ABSTRACT Contemporary psychoanalysis is living through a precarious moral moment. It is a moment of converging global crises: social, political, and environmental. We are witnessing the resurgence of racism and misogyny, the emergence of existential threats to our democratic institutions and aspirations, and desperate denial of our climate emergency.We must, with full awareness, recognize the defensive ascendancy of a narcissistic and sociopathic worldview rationalized by the conscious and unconscious idealization of invulnerability and denial of the predatory and destructive logos of capitalism, colonialism, and classism—historically and in its contemporary manifestation, Neo-liberalism; we must confront these profoundly anti-democratic, fascistic developments with all the psychological and sotcio-political power we can muster. This article proposes that an emergent socio-centric psychoanalysis can contribute both to a diagnosis of the “socio-political unconscious,” analogous to Freud’s “dynamic unconscious,” and to a “communal talking cure” that can help reduce or eliminate our collective regressive defenses. The article also proposes that movement toward a truly socio-centric psychoanalysis requires a transformation in psychoanalytic training—a transformation that incorporates a “fourth pillar”—adding to the traditional three pillars of psychoanalytic training: supervision, learning of psychoanalytic theory, and training analysis.

ABSTRACT In this paper, I will attempt to formulate my personal experiences as a psychoanalyst in the wake of the atrocities committed in southern Israel on October 7th, 2023, which have led to a bloody war whose deadly consequences have been felt on both sides, in Gaza and in Israel. I wish to explore the meaning of the here-and-now encounter for me and my patients, as we are trapped within an ongoing catastrophe, wondering within ourselves, each in our own world, if this emotional turbulence will prove a permanent catastrophe or a “catastrophic change” which can facilitate psychic growth. I will attempt to understand what has been lost in my analytic practice and what supports the restoration of faith and analytic work, despite the hopelessness and the sense that no end to this war is in sight. I will examine my wounded identities – as a psychoanalyst and as an Israeli – and their potential rehabilitation. I will draw on Bion’s thinking about the psychoanalytic elements in clinical practice, which played a significant role in helping me establish my identity through my psychoanalytic training and which now help me understand the place-where-I-live.

ABSTRACT This project was initially conceived as a qualitative study investigating how current psychoanalysts think about gender and sexuality. As a second-year psychiatry resident considering psychoanalytic training, I was anxious about entering a community with so few QTBIPOC. On the other hand, much of my community organizing work drew inspiration from literature that had roots in psychoanalysis. I decided to conduct this study to reconcile this discrepancy, hoping my findings might be useful to others within and outside the psychoanalytic community. I conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 adult and 15 adult/child psychoanalysts (12 cis men, 16 cis women, 2 non-binary; 22 straight, 5 gay, 2 bisexual, 1 questioning; all white) who had completed psychoanalytic training and worked with at least one LGBTQ-identifying patient. In addition to sharing my findings using reflexive thematic analysis, I share my personal experience of the process. Drawing on queer of color critique, I use the metaphor of dance to illustrate how the participants and I reenacted familiar oppressive dynamics. I conclude by situating this project as an interpersonal representation of psychoanalysis’ ongoing participation in oppression.

ABSTRACT The role of social class in the analytic encounter has been given little attention in our psychoanalytic literature and training institutes. This dimension of the treatment relationship tends to remain invisible most of the time. However, when the analyst raises the fee, it can become a catalyst for bringing social class concerns of both patient and analyst into the treatment room. In the case presented below, the fee increase evokes shame, envy, and guilt for both participants in this dyad, each raised in a working-class home. The author considers unconscious dynamics informing psychoanalytic work between patients and analysts who outwardly appear to have no conflict about their social class origins, but privately harbor much shame and anger about where they come from.

Analysis of the personal archives of Spanish psychiatrist Ramón Sarró, housed in the Library of Catalonia, reveals a wealth of unpublished documents related to his time in Vienna (1925-1927) and his engagement with psychoanalysis. During this period, he met Sigmund Freud and underwent psychoanalytic training with Helene Deutsch. He also provided therapy to patients under supervision at the Vienna Ambulatorium, one of several free psychoanalysis clinics established after World War I. However, Sarró did not complete his psychoanalytic training, and in 1927, he returned to Spain. Starting from 1939, Sarró became part of the medical establishment of the Franco dictatorship. In 1950, he obtained the position of the Chair of Psychiatry at the University of Barcelona. In this capacity, he actively participated in scientific debates and promoted the dissemination of psychoanalytic ideas within the public sphere. This article aims to explore the significance that Sarró attributed to his encounter with Freud and his training in Vienna. It also delves into how he leveraged these experiences to establish his scientific and professional legitimacy in the realms of psychoanalysis, both nationally and internationally. In this context, it serves as an exploration of the transnational history of psychoanalysis, between Vienna and Barcelona, influenced by the significant political transformations that occurred in Spain and Europe between 1920 and 1980. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

This paper begins with Donnel Stern’s personal psychoanalytic training and key writings, offering an interview that explores topics such as the history of psychoanalysis in the United States, its relationship with philosophy, its connection to empirical research, the pluralism and non-academic status of psychoanalysis, and its future prospects. Through an in-depth discussion of these themes, the paper primarily presents Stern’s comparative approach to psychoanalysis, emphasizing the promotion of psychoanalysis through dialogue. This includes dialogue between different psychoanalytic schools, between various psychotherapies, between psychoanalytic institutes and universities, and across different cultures.

ABSTRACT The author posits that for an analytic treatment to be alive and effective, the analyst must invent psychoanalysis with each patient. In responding to the question, “What does it mean to invent psychoanalysis with each patient?” the analyst must first ask himself, “What does it mean to become a psychoanalyst?” and “What is it that defines psychoanalysis.” Further, “What is distinctive about the practice of psychoanalysis?” In responding to these questions, it becomes apparent that what is definitive of psychoanalysis as a discipline and as a clinical practice are matters that each of us must come to on our own, and that the process of becoming a psychoanalyst is a highly personal endeavor that continues through one’s years of practice. Becoming a psychoanalyst is not a distinction conferred by a psychoanalytic training program. Development of an analytic sensibility is built upon one’s personal analysis, one’s individual study of psychoanalysis, and one’s clinical experience. The author presents clinical illustrations of some of the ways he, with each of his patients, invents a form of psychoanalysis unique to the two of them.

ABSTRACT The psychoanalytic literature refers to an analyst’s pregnancy as a clinical dilemma, not a personal crisis. Yet pregnancy and childbirth expose the analyst not only to a biological storm inside of herself, but also to hostility from patients and even from loved ones. The provocative outline of the pregnant analyst’s body tugs at the vestiges of the earliest memories, a time during which one’s mother was both cherished and reviled. As such, pregnant analysts, and indeed all pregnant women, contend with others’ long-held unconscious paranoid representations of the mother. The pregnant analyst of color confronts intensified conflictual racial dynamics. In this article, I present my lived experience as the daughter of Hindu Indian immigrants who gave birth to two children during psychoanalytic training. My brown pregnant and postpartum body inhabited a dissociated realm for both white and brown folk, eliciting impulsive and aggressive reactions. For some Americans, my unavoidably large and erotically marked body evoked fears of being overtaken by a foreigner whom they wanted to colonize. To some immigrants, I stimulated biting feelings about a formidable and ravenously longed-for brown mother whose loss was unbearable. I suggest that only via mourning the loss of our first home, the womb, and subsequent losses triggering loneliness and alienation can we move beyond the rampant scapegoating of pregnant women and people of color in our chaotic society.

ABSTRACT The introduction of remote communication technology in psychoanalytic practice and training raises multiple psychoanalytic, clinical, and ethical issues that require qualitative and empirical process and outcome research, careful psychoanalytic reflection, and open but transparent searching dialogue between practitioners.

What unconscious elements fuel the 'radioactive atmosphere' of psychoanalytic institutions - those unconscious sources of the chronic conflicts that sometimes plague the relationships among members of psychoanalytical societies and obscure the path of a constructive resolution of conflicts, creating a toxic climate that stultifies members' creativity, hindering progress and further development? An empirical research was conducted using the psychoanalytically informed research interview as an experimental situation. The main findings indicates unconscious sibling rivalry as the source of conflict in the psychoanalytic institution studied, along with narcissism of minor differences. The implications for psychoanalytic training are discussed.

ABSTRACT Psychoanalytic infant observation, first introduced by Bick, E. (1964. Notes on infant observation in psychoanalytic training. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 45, 558–566), is a foundational element of psychoanalytic training. It is designed to develop an observer's capacity for emotional containment, analytic abstinence, and sensitivity to unconscious communication prior to clinical work. While widely acknowledged as a transformative learning experience, further exploration is warranted into how infant observation facilitates the development of analytic neutrality, countertransference awareness, and emotional attunement. This paper offers a first-person account of a year-long observation, focusing on the penultimate session—a moment rich with implicit emotional undercurrents as the observation approached its end. Drawing on detailed narrative material, it explores core psychoanalytic themes, including separation, mirroring, triangulation, and the emergence of a holding environment. Theoretical perspectives from Bick, Winnicott, Klein, and Freud inform the interpretive framework. Through sustained non-intrusive presence, the observer encounters the tension between the wish to be understood and the necessity of analytic neutrality. The experience of tolerating uncertainty, bearing emotional complexity, and resisting the urge to intervene mirrors the stance required in psychoanalytic work. Ultimately, this paper illustrates how infant observation cultivates the reflective, observational, and emotional capacities essential to psychoanalytic training.

ABSTRACT Parent-Infant psychoanalytic interventions have not been well integrated into child and adolescent or adult psychoanalytic training programs. Although many institutes have development courses on infancy and early childhood and even infant observation, it is rare that an infant or toddler case is supervised as a control case. This training gap has resulted in a relative paucity of psychoanalysts engaged in infant mental health and public health to meet massive societal needs. A case vignette is used to demonstrate the sophistication and effectiveness of early psychoanalytic dyadic intervention. Through the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) Committee on Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis (COCAP), a pilot program for a two-year training in psychoanalytic interventions for infants and parents is being developed, geared to psychoanalytic candidates, analysts, and faculty with theoretical, research, observation, and clinical components.

ABSTRACT The values inherent in the ICP+P Psychoanalytic Training Program that Joe Lichtenberg created, emerged from his immersion in self psychology and his desire to respect candidates as adults, minimize hierarchy and shameful experiences and create an affirming environment. These values related to experiences of narcissistic injury Joe endured as a candidate at a traditional institute. The sensibility, that Joe embodied and communicated, includes an appreciation of an empathic and developmental approach, the value of creativity and culture, encouragement of generativity in candidates, and enthusiasm in teaching and supervision within an intersubjective perspective. The author’s long experience with Joe, initially as a Founding Member of ICP+P and ultimately as the longstanding Chair of the Psychoanalytic Training Program, as well as her own experience going through psychoanalytic training, informed her vision and values as a leader.

Psychoanalysis reflects the minds of its creators and is an ethical practice in the sense that the theories with which we psychoanalysts identify are those that reflect what is most important in life to each of us. I present autobiographical material that points to the personal sources, even earlier than my psychoanalytic training, of my conviction that the creation of emotional connection between two actual persons lies at the heart of psychoanalysis and is the key element in the beginning of psychoanalytic treatment. I argue that the beginning of an interpersonal/relational treatment has more continuity with the beginning of non-psychoanalytic relationships than does the beginning of treatment carried out by analysts from other schools. I present what I believe are the reasons for this difference and offer comparisons and contrasts of these ways of establishing a psychoanalytic situation. The article ends with a brief clinical illustration.

In this interview, Howard Levine freely associates his life history, medical and psychoanalytic training and remembers inspirational encounters. Levine emphasizes the theoretical shift from the Freudian paradigm, to the Bionian model and then to Metabionian thought. He speaks about his encounter with European psychoanalysis and how this has enriched his thought and practice. Levine also evokes the importance of the social environment and his implications in social activities. He concludes the interview with comments on his relation to writing and editing the multiple voices of psychoanalysis.

New tools for psychoanalysis1 Clinical investigation and psychoanalytic training in the working parties

From the perspective of a poet and first-year psychoanalytic training candidate, this paper develops Jeremy Safran's ideas about the dialectic between psychoanalysis and Buddhism by drawing an analogy between their processes and those of a poetry practice to define an alternative to pathological dissociation under capitalist systems of value. The paper details the writer's experience of working a day job in an office and the pathological dissociation which she subsequently attempts to overcome and critique through writing poetry. Various poems written at work are shared and analyzed as evidence. Drawing from Safran's edited volume, Psychoanalysis and Buddhism, the author then identifies aspects of Zen Buddhist meditation practice and the psychoanalytic process that focus on connecting with reality, however conflicted, as opposed to escaping it. This paper was written under the mentorship of the psychoanalyst and Zen teacher Barry Magid.

ABSTRACT This paper presents the author’s considerations of how Russia’s war against Ukraine impacted the ability to think and the capacity to empathize among psychoanalytically oriented practitioners. She first describes and discusses the observed patterns among external psychoanalytic responses to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Secondly, she reflects on these patterns through the prism of her own reactions to the 2014 Russian invasion of Eastern Ukraine and the Crimea annexation. Lastly, she offers her considerations about the limits and possibilities of psychoanalytic thinking, practice, and training in the context of wars. Overall, the author proposes associating the psychic responses to war with (a) the war mode of psychic functioning and related defenses against it, (b) psychoanalytically informed propaganda influence, and (c) peculiarities of psychoanalytic training and practice, which set a specific type of thinking.

ABSTRACT The paper explores possible similarities between falling ill after being infected by transmitted disease and the transformation that can occur after receiving a grain of something psychically foreign transmitted through human communication – whether it takes place in the primal situation of the mother/infant dyad, in the clinical situation of psychoanalytic treatment or in psychoanalytic training. The author argues that in order to gain transformative insight (learn), one must necessarily put oneself at risk, as there is no absolute way of knowing beforehand whether the incorporated aspects of the other embedded in interpretation and (enigmatic) messages also contain ‘pathogens’ and both analyst and analysand are exposed to this risk. The analogy is further used to highlight the specificity of psychoanalysis compared to other contemporary psychodynamic approaches and to make a plea for the preservation of the radicality of psychoanalysis in contemporary times.

The Columbia Academy for Psychoanalytic Educators supports graduate analysts' professional development at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. In 2018, a pilot program was launched for faculty interested in analyzing and supervising candidates, whose aim is to support and educate those interested in taking on these essential training functions. The focus is on educating the educators, which is a significant departure from the historical focus on evaluation, vetting, and faculty hierarchies. In the process of developing and piloting the program, complex and long debated issues in psychoanalytic education and development were considered that are relevant to many institutes, including training of supervisors and analysts of candidates, addressing problematic faculty hierarchies, creating safety for those presenting clinical work to colleagues, building professional peer relationships, and engagement of faculty in time consuming and nonremunerative activities. The authors report on their experience developing and evaluating this pilot program.