands of university, psychoanalysts engage in efforts to propose methodologies with their own theoretical and clinical assumptions. The presence of psychoanalysis in Brazilian academy has allowed advances that would otherwise have been impossible given the differences between the demands of university and psychoanalytic institutions.

Непредставительная институция: к вопросу о положении анализантов в психоаналитических сообществах

Ever since Sigmund Freud decided on the necessity of establishing a psychoanalytic institution as a representative body of psychoanalytic theory and clinic, psychoanalysis has generally not undertaken an examination of its own institutionality and has not thought of its very existence in the forms of a “psychoanalytic community” as a problematic point. One of the reasons for avoiding this question is the historical position of those who receive analysis, since, as the article shows, a double institutional definition procedure is carried out regarding the latter. By identifying themselves as “analysts” and acting as “partners” of analysts in the realization of the analysis, they are thereby seen as an element of the analytic process. Nevertheless, they are not recognized as part of psychoanalytic communities. This non-recognition is justified by psychoanalysis itself as a measure to ensure the preservation of analysis as an exclusive professional practice. At the same time, a specific psychodynamic factor underlies the formation of psychoanalytic communities: Freud’s anxiety that psychoanalysis could preserve its existence only through permanent measures to cleanse the psychoanalytic professional field and to remove any extraneous components to the analysis. Freud is shown to undertake the establishment of a psychoanalytic community, not sure about the benignity of this form, but expecting that it would prove capable of maintaining the necessary disciplinary dissociation. However, the continued existence of psychoanalysis in the form of communities reveals that external dissociation procedures generate a series of processes within the communities themselves, causing their constant destabilization and their members’ susceptibility to various forms of collegiality violation. In drawing open attention to these violations for the first time, the Gabriel Tupinambá’s Desire of Psychoanalysis raises the question of the position of the didactic analyst (as potential member of the community as future psychoanalyst), which we consider incomplete and in need of radicalization through a different question about the degree to which analysts belong to the psychoanalytic community in principle.

Сообщество, ничего не желающее о себе знать: о книге Габриэля Тупинамбы «Желание психоанализа»

In the lead up to the issue of Logos dedicated to the debates on the Gabriel Tupinamba’s Desire of Psychoanalysis the guest editor addresses the question of the problematic existence of psychoanalytic institutions. It is assumed that psychoanalysts take advantage of the opportunities of being in professional communities in order to expand their experience and acquire various beneficial influences on their practice. In reality, at the same time, institutional spaces (psychoanalytic associations, schools, independent associations of specialists) act as a small political stage, supported on which an unprecedented level of conflict is supported by the institutional management regime itself. In fact, this leads to the fact that institutional spaces are used by analysts for mental reactions, which are forbidden for them both in the clinic and in scientific interaction with representatives of other disciplines. Psychoanalysts themselves refrain from any problematization of these effects, and the functioning of the analyst in the institutions that constitute the official façade of the analytic discipline, paradoxically continues to be the most obscure side of what is happening in psychoanalysis. This internal silence is supported from the outside also by intellectuals who resort to the use of psychoanalytic knowledge to produce their own theoretical constructions. Neither the operation of political concepts, nor the general socio-critical background in which such an intellectual usually operates, leads to the questioning of the circumstances of the institutional functioning of psychoanalysis. Instead, non-clinical researchers do the opposite, borrowing the theory and apparatus of psychoanalysis in order to justify the project of a certain political future for “society as a whole.” It is in this vein that a theory is produced that juxtaposes psychoanalysis with philosophical thought, beginning with the main representatives of Freudo-Marxism and ending with the modern “Lacanian left.” Tupinamba’s work, which focuses exclusively on the organization of psychoanalytic communities, is a rare exception to the prevailing pattern. By raising the issue of the institutional functioning of psychoanalysts as urgent, Tupinamba makes an appropriate social and logical turn, correcting the one-sided exploitation of psychoanalytic theory by philosophy and at the same time allowing to break the regime of silence about what is happening on the psychoanalytic stage itself.

Лакановские революции

Gabriel Tupinambá’s Desire for Psychoanalysis proposes thinking about psychoanalysis in a way that has never been done before — as a scene whose clinical and conceptual significance must for the first time yield to the institutional clashes that take place on it. The development of a critical theory of psychoanalytic institutions is made possible by events that have made the institutional register, after the death of Jacques Lacan, generate events that go beyond questions of internal governance in the communities that Lacan inherited. Tupinamba emphasizes that it is in post- Lacanian analysis that elements of crisis institutional intervention come to the fore, implying control over the “political sanity” of psychoanalysts, as well as the persecution that the more radical and autonomous wing of Lacanian researchers is constantly subjected to from the institutional center coordinated by Jacques-Allain Miller, holder of the monopoly on “clinical thought.” The illumination of these processes also allows us to ask other questions that relate to the circumstances usually presented in psychoanalysis as its natural historical coordinates. We are referring first of all to the inequality of those undergoing analysis in terms of their ability to pay for it, to the pathological insularity of the analytic communities themselves, leading to the maintenance in them of an illusory regime of depoliticization against the background of external socio-political crises. At the same time, the effects of the latter are artificially normalized by the clinic and institutions of analysis in the name of maintaining the stability of psychoanalytic practice. The Desire for Psychoanalysis calls for an end to the internal justification of these circumstances, calling into question the very possibility of “continuing with Lacan” claimed by his institutional heirs. Instead, Tupinamba proposes to reassess the Lacanian legacy itself, both in its institutional domain and in the part of the theory Lacan created, suggesting a problematic relationship between the conceptual foundations of Lacanian thought and the shape of the clinical community he created shortly before his death.