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Psychoanalytic Dialogues is proud to present a groundbreaking panel on autotheory that pairs Leigh Lyndon's essay, The Ice is Melting, with responses by Gila Ashtor, Masha Borovikova Armyn, Adam Blum, and Maxine Chung Chow. In this brief introduction, autotheory is introduced to frame an emergent conversation that launches from the page, through the potential space carved by readers and writers, to forge an ever more open-source mode of sharing personal experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the republication of Muriel Dimen's classic essay, "Deconstructing difference: Gender, splitting, and transitional space" (Dimen, 1991), Psychoanalytic Dialogues launches a new feature, Après Coups. By putting a paper from the early years of the journal in conversation with contemporary readers and writers, we hope to dial into the ways psychoanalysts forge relationality in spaces of complexity and contradiction over time. In this dialogue, we see queerness speaking in and to the psychoanalytic frame. The Après Coups includes commentaries from Virginia Goldner, Ph.D., Ann D'Ercole, Ph.D. & Jack Drescher, M.D., Ph.D., Stephen Hartman, Ph.D., June Lee Kwon, Ph.D., and Julie Leavitt, M.D. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Muriel Dimen penned many introductions to books and panels. In this essay that became the first chapter of Reading with Muriel Dimen/Writing with Muriel Dimen: Experiments in Theorizing a Field, I follow Dimen's manner of hopscotching among self-reflection, mentoring, and theory building. I riff on Dimen's call for a new genre of psychoanalytic text and read Dimen's 1986 memoir/novel, Surviving Sexual Contradictions, finding Dimen fomenting revolution on the page as in the consulting room, where paradox and contradiction spark innovation in personal, interpersonal, and professional space. I challenge the genre of editor's introduction to put personal narrative to political task (here, the story of my decision to shift the focus of this volume from collected works to collective writing). I place Dimen in conversation with authors whose lens trained on race during the years she pursued gender. In the vulnerability that Dimen bravely forded as she turned to the study of sexual boundary violations in her late work, I find permission to call for psychoanalytic publishing to go tilt-o-whirl in service of revolution in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the use of autotheory, a literary genre that reflects on the author's own embodiment to explore the interplay between relational experience and theory in forming subjectivity. The author argues that autotheory can be used to hold and expose the structuring and expression of subjectivity, as well as the ongoing interplay of body and mind. The article also references the work of Muriel Dimen, a feminist psychoanalyst who incorporated autobiography into relational technique. Dimen's writings explored gender, sexuality, and the complexities of identity, and anticipated the emergence of nonbinary identities. The article suggests that Dimen's work remains relevant and valuable in understanding and navigating contemporary discussions of gender and identity. [Extracted from the article]

In his beautiful mediation on the sights and sounds that crest in waves of oceanic feeling, Adam Blum challenges a false binary between intuiting the moment and understanding the moment – and, by extension, being in love and knowing love. With attention to how temporality inheres differently during listening and seeing, I describe how psychoanalysts and anthropologists differently locate structure in the manner of being in time that their method posits. Surfers and yoga practitioners span perception immersively – as does Blum – such that listening and seeing, being and knowing, inhere as union, in an Ocean that, when encountered in the simultaneity of possibility and constraint which translates as the love fellow surfers share, joins accomplices in the arc of history at the peak of momentum, as a community vested with the challenge of the next climactic wave. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the process of producing a peer-reviewed journal and the importance of representing a range of voices and perspectives within the field of psychoanalysis. The concept of "holding the center" is explored, which involves fostering controversy and comparative thought while respecting different theoretical schools and interpretations of core concepts. The article also highlights the diverse and chaotic world in which we live and the need to feature a variety of voices to stretch beyond complacency and demagoguery. The issue of Psychoanalytic Dialogues presented in the article includes panels on topics such as splitting, the more-than-human in psychoanalytic theory, the work of Françoise Dolto, and the impact of socio-political trauma on the psyche. [Extracted from the article]

The article introduces the last issue of Psychoanalytic Dialogues for 2023. The three panels presented in this issue are rooted in the relational tradition of psychoanalysis, exploring topics such as mystical experiences and time travel in the treatment of psychopathy, the role of shame in cults, and the challenges of coming into being as a mother. The authors engage with innovative and new content, forms, and foci, contributing to the ongoing evolution and originality of Psychoanalytic Dialogues. The article invites readers to explore these panels and looks forward to the ideas and conversations that will emerge in the future. [Extracted from the article]

Inspired by Steven Knoblauch's paper, Fanon's Vision of Embodied Racism for Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice (this issue), I urge White analysts to (individually and collectively) pursue acts of self-examination that risk destabilizing routines and convictions that bind our practices to Whiteness. Among terms to be interrogated, mutual recognition, diversity, integration, vitalization, and resilience are queried for the violence that is evacuated into the phantomatic register in support of a White ongoing being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I Psychoanalytic Dialogues i is happy to present three papers by Sarah Schoen, Jean Petrucelli, and Susan Sands, originally presented at the IARPP 2022 meeting in Los Angeles. Schoen, Petrucelli, and Sands' work is noteworthy for its attention to lacunae inscribed in embodiment's intersubjective capacity. Schoen, Petrucelli, and Sands explore how interiority may or may not show itself on the body and, by extension, express interiority outwardly. [Extracted from the article]

Taking the online symbol # ("hashtag") as my guide, I conceptualize mania as a psychic space where collective and individual registers of meaning collide at warp speed with the effect of highlighting the uneasy but recursive intertwining of individual and collective object relations. I coin the term ultrapsychic to describe the transpersonal flow of objects between the individual and the collective as brokered by human and non-human meaning-makers in an ultra-broadband society. Ultra-subjectivity highlights the affects, definitional problems and crossed-temporalities that are in play when individuals negotiate in the collective to locate themselves among others in an intersectional matrix. By reviewing the philosophy that gave rise to the hashtag as well as its transformation into a taxonomic symbol, I return to mania's uncanny collectivist quality and explore what happens when people who perceive themselves at-risk use a #cyberobject to risk self-disclosure in the collective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are also grateful to our teachers, supervisors, analysts, and mentors whose words in I Dialogues i nurtured our growth. We are so grateful to Jeff Jackson, our managing editor, for all the work he does to keep the journal on track, and to our colleagues at Taylor and Francis whose production team keeps the journal in print. We argue about form and content, engaging deeply in conversation about the future of psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic writing and, of course, our plans for the journal. [Extracted from the article]

By way of a vignette about my childhood mix of British and American accents, I explore how the Mother of the primal scene becomes a nodal point in the recursive iteration of psyche and society that is given voice in the child's mother tongue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paper, discussions, and replies: each has its own cast of characters. Lauren Levine argues powerfully for a radical shift in our conception of the analytic frame through clinical encounters as a White analyst working with three women of color. Virginia Goldner offers an appreciative read of Guzzardi, asking for more of the arc of Nicki's development and the mourning of gendered self-states that are part of that arc. [Extracted from the article]

This paper celebrates Muriel Dimen’s unique manner of conceptualizingthe fieldwith regard to the recursive relations she theorized among psychic and social components of sexual subjectivity. Recursion is a structural force in the field that implicates the analyst in the history of fieldwork. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The multi-perspectival discussions by Robert Bartlett and Richard Chefetz add further nuance to this panel, demonstrating ways in which the question, "who reads" becomes an exercise in both content and form. As Joint Editors in Chief of I Psychoanalytic Dialogues i , we have been raising the questions: "Who reads?" The mobilization around race and the phenomenon of disciplinary self-scrutiny located in the question "who speaks" swept across the psychoanalytic landscape after the killing of George Floyd in 2020, ushering in a long overdue interrogation of the white supremacy and inequitable power dynamics embedded in our institutes and consulting rooms. [Extracted from the article]

In this discussion, I contrast Knafo’s worry about onlineinhumanitywith a perspective informed by Katherine Hayles’s humanistic work on cybernetics, the posthuman, and the technological unconscious. Drawing upon my own writing about cyberobjects and reality, I argue that Knafo’s claim that “technology has invaded our intimate lives” is wildly overstated and that it hinges upon a curious manipulation of a false active/passive binary that is then used as a litmus test for perversion. I challenge Knafo’s “evolutionary” and materialist claims with reference to the intercourse of perversion and neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue ofStudies in Gender and Sexualitytakes up the problem oflookingas viewed from an array of theoretical perspectives on film, clinical interaction, music, literature, and popular culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jade McGleughlin’s textured paper frameswriting enactmentsthat help describe breaches in narrative consequent to trauma. I work from my own understanding of enactmentas a particular readerof McGleughlin’s fieldwork: moving from ceramics to photography to Bionian Field Theory to ethnography to Betty Woodman to Gadamer’s player/played distinction to call attention to the anticipatory processes involved inreadingand inreading enactments—by which I meanthe enacted dimensions of the act of readingthat pertain to the experience ofreading about enactments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

If psychoanalysis is to offer its words to a broader, more diverse audience, and to readers who do not and, perhaps, cannot afford to subscribe to the journal in print, enhanced online search afforded by this format is a necessary tool to foster change and growth. Likely you've noticed that I Dialogues i has a new look. "A Few Regrets" is a powerful stand-alone paper in which Joyce Slochower, a central figure in relational psychoanalysis, looks back on the evolution of her thought. [Extracted from the article]

Tracy L. Simon's case of Nora and her eloquent discussion of the traumatic dimensions of assisted reproductive technology portray the psychic burden of indebtedness when one's viability depends on an Other from whom one feels psychically and corporeally estranged. Inherent in a claustrophobic drama of indebtedness such as Nora's, be it rendered to the appellation “miracle” child or commanded by a technological marvel, socio-historical and intersubjective fonts of meaning lurk internally as mordant self-satire—all the while held as an intention and contained as viable representatives of meaning in the embodied space that awaits transference. In the first part of this essay, I write while trapped in my reverie (captive to Donald Meltzer'sClaustrumand Ridley Scott's filmAlien). Then, in a calmer tone, I parse the intersubjective and embodied meaning of viability—a quality of therapeutic movement during psychic standstill held gracefully by Simon in her work with Nora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As we are completing our first issue as Joint Editors-in-Chief, COVID-19 continues to ravage the globe. Appollon interweaves uncanny experiences with her patient, analyst and clinical consultant, a poetic remembrance of her Haitian grandmother and a meditation on the psychoanalytic encounter. Appollon and Merson are both candidates who speak to matters of race, identity, and psychoanalytic practice with passion and introspection. [Extracted from the article]

Dana Amir's paper, “The Chameleon Language of Perversion,” provides an opportunity to consider the discourse of perversion on two fronts: as a stalled mode of representation in the articulation of desire (Freud, 1905) and as an elusive harbinger of normative discourse in the psychoanalyst's countertransference. By drawing us into the intricacies of perverse communication, her paper invites us to elaborate a relational perspective on perversion that accounts for both qualities of discourse. I use clinical vignettes to argue that by holding the double meaning of countertransference, as discourse that aims for affect to be contained and represented and as a way of knowing endowed by the analyst's occupation of normative discourse, the relational analyst may coaxperversionfrom inert scene into the domain of object representation, making reparation to the idolized countertransference (Khan, 1989) so as to vest chameleon language with intersubjective capacity for recognition and meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a series of vignettes that span 30 years, I tackle the desire to be generative, an urge I came in contact with during an intergenerational romance and in the transference with a patient who, like me, struggles with the powerful seduction of flash-frozen desire: you want, but you can't. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given this opportunity to reflect onThe Bonds of Love(Benjamin, 1988) 25 years later, I read Benjamin's text as a bridge between political theory and psychoanalytic practice. In so doing, I hope to recognize Benjamin's profound influence on my thinking about recognition and destruction in collective erotic experience. I suggest that Benjamin opens the door to the investigation oferosin a collective unconscious. Yet, perhaps becauseThe Bonds of Lovepredates the rise of the Internet, aspects of recognition that connote libidinization by an erotic collective are sequestered from intrapsychic phenomena and housed in a protointersubjective realm,the ideal, sustaining a long held psychoanalytic priority on loss and narcissistic injury in subject formation. I champion opening the intrapsychic realm to the fantasmatic collective by discussing Grindr, an iPhone app that provides public space for homoerotic desire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines features of cyberreality that are reconfiguring loss and mourning. In turn, it queries a transformation in the nature of object loss that is taking place on the Internet. As we move from a reality based on the acceptance of loss and limit to one of infinite access, concrete losses may be less necessary to mourning than forms of access that propel the object's capacity for collective re-use toward immortality. If we focus too intently on loss at the level of the individual and the group, we will surely overlook how cyberspace is transforming loss into a collective event. Clinical examples illustrate how the burden of loss is increasingly mitigated by mourning's sudden twin: cybermourning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The editors of Studies in Gender and Sexuality are pleased to award the 2012 Symonds Prize to Shirly Bahar for “Coming Out as Queen: Jewish Identity, Queer Theory, and the Book of Esther.” Here, I introduce Bahar's article, as well as Erin Williams Hyman's “Hedging Against Heritage: Jewish Identity Reconsidered” and Jill Salberg's “Reimagining Yentl While Revisiting Feminism in the Light of Relational Approaches to Gender and Sex.” Taken together, these articles contrast generalized Jewish identity (an essentialist premise iterated in discourse when literary subjects come out as Jewish) with multiplicity that adheres in Jewishness when legible features of the subject such as sexuality and gender are brought into play through coming out. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Inspired by Kyoko Taniguchi's article (this issue), I deploy the Japanese concept amae to engage the mother as a collective erotic object. Amae also helps me express gratitude to my psychoanalytic mothers for their tireless efforts on behalf of this journal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cyberspace is provoking a dramatic shift in our cultural understanding of reality. A transition is taking place, from a reality marked by loss and limit to one experienced through infinite access. This paper begins to map Reality 2.0 with the conviction that we need to revisit traditional psychoanalytic concepts such as loss and fantasy within the framework of this new reality so that we may appreciate how online experience does and doesn't facilitate the formation of subjectivity and multiplicity. In Reality 2.0, access trumps the need to accept limits as a tool to self-discovery, and networking replaces containment as the bulwark of meaning. How then might we appreciate ways that online life turns what many see as a kind of psychic retreat into a generative space for psychoanalytic dialogue? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sorting among Stephen Seligman and Vittorio Lingiardi's wealth of links to my paper, I take up Seligman's question, 'What is authenticity when you don't even have to show your face to be on Facebook?' Inspired by insights from each of their commentaries, I turn to the question of the analyst's texuality and offer an approach to therapeutic disclosure when the metric of discovery is searching rather than loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this discussion, I situate Guralnik and Simeon's argument about depersonalization and interpellation among ways that different psychoanalytic theorists have understood the interaction of the psychic and social domains. I elaborate on what Guralnik and Simeon mean when they refer to the role of “the State” in dissociation, interpellation, and depersonalization. Upon showing how self-states simultaneously incorporate and resist the State, Guralnik and Simeon provide a clinical rationale to confront interpellation's “discursive instructions.” This leads me to explore the curious status of the term state in psychoanalytic theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following on a discussion of Botticelli's and Guss's (this issue) papers on anal sex and gay psychopolitical erotics, this paper takes up the questions: Do gay men, does anyone, experience their embodiment relationally? Is there an inter-embodiment to match intersubjectivity? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postmodern psychoanalysis differs from the original practice of postmodern writers in a way that highlights the particular demand placed on psychoanalytic theory: to mediate between traditional practice and theoretical innovation. The argument is made here that it is postmodern theory to which relational psychoanalysis turns for auto-critique and to expand the horizons of practice, a process of disciplinary growth that is evident in the roundtable on Bringing the Plague: Toward a Postmodern Psychoanalysis. This introduction locates the roundtable in a critical moment when postmodern theory, as it becomes an -ism in practice, copes with inevitable and necessary innovation and strives not to jettison the field's operational principles while retaining its critical edge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to Gediman's paper, I argue that disclosure is really not a choice. It happens all the time, revealing how that which is co-constructed has always already been there. One discloses that which has already been (in some unformulated way) disclosed. This entails a radically different understanding of what disclosure is, how it happens, when it is judicious to disclose, and what it means to interpret than was the case in the Freudian tradition. By contrasting Gediman's view of disclosure with a postmodern one, I argue that the relational perspective understands and structures knowledge differently than its Freudian forebear and that it is not possible to choose among paradigms. The clinical theory that emerges in relational practice is contrasted to Freudian technique-based theory. A strong case is made for the interdependence of theory and practice in relational psychoanalysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The STAT (signal transducer and activator of transcription) proteins play a crucial role in the regulation of gene expression, but their targets and the manner in which they select them remain largely unknown. Using chromatin immunoprecipitation and DNA microarray analysis (ChIP-chip), we have identified the regions of human chromosome 22 bound by STAT1 and STAT2 in interferon-treated cells. Analysis of the genomic loci proximal to these binding sites introduced new candidate STAT1 and STAT2 target genes, several of which are affiliated with proliferation and apoptosis. The genes on chromosome 22 that exhibited interferon-induced up- or down-regulated expression were determined and correlated with the STAT-binding site information, revealing the potential regulatory effects of STAT1 and STAT2 on their target genes. Importantly, the comparison of STAT1-binding sites upon interferon (IFN)-γ and IFN-α treatments revealed dramatic changes in binding locations between the two treatments. The IFN-α induction revealed nonconserved STAT1 occupancy at IFN-γ-induced sites, as well as novel sites of STAT1 binding not evident in IFN-γ-treated cells. Many of these correlated with binding by STAT2, but others were STAT2 independent, suggesting that multiple mechanisms direct STAT1 binding to its targets under different activation conditions. Overall, our results reveal a wealth of new information regarding IFN/STAT-binding targets and also fundamental insights into mechanisms of regulation of gene expression in different cell states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the process of reification whereby gay men recognize themselves to be gay, and offers a way of thinking about substance use among Chelsea Boys or urban gays. Concept of reification; Description of Chelsea Boys; Analysis of addiction among Chelsea Boys.

With the republication of Adrienne Harris' classic essay, "You must remember this" (Harris, 2009), Psychoanalytic Dialogues continues our new feature, Après Coup. By putting a paper from the early years of the journal in conversation with contemporary readers and writers, we hope to dive into the ways in which psychoanalysts forge relationality in spaces of complexity and contradiction over time, as our experiences- collective, dyadic, or solitary – are always nonlinear and multiply configured. This Apres Coup includes commentaries by Cleonie White, Ph.D. Ken Corbett, Ph.D. Shubha Herlekar, Psy.D. MFT, Victor Donas, M.D. Donnel Stern, Ph.D. and Giuseppe Civitarese, M.D. Ph.D. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifies and characterizes terreic acid, a quinone epoxide inhibitor of Bruton's tyrosine kinase (Btk). Use of in vitro assay to measure the activity that blocks the interaction between protein kinase C and terreic acid; Inhibition of enzymatic activity of Btk in mast cells and cell-free assays.

The document is an introduction to Issue 34:1 of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, written in November 2023. The authors acknowledge the recent conflict between Hamas and Israel and the impact it has had on communities worldwide, including within the field of psychoanalysis. They emphasize the importance of dialogue and recognition of the Other in the face of intergenerational trauma. The issue includes papers that explore topics such as enactment in therapy, the analyst's mortality, and working with traumatized Afghan students. The authors hope that these papers will facilitate a transformative dialogue for readers. [Extracted from the article]

To invite future contributions to the project taking shape in this special issue of Studies in Gender and Sexuality, I defer making the usual theoretical introductory comments on our topic, What Age is Desire? in preference for what might emerge among the articles as they read and are read, open to elaboration and close wounds, engender desire and spark controversy—as do barfly and passerby eyeing one another at the Glass Coffin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dilemmas and opportunities of interpellation and intelligibility play out also in the sexual domain. In 'Darren: Erotic Interludes in Political Transference,' Stephen Hartman shows how interpellation makes both him and Darren intelligible and therefore anxious: The power of discourse to legitimate desire means that you can lose your legitimacy and fall into abjection if you ever refuse your interpellation. Here Hartman, interpellated by The New York Times announcement of his marriage to another man, desexualizes and abjects his patient by interpellating his desire as a desire to be a married gay guy, a 'good gay' too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short editorial note introduces a panel titled "All About the Mother" that is being presented in its original conference format with papers by Orna Guralnik, Jade McGleughlin, Julie Leavitt, and Stephen Hartman. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, titled "Introduction," discusses the concept of splitting as a defense mechanism in psychoanalysis. The concept was first elaborated by Melanie Klein in her 1946 article, "Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms." Splitting refers to the separation or division of positive and negative experiences within the developing ego. Since Klein's formulation, other theorists have explored this concept in relation to borderline personality functioning, the development of endopsychic structure, and responses to unbearable experiences. The article highlights the relevance of splitting in understanding issues such as othering, whiteness, racism, and socio-cultural divides. The authors have invited various psychoanalytic thinkers to reflect on their use of the concept in clinical practice and in understanding the current world and professional communities. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the historical hierarchy and division of tasks among mental health practitioners in the United States, particularly in psychoanalytic settings. It highlights the role of psychiatrists as team leaders and primary investigators, social workers as attending to systems, and psychologists as data scientists. The article emphasizes the need to move away from these hierarchical structures and embrace diversity in personal and professional backgrounds and practices. It also explores the themes of belonging, home, and transformation in the context of a chaotic and unsettled world. The article includes personal reflections, autotheoretical essays, and discussions on the work of Adrienne Harris. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the upcoming 53rd Congress of the International Psychoanalytic Association in Cartagena, Colombia. The conference will feature a roundtable panel on psychoanalytic journals and their approaches to the conference's social and eco-conscious theme. The article also explores the emic and etic approaches to psychoanalysis, as well as the evolving nature of relational psychoanalysis. It highlights several papers that will be featured in the journal, including one on mutual processes in the relational matrix and another on the impact of COVID on a poetic approach to treatment. Additionally, the article discusses a paper that examines racism and white rage in American evangelical culture, and the differing perspectives on working from an emic or etic position. The journal also introduces a new series called Après Coup, which presents previously published papers followed by current reflections from diverse authors. [Extracted from the article]

This article, titled "Introduction," discusses the experiences of clinicians from the Post Doctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy at NYU who collaborated with the American University of Afghanistan to provide crisis intervention to Afghan students during the Taliban's takeover of Kabul in August 2021. The clinicians, led by program director Spyros Orfanos, initially intended to offer short-term support over Zoom but ended up having a more profound impact on everyone involved. The article includes narratives from three clinicians, as well as a letter written by Shaista Shams, a student who went from being in Kabul to a displaced person and eventually arriving in New York to complete her Master's degree. The panel reflects on the complexities, challenges, disillusionments, moments of fear, doubt, and hope encountered throughout this collaboration. [Extracted from the article]