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Psychoanalysis On and Off the Couch

Psychoanalysis On and Off the Couch

By: Harvey Schwartz MD
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 Psychoanalysis applied outside the office. Alternative & Complementary Medicine Hygiene & Healthy Living Psychology Psychology & Mental Health
Episodes
  • The 'Necessary Foreignness' of Psychoanalysis with Mariano Horenstein, PhD (Cordoba, Argentina)

    The 'Necessary Foreignness' of Psychoanalysis with Mariano Horenstein, PhD (Cordoba, Argentina)
    Jun 1 2025

    “In the analysis, the place where you face the experience of otherness, of foreignness, of the unconscious that goes through you, it doesn't appear as knowledge. Of course, in an analysis, you get a lot of knowledge, but it's not an important aspect of an analysis. I think that in the analysis, and that's the idea of using that word ‘transmission’ instead of ‘teaching’, what you receive is something that the analyst doesn't have. When you receive some knowledge from a teacher, you receive the knowledge the teacher has. When you transmit something, or when you receive something that has been transmitted by the analyst or by the psychoanalytical setting, is something that the other doesn't have. It's a kind of void. It's a kind of fire. It's like the baton that every runner passes to others in a relay race. It is something more difficult to be grasped with words, is something elusive to words, but it does exist.”

    Episode Description: We begin with describing the 'necessary foreignness' of psychoanalysis, "It is from both a foreign perspective and foreign listening that makes it possible to notice the concealed underpinnings, to discover the new, and to express the unexpressed." We consider the clinical asymmetry that allows for the patient's unbridled freedom to think and speak the unspeakable. Educationally, Mariano discusses the essential transmission of analytic experience as contrasted with the teaching of knowledge - a distinction between science and mystery. He shares his thoughts on eclectisism, hypothesis testing and risk. We close with recognizing that the "anachronistic method of psychoanalytic listening is the most authentic way of being contemporary."

    Our Guest: Mariano Horenstein, PhD is a training and supervising analyst who belongs to the IPA, FEPAL (Latin American Psychoanalytical Federation), and the international research group "Geographies of Psychoanalysis". He is an IPA Board member and a former chief editor of Calibán, the official Journal of FEPAL. Former Training Director of APC (Argentina). His articles have been translated into Portuguese, English, Farsi, French, Russian, Italian, Portuguese and German. Author of four books :Psychoanalysis in Minor Language, The Compass and the Couch. Psychoanalysis and its Necessary Foreignness, Funambulistas. Travesía adolescente y riesgo and Artists, Writers and Philosophers on Psychoanalysis. From the Couch. He has received international awards as M. Bergwerk (about the clinic forms of Evil), Lucien Freud (about Psychoanalysis and Culture); Elise Hayman Award for the study of Holocaust and Genocide (given by the IPA); A. Garma (given by the Spanish Association of Neuropsychiatry); the FEPAL Award and Carolina Zamora Award (given by Madrid Psychoanalytical Association).

    http://www.marianohorenstein.com/

    Recommended Readings:

    Horenstein, Mariano, The compass and the couch. Psychoanalysis and its necessary foreignness, Mimesis, Milan, 2018.

    Horenstein, Mariano, Artists, writers and philosophers on Psychoanalysis. From the couch, Routledge, London, 2024.

    Horenstein, Mariano, Psicoanálisis en lengua menor, Viento de Fondo, Córdoba, 2015.

    Preta, Lorena (ed), Dislocated subject, Mimesis, Milan, 2018.

    Preta, Lorena (ed), Geographies of Psychoanalysis, Mimesis, Milan, 2015.

    Preta, Lorena, The brutality of things. Psychic transformations of reality, Mimesis, Milan, 2019.

    Wohlfarth, I., Hombres del extranjero. Walter Benjamin y el Parnaso judeoalemán, Taurus, CDMX, 2014.
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    1 hr and 5 mins
  • Care of a Former Analysand with Dementia with Maxine Anderson, MD (Seattle, Washington)

    Care of a Former Analysand with Dementia with Maxine Anderson, MD (Seattle, Washington)
    May 18 2025
    “I think that my analytic awareness of denial and projection and the concreteness of psychic reality when executive function wanes, that I could help the other caretakers to understand some of what was going on - to give them a way to understand that relieves their sense of frustration and uncertainty. I think that the analytic awareness of denial, of projection, that these things are not generally recognized by many caretakers, but it does reorient and make the caretaking function much more tolerable. It expands the understanding of what goes on in the waning personality. I also think that analytic work fosters the capacity to tolerate ambiguity, uncertainty, pain and frustration and in that way may allow us, the analytic mind, to tolerate some of the intense affect - as sort of the phrase I love from an Italian analyst, as “writings waiting to be completed” - by the analytic mind. We can hold and metabolize the difficulty and offer that kind of function rather than unpleasantness just to be rid of. These are some of the things that I felt are useful as a psychoanalyst.” Episode Description: We begin with describing how dementia is a cloud over our field both for individuals and for institutes. Maxine then introduces us to 'Sally' who was her analysand 40 years prior to recontacting her to care for her cognitive decline. Maxine mentions that just hearing her former patient's voice instantly brought alive her past experiences with her. We discuss how she approached the issue of caring for her and her neurological condition. We consider the at times overlap between psychogenic and organic symptoms and she shares with us her countertransference experiences of herself losing her memory. Maxine also shares her approach to answering Sally’s questions about the possibility of recovering. We close with her describing how she feels that being an analyst aided her care of Sally and what she learned from that experience that she brought to her other patients -"to face the pain of difficult truths." Our Guest: Maxine Anderson, MD, is a training and supervising analyst at the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, the Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute and Society and the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society. Originally trained in psychiatry, she pursued psychoanalytic training in Seattle in the early 1970s and then pursued post-graduate work at the British Psychoanalytical Society for 8 years, returning to Seattle in 1992. Thereafter, she became a Founding Member of the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. Maxine has published several articles, and chapters and 3 books, the most recent being The Hardest Passage: a psychoanalyst accompanies her patient’s journey into dementia (Karnac, 2025). Feeling herself now to be an Elder in life and in her field, Maxine hopes to continue to think and write about this phase of personal and professional life. Recommended Readings: Balfour, A. (2007). Facts, phenomenology, and psychoanalytic contributions to dementia care. In: R. Davenhill (Ed.) Looking into Later Life: a psychoanalytic approach to depression and dementia in Old Age. (pp. 222–247). London: Routledge, 2007. Davenhill, R. (Ed.) (2007) Looking into Later Life. A Psychoanalytic approach to Depression and Dementia in Old Age. London: Karnac. Davenhill, R. (2007). No truce with the furies: issues of containment in the provision of care for people with dementia and those who care for them. In: R. Davenhill ( Ed.), Looking into later life: a psychoanalytic approach to dementia and depression in old age. (pp. 201-221). London: Routledge. Evans, S. (2008). “Beyond forgetfulness”: How psychoanalytic ideas can help us to understand the experience of patients with dementia”. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, 22(3):155–176. Kitwood, T. (1997). Dementia Reconsidered: The Person Comes First. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Malloy, L (2009). Thinking about dementia – a psychodynamic understanding of links between early infantile experience and dementia. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, 23(2): 109–120. Plotkin, D. (2014). Older adults and psychoanalytic treatment: It’s about time. Psychodynamic Psychiatry, 42(1): 23–60. Sherwood, J. (2019). Dementia: childhood and loss. In White, K. Cotter, A. & Leventhal, H. (Eds.), Dementia: An Attachment Approach. London: Routledge.
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    56 mins
  • Before 'Ghosts' become 'Ancestors' with Shalini Masih, PhD (Worcestershire, UK)

    Before 'Ghosts' become 'Ancestors' with Shalini Masih, PhD (Worcestershire, UK)
    May 4 2025

    “All of this together shaped how I began to think about mind, not as something to be mastered, but as a landscape of the unspoken whether it was ghosts or griefs or desires that were hard to relinquish. I saw that the ghost was not always an ‘other’. It was often intimate, tied to lost ones, sometimes to unmet desires, to unbearable longings, but in some ways possession was an attempt to keep close what was slipping away. The ghost doesn't just haunt, it feels as if it wants something, and we just have to learn to develop ears to listen to what it wants.”

    Episode Description: We acknowledge Loewald's concept of 'ghosts becoming ancestors' and consider the similarities and differences with those who hold 'ghosts' to be literal. Shalini shares with us her journey to open herself to the uncertainty and ambiguity of these externalized entities while appreciating both their cultural and intrapsychic sources. We learn of her family's involvement with exorcisms, especially her grandmother's "fearless warmth" and "empathy that saw beyond the terror of the ghosts." She considers the many facets of mind that are represented by 'ghosts' and the essential value of approaching them as guides to the "landscape of the unspoken." Shalini describes a long term engagement that she had with an individual who "taught me to receive the inchoate and horrific...to contain the brokenness and not interpret it away.. and to appreciate the glimpses of beauty in the most grotesque parts of self."

    Our Guest: Shalini Masih, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and writer, grew up in India amidst priests and healers, witnessing spirit possession and exorcism. Now based in Worcestershire, UK, she holds a Master’s degree in Psychoanalytic Studies from Tavistock & Portman, London, and a PhD from the University of Delhi. Mentored by psychoanalysts Michael Eigen and Sudhir Kakar, she’s an award-winning scholar of the American Psychological Association. She has taught and supervised psychoanalytic psychotherapists in Ambedkar University, Delhi and in Birkbeck, University of London. Her acclaimed paper, 'Devil! Sing me the Blues', was nominated for Gradiva Awards in 2020. Her debut book is Psychoanalytic Conversations with States of Spirit Possession: Beauty in Brokenness.

    Recommended Readings:

    Kakar, Sudhir. Shamans, mystics, and doctors: A psychological inquiry into India and its healing traditions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991.

    Kakar, Sudhir. Mad and Divine. India: Penguin Books India, 2008.

    Eigen, Michael. “On Demonized Aspects of the Self” In The Electrified Tightrope. Routledge. 2018.

    Kumar, Mansi, Dhar Anup & Mishra, Anurag. Psychoanalysis from the Indian Terroir: Emerging Themes in Culture, Family, and Childhood. New York:Lexington Books, 2018.

    Meltzer, Donald, and Williams, Meg H. The apprehension of beauty: The role of aesthetic conflict in development, art and violence. Karnac, London: The Harris Meltzer Trust, 2008.

    Obeyesekere, Gananath. Medusa’s Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1981.

    Ogden, Thomas. This Art of Psychoanalysis—Dreaming Undreamt Dreams and Interrupted Cries. East Sussex: Routledge, 2005

    Botella, Cesar, and Botella, Sara. The Work of Psychic Figurability: Mental States without Representation. Brunner-Routledge. Taylor and Francis Group: Hove and New York. 2005.

    Winnicott. Donald W. “Transitional objects and transitional phenomena.” International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 34, (1953): 89–97
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    59 mins
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as if I went though my own psychoanalyst therapy through this podcast. I'm very grateful, thanks a lot for this conversation.

thanks!

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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.

Real life

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