American Journal of Psychoanalysis最新文献

The sense of agency, our felt sense of authorship for our actions, is a difficult concept to define, yet its faltering stands at the heart of psychopathology. Historically undertheorized by psychoanalysis and typically positioned opposite relatedness by clinical psychology, Jeremy Safran conceived of agency and relatedness as paradoxically related. This paper pays tribute to Safran's ideas by taking his writings on agency as a starting point to elaborate how agency forms, and goes awry, in the relational crucible of early life. In doing so, the paper draws on the developmental theory of Winnicott, empirical research on embodied agency from adjacent fields of study, and Safran's clinical phenomenology.

This paper reflects the legacy of Jeremy Safran's application of Buddhist principles to clinical practice and supervision. The rebirth of his life and work in the clinical work and supervision of his students is examined. The paper explores transformation or enlightenment in cyclical spaces of loss and suffering or samsara.

In this duet of two voices honoring Jeremy Safran's legacy, the authors celebrate some points of resonance between Sándor Ferenczi's groundbreaking relational interventions and Safran's approach to the therapeutic relationship as the heart of healing. Karen Starr first highlights Ferenczi's now well-known creative experimentation with technique and his emphasis on and care for the relational dimension of psychoanalytic treatment. Jill Bresler then links Safran's career-long dedication to the therapeutic alliance to Starr's introductory remarks, honoring Safran and Ferenczi's shared dedication to expanding options in clinical practice through focus on the relationship. Recalling Safran's naming Ferenczi as a key figure in psychotherapy integration's origin story, Bresler reflects on her own learning from Safran's groundbreaking transtheoretical research into the mutative aspects of psychotherapy and his translating a psychoanalytic focus on the therapeutic relationship to CBT researchers and practitioners.

Dr. Jeremy Safran had a unique talent to seamlessly weave together clinical work with his broad knowledge of philosophy, history, and theology. Alongside his commitment to researching the minutest clinical interactions, he was conscious of the broad values of the nature of the good life that underpinned his analytic approach. This paper will explore the concepts of the enchanted unconscious, clinical impasses, negotiation, and surrender, suggesting that these concepts together provide insight into Safran's larger philosophy of life. It will then provide the approach to these concepts of the Rebbes of Ishbitz/Radzin, a school of Polish Hasidic thought. It will conclude with an exploration of how both Safran's psychoanalytic approach and the Ishbitz/Radzin Rebbes' Hasidic approach to the Torah provide distinct insights and applications of these concepts, which can be mutually enriching for both disciplines.

Psychoanalysis involves studying how people maintain not knowing what they "know." As a result, how psychoanalytic psychotherapists orient toward what their patients may be experiencing but cannot say is at the core of psychoanalytic praxis. Jeremy Safran's unique psychoanalytic sensibilities were a model for how to yield to feeling states and relational dynamics that are at the heart of therapeutic action, but which all too frequently get bypassed. This brief recollection highlights how Safran's commitment to open inquiry and mutuality-not just with his patients but also with his students-continues to impact the field.

This paper honors Jeremy Safran's legacy of scholarship and pedagogy through the lens of his emphasis on rupture and repair. Challenging a Freudian rendering of mourning as ultimately giving up a lost object, the author draws on Nicholas Abraham and Maria Torok's application of Sandor Ferenczi's concept of introjection to offer a relational rendering of the grieving process.

The following is a meditative reflection on an anecdote from Jeremy Safran's Psychoanalysis and Buddhism. Moving through Safran's description of an important moment in his development as a student of Buddhism, the author weaves images, practices, and ways of being and feeling into an homage to Safran's legacy integrating psychoanalytic and Buddhist praxis and epistemology.

The author reflects on how his relationship with Jeremy Safran during graduate school continues to inform his thinking around pedagogy and clinical training. Safran's emphasis on independent inquiry is highlighted, especially regarding the importance of seeking out perspectives and evidence that come into conflict with one's primary orientation. The author argues that Safran's pedagogical stance could be described as inhabiting a state of "pre-judgment," which is essential in both clinical and pedagogical contexts in the psychoanalytic field.