Transformational Processes in Clinical Psychoanalysis
In his new book, Transformational Processes in Clinical Psychoanalysis: Dreaming, Emotions and the Present Moment (Routledge, 2018), Lawrence J. Brown offers a contemporary perspective on how the mind transforms, and gives meaning to, emotional experience that arises unconsciously in the here-and-now of the clinical hour. Brown surveys the developments in theory and practice that follow from Freud’s original observations and traces this evolution from its conception to contemporary analytic field theory. He emphasizes that these...
read moreDriven to Survive
Driven to Survive: Selected Papers on Psychoanalysis is a new book by Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau, PhD, published by IPBooks in 2018. “Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau has given us a work of deep scholarship and original thought. Fully engrossing and forceful in presentation, it is a bold and necessary reworking of Freudian drive theory. Her new formulations will reshape our thinking and our way of listening. ” ~ Dan Jacobs, MD, Director of the Library “This is a sharp, courageous, innovative and highly documented exploration of one of the...
read moreDeath and Fallibility in the Psychoanalytic Encounter
Death and Fallibility in the Psychoanalytic Encounter: Mortal Gifts (Routledge, 2017) recently published by BPSI’s faculty member Ellen Pinsky, PsyD, considers psychoanalysis from a fresh perspective: the therapist’s mortality―in at least two senses of the word. That the therapist can die, and is also fallible, can be seen as necessary or even defining components of the therapeutic process. At every moment, the analyst’s vulnerability and human limitations underlie the work, something rarely openly acknowledged. Check out a...
read moreBPSI Off the Couch: Green Book
Below are the remarks from the December 11, 2018 “Off the Couch” viewing of Green Book with Judith A. Yanof, MD, Member of BPSI. “Off the Couch” is part of a decades-long collaboration between The Coolidge Cinema and BPSI. When Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen), a bouncer from an Italian-American neighborhood in the Bronx, is hired to drive Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), a world-class Black pianist, on a concert tour from Manhattan to the Deep South, they must rely on “The Green Book” to guide them to the few establishments that were then safe...
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BPSI Off the Couch: mother!
Below are the throwback remarks from the September 19, 2017 “Off the Couch” viewing of mother! with Rodrigo Barahona, PsyaD, Member of BPSI. “Off the Couch” is part of a decades-long collaboration between The Coolidge Cinema and BPSI. A married couple (Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem) share a quiet, mundane life in their isolated country home–that is, until they take in an eerie stranger (Ed Harris) and his provocative wife (Michelle Pfeiffer). As their guests become lodgers and her husband grows increasingly erratic, the woman’s...
read moreBPSI Off the Couch: A Star is Born
Below are the remarks from the October 16, 2018 “Off the Couch” viewing of A Star is Born with Benjamin Herbstman, MD, MHS, Member of BPSI. “Off the Couch” is part of a decades-long collaboration between The Coolidge Cinema and BPSI. In this new take on the iconic love story, four-time Oscar nominee Bradley Cooper, makes his directorial debut and also stars alongside multiple award-winning, Oscar-nominated music superstar Lady Gaga in her first leading role in a major motion picture. Cooper portrays seasoned musician Jackson Maine, who...
read moreSolange Skinner Conference: Race and Emancipation
Dr. Bernard Edelstein, is a Training/Supervising Ananlyst at BPSI. His remarks below originally appeared in the Spring-Summer 2018 issue of the BPSI Bulletin, which can be read here. In the Spring 2017 issue of the American Psychoanalyst, in an article titled “Race and Racism in Psychoanalytic Thought: The Ghosts in Our Nursery,” Beverly Stoute offers a compelling review of themes of racism in the psychoanalytic literature. Referring in her conclusion to Selma Fraiberg’s classic 1974 paper, she says, “When past trauma is endured but not...
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