ISFN Book Presentation Series – 2022-2023 Event Archive
In support of
2022-2023 Book Series Presentations
October 1st, 2022
Author: Peter L. Rudnytsky
Mutual Analysis: Ferenczi, Severn, and the Origins of Trauma Theory. London: Routledge, 2022.
Moderator: Carlo Bonomi
Discussants: Adrienne Harris, Agnieszka Sobolewska
Sándor Ferenczi’s mutual analysis with Elizabeth Severn—the patient known as R.N. in the Clinical Diary—is one of the most controversial and consequential episodes in the history of psychoanalysis. In his latest groundbreaking work, Peter L. Rudnytsky draws on a trove of archival sources to provide a definitive scholarly account of this experiment, which constitutes a paradigm for relational psychoanalysis, as Freud’s self-analysis does for classical psychoanalysis. The first comprehensive study of Ferenczi’s mutual analysis with Severn, Rudnytsky’s book is a profound reexamination of Ferenczi’s relationship to Freud and an impassioned defense of Severn and Ferenczi’s views on the nature and treatment of trauma.
Peter L. Rudnytsky is Professor of English at the University of Florida and Head of the Department of Academic and Professional Affairs of the American Psychoanalytic Association. He is Editor of the History of Psychoanalysis series for Routledge and Coeditor of the Psychoanalytic Horizons series for Bloomsbury. He received the Gradiva Award for Reading Psychoanalysis: Freud, Rank, Ferenczi, Groddeck and has edited Elizabeth Severn’s The Discovery of the Self: A Study in Psychological Cure.
Carlo Bonomi Ph.D., is President of the International Sándor Ferenczi Network.
Adrienne Harris, Ph.D. is Faculty and Supervisor at New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. She is on the faculty and is a supervisor at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California. Adrienne is an Editor at Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and Studies In Gender and Sexuality. In 2012, she, Lewis Aron, and Jeremy Safran established the Sandor Ferenczi Center at the New School University. In collaboration with Lew Aron, Eyal Rozmarin and Steven Kuchuck, Adrienne co-edits the Book Series Relational Perspectives in Psychoanalysis, a series now with over 100 published volumes. She is an editor of the IPA e-journal Psychoanalysistoday.com, which is developing cross cultural communications among the five language groups in the IPA. She has written on topics in gender and development, analytic subjectivity and self-care, primitive states and the analytic community in the shadow of the First World War. Her current work is on analytic subjectivity, on intersectional models of gender and sexuality, and on ghosts.
Agnieszka Sobolewska is a research-and-teaching assistant at the University of Warsaw, a junior visiting fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna (Jozef Tischner Award 2022), and an associated researcher at French Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences (Cefres) in Prague (2022-2023). She finishes her Ph.D. under the title Theories and Practices of Psychoanalysis in Central Europe: Between Self-Analysis, Life Writing, and Fiction at Sorbonne University and the University of Warsaw. Sobolewska is the author of The Images of Blackness. Imperial Imagination and Racial Differences in German Culture of the 19th and 20th centuries. Anthropology of Hostility Seven Sketches (Warsaw University Press, 2020), Julian Ochorowicz Self-Economies. Everyday Writing Practices of the Polish Psychologist (Warsaw University Press, 2021) and Imago of Psychoanalysis: An Anthology (Słowo/obraz terytoria, 2021).
November 5th, 2022
Author: Clara Mucci
Resilience and Survival: Understanding and Healing Intergenerational Trauma. London: Confer Books, 2022
Moderator: Carlo Bonomi
Discussant: Howard Steele
In this unique book, Mucci investigates several human practices, processes and features that aid our capacity to resist, combat, adapt to or counter extreme traumatisation. These features and capabilities come into play at the interface between vulnerability and resilience, leading to a deeper understanding of the mechanism of resilience itself. The book also explores the positive effects of moral commitment, empathy and altruism, and psychodynamic intergenerational therapy on trauma, showing that acts and feelings of compassion and forgiveness, and an appreciation for and use of higher order symbolic structures, such as art and creativity, together contribute to building and reinforcing resilience and social solidarity.
Clara Mucci is a Professor of Dynamic Psychology at the University of Bergamo, Italy, and a Training and Supervising Analyst at Società Italiana di Psicoanalisi e Psicoterapia Sándor Ferenczi. She is the author of Beyond Individual and Collective Trauma and Borderline Bodies, among other books.
Carlo Bonomi Ph.D., is President of the International Sándor Ferenczi Network.
Howard Steele is Professor of Psychology, Co-Director, Center for Attachment Research, New School for Social Research, New York.
December 3rd, 2022
Author: Sally Weintrobe
Psychological Roots of the Climate Crisis. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.
Moderator: Robert Prince
Discussants: Endre Koritar, Ian Miller
Psychological Roots of the Climate Crisis tells the story of a fundamental fight between a caring and an uncaring imagination. It helps us to recognise the uncaring imagination in politics, in culture and also in ourselves. Weintrobe argues that achieving the shift to greater care requires us to stop colluding with Exceptionalism, the rigid psychological mindset largely responsible for the climate crisis. People in this mindset believe that they are entitled to have the lion’s share and that they can ‘rearrange’ reality with magical omnipotent thinking whenever reality limits these felt entitlements. While this book’s subject is grim, its tone is reflective, ironic, light and at times humorous. It is free of jargon, and full of examples from history, culture, literature, poetry, everyday life and the author’s experience as a psychoanalyst, and a professional life that has been dedicated to helping people to face difficult truths.
Sally Weintrobe is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society and she Chairs the International Psychoanalytical Association’s Climate Committee. In 2021 she received an award from the IPA for her work in bringing psychoanalytic ideas to an understanding of the climate crisis. She edited (2012) Engaging with Climate Change: Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, London: Routledge and the New Library of Psychoanalysis, short listed for the Gradiva Award. She co-authored (2022) Climate Psychology: A matter of Life and Death, Bicester: Phoenix Press.
Robert Prince Ph.D., ABPP is Clinical Associate Professor, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis where he is also past co-chair of the Interpersonal Track and one of the founding members of the Trauma Studies Specialization. He is Past-President of Psychologist-Psychoanalyst Clinicians and an Associate Editor of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis. He has written 50 papers and his books include The Legacy of the Holocaust and The Death of Psychoanalysis. His most recent papers have been on the effects of the pandemic and on the Fascist mind and its creation of an alternative reality.
Endre Koritar, MD, FRCP(C), FIPA, is Clinical Asst Prof University of British Columbia, training and supervising analyst of the Western Psychoanalytic Society Institute (Vancouver), Associate Editor AJP, member Executive Board ISFN, member National Training Cte. of Canadian Institute Psychoanalysis.
Ian S. Miller, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst and writer based in Dublin. His most recent book is Clinical Spinoza: Integrating his Philosophy with Contemporary Therapeutic Practice (Routledge, 2022). He is also the author of Defining Psychoanalysis: Achieving a Vernacular Expression (Karnac, 2016); On Minding and Being Minded: Experiencing Bion & Beckett (Karnac, 2015); and co-author of Beckett and Bion: The (Im)patient Voice in Psychotherapy and Literature (Karnac, 2013) as well as On the Daily Work of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (Routledge, 2018). He serves as Associate Editor on the American Journal of Psychoanalysis.
February 4th, 2023
Editors: Aleksandar Dimitrijevic, Michael Buchholz
From the Abyss of Loneliness to the Bliss of Solitude: Cultural, Social and Psychoanalytic Perspectives
Moderator: Carlo Bonomi
Discussant: Jay Frankel
“Highlighting the pervasive presence of painful loneliness and a comparable absence of contemplative solitude in our modern society, Dimitrijevic and Buchholz offer us a multifaceted text on these important human experiences. They have enlisted a roster of distinguished international colleagues who, together with the two editors themselves, elucidate various aspects of loneliness in adults and children, deploying the perspectives of epidemiology, neurology, child developmental studies, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis. The result is a nuanced tapestry of thought that underscores the tragedy of psychic isolation as well as the triumph of regenerative retreat from the cacophony of constant interaction. This is a superb addition to our literature!”
Salman Akhtar, MD, Professor of Psychiatry, Jefferson Medical College, Training & Supervising Analyst, Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia
Aleksandar Dimitrijević, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. He works as a lecturer at the International Psychoanalytic University and in private practice in Berlin. He has given lectures, seminars, university courses, and conference presentations throughout Europe and the US. He is the author of many conceptual and empirical papers about attachment theory and research, psychoanalytic education, psychoanalysis and the arts, some of which were translated into German, Hungarian, Italian, Slovenian, Spanish, and Turkish. He has also edited or co-edited twelve books or special journal issues. His next projects are the three-volume Hearing Silencing (co-edited with Michael B. Buchholz) and Balint-Jones Correspondence, both to be published by Phoenix.
Michael B. Buchholz, fully trained psychoanalyst, social scientist, former Professor for social psychology and head of the dissertation program at IPU (International Psychoanalytic University), Berlin, Germany; now Senior-Professor at IPU and head of “Junctim”, the first affiliate institute at IPU https://junktim.online. Michael has practical interest in clinical psychology, worked more than 20 years as a family therapist and trained clinicians and social workers in family therapy. He wrote about metaphors in clinical talk and deepened his interest in linguistics, organized many conferences about “talk and cure” in order to better understand the performance of healing conversation. His interests in social science led him to give lectures about pandemics in history and therefrom results the loneliness- project together with Aleksandar Dimitrijevic.
Jay Frankel is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, an Adjunct Associate Professor and Clinical Consultant in New York University’s Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and an Associate Editor for the journal Psychoanalytic Dialogues. He is a co-editor of the book Sándor Ferenczi’s Influence on Contemporary Psychoanalytic Traditions (Routledge, 2018), co-author of Relational Child Psychotherapy (Other Press, 2002), and author of dozens of journal articles and book chapters on topics including the work of Sándor Ferenczi, psychological trauma, play, the therapeutic relationship, authoritarianism, and others. He is in private practice.
March 11th, 2023
Authors: Alberto Fergusson and Miguel Gutiérrez-Peláez
Sándor Ferenczi: A Contemporary Introduction
Moderator: Mark Poster
Discussant: Annie Reiner
“The book presents Ferenczi as a person; his discovery of psychoanalysis and his relationship with Freud; the theoretical and clinical novelties he introduced to psychoanalysis; his deep political and social commitment, striving for the democratization of psychoanalysis; and the great relevance of his thought and perspective for the future. It also talks about his repression in the history of psychoanalysis as well as his influence in the following generations of psychoanalysts. The reader will be presented with the most relevant historical milestones and concepts, as well as an informed viewpoint of his legacy, the contemporary readings of his work and the institutions and associations that continue following the path traced by l’enfant terrible of psychoanalysis.” – Routledge
Alberto Fergusson M.D. is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst working in Colombia and in the U.S. In 1982, he founded the Institute of Accompanied Auto-analysis. An advocate of the human rights of the so-called mentally ill, he developed “Accompanied Self-Rehabilitation”, also called “Accompanied Auto- Analysis” (AA), a unique alternative to traditional psychiatric treatments. He is the Founder FUNGRATA in Colombia and FAS in Washington DC, innovative institutions that develop therapeutic strategies to accompany so-called mentally ill people. He worked on the concepts of “therapeutic towns” and “mutual recovery”. He has been actively involved in the peace process in Colombia both in the negotiations with the National Liberation Army (ELN) and in the Truth Commission. He has worked as a consultant for the Department of Mental Health in Washington DC and in Middlebury (Vermont) teaching the method of “Accompanied Auto-analysis”. Full professor of the Universidad del Rosario (Colombia), where he has created the Center for Psychosocial Studies (CEPPS). Founding member of the Colombian group “Aperturas en Psicoanálisis” (“Openings in Psychoanalysis”).
Miguel Gutiérrez-Peláez PhD, is a psychologist and psychoanalyst working in Bogotá, Colombia. He is Full Professor of the Center for Psychosocial Studies (CEPSS) and Psychology Program of the Universidad del Rosario (Colombia). Dr. Gutiérrez-Peláez is a psychologist from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and obtained his “Masters degree in psychoanalysis” and “PhD in psychology” from the Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina). He is a member of the World Association of Psychoanalysis and the New Lacanian School. He is the author of various publications in indexed journals on issues related to trauma, art and mental illness, and psychosocial interventions in armed conflict scenarios. He is author of the books Confusion of Tongues. A Return to Sandor Ferenczi (Routledge, 2018), Art and psychoanalysis. Unique (artistic) inventions of singular subjects (Universidad del Rosario, 2018, co-edited with Beatriz García Moreno) and Sandor Ferenczi. A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, 2022, co- authored with Alberto Fergusson).
Dr. Annie Reiner is a senior faculty member and training analyst at The Psychoanalytic Center of California (PCC) in Los Angeles. Her work was greatly influenced by Wilfred Bion, with whom she studied in the 1970’s. She lectures throughout the world, is published in numerous journals and anthologies, and is the author of three psychoanalytic books, including—The Quest for Conscience & The Birth of the Mind (Karnac 2009), and Bion and Being: Passion and the Creative Mind (Karnac 2012), which James Grotstein (2012) said ranked Dr. Reiner, “… high among Bion scholars.” Her most recent book is, Bion’s Theories of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, 2022). Dr. Reiner is also a poet and painter. In addition to her psychoanalytic writings, she is the author of a book of short stories, four books of poems, and six children=s books which she also illustrated. She supervises and maintains a psychoanalytic practice in Beverly Hills, California.
Mark F. Poster, MD is a member of the PINE Psychoanalytic Society of New England. He is trained in internal medicine, oncology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis. He has written about Sandor Ferenczi’s relationship with Georg Groddeck, war trauma, and the role of “common factors” in psychotherapy.
He is retired from the staff of the Veterans Administration Boston Healthcare System and from the faculty of Harvard Medical School where he was an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry. He lives in West Newton, Massachusetts.
April 1st, 2023
Authors: Raluca Soreanu, Jakob Staberg, and Jenny Willner
Ferenczi Dialogues: On Trauma and Catastrophe
Moderator: Endre Koritar
Discussant: Adrienne Harris
Ferenczi Dialogues: On Trauma and Catastrophe presents the contribution of Sándor Ferenczi to a psychoanalytic theory of trauma and discusses the philosophical, political and clinical implications of Ferenczi’s thinking. Ferenczi’s work pluralises the notion of catastrophe, as being both destructive and a turning point. Ferenczi Dialogues addresses Ferenczi’s work in terms of thinking in times of crises. The authors discuss insurgent insights in Ferenczi’s theory and situate his legacy within a broad interdisciplinary landscape. They are in dialogue with one another, within three sets of triangular exchanges around the idea of catastrophe. Each set combines different disciplinary angles and methods: clinical psychoanalysis, history of science, literary theory, and philosophy.
Raluca Soreanu is a psychoanalyst, member of the Círculo Psicanalítico do Rio de Janeiro, and Professor of Psychoanalytic Studies at the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex. Her work sits at the intersection of psychosocial studies, psychoanalysis, social theory and medical humanities. She has a particular interest in the social, political and cultural applications of psychoanalysis. She is the author of Working-through Collective Wounds: Trauma, Denial, Recognition in the Brazilian Uprising (Palgrave, 2018). Between 2022 and 2027, she is leading an interdisciplinary research project FREEPSY: Free Clinics and a Psychoanalysis for the People: Progressive Histories, Collective Practices, Implications for Our Times (UKRI Frontier Research Grant). She is an Academic Associate of the Freud Museum London.
Jakob Staberg is a practising psychoanalyst and psychotherapist, and a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association. He is an assistant professor for Comparative Literature and lecturer in Aesthetics at Södertörn University, south of Stockholm. Staberg is working in the field of aesthetics, literature, and psychoanalytic theory. He received his PhD in 2002 at Stockholm University. In 2009, Staberg published the monograph Sjukdomens estetik [The Aesthetics of Illness]. Staberg is currently working on a project that seeks to rethink the genealogy of psychoanalysis. In particular, he has devoted himself to the relationship between Freud and Ferenczi from the perspective of the problem of transference. He has published on this topic in Psyche. Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse und ihre Anwendungen 5(74), 2020.
Jenny Willner is an assistant professor for Comparative Literature at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. Her research is located at the intersection between literary theory, history of science, and psychoanalytic theory. She studied German Literature and Philosophy in Berlin and New York and earned her PhD at Freie Universität Berlin with the study Wortgewalt. Peter Weiss und die deutsche Sprache (Konstanz UP, 2014). Currently, she is completing her second monograph, which discusses the political dimension of phylogenetic speculation in Ferenczi and Freud. She has published on this topic in Psyche. Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse und ihre Anwendungen 11(74), 2020, in RISS. Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse 94, 2020, and in Psychoanalysis and History 24(2), 2022.
Adrienne Harris, PhD, is Faculty and Supervisor at New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. She is on the faculty and is a supervisor at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California. Adrienne is an Editor at Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and Studies In Gender and Sexuality. In 2012, she, Lewis Aron, and Jeremy Safran established the Sandor Ferenczi Center at the New School University. In collaboration with Lew Aron, Eyal Rozmarin and Steven Kuchuck, Adrienne co-edits the Book Series Relational Perspectives in Psychoanalysis, a series now with over 100 published volumes. She is an editor of the IPA e-journal Psychoanalysistoday.com, which is developing cross cultural communications among the five language groups in the IPA. She has written on topics in gender and development, analytic subjectivity and self-care, primitive states and the analytic community in the shadow of the First World War. Her current work is on analytic subjectivity, on intersectional models of gender and sexuality, and on ghosts.
April 29th, 2023
Author: Howard Levine
Affect, Representation and Language: Between the Silence and the Cry
Moderator: Giselle Galdi
Discussant: Endre Koritar and Judy Eekhoff
The terms “unrepresented” and “unrepresented states” are increasingly being referred to in psychoanalytic discourse, without our having established a generally agreed upon consensus about their definition, use or meaning. While these particular designations were never used by Freud, a careful reading of his work reveals them to be qualities that characterize the initial state of both the drive and perception. The chapters in this book attempt to place these terms in a clinically useful, metapsychological perspective by reviewing their conceptual origin in Freud and examining their elaboration and clinical relevance in the work of Bion, Winnicott and Green.
Howard B. Levine is a member of APSA, PINE, the Contemporary Freudian Society, on the faculty of NYU Post-Doc’s Contemporary Freudian Track, on the Editorial Board of the IJP and Psychoanalytic Inquiry, editor-in-chief of the Routledge Wilfred Bion Studies Book Series and in private practice in Brookline, Massachusetts. He is the author of Transformations de l’Irreprésentable (Ithaque 2019) and Affect, Representation and Language: Between the Silence and the Cry (Routledge 2022) and editor of The Post-Bionian Field Theory of Antonino Ferro (Routledge 2022) and The Freudian Matrix of Andre Green. Towards A Psychoanalysis For The 21st Century by André Green (Routledge/IPA forthcoming). His co-edited books include Unrepresented States and the Construction of Meaning (Karnac 2013); On Freud’s Screen Memories (Karnac 2014); The Wilfred Bion Tradition (Karnac 2016); Bion in Brazil. (Karnac 2017); Andre Green Revisited: Representation and the Work of the Negative (Karnac 2018); Covidian Life (2021 Phoenix); and Psychoanalysis of the Psychoanalytic Frame Revisited: A New Look at Bleger’s Classical Work (Routledge/IPA, 2022).
Endre Koritar, MD, FRCP(C), FIPA, is a training and supervising analyst with the Western Canada Psychoanalytic Society Institute. He is an Assistant Clinical Professor of the University of British Columbia affiliated with the Department of Psychiatry. He is on the Board of Directors of the ISFN, the National Council of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, the National Training Committee, and an Associate Editor of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis. He is interested in researching and elaborating on the ideas of Sándor Ferenczi, who was a harbinger of contemporary psychoanalytic theory and technique.
Judy Eekhoff, PhD, FIPA is an IPA certified training and supervising psychoanalyst and a licensed child psychologist. She is a full faculty member of Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society & Institute and Seattle Psychoanalytic Society & Institute.She has a private practice in Seattle, Washington, USA where she teaches, writes, and consults. She is the author of numerous papers and two books: Trauma and Primitive Mental States: An Object Relations Perspective (2019) and Bion & Primitive Mental States: Trauma and the Symbiotic Link. (in press: Routledge). Dr. Eekhoff is on the editorial board of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis.
Giselle Galdi, PhD, is a psychologist, psychoanalyst, and the Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis, which is publishing its 81st volume in 2021. She is a Training and Supervising Analyst and former Director of Training at the American Institute for Psychoanalysis, former Director of the Trauma Treatment Center of the Karen Horney Clinic, in New York City. She is a member of APsaA, IPA, AAP, AIP, the Sándor Ferenczi Center of the New School in New York City and a Board member of the International Sándor Ferenczi Network. She is also in private practice in New York City.
(€ 30, 50, 100 or 150)