American Journal of Psychoanalysis最新文献

In 2023, THE A-SANTAMARIA PSICOANALISIS MEXICO ASSOCIATION planned the Online Conversations of W. Bion to generate dialogues with outstanding colleagues about the divergences and convergences of Bion with the work of André Green, Jean Laplanche, Ignacio Matte Blanco and D.W. Winnicott. The need to share thoughts about these authors' works and their links with others, facilitated widespread international dialogues about these authors and placed them all in a field of exchange, debate and challenge. The Online Conversations underlined the new dimensions in which Bion and Winnicott placed psychoanalytic theory and technique. Five outstanding presentations illustrate their understanding and grasping of these dimensions, each followed by an author exchange. These authors provide an in-depth inquiry into a wide range of topics: Angela Joyce looks at object constancy and absence through the lens of Winnicott's (1977) The Piggle; Dominque Scarfone examines the concept of contact barriers among Freud, Bion and Winnicott; Howard B. Levine discusses absence, failure and the negative in the work of Bion, Winnicott and Green; Lesley Caldwell links the works of Bion and Winnicott in addressing being alone and with others, and communicating and not communicating; finally, Rudi Vermote shows how Bion's and Winnicott's views on regression and formlessness complement each other.

From the perspective of a poet and first-year psychoanalytic training candidate, this paper develops Jeremy Safran's ideas about the dialectic between psychoanalysis and Buddhism by drawing an analogy between their processes and those of a poetry practice to define an alternative to pathological dissociation under capitalist systems of value. The paper details the writer's experience of working a day job in an office and the pathological dissociation which she subsequently attempts to overcome and critique through writing poetry. Various poems written at work are shared and analyzed as evidence. Drawing from Safran's edited volume, Psychoanalysis and Buddhism, the author then identifies aspects of Zen Buddhist meditation practice and the psychoanalytic process that focus on connecting with reality, however conflicted, as opposed to escaping it. This paper was written under the mentorship of the psychoanalyst and Zen teacher Barry Magid.

This introduction provides an overview to this special issue honoring the work and legacy of Jeremy D. Safran. Born of the Jeremy Safran Memorial Conference, held on April 2nd, 2023, this issue features a wide range of contributions from leaders in the field, former students, and early career professionals whose work engages and develops central ideas from Safran's work and reflects on his impact on their own clinical work and scholarship. Themes center around the three domains of Safran's major contributions: pedagogy; psychotherapy integration; and Buddhism, spirituality, and psychoanalysis. We observe among the contributions an experiential reconnecting with the deeply relational commitments of our friend and colleague.

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.