All That Is Solid Melts into Air: Zooming in Unprecedented Times
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W I N T E R / S P R I N G 2021
Volume 55, No. 1
M a g a z i n e o f Th e A m e r i c a n
Psychoanalytic Association
All That Is Solid Melts into Air: INSIDE
THIS
Zooming in Unprecedented Times ISSUE
Jeffrey Prager
“All that is solid melts into air, all that sanctity and solidity of the consulting
is holy is profaned.” In his 1848 The room has been upended, dramatically
Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx replaced by the technological limitations
anticipates how capitalism depends on proscribed by the internet. Long before Covid-19, George Floyd,
constant technological innovation with t he c o r o n av i r u s , p s yc ho a n a l y s i s Racism, Psychoanalysis,
increasingly efficient machinery in his struggled with how enthusiastically to and Music
time and, now, with the globalization of embrace this new technological capacity Julie Jaffee Nagel
the marketplace, an ever-improving that enables the therapist to practice his
internet. For Marx, this process always or he r t r ade ab s e nt i n-t he -ro om
CrossCurrents Part II
results in worsening and thinning interaction. Today, we are faced with no
relationships between human beings. A alternative: We exist in a post-viral age. Lisa Roth, Tareq Yaqub,
person’s value increasingly becomes What had suddenly occurred, I imagined, Matthew von Unwerth
defined as transaction; vestiges of was the degradation of my working day.
humane, more ethical bonds between What had been holy between me and my Holmes Commission
one another disappear. Connections patient was profaned. Dorothy E. Holmes,
between people that had once been solid Months into our lockdown, I do not
Dionne Powell, Anton Hart,
and stable dissolve over time becoming spea k so con f ident ly. T he v i r t ua l
always more ephemeral and instrumental. experience, as a rule, is not as bad as I Beverly J. Stoute
As that process within capitalism reaches imagined. Without a doubt, it is a
its denouement, Marx insists, “Man is at different way to engage with another. Film: Id(e)a
last compelled to face with sober senses, No longer can I ensure a physical space Giuseppe Civitarese
his real conditions of life, and his for my patients to explore their inner
relations with his kind.” worlds or the privacy of their own
Finding Order in Meaning,
For now, because of the pandemic, thoughts. Instead, they confront the real
on ly “v i r t ua l” psychoa na ly t ic constraints imposed by their living
Being and Becoming through
relationships are possible. For us, the arrangements. Some of my patients have Memoir: An Interview
adapted more successfully than others. with Joan Wheelis
The few patients who decided to take a Fred L. Griffin
Jeffrey Prager, Ph.D., is research hiatus from treatment, while expressing
professor of sociology, interim chair of the various reasons including “not having
Department of Information Studies at APsaA’s Fellows 2020-2021
anything to talk about,” nonetheless
UCLA, and training and supervising
seem less able to pursue their own self-
analyst at the New Center for
Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. Continued on page 5
T H E A M E R I CA N PSYCH OA N ALYST • Vol um e 55, N o. 1 • W i n t e r/S pring 2021 1CO N T E N TS: W i n t e r/S p r i n g 2021 THE AMERICAN
PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSOCIATION
President: Bill Glover
3 Reimagining APsaA - Continued Bill Glover and Kerry Sulkowicz President-Elect:
Secretary:
Kerry Sulkowicz
Bonnie Buchele
Treasurer: Julio G. Calderon
Executive Director: Thomas H. Newman
7 Covid-19, George Floyd, Racism, Psychoanalysis, and Music
Julie Jaffee Nagel
THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYST
Magazine of the
8
CrossCurrents Michael Slevin, Special Section Editor American Psychoanalytic Association
Coronavirus Has Infected the Internet! Lisa Roth Editor
Time Travel, Teleportation, and Telepsychiatry Tareq Yaqub Lyn Yonack
The Frame and the Lens Matthew von Unwerth Special Section Editor
Michael Slevin
Education Editor
11 Diversities Justin Shubert, Diversity Editor
Alan Sugarman
Analyzing Psychoanalytic Racism Mark J. Blechner Diversity Editor
Justin Shubert
Notes from the Inaugural Meeting of the
Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in APsaA Candidate Editor
Sheryl Silverstein
Dorothy E. Holmes, Dionne R. Powell, Anton Hart, and Beverly J. Stoute
Book Review Editors
Arlene Kramer Richards and
Arnold Richards
16 Film: Id(e)a Giuseppe Civitarese
Science Editor
Robert Galatzer-Levy
18 Finding Order in Meaning, Being and Becoming through Memoir: Psychotherapy Editor
Ann H. Dart
An Interview with Joan Wheelis Fred L. Griffin
Child and Adolescent Editor
Leon Hoffman
21 Psychoanalysis in a Broken World: Editorial Board
Phillip Freeman, Peter Loewenberg,
Who We Are and What We Might Become Judith Logue, Julie Jaffee Nagel,
Thomas H. Newman, ex officio
Manuscript and Production Editors
24 APsaA’s Excellent New Fellows for 2020-2021 Michael and Helene Wolff,
Technology Management
Communications
27 The Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis in the The American Psychoanalyst is published three times a year.
Subscriptions are provided automatically to members of The
Time of Covid Deborah Fried and Bonnie Becker American Psychoanalytic Association. For non-members,
domestic and Canadian subscription rates are $36 for
individuals and $80 for institutions. Outside the U.S. and
28 Committee on Psychoanalytic Study (COPS) Gail Glenn, Chair
Canada, rates are $56 for individuals and $100 for institutions.
To subscribe to The American Psychoanalyst, visit https://
Study Group on Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience Charles P. Fisher www.apsa.org/product/american-psychoanalyst-domestic-
and-canadian-individuals, or write TAP Subscriptions, The
American Psychoanalytic Association, 309 East 49th Street,
New York, New York 10017; call 212-752-0450 x18 or
29 A Psychoanalytic Approach to Combating Racism Margarita Cereijido e-mail info@apsa.org.
Copyright © 2020 The American Psychoanalytic Association.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
30 Psychoanalytic Education in the Age of the Pandemic reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any
form or by any means without the written permission of The
Alan Sugarman, Education Editor American Psychoanalytic Association, 309 East 49th Street,
New York, New York 10017.
ISSN 1052-7958
32 Psychoanalysis Underwater Luke Hadge
The American Psychoanalytic Association does not hold itself
responsible for statements made in The American Psychoanalyst
by contributors or advertisers. Unless otherwise stated, material
in The American Psychoanalyst does not reflect the endorsement,
official attitude, or position of The American Psychoanalytic
Correspondence and letters to the editor should be sent to TAP editor, Association or The American Psychoanalyst.
Lyn Yonack, at lyn.yonack@gmail.com.
2 THE AMERI CAN PSYCHOANALYST • Volume 55, No. 1 • W in te r / S pr in g 20 21FROM THE PRESIDENTS
Reimagining APsaA – Continued trauma and suffering. We urgently need
a strong national voice to impact
interdisciplinary and public conver
Bill Glover and Kerry Sulkowicz
sations and promote our values and
thinking, support research, influence
Reimagining APsaA Membership
public policy, and advocate for psycho
A Home for Psychoanalytic Thought
analytically based treatment while
and Practices
listening to and learning from others.
How will we define the family that APsaA can provide this voice and reaffirm
lives in the APsaA home? The its leading role in mental health by
philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein actively including members from the
suggested replacing the essence of a broader psychoanalytic community.
category or a concept (to determine The potential for broadening the
Bill Glover Kerry Sulkowicz
what belongs and what does not) with scope of APsaA membership has been
family resemblance, that is, there are demonstrated by the enthusiastic
Our first column, in the fall issue of similarities and differences, but not response to the spontaneous opening
TAP, on “Reimagining APsaA” gave a one characteristic common to all. of our institutional borders during the
broad vision for the Association’s future. Adapting what he says to the concept Covid-19 pandemic. We are providing
This vision builds on multiple efforts-– of psychoanalytic: Our family includes resources to the public, free training
the Strategic Planning Task Force, calls all psychoanalytic thought and and peer consultation to mental
for racial justice, taking positions and practices, their features overlapping health professionals who are adapting
organizing programs on social issues, and crisscrossing. We extend our their practice during the pandemic
correcting injustices within APsaA, all concept of psychoanalytic as in and opening our Covid Town Halls to
the work that led to the 6-Point Plan spinning a thread we twist fiber on the entire psychoanalytic community.
with the restructuring of governance fiber. And the strength of the thread We are perceived as more welcoming
and the creation of the Department of does not reside in the fact that one and hospitable, and it is a breath of fresh
Psychoanalytic Education (DPE), and fiber runs through its whole length
many more. air to see so many new faces joining
but in the overlapping of many fibers. familiar ones.
The features of Reimagining stem from — Britt-Marie Schiller, Head, Department
our evolution in governance, educational The scope of Reimagining APsaA
of Psychoanalytic Education membership follows over 20 years of
standards, social engagement, self-
examination on race and gender, while One decade into its second century, considering membership for psycho
maintaining excellence in psychoanalytic APsaA is poised to become a richer and analytic psychotherapists. Many
education. more welcoming organization through institutes/centers have developed
Reimagining is a vision for a plan to be vigorous policies of inclusion and psychotherapy training programs that
developed in the coming months correction of injustices. A better and enrich and strengthen them. Exposure to
through dialogue across the Association necessary future for APsaA will consist of psychoanalysis motivates therapists to
with all stakeholders in a variety of a membership more diverse in race, want more for themselves and for their
settings: committee meetings, forums at gender, geographic location, cultural patients. Some go on to seek analytic
meetings, local discussions, town halls, heritage, and age. APsaA will be a home training; others practice psychotherapy
board meetings, and online exchanges. for psychoanalytic thought and practices, or use psychoanalysis in other ways.
The focus of this column is Reimagining building on but not limited to education We now recognize APsaA is strongest
APsaA membership. This initiative comes and clinical practice in psychoanalysis if we support the full breadth of
from the work of the Expanded and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, psychoanalytic thought and practice
Membership Task Force (previously the including research, scholarship, and and welcome researchers, scholars, and
Psychotherapy Membership Task Force). psychoanalysis in the community. These advocates into the community as full
The ideas presented are for discussion intertwined fibers of the psychoanalytic members. Synergy among our various
and elaboration as we work together to fabric support and strengthen one constituencies will advance psycho
secure APsaA’s future. another. analytic thinking and promote contem
In these challenging times, psycho porary psychoanalysis.
analysis has a great deal to offer in Reimagining APsaA membership
Bill Glover, PhD, is president of APsaA.
addressing social as well as individual quickens the pace of change, building on
Kerry Sulkowicz, M.D., is president-elect.
Continued on page 4
T H E A M E R I C A N P S YC H OA N A LY S T • Vo l u m e 5 5 , N o . 1 • W i n t e r/S p r i n g 2 0 21 3FROM THE PRESIDENTS
Reimagining APsaA possible with meaningful and proport Researchers Open to graduates of a
Continued from page 3
ionate representation. didactic program at an APsaA institute,
Educational Responsibility Delineation or to scientists who demonstrate interest
years of work nationally and locally, and of responsibility for education will be in psychoanalysis in their work.
can make psychoanalysis more vital, specified where functionally necessary, Communit y Advocates Open to
accessible, and influential in today’s with communication and collaboration community members who are interested
world. within the organizational structure. in psychoanalysis and support the
T he Task Force on E x pa nded Stepwise Evolution Implementing a mission of APsaA.
Membership is developing a proposal to Reimagined APsaA requires compromise Each of the first four groups will have
present in 2021. There are myriad details and flexibility. To achieve the consensus a corresponding category of Candidate
to consider in a reorganization of this necessary for change to occur, some or Student membership, but with some
scope. The preliminary sections that steps may be incremental and evolve limitations to voting rights and eligibility
follow address important concepts and over time. to hold office.
decisions with the understanding that As we have pointed out, Reimagining
Proposed APsaA Membership
they will evolve and we will go into APsaA is an evolving document that will
Categories
greater, more nuanced detail as the plan change in dialogue across the APsaA
is developed in dialogue across the A key feature of Reimagining APsaA is membership. We look forward to lively
Association. The culminating step will expanding membership by drawing debate culminating in the adoption and
be a comprehensive bylaw amendment. from a number of constituencies, as implementation of a comprehensive
To further discussion, here are core listed below. A question for discussion is plan for a sustainable and reinvigorated
assumptions for Reimagining APsaA and whether those groups should be Association.
suggestions for new membership groups: identified as belonging to different
formal membership categories, or all be
Core Assumptions - Reimagining APsaA characterized simply as APsaA members, Contacting the
with equal benefits, voting rights, and
A Conceptual Guide to an
Inclusive APsaA eligibility for all nationally elected National Office
offices, with the following criteria and
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion APsaA The American
qualifications:
strives for a demographically diverse Psychoanalytic
membership with equitable rights/ Psychoanalysts Open to all graduates Association
benefits and inclusion throughout the of a program in clinical psychoanalysis
309 East 49th Street
Association. at an APsaA or IPA institute, or to those New York, NY 10017
Pluralism APsaA values diversity in who demonstrate substantially equivalent
Phone: 212-752-0450
psychoanalytic thought and respects psychoanalytic training and experience. Fax: 212-593-0571
different uses of psychoanalysis. All Psychoanalyst members shall be
info@apsa.org
members are united by shared values primarily responsible for education and
http://apsa.org/
and common goals. qualification in psychoanalysis.
Democracy All members are eligible Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists National Office
to vote and stand for office, including Open to all graduates of a program in Voice Mail Extensions
president. New membership categories clinical psychotherapy at an APsaA
will be represented on the Board and institute, or to those who demonstrate Taylor Beidler x12
other administrative bodies. substantially equivalent training and Chris Broughton x19
Local Option APsaA institutes/centers experience in psychoanalytic psycho Brian Canty x17
determine their own membership therapy. Psychotherapist members would Sherkima Edwards x15
criteria, choose their own forms of be primarily responsible for education Tina Faison x23
democratic governance, and may exceed and qualification in psychoanalytic Carolyn Gatto x20
APsaA Educational Standards. The APsaA psychotherapy. Scott Dillon x28
DPE is available for assistance. Academics Open to graduates of a Nerissa Steele-Browne x16
Integration New membership constit didactic program at an APsaA institute, Tom Newman x25
uencies will be integrated into APsaA or to educators and scholars who Debbie Steinke Wardell x26
governance, education, programming, demonstrate interest in psychoanalysis Wylie Tene x29
and other activities to the fullest extent in their work. Bronwyn Zevallos x18
4 T H E A M E R I C A N P S YC H OA N A LY S T • Vo l u m e 5 5 , N o . 1 • W i n t e r/S p r i n g 2 0 21WORKING IN A PANDEMIC
All That Is Solid Melts forces us to confront ourselves and our their experi
interpersonal relationships in ways that ences of radical
into Air might otherwise have escaped our u n c e r t a i n t y.
Continued from page 1
attention. For both of us,
exploration. I will return to this at the I find myself often exploring with my we felt the
end of these reflections. patients’ fundamental existential ques c o n t i ng e n t
Still, there are many features that remain tions otherwise obscured in the comfort quality of decis
the same. When I reflect on my reaction to and safety of the office. ion-making as
the script “the internet connection is we t r ie d to
Precarity, or the “World’s”Vulnerability
unstable” in session, as an accusation that I a d ap t to t he Jeffrey Prager
In almost an instant, we were forced to
haven’t adequately provided for my p ower f u l ness
accommodate to a new realization: our
patient, it’s not much different than when and complexity of a world over which we
precarity to the danger of infection by a
we shared the same space. It reminds me of have little cont rol. T he a sy m met r y of
virus for which we have no immunity.
those rare occasions when someone, like a power inherent in the analytic
However felt, in abandoning my office, the
delivery person, would knock on my relationship, for a time at least, was
illusion of a vast chasm between my
consulting room door during a patient rattled. The actual conditions of mutually
patients and me, at least for a time,
hour. Then, annoyed at the disturbance, shared precarity became front and center.
powerfully dissolved. We were all doing
my concentration and focus broken, and The intensity of that moment has
the best we could to navigate treacherous
protective of the patient’s privacy, I would passed, the novelty of our meeting on
waters. One patient reported feeling
Zoom has worn off and the pre-existing
routine has returned, more or less. But I
know that the forcefulness of a permanent
Virtuality does not weaken feelings and behaviors
and solid world we relied on has been
essential to the analytic relationship. profoundly shaken. We don’t yet know
whether the visceral realization of human
fragility in the world will be more
quickly handle the breach, apologize to reassured, seeing me via Zoom in the
p er ma nent ly i nsc r ib e d i n ou r
the patient for the intrusion and, more to safety of my home. She reported that until
consciousness. Will the universality of this
the point, feel as if I failed to provide the then it was difficult to hold a view of me as
shared experience of human vulnerability
kind of safety I implicitly promise. When I existing outside my office and, therefore,
make us all more ecologically mindful?
am unable to provide a stable and strong with the virus sweeping the world,
Will the largely unchecked impulse to
internet signal, I similarly experience especially vulnerable. I could hear her
master nature, as if it were possible,
impatience as if I am letting down the concern for me and my importance to her.
generate instead a more authentic relation
patient. Even that has receded, as we Those feelings could no longer be so neatly to our real place in nature?
together adjust to the realities of today’s bracketed off as when she could more
world. I am able to demonstrate my comfortably think of us as in my office Solitude and Finitude
reliability, punctuality, and my capacity together “doing therapy.” The pandemic brought a rapid retreat
to create and maintain a sense of care In the immediate aftermath of the into our homes, halting immediate plans,
and responsibility for the patient’s well- lockdown last spring, my distress at not calling into question long-range ones, and
being. Virtuality does not weaken seeing my patients in person surfaced squelching visions for the future. We were
feelings and behaviors essential to the vividly. It was not unlike in the aftermath required to reside more fully in the present
analytic relationship. of a Southern California earthquake, and live within our inner selves. We
There is nonetheless a truth to Marx’s when fear, danger, and uncertainty shared in the experience of solitude,
o r i g i n a l a s s e r t io n t h at t h i s ne w undid our routine. Then and now, I felt radical downscaling expectations in which
technological capacity makes us all “face… we became less reliant on the outside world
freer, even compelled, to share my own
our real conditions of life and [our] of people and things for stimulation.
experiences with my patients, including
relations with [our] kind.” For those we What now seems to be a nearly compulsive
what precautions I took to protect myself.
treat and for ourselves, our new reality— desire for novelty of e x p e r i e n c e s —
In this instance especially, my own need
the necessity for self-isolation and our t r a v e l , r e s t a u r a nt s , entertainment,
to improvise with respect to the
dependence on internet technology— new cars, new people—has been called into
unexpected made me better appreciate
Continued on page 6
T H E A M E R I C A N P S YC H OA N A LY S T • Vo l u m e 5 5 , N o . 1 • W i n t e r/S p r i n g 2 0 21 5WORKING IN A PANDEMIC
All That Is Solid Melts into Air urgency. Protesters stood against systemic
Continued from page 5 anti-Black police brutality and a political
leadership refusing to articulate a common
question. For many of my patients, this loneliness, feelings that one does not national purpose and a collective vision
scaled-down life has come to feel surprisingly matter to anything or to anyone. Anger, for the future. In my view, the ubiquity
centering, offering a greater confidence in defiance, denial, anxiety, somatization, and durability of the protests express a
their own capacity for self-care. lethargy, and retreat all function to refusal, especially by the young, to tolerate
Simultaneously, as physical and defend against loneliness. simultaneously drastic social isolation and
emotional vulnerabilities are confronted,
so too is the reality of one’s own death.
We are forced to acknowledge our own
finitude. Many of my patients, with a In this moment, anti-racism and anti-loneliness
more stripped away perception of time, are powerfully linked together.
feel greater urgency to realize their life. I
have found this especially among people
of color. For them, their finitude is more By loneliness, I mean not an existential a radical rejection of white inhumanity
profoundly experienced, especially crisis but rather an expression of profound toward Blacks. In this moment, anti-
because of recent reminders that life can
social failure. For me, keeping this kind of racism and anti-loneliness are powerfully
be instantaneously taken away because of
patient in treatment has presented a serious linked together.
the color of their skin. Seeing their own
challenge; without social supports to Marx’s invocation that new technology
vulnerability with greater clarity, they
encourage idealistic, even grandiose, forces us to confront, in the new ways,
engage their treatment with a more vivid
purpose for which to prepare, the “the relations between [our] kind,” might
sense of time passing and opportunities
uncertainty of any planned future, and capture, at least in the U.S., today’s
potentially lost.
financial insecurity, the motivation to work moment in ways that Marx could not
In short, the locus of personal
on oneself becomes very precarious indeed. anticipate. The rallying cry that “all lives
experience has shifted away from the
No one could have anticipated the matter only when Black Lives Matter”
“mundane”—the life world—and toward
sudden acts of near universal condemn suggests a new sensibility and a new
more “sacred” existential issues of being.
ation of police brutality, systemic racism, subjectivity among people—dramatically
Here again, more than reliance on a new
and racial injustice in America in the forged in the course of these protests
technology, our retreat to Zoom comes to
midst of the pandemic. Following the against police brutality, with the pandemic
represent existential uncertainty. Zoom
becomes a prod to face the “real conditions death of George Floyd in May 2020, as its backdrop. Beset by the affective
of life” rather than superficial distractions. massive multiracial demonstrations realization that life is both precious and
throughout the country burst forth and brief, the uprising embodies the realization
Loneliness and the Uprising Against It. they have endured. They take place in big that overcoming loneliness requires a
For many, especially young people, cities and small, and in urban, suburban, world that cares for everyone, not just
Covid-19 threatens to evaporate hard and rural parts of the country. The starkly some. Millions of protesters proclaim that
fought gains in creating a place of one’s disproportionate number of Black Americans America cannot be whole until “our kind”
own—a sense of forging and securing who have died from the virus highlighted has no racialized referent.
one’s indiv idualit y and personal the undeniable truth of racial inequality. Only now has the reality and morally
autonomy. This experience is surely This social uprising would likely not bankrupt character of white supremacy
aggravated for some by the near-absence of have attained either the breadth or come into sharp focus. This is not a new
any collective expression that unites their intensity of expression had it not been for insight for African-Americans, but it may
own responsible behavior with serving a the Covid-19 lockdown and the social be for others. What is solid that has
public good or the common welfare. We isolation it created. The protests required melted into air may not be our discovery
live in a nation that, rather than providing individuals to forswear best practices that that therapy can occur without a physical
a sustaining linkage between individual otherwise serve to protect them from office but rather our complacency with
initiative and the collective good, demands infection. This “acting-out” occurred as a which we imagined that, following the
that individuals fend for themselves and unified vision of America, one no longer pandemic, our nation will return to the
socially isolate. This contributes to divided by racism, gained strength and way it was.
6 T H E A M E R I C A N P S YC H OA N A LY S T • Vo l u m e 5 5 , N o . 1 • W i n t e r/S p r i n g 2 0 21WORKING IN A PANDEMIC
Covid-19, George Floyd, Racism, mind when
my patient is
Psychoanalysis, and Music not associating
to music, and
Julie Jaffee Nagel this influences
my response.
Like many of you, I tuned into the unemployment, a conundrum around In my clinical
APsaA Sunday Town Halls on Zoom opening schools, and analysts’ anxieties work I have
when we first began the lockdown and about safely returning to their offices —or noticed my
found them supportive and thoughtful. not—has exacerbated Covid-19 anxiety. p a t i e n t s
For a large group of members, many of Julie Jaffee Nagel
Oral and Aural Roads: An Intersection soften their
whom know each other only through defenses, express affect, and recall
of Music and Psychoanalytic Ideas
badges at APsaA national meetings or memories that resulted in fruitful
In many analytic sessions, currently
on Open Line postings, there was an associations from their past, relevant to
and past — not unlike in the APsaA
extraordinary sense of camaraderie and present relationships, and expressed in
Town Halls — a number of my patients
shar ing personal feelings. Ker r y their relationship with me. Can analysts
have recalled music in their lives. Mr. T.
Sulkowicz and William Glover provided creatively use music both inside and out
spoke about a “spectacular concert” he
a safe and welcoming atmosphere. side our consulting rooms to reach out
attended and “wished I could have
At the beginning of the third Town to a public that is coping with the
heard the music.’’ Exploring his
Hall, in reply to Kerry Sulkowicz’s pandemics of illness, loss, death, racism,
comment in our session, he revealed his
question “How are you all doing and and murder? My answer is yes.
wish that I could have been with him at
what’s helping you during this time?” I The polyphonic, or multiple functions
the concert. Mr. C. softly hummed
was particularly moved to hear several
members comment that music provided
relief for personal and professional fears.
Particularly poignant, was the comment Music is always present inside the consulting room
by one member who recently lost his when we listen and pay close attention.
mother and mentioned the comfort a
particular musical composition brought
to his mourning. Two of the Town Halls
melodies as he walked from my waiting of music, like overdetermined principles
concluded with recorded music provided
room to my consulting room, totally in psychoanalysis, enable us to feel
by William Glover.
unaware, until I inquired, that he was both elevating and disquieting
As I write in mid-summer, we are
remembering a special song. Ms. D. dynamics simultaneously. I remember
moving beyond our initial efforts to
recalled that as a child, she shared music once saying to my analyst, “I wish I
scramble to adjust to working remotely
with a currently estranged parent and could speak like a full orchestra so I
with patients, the initial rise and fall of
associated to her faded but ever-present could talk about all the feelings I am
the Covid-19 curve, and tragically, a
wish to establish an adult relationship having at the same time. With music
Covid-19 surge occurring again in July.
with this parent. you can play more than one note at the
Additional trauma including the
Classically trained as both a musician time.” With words, you can only say one
murder of George Floyd, civil protests,
and a psychoanalyst, I feel acutely word at the time. “Multiple formal
exposure of systemic racism,
attuned to melodies in our minds. I am musical elements resonate with the
curious about what resonates intra disparities among simultaneously
Julie Jaffee Nagel, Ph.D., graduated from psychically when words have limited conflicting impulses, defenses, affects,
Juilliard, University of Michigan, and value. What brings particular music to and actions that we and our patients
Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. She my mind — or to your mind? Why did share. We hear the resonance and
integrates music and psychoanalysis in Leonard Bernstein’s “Age of Anxiety” nuance of music in our analysand’s
Melodies of the Mind, Managing Stage (especially the Masque movement) associations, their tone of voice, the
Fright, and A Conversation Between comfort me immediately following the rhythms in their speech, the timing and
Freud and Mozart. Nagel is in private heartbreaking, untimely death of my length of their silences, and the power of
practice in Ann Arbor, Michigan. mother? Sometimes, melodies enter my
Continued on page 34
T H E A M E R I C A N P S YC H OA N A LY S T • Vo l u m e 5 5 , N o . 1 • W i n t e r/S p r i n g 2 0 21 7CROSSCURRENTS : PART II
CrossCurrents Part II
Michael Slevin, Special Section Editor
The election is behind us. The pandemic continues. Racism remains in the forefront of APsaA and
the nation’s dialogue. With that in mind, we complete our series of brief essays on the way our lives as
clinicians have been affected. The suddenness of infection in our bodies and the uprising that
compelled conscious recognition of the long-term damage of systemic racism have segued into the
familiar and a long slog of change and commitment. Yet the three essays here printed are as timely as
when written in the heat of summer. I offer you the gift of three fine writers: Lisa Roth, Tareq Yaqub
and Matthew von Unwerth. Michael Slevin
Michael Slevin, M.S.W., is a psychotherapist in private practice in Baltimore and co-editor with Beverly Stoute, M.D., of a book,
The Trauma of Racism: Lessons from the Therapeutic Encounter, forthcoming under the Routledge imprint.
Coronavirus Has
Infected the Internet!
Lisa Roth
Augustus*, a One missed session, and then another.
little boy with His aunt would appear on screen and say
feelings as big as he refused to come. Their house had
his name, stood at curtains, not doors, so I assumed he “ T H I S I S YO U R W I N D O W S
his window and could hear me. If he was angry at me, I OPER ATING SYSTEM. R EBOOTING.
asked me to stand said into the ether, maybe we could talk 1%... 2%... 3%...”
at mine. It was or play about it in session. “Wow, this is going to take a really
our first video long time.”
I saw his face, a chubby finger coming
session during the “20%... 99%...”
towards the camera, then black.
pandemic after Lisa Roth
“Oh yay! I will see him so soon!”
“Internet disconnecting! Internet
two years of “7%...”
disconnecting! Coronavirus has infected
treatment. I waved, jumped, and “Oh no! I’m never going to see him!”
the internet!”
shouted, but he could not find me. He “80%... 98%...”
“Oh no! I was so excited that Augustus
turned from his window to the screen. “Yay!”
“Dr. Roth, where is your house, was finally going to play with me for our
“32%...”
anyway?” session, and now coronavirus has
“No!”
A pang of guilt. I had left the city, and infected the internet and I can’t see him I was helpless at the hands of the
him, on the coattails of my privilege. after all? I am so sad and angry and coronavirus, which had infected our
“My house is in the Catskills.” disappointed! I wish more than anything treatment. He did not even have a door
“Oh, well then I definitely can’t see that we were back in the office so we to close, a space that deigned to mimic
you. My house is in the Bronx.” could play together like normal!” the private world we shared in my office.
A whisper coming from the blackness. He would not pretend that video was the
Lisa Roth, M.D., is a child, adolescent, and “Dr. Roth, you have to restart Windows.” same, that my leaving was okay, that we
adult psychiatrist in private practice in New were still together. My guilt was my own
“Oh phew! I just have to restart
York City (downtownpsychiatry.com) and a
Windows and then I’ll see Augustus after to bear. But now, at least, we could play
child and adolescent psychoanalytic
all. Such an easy fix. BEEP! WINDOWS about being apart.
candidate at the New York Psychoanalytic
Society and Institute. RESTARTING.” *Not his real name
8 T H E A M E R I C A N P S YC H OA N A LY S T • Vo l u m e 5 5 , N o . 1 • W i n t e r/S p r i n g 2 0 21CROSSCURRENTS : PART II
Time Travel, Teleportation, reasons, Baba was forced to stay in Saudi
Arabia for one year after the rest of us
and Telepsychiatry departed. I recall both the pain and the
wonder of speaking to my father on the
Ta re q Ya qub phone: he under the night sky and I
under the sun. Our voices were the
I hate the virus. I’m pacing through sweatpants: my
bridge between day and night. At times,
the sepulcher, otherwise known as my patient will never
I thought our voices alone would shatter
apartment, wondering how my social know. I am tying
the distance. I pictured the sound waves
d ista nc ing sac r if ices w ill be my tie and I
that connected us traveling through the
monumentalized within these walls. I’ll am flooded by
surely die here confined by these 600 telephone wires I had seen earlier that
memories of my
square feet. I am deeply alone, and yet I day. I imagined what it would be like to
father walking me
am bombarded by notifications of through the join those waves on that journey through
“connection.” This living space has also motions, hundreds the wires to once again reconnect with
Tareq Yaqub my father. Despite my inability to
become my workspace and my place of of times, until I
leisure. Days become nights and, in the learned to master it on my own. I’m metamorphosize into a sound wave, I
absence of routine, time collapses. finding it particularly difficult to tie a found myself, nightly, in Virginia, in
I stare at myself in the mirror and knot today. “Stop thinking about it and Riyadh, under the sun, under the moon,
begin to laugh at the absurdity of my do it,” I tell myself, echoing my father. I so near to my father, and yet so far, all at
wardrobe: a shirt, tie, and a new pair of miss my father’s voice. the same time.
Time and space have lost their I write this now, envying my previous
coherence before. I remember first ability to exist outside of time and space.
Tareq Yaqub, M.D., is currently a fellow in
coming to terms with the idea of a “time For now, however, I have finally tied my
child and adolescent psychiatry at the
University of Michigan and was a 2019- zone” when my family, excluding my tie and can’t be late for my patient: He
2020 American Psychoanalytic Association father, immigrated to the United States has been struggling with the isolation
fellow. when I was six years old. For various brought about by the virus.
The Frame and the Lens order to delineate the analytic
relationship from all those other kinds
Matthew von Unwerth of being with-others on whom one must
cling or rely, endure, respond, or relate.
In the middle of the journey through accumulated Those conditions, informed by the
my analytic training, I had a patient thinking that doctrine of abstinence from gratification
who wondered to the point of insisting had glacially which was considered so central to
why psychoanalysis couldn’t be gathered — even analysis in its early, randy days, were
conducted en plain air, walking together as our forebears understood (by me) to foster, through
in some shared landscape instead of practiced their Matthew von Unwerth their idiosyncrasy, transparency, and
him lying beneath my chair, in my craft through constancy, to allow the dyad to dispense
office. I dutifully, perhaps breezily, the disruptions of war, persecution, with the semantic anguish of civilized
certainly defensively, recited the displacement, economic calamity, and life, and focus on the mental and
exile — to forge the fearful asymmetries internal experience of the patient, to
Matthew von Unwerth, Ph.D., is faculty of the analytic frame: the chair and the the approximate exclusion of reality.
at IPTAR and the Program in Narrative couch, the purse and the pocket, the Convincing not even to myself, my
Medicine at Columbia University. He is fastened, shortened “ h o u r , ” t h e patient — who was after something I
author of Freud’s Requiem: Memory, analyst’s space housing the patient’s couldn’t yet apprehend — had no use
Mourning and the Invisible History of mind, in person, but at an angle — in for my reasons, and though he
a Summer Walk.
Continued on page 10
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The Frame and the Lens ultimately, we learned that
Continued from page 9 much of what I had to tell the
patient about himself accord
grudgingly tolerated the rules of our ing to the theories with which
engagement, the gauntlet was down, I prosecuted him was of far less
and, before long, he assayed various use than what he had to show
inspired infractions against the frame. me about what it was to be
With my half-hearted endorsement, him, and that it was work
and with my supervisors’ eyes on me, enough for a long time to bear
the patient sat on the floor, then lay on witness to his mind, and his
the floor, then insisted we switch chairs; yearning to be both idiopath
once he hung upside down. Later on, we ically himself and also
played with time — shorter and longer acknowledged and cherished the sudden disclosure, through barking
sessions, floating appointments — for his becoming. For it was in that and baking and other irruptions of our
which, to my relief, the patient found witnessing, in our embroiled reaching own humanity into an analytic frame
even less congenial than I did. and not being reached and yet still newly mediated by the camera eye, we
But really, why, apart from the anxiety reaching, that he could feel himself are learning new ways to work, ways
of s c r ut i n i z e d i ne x p e r ie nc e t hat somewhat known, fleetingly seen, that were proscribed by custom if not
analytic training entails, should I have provisionally less separate, less mediated. training, until made urgent by our and
our patients’ mutual need. And now,
having abdicated so many of the
familiar symbols, guardrails and first
...we are learning new ways to work, ways that were
things of our practice, we are left to
proscribed by custom if not training, until made urgent
ponder, as my patient and I did long
by our and our patients’ mutual need. ago: How shall we find one another
again, what is really required to witness
the mind of another, and can our
cared? As we came to understand Now, de golpe, psychoanalysis, so patients still use us to find out what
together, all of this playing with the intrinsically concerned with the they come to us for?
frame wasn’t simply a matter of working
mediation of inner experience, must Several years further on into the
out the nature of control in the
suddenly contend with the mediations treatment, I was inadvertently locked
relationship (though it was that), but
of film, the Modernist twin with whom out of my office at just the time I was to
the founding of the relationship itself.
it has so long shared the frame. And meet with my patient, and I hastily
In wanting to know what could be
now we all find ourselves with certain arranged for a substitute space. The
changed about the place and the way
rules dispensed, rules that we might space was just a few minutes away, and
we interacted, the patient was asking
have been cautiously considering so we walked there together. The initial
would this be a collaboration; could he
before, in terms (we’d tell ourselves) of moments, which were not unfamiliar
count on our relationship to move with
what was effective, therapeutic, ethical, from rides we had occasionally shared
him and still be constant, and above all,
developmentally informed, in the in the elevator, had an anxious and
could he get with me what he had come
patient’s interest, but perhaps also a uncertain quality for both of us, but
for, and be sure it was his and not mine?
In due course, I had to learn with this little defensively, fearful of some then we adjusted to the new situation,
patient (for that was what was needed) disintegration if how we are with and we began to talk as we might in the
to dispense with not a few of the rules I patients were to become too estranged office. It was not lost on either of us that
had learned: We opened and read his from our inheritance and self- we had accidentally finally realized the
mail together in my room when the pile conception. Trading face time for patient’s early wish. As it turned out,
grew too large in the patient’s mind; we FaceTime, evacuating our offices (for my patient and I did have our walking
spoke by phone when the effort of many of us, the incarnation in space of analysis, and managed to find ourselves
finding the office was too great; our therapeutic identities), confronting together again in the new frame.
10 T H E A M E R I C A N P S YC H OA N A LY S T • Vo l u m e 5 5 , N o . 1 • W i n t e r/S p r i n g 2 0 21DIVERSITIES
DIVERSITIES
Justin Shubert, Diversity Editor
Analyzing Psychoanalytic Racism be killed, which led to the genocide in
which hundreds of thousands were
Mark J. Blechner murdered. When Australia was settled
by ex-convicts from Great Britain, the
It is time for conscious and unconscious racism. We settlers developed a law that said the
psychoanalysis must grapple with such questions as: land was uninhabited by humans, so
as a profession How are issues of race and culture that the whites could take the land. This
to reckon with addressed in our courses? In our journal law came off the books only in 1993,
its conscious and articles and our reading lists? How many when aboriginal people were redefined
unconscious members of racial minorities hold as human beings.
racism. We need positions of authority and power? What That some people are not humans
to reject the is the proportion among administrative leads to the acceptance of inferior or evil
status quo and leaders and training and supervising “races,” who can then be murdered and
engage in a self- Mark J. Blechner analysts? In the day-to-day operation of mistreated without guilt. These days the
study of our own psychoanalytic institutes and organiz notion that one race of people is not
prejudices. The membership of the ations, how much and in what ways are fully human is being lived out in the
American Psychoanalytic Association issues of race addressed? Are any issues United States, consciously and unconsc
does not reflect the proportional racial bypassed or given short shrift? iously, in regard to people of color, most
diversity of the United States population, egregiously toward African-Americans,
but rather reflects years of insufficient Some Lives Matter Less and pervades our thinking and action.
attention to the psychological issues of The relationship of psychoanalysis We disavow this idea even while we
people of color and the psychodynamics and issues of race has been complex. tolerate it, until a picture of a white
of racial prejudice, in our conferences, What can psychoanalysis teach us about police officer with his knee on a Black
our teaching, and our publications. the psychology of racism? How does man’s neck captures, viscerally and
No psychoanalytic institute, as far as I racism affect psychoanalysis today, and emotionally, the outrage of a man
know, claims to be racist. However, it is how can racism in psychoanalytic murdered as if he were not human.
not enough to say, “We don’t discriminate.” institutes be lessened or ameliorated?
We can also ask, “How much do we Psychodynamics of Racism
Today, we hear the statement “Black
actively support candidates of color? Do Lives Matter.” Some respond “All Lives A psychoanalytic view of racism would
we welcome them? Do we actively train Matter,” but that rejoinder misses the naturally look at the psychological
our candidates to have expertise in point that all lives should matter equally, tendency of human beings to categorize
working with issues of race and prejudice? no matter the skin color, religion, ethnic people according to groups and to
To what degree are we anti-racist? Do we heritage, or other factors. Essential to presume that some groups are inferior to
passively accept the status quo?” Every others. In 1985, Erik Erikson called this
racist tradition and maltreatment is the
one of our organizations and institutes “pseudospec iat ion.” Accord i ng to
idea that some human groups are not
must engage in an interrogation of Erikson, “The term denotes that while
fully human or not people at all. In pre-
Civil War America, Black people were man is obviously one species, he appears
counted as 3/5 human. In December and continues on the scene split up into
Mark J. Blechner, Ph.D., is the author of
1945, a question asked by a Polish child groups (from tribes to nations, from
The Mindbrain and Dreams:
was written about in the underground castes to classes, from religions to
Explorations of Dreaming, Thinking,
and Artistic Creation (2018). He press: “Mommy, was it a human being ideologies, and I might add, professional
established scholarships to fund the training that was killed or a Jew?” In Rwanda in associations) which provide their
of candidates of color and transgender 1992, Leon Mugesera, a Hutu, preached members with a firm sense of unique and
candidates at the White Institute. that Tutsis were cockroaches and should Continued on page 12
T H E A M E R I C A N P S YC H OA N A LY S T • Vo l u m e 5 5 , N o . 1 • W i n t e r/S p r i n g 2 0 21 11DIVERSITIES
Analyzing Psychoanalytic Racism slaves. Equality of men was stated in
Continued from page 11 clear terms. In practice, however,
equality applied only to white men.
superior human identity.” Harry Stack limited the civil rights of Jews (who were The idea that Black people are not
Sullivan thought that racist prejudice considered an inferior race), separating fully human continues today among
protects us from feelings of inferiority them into their own neighborhoods and many white people, despite the fact that
and resultant psychopathology. He wrote eliminating their right to marry outside the Fourteenth Amendment to the
in 1940: “It may be said of the practice of their racial category. Yet the Nazis, at Constitution conferred to all people
“equal protection of the laws.” The last
time I served on jury duty in New York
It is not enough to say, “We don’t discriminate.” City, all defendants were Black or
Also ask, “Do we actively support candidates of color? Do we Hispanic. It seemed that I was in a court
for people of color. A year later, one of
welcome them? Do we train candidates to have expertise
my white patients told me when he was
working with issues of race and prejudice?... Are we
a teenager, he was stopped by a
anti-racist? Do we passively accept the status quo?” policeman, who searched his car and
found marijuana. The policeman gave
him a warning and let him go. I said to
disparaging others and the entertaining least in 1935, thought American race him, “Do you realize that if you were
of active prejudice to whole classes of laws were too extreme, as documented Black, you would have been put in jail
people that, like the use of alcohol, they by James Whitman in his 2017 book for 10 years?” The “average expectable
protect the person concerned from a Hitler’s American Model. The Nazis based environment” is clearly different for
more serious disturbance of personality; their definition of a Jew on the number white and Black people in the United
they are, in a word, the lesser of two evils of Jewish grandparents. They did not go States. We know this racial disparity
for the person who manifests them.” so far as the American “one drop exists but allow it to continue.
Belonging to a privileged racial group principle,” which stated that one drop of The two conflicting strains in Amer
allows a person to believe that she or he inferior blood stripped a person of his ican culture — human equality vs.
has heightened value by virtue of birth. belonging to the superior race. The Nazi maintenance of racial purity — continue
This is true of all racisms, not only the lawyers argued that the American to compete in the contemporary United
version of “white racism” most familiar miscegenation laws were also too harsh. States. Their disjuncture allows for various
to Americans. In China, for example, While the Nazis made it illegal for Jews forms of splitting and dissociation. In the
westerners are called “big-noses” or to marry non-Jews, they did not at first psychoanalytic literature, there are
“white devils.” By developing a field of make already consummated mixed-race examples of unabashed racism. For
“comparative racism,” we would be able marriages a crime, as was the case in the example, in 1914 John Lind studied the
to consider how notions of race are used United States until 1967. dreams of 100 African-Americans and
the same or differently by different While the United States race laws were concluded that their dreams were
groups and the role that prejudice plays harsh, they were balanced by a liberal, undisguised wish-fulfillments, as Freud
in human personality functioning. egalitarian streak underlying the United said was characteristic of children’s
States government. The Declaration of dreams. Lind stated that Negroes had
American Race Laws: Too Harsh for
Independence stated in 1776: “We hold childlike minds and childlike dreams. He
the Nazis in 1935
these Truths to be self-evident, that all did not take into account that many were
Adolf Hitler wrote in his auto
Men are created equal, that they are in jail, reporting dreams to white
biographical manifesto Mein Kampf that
endowed by their Creator with certain investigators, so likely less than fully
he admired the United States as the
unalienable Rights, that among these are candid about their dream content.
world leader in devising strict laws to
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of There are many other examples of
maintain racial purity. Nazi legal scholars
Happiness….” Many of the authors, sanctioned racism in the psychoanalytic
looked to American racial laws as the
including Thomas Jefferson, owned past, but change in the present is more
model for the Nuremberg laws which
Continued on page 13
12 T H E A M E R I C A N P S YC H OA N A LY S T • Vo l u m e 5 5 , N o . 1 • W i n t e r/S p r i n g 2 0 21DIVERSITIES
Psychoanalytic Racism If we really want to engage in self- understand latent and unconscious
Continued from page 12 study on this issue, we must welcome racism, you must ask the opinion of
feedback from the members of our people who are experiencing discrim
important. At the William Alanson community who have been the targets of ination to tell you what you cannot see
White Institute, we have established
scholarships for candidates of color (and
for transgender candidates) in the hope If we really want to engage in self-study on this issue, we must welcome
of attracting future leaders who may feedback from the members of our community who have been the targets of
correct for past blind spots in our prejudice and invite the opinions of people outside our community.
thinking and training. That is just the
beginning of a vast task. Systemic racism
tends to accommodate perturbations in prejudice and invite the opinions of about yourself. Psychoanalysis needs a
society, give lip service to justice for a people outside our community. Psycholo thoroughgoing analysis of the ways racist
while, and then re-establish the status gist Marie-Louise von Franz said that you and other prejudices are silently, perhaps
quo. Can we as psychoanalysts outline cannot see your own back. If you show it unconsciously, imprinted on its theories
psychodynamics that will lead to to another person, he can see it, but you and practices.
genuine long-lasting change? can’t. If you are white and want to fully
Notes from the Inaugural Meeting of the Holmes
Commission on Racial Equality in APsaA
The Leadership Team
At last, on October 11, 2020, the
weekly meetings of the Holmes
Commission’s leadership team — regularly
attended by (the eponymous) Dorothy E.
Holmes, Anton Hart, Dionne Powell and
Beverly J. Stoute — expanded to all 19
members in our inaugural gathering of
the Holmes Commission on Racial Equal-
ity in APsaA. It occasioned warm wel- Dorothy E. Holmes Dionne R. Powell Anton Hart Beverly J. Stoute
comes and introductions, listening to Dorothy E. Holmes experience has taught us that in every
the Stanford Talisman Alumni Virtual In addressing psychical matters that phase of the patient’s recovery we have
Choir’s rendition of “Lift Every Voice may or may not require psychoanalytic to fight against his inertia which is
and Sing,” which brought many to attention, Freud referred to the patient’s ready to be content with an incomplete
latent, instinctual conflict as a “sleeping solution.
tears and the emotionally connected
dog.” But, he noted, when such a dog is,
sharing of personal reflections and In the reality of our current society and
in fact, causing disturbances, it is not
aspirations as we began our work as a in our organization, the “sleeping dog”—
truly sleeping and should not, thus, be racial conflict and racial inequality—
commission. left to lie. Instead, Freud argued: have again been awakened. It is, in fact,
Commission Chair Dorothy E. Holmes
We seek to bring this conflict to a head repeatedly barking and loudly.
opened the meeting by reading from
to develop it to its highest pitch in order Following Freud’s admonition that we
Freud’s 1937 Analysis Terminable and to increase the instinctual force must bring such latent conflicts “to a
Interminable. available for its solution. Analytic Continued on page 14
T H E A M E R I C A N P S YC H OA N A LY S T • Vo l u m e 5 5 , N o . 1 • W i n t e r/S p r i n g 2 0 21 13DIVERSITIES
Holmes Commission
Continued from page 13
head,” the commission’s aim is to bring Systemic racism, wherever it is found, Dionne R. Powell
to a head the conflicts and disturbances involves powers, the organizational It is difficult to come up with
around race in APsaA, and to bring equivalent of instinctual forces that are introductory remarks for such a lifelong
them to their highest pitch. This will expressed to create and maintain racial battle; including the personal, which I
not be easy. inequality. The formation of this believe is the source of any meaningful
In the formation of CO-RAP, our commission is an intentional effort to change. We are a segregated, invisibly
acronym for our commission, there is an bring a new powerful voice to meet and gated community. And while there may
intellectual recognition of the mental not be the snarling white faces and racial
transform the old organizational powers
sickness of racism and that we must do epithets of my youth, the message of
that have kept systemic racism in place.
something about it, starting in our own how “welcoming” APsaA and analytic
Our work will be aimed at helping APsaA
analytic home. Given the intransigence institutes are is suggested by its lack of
redefine and rebuild its structures,
and embeddedness of racism in its many diversity, particularly African-Americans,
operations, and practices, including
expressions, institutionally and individ Latin Americans, and Asian- Americans.
institute practices, in order to achieve
ually, and the historical record of high The Holmes Commission is an attempt
cultural moments about race being racial equality and to build alliances to
to look at all of this closely or as stated in
repeatedly followed by the basest do the same with other analytic groups.
my recent paper “From the Sunken Place
moments, we need to wage a fight against In such kinships we will also aim to
to the Shitty Place: The Film Get Out,
inertia in our attempts to find solutions actively work in larger communities— Psychic Emancipation and Modern Race
to racism within our organization. regional, national, and global — to Relat ions f rom a Psyc hody na m ic
eliminate all forms of oppression. Clinical Perspective” published in the
Just as Freud speaks of necessary [2020]Psychoanalytic Quarterly:
Anton Hart, PhD, FABP, FIPA, is a
suffering, frustration, and damming up Our analytic understandings are
training and supervising analyst and faculty
of libido as necessary components of the formed within a racist system that
at the William Alanson White Institute,
work to be done to liberate oneself, in privileges certain people and excludes
and co-chair of the Holmes Commission on
Racial Equality in APsaA. fostering CO-REAP, APsaA has agreed to others. We hide behind maintenance
the examinations the commission will of an “analytic stance” and yet are
Dorothy E. Holmes, PhD, psychoanalyst
conduct that will likely involve some blinded and mute to how that precludes
in private practice, Bluffton, SC; teaching,
organizational frustration. We will inclusiveness and diversity. In the end
training and supervising psychoanalyst,
persevere to make discoveries and propose our stance becomes defensive armor
Psychoanalytic Center of the Carolinas;
fellow, IPTAR; PsyD Program director changes that will not dam up but that is rarely challenged.
emerita, clinical psychology, The George transform organizational instincts into The Holmes Commission is tasked to
Washington University. Her current constructive developments. Deep look at our participation and the
scholarship is focused on “whiteness.” disservices of race are as old as our maintenance of racist structures and
Dionne R. Powell, MD., is a training and country. They persist and course through behaviors individually, organizationally,
supervising psychoanalyst at both the all of us. Perhaps racism is interminable, and institutionally, requiring us to dwell
Psychoanalytic Association of New York in the shitty and unpleasant places,
but the commission’s commitment is that
(PANY) and Columbia University Center for exploring its embeddedness and
it is modifiable for the good of all in our
Psychoanalytic Training and Research intransigence, finding new paths to
Association and beyond. We pledge to be
(CUCPTR), New York. mitigate the effects of racism. This is
radical in our examination of race in the
undoubtedly subversive and uncomfortable
Beverly J. Stoute, MD, FABP, FAPA is a best psychoanalytic sense. That is, we
training and supervising analyst at the as we acknowledge our sordid past and
will upset the status quo for the purpose
Emory Psychoanalytic Institute, and child present, while looking at personal,
of progressing toward racial equality.
and supervising analyst at the New York institutional and organizational
Remarks by Dionne Powell, Beverly J. thoughts, behaviors, and biases that
Psychoanalytic Institute, and co-chair of the
Stoute, and Anton Hart of the Holmes have denied, discriminated, and
Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in
APsaA.
Commission’s leadership team follow below. restricted access to those often identified
Continued on page 15
14 T H E A M E R I C A N P S YC H OA N A LY S T • Vo l u m e 5 5 , N o . 1 • W i n t e r/S p r i n g 2 0 21You can also read
