Psychoanalysis On and Off the Couch By cover art

Psychoanalysis On and Off the Couch

By: Harvey Schwartz MD
Listen for free

  • Summary

  • Psychoanalysis applied outside the office.
    Show more Show less
Episodes
  • 'Does it Still Taste like Psychoanalysis’? - University Affiliation in Finland with Jan Johansson (Helsinki)

    'Does it Still Taste like Psychoanalysis’? - University Affiliation in Finland with Jan Johansson (Helsinki)
    Apr 21 2024
    "Psychoanalysis landed in Finland in the 50s; before the Second World War there were one or two persons familiar with psychoanalysis. In the 50s, psychoanalysis got a lot of interest in Finland but then there was no possibility of training in Finland. The pioneers went abroad, some to Sweden and some to Switzerland. They picked up the theoretical preferences in the new countries and new institutes - the IPA Associations mainly were from people studying in Sweden and coming back to Finland and creating the IPA association. The Therapeia Institute consisted mainly of people studying in Switzerland and got a lot of influence from existential psychoanalysis and Jungian psychoanalysis… I tend to side with Lee Grossman [link below]; I guess the theoretical theories reflect more the character - when you listen to a case presentation of course people present them differently depending on their theoretical background, but in the consulting room I am not sure there is that much difference." Episode Description: We begin with acknowledging the value of meeting and learning from analyst colleagues from around the world. We discover both similarities and differences in both the challenges and pleasures of this work. In Finland there was a government-mandated change in the structure of training in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis starting in 2012. The anticipatory anxieties were considerable. There was input from the university on issues of curricula, research opportunities, and improved pedagogy. The fears of loss of meaningful autonomy proved to be mostly fears - not realized. We also discuss the origins and current state of psychoanalysis in Finland. We close with a few words of the pervasive role of sauna in Finnish life and the ways it manifests in analyses. Linked Episode: Episode 135: Technique is Character Rationalized with Lee Grossman, MD (Oakland, Ca.) – IPA Off the Couch Our Guest: Jan Johansson is a psychologist and a training and supervising analyst at the Therapeia Institute in Helsinki, Finland. Currently, he’s working as a psychoanalyst in private practice in Helsinki. In addition, he supervises psychotherapists and psychoanalysts. He has been interested in issues concerning psychoanalytic training for the last decade and a half. Currently he is the chair of the board of the Institute, while also being a member of board of the Therapeia Society. He also was a member of the Executive Committee of the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies 2014 - 2022. He is interested in promoting the multitude of psychoanalytic voices; while being trained within an object-relational frame, he doesn’t identify exclusively with any particular theoretical frame of reference. He lives in Espoo, a neighbor city of Helsinki with his wife. After languishing in the darkness of the Finnish winter from October to mid-March, in the summer they enjoy the light and the white nights at their summer-house at the seaside, heating their sauna everyday and swimming in the Finnish Gulf. Linked Episode: Episode 135: Technique is Character Rationalized with Lee Grossman, MD (Oakland, Ca.) Recommended Readings: Grossman, L. (2023): The psychoanalytic encounter and the misuse of theory. New York: Routledge. Kernberg, O.F. (2016). Psychoanalytic education at the crossroads: Reformation, change and the future of psychoanalytic training. New York: Routledge Reeder, J. (2004). Hate and love in psychoanalytic institutions: The dilemmas of a profession. New York: Other Press. Tuckett, D. (2005). Does anything go? Towards a framework for the more transparent assessment of psychoanalytic competence. Int J Psychoanal. 86: 31–49. Tuckett, D., Amati Mehler, J., Collins, S., Diercks, M., Flynn, D., Franck, C., Millar, C., Skale, E., Wagtmann, A-M. (2020): Psychoanalytic education in the Eitingon model and its controversies: A way forward. Int J Psychoanal. 101: 1106 – 1135.
    Show more Show less
    48 mins
  • The Presence of 'Companioning' in Psychoanalysis with Robert Grossmark, PhD (New York)

    The Presence of 'Companioning' in Psychoanalysis with Robert Grossmark, PhD (New York)
    Apr 7 2024
    “My interest is to rather than continue with the psychoanalytic tilt which has tended to try to find the words - to find the areas of the analyst that has words to engage with these states and then help the patient transform these states into something thinkable and communicable. [In contrast] my interest has been to take the patient where they are; it’s kind of a radical way of saying ‘meeting the patient where they are’, and find our way and lend ourselves to engaging with them in their own idiom, using Bollas’s term, in their own way of being and to find ways to be with them that don’t necessarily rely on talking about things and making things known.” Episode Description: We begin by considering patient's non-represented mental states and their manifestation in somatic and motoric registers. Robert describes his understanding and approach to clinically engage those who "barely experience continuity of the self or subjectivity in themselves or others." He recommends 'companioning' with them. This entails not trying to "move the patient out of these regressed areas into greater relatedness ...but to welcome these other dimensions and their full expression within the analytic space." We consider the role of enactive engagements, the non-verbal vs the pre-verbal and 'radical neutrality'. He presents a case where the patient and analyst shared music, food and not discussed emotional intimacy between them that he felt was vital to enable the patient to emerge as a 'real person'. We close with speaking of Robert's professional history of working early on with psychotic individuals and finding that his approach enabled them, often to their surprise, to feel heard. He also describes his attunement to the experience of being an 'other' that emerged from his growing up as an 'other' - a Jew in London. Our Guest: Robert Grossmark, Ph.D., ABPP, is a psychoanalyst in New York City. He works with individuals, groups, and couples. He is on the teaching and supervising faculty at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, The National Institute for the Psychotherapies Program in Adult Psychoanalysis, The National Training Program in Psychoanalysis, National Faculty Member, the Florida Psychoanalytic Center and lectures at other psychoanalytic institutes and clinical psychology training programs nationally and internationally. He is an Associate Editor for Psychoanalytic Dialogues. He is the author of The Unobtrusive Relational Analyst: Explorations in Psychoanalytic Companioning and co-edited The One and the Many: Relational Approaches to Group Psychotherapy and Heterosexual Masculinities: Contemporary Perspectives from Psychoanalytic Gender Theory. Recommended Readings: Grossmark, R. (2024) The Untelling, Psychoanalytic Dialogues. In press. Grossmark, R. (2019) The anguish of fatherhood, Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 16 (3), 316-325. Grossmark, R. (2023) A child is being murdered: A contemporary psychoanalytic treatment of a compulsion to child pornography, Psychoanalytic Psychology, 40: 25-30 Bach, S. (2011) Chimeras: Immunity, interpenetration and t he true self. Psychoanalytic Review, 98(1): 39-56 Winnicott, D. W. (1974). Fear of breakdown. International Review of Psycho-Analysis, 1(1-2), 103–107. Bollas, C. (2011) Character and interformality. In C. Bollas, The Christopher Bollas Reader (p. 238-248) Ogden, T.O. (2017) Dreaming the analytic session: A clinical essay. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 86: 1-20. Stern, D.B. (2022) On coming into possession of oneself: Witnessing and the formulation of experience. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 91: 639-667 Symington, N. (2012) The Essence of psychoanalysis as opposed to what is secondary. Psychoanalytic Dialogues. 22, 4, 395-409
    Show more Show less
    1 hr and 16 mins
  • The Dynamic Underpinnings of the Eating Disorders with Tom Wooldridge, PsyD (San Francisco)

    The Dynamic Underpinnings of the Eating Disorders with Tom Wooldridge, PsyD (San Francisco)
    Mar 24 2024
    "The first line treatment for adolescents with anorexia now is family-based therapy typically, which involves helping the parents facilitate the refeeding of the adolescent. So, I was working with the patient in that way and found it to be helpful and useful, but was consistently struck by the neglect of the patient’s inner life, and found, at least based on my experience with many patients, that while you could get some symptomatic relief, if you didn't, in some way, address the deeper dynamics, the aspects of the patient's personality organization that drove the disorder, that were implicated at the disorder, there was a way that the patient would snap back to their old behaviors over time, that deeper change and a deeper understanding of what was going on was really necessary; and so that's been kind of evolution from my work over the past ten years from my first book, which was about anorexia in males, and tried to present a kind of Integrative understanding of that phenomena, increasingly over time I've become more and more interested in the deeper kind of analytic thinking that we can bring to bear on this kind of suffering.” Episode Description: We begin with a description of the common contertransferential pull to intervene behaviorally in the face of repetitive self-destructive eating disorder symptoms. This intention can inform but not compel the clinical decision as to the indicated treatment of choice for someone at any particular moment. Behavioral and pharmacologic treatments can be important in softening the pressure of eating disorder symptoms. They do not, however, give an individual access to their interoceptive life, from which these disturbing self-preoccupations emerge. We discuss the challenges of working with those who have limited capacities for mentalisation and as a result, live out their inner lives somatically and motorically. Immersive treatment leads the clinician to experience these proto-affects in one's own body and in one's own ruminations. Tom discusses alexithymia, typical family structures, and the presence of the 'abject' experience in the lives of these patients. He presents a disguised case of a patient who was able to work through both the early struggles and later neurotic aspects of these conflicts analytically. We close with his sharing with us his vision for the future which includes more integration between the dynamic and adynamic approaches to these challenging patients. Our Guest: Tom Wooldridge, PsyD, is Chair in the Department of Psychology at Golden Gate University as well as a psychoanalyst and board-certified, licensed psychologist. His first book, Understanding Anorexia Nervosa in Males, was published in 2016. His second book, Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders: When Words Fail and Bodies Speak, an edited volume in the Relational Perspectives Book Series, was published in 2018. His third book, Eating Disorders (New Introductions to Contemporary Psychoanalysis), was released in 2022. His fourth book, co-edited with Burke, Michaels, and Muhr, is entitled Advancing Psychotherapy for the Next Generation: Rehumanizing Mental Health Policy and Practice. He has also written a novel about the process of psychotherapy, Ghosts of the Unremembered Past, additionally released as an audiobook. He is a Personal and Supervising Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Institute for Northern California and a Training Analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. He is on the Scientific Advisory Council of the National Eating Disorders Association, Faculty at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC), the Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology (NCSPP), the William Alanson White Institute’s Eating Disorders, Compulsions, and Addictions program, and the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, and has a private practice in Berkeley, CA. Recommended Readings: Williams, G. (1997). Reflections On Some Dynamics Of Eating Disorders: ‘No Entry’ Defences and Foreign Bodies. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis., 78, 927-941. Brady, M.T. (2011). Invisibility and insubstantiality in an anorexic adolescent: phenomenology and dynamics. Journal of Child Psychotherapy, 37(1), 3 – 15. Bromberg, P.M. (2001). Treating patients with symptoms – and symptoms with patients: Reflections on shame, dissociation, and eating disorders. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 11(6), 891 – 912. Petrucelli, J. (2015). ‘My body is a cage’: Interfacing interpersonal neurobiology, attachment, affect regulation, self-regulation, and the regulation of relatedness in treatment with patients with eating disorders. In J. Petrucelli (Ed.). Body-states: Interpersonal and relational perspectives on the treatment of eating disorders. (Psychoanalysis in a New Key). New York: Routledge. Sands, S. (2003). The subjugation of the body in eating disorders: A Particularly female solution. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 20(1), 103 ...
    Show more Show less
    57 mins
Alternative & Complementary Medicine Psychology Hygiene & Healthy Living
Show more Show less

What listeners say about Psychoanalysis On and Off the Couch

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.com reviews

Amazon reviews
Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars
Profile Image for Natalia

thanks!

as if I went though my own psychoanalyst therapy through this podcast. I'm very grateful, thanks a lot for this conversation.

Report this

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars
Profile Image for Amazon Customer

Real life

Really a wonderful job you're doing. I have learned so much from the few episodes I have listened to and I can always apply the knowledge outside the therapy room. The bell boy metaphor is really wonderful to know.

Report this

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!