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In response to Dr. Tronick's article on the evolution of responses to trauma, I explore the advantages of extending his study by differentiating between three types of trauma. I suggest that as analysts recognize chronic trauma that derives from pervasive racial and cultural prejudice, critical domains of social relevance open up for psychoanalytic consideration on levels of theory and practice. On a clinical level we are enabled to address suffering associated with social marginalization and neglect otherwise thought to be outside the realm of psychoanalytic applicability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This fine collection of articles documents efforts to bring Anna Freud’s diagnostic profile (1965) up to date by integrating more recent theory and research in attachment theory, inter-subjective theory, and theories deriving from the work of Bion on the process of “containing” (Bion, 1988). While some of the articles present the theoretical context for this integrative effort, Melandri’s (this issue) thoughtful and comprehensive clinical case shows us how an updated diagnostic profile can be put to work in the consulting room. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Yvette Esprey’s claim that race has the capacity to disrupt thinking in the analytic situation accords with my own experience. In this discussion I take up the question as to why ruptures that occur around race may have a special capacity to disrupt and disable analytic thinking. I look in detail at Esprey’s instructive clinical experience as it gives us a template, something to fall back on, in those moments when anxiety overwhelms us around a racial disruption. Such a template can settle us until we can restore a sense of self that is bothracedand analytically focused on the rupture at hand with all its personal and social/historical resonances. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper I consider some of the issues raised by the way the American Psychological Association has dealt with the participation of psychologists in interrogations at Guantanamo Bay. I set forth some of my experience, and what I feel I learned, from trying to convince the Council of Representatives of the American Psychological Association to support a moratorium on the participation of psychologists in interrogations of detainees at centers where due process is systematically denied. The paper was written before the Council of Representatives voted down the idea of a moratorium, with a coda describing the outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this discussion of papers by Ehrensaft, Gin, and Fernando, the author reviews some of the dilemmas and opportunities that arise when community-based therapeutic work is taken up with a psychoanalytic perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will look at the experience of bad feelings and disappointments that arose despite the good intentions and generosity of providing pro bono treatment to foster children. Written in four segments by the founders of The Fostering Connection (formerly The Children's Psychotherapy Project, a program of A Home Within), the paper will explore the clinical, theoretical, and organizational aspects of this project. In the first part, we give a theoretical perspective followed by a report of some clinical work, and finally we offer some reflections on the development of our ideas to date including some thoughts about where we are headed. As psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapists, in the planning for this project we sought to bring our analytic point of view to the task of providing weekly psychotherapy to foster children and their families. For context, we will start by giving a description of how our organization works and a history of our ideas and evolution as a group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I consider some of the dilemmas and challenges of a male therapist working with female adolescents, in counterpoint to those facing the father of adolescent daughters. There is a conventional wisdom that female adolescents need female therapists; I argue that this kind of thinking is related to the common phenomenon of fathers withdrawing emotionally from their daughters when they reach adolescence. I draw out some implications of what it might mean to father an adolescent daughter if one does not accept the conventional wisdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on Mary Tennes's research on intersubjectivity. Tennes's ideas are linked with modern physics and psychoanalysis. To go beyond intersubjectivity, he believes that it is also important to consider the transpersonal in order that intimation and intuitions are linked to other people's psychic reality.

The author observes that some parents of the baby-boomer generation have conflicts over assuming authority in relation to their adolescent children. The result can be a vacuum of leadership and commitment within the family. These ideas are illustrated with examples from clinical work and from films. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this commentary, I argue that if humor is to be considered in an intersubjective context, the impact of any comment or action by analyst or patient cannot be predicted with much confidence. An interaction that is experienced by both parties as humorous depends on an unconscious confluence that is largely spontaneous. Efforts to orchestrate a particular outcome to an intervention that is meant to be humorous may well reveal more than was intended, and thus have an unpredictable unconscious resonance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I consider the psychoanalytic significance of taking account of the historical context, across generations, in which the emotional lives of analysands take shape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this commentary, I discuss the many meanings of boredom in the literature of different schools of psychoanalysis. In discussing the clinical work presented by the authors, I comment on how theoretical orientation is reflected in the way the experience of boredom is understood: as induced by the patient, as a coconstructed experience, and as a product of dissociation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this response to Rustin, Goldman, and Schwartz, I note the ways in which their commentaries have stimulated my thinking further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue that on both the small-scale level of the interpersonal relationship, and the large-scale level of society, the manic defense makes it difficult to care about others, and so militates against a sense of social responsibility. I address four basic questions: what is the nature of social responsibility? What is the nature of the manic defense? How does the manic defense interfere with the potential for social responsibility? And, on a more general level, what are the issues with respect to methodology for efforts such as this one to link psychoanalysis and social theory? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dynamics of the larger society inevitably are manifest in intrapsychic dynamics, as well as interpersonal interactions, in and out of the psychoanalytic consulting room. Traditional psychoanalytic inattention to the social world predisposes analysts to enact unreflectively some of the racist and classist patterns in the social world around us in our clinical work. This author argues first that U.S. psychoanalysis, as a field, has sought to define itself as white, thereby demonstrating the influence of racism in this country. Second, in a clinical example, the author demonstrates the subtle imprint of racism and classism in a dyad in which both participants are conventionally classified as white. He concludes that open discussion of U.S. history and of the past and current social location of psychoanalysis as a field goes hand in hand with increased awareness of the ways in which social forces organize psychoanalytic interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this discussion of papers by Gillian Straker and Melanie Suchet, the author draws some links between the two papers in the interest of expanding analysts' understanding of the nature of whiteness as part of a racist discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I outline some of the ways in which I believe the psychoanalytic traditions in North America and in Great Britain are influencing each other. I identify points of convergence and divergence at this moment in the evolution of psychoanalytic theory and technique. I then point out some of the implications of relational perspectives in child psychotherapy as this perspective is developing in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this appreciative discussion of Shabad's paper, the author suggests an expanded role for intrapsychic conflict around the passionate drive to grow and change. At the same time, he suggests that the parent or analyst may need to 'suffer passion' him or herself in order to help the patient or child evolve in this way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the panel that follows, Hoffman's dialectical and constructivist perspective is brought to bear on the polarity between self-interest and concern for others evident in the contributions of Layton and Slavin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on the developments in the journal "Psychoanalytic Dialogues." This development widened the membership of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis. Promotions from different positions are also presented in this article including Anthony Bass as the new executive editor, and Steven Cooper and Stephen Seligman as full editors in chief.

Analyzes the trauma that was caused by the terrorist attacks in New York in September 11, 2001. Factors contributing to the onset of trauma; Psychological effects of living with long-term terrorism; Focus on the transference-countertransference implications of a patient and an analysts buffered by the same traumatic events; Implications for psychoanalytic practice.