At A Time Like This, We’re Singing?
Manuscript in search of a publisher, 2024, TBD
The attack on Israel by Hamas colored a treatment of an young Jewish patient, changing the treatment relationship into a deeper one. I reflect on the way I was dealing with my own feelings regarding the suffering in the Middle East. The essay showcases a transformative moment in treatment. It then unpacks the management of complex, painful feelings secondary to the intersection of the personal and the political.
CAN WE HUG? The Vibrancy and Vicissitudes of Patients in Person: Sifting Through the Rubble of Covid, Psychoanalysis, Self and Context, in press, 2024
What makes the first in-person meetings so extraordinary for the therapist, patients, and students? Meeting again elicits profound and overwhelming feelings of all types, from anxiety and self-consciousness to delight and joy. We experience release and relief upon returning to “real life.” What makes these meetings so profound?
The safety of the traditional and familiar psychoanalytic holding environment was disrupted in ways we could have never predicted. All of us, therapists and patients alike, were terrified following the wide-ranging sequelae from the deadly disease.
The impact was especially dramatic for those who remained in the NYC metropolitan area, the epicenter of the pandemic in the USA. I deconstruct the cascade of assaults on our lifestyles and our psyches resulting from lockdown during the Covid pandemic.
I consider how the field of psychoanalysis has changed given the shared trauma, advent of universal telehealth and reshaping or even dissolution of traditional boundaries.
The Intrafamilial Holocaust Within Me: Antisemitism as experienced by a non observant Jew, Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 21: 258-263, 2024.
I chronicle a personal effect of an avalanche of events representing antisemitism and intergenerational trauma prior to the midterm elections in 2018. My father’s childhood flight from pogroms in Ukraine, the ascendance of Trump, and antisemitic riots and shootings in the USA plummeted me into a state in which I unconsciously channeled his feelings and experience of 100 years ago.
The Pandemic, the Protests, the Chaos: A destabilizing effect on the analyst, American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 82(4): 592-617, 2022.
In May, 2020, within the cultural and emotionally regressive chaos of the pandemic, the analyst witnessed a violent Black Lives Matter protest. Myriad unprocessed feelings subsequently impacted her handling of the treatment of a patient who abruptly left a session to attend a protest herself. The analyst describes her personal experience and the cascade of events that affected the treatment.
She suggests that analysts can be armed with the awareness that enactments are more likely to happen when the analyst, as well the patient, are under extreme duress as is the case in the time of Covid. She describes some of the forces that were specific to this case and her own personal embroilment. She then broadens the discussion to other analysts’ reports of overwhelming pandemic experiences, and the corresponding effect on the work. She also elucidates the importance of the frame for therapy.
AAPCSW Newsletter book review, Fall 2020: Treating the Eating Disorder Self: A Comprehensive Model for the Social Work Therapist, by Mary Anne Cohen, LCSW, NASW Press, 2020.
Digital Communication in Psychoanalysis: An Oxymoron? Psychoanalytic Social Work, 27 (1): 1-16, 2020.
Texts and emails can create treatment dilemmas. This is especially the case when impulsively employed by patient or therapist.
Incongruent Feeling States in Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 39, (3-4): 268-275, 2019.
Analysts occasionally find that we have dreamt of a patient or experienced feelings in sessions that appear to have nothing to do with the feelings or content presented by the patient. What do we make of this?
AAPCSW Newsletter book review, Spring 2018: French Toast for Breakfast: Declaring Peace with Emotional Eating, Second edition, by Mary Anne Cohen, LCSW, New Forge Press, 2016.
"I Hate You, Mommy!” What To Do When Our Kids Are Mad: Modern Analytic Parenting, 2010.
Modern Psychoanalysis teaches us how we turn anger against ourselves, and its antidote; constructive management of aggression. This is a crucial aspect of parenting...
Maternal Conflicts Activated by the Child’s Separation-Individuation: A Maturational Opportunity, Annals of Modern Psychoanalysis. 2(2), 2004.
The mother’s emotional availability during the crucial developmental phase of separation-individuation is limited by her own unresolved separation problems...
Psychoanalytic Supervision: The Sequential Resolution of Candidate and Patient Resistances, Annals of Modern Psychoanalysis. 1(2): 185-209, 2002.
This project focuses on three issues:
The disguised expression of infantile, murderous rage by a preoedipal patient.
A beginning analyst's countertransference resistances to experiencing and verbalizing appropriately the patient’s hate and her own.
The resolution of resistances through supervision. While this patient typically generated particularly powerful negative reactions, ultimately her health, function in work, enjoyment of leisure time, and ability to relate to the analyst, family and friends, all improved dramatically.
A Case Dynamics Schema (CDS) was created specifically for this project to organize and follow the sequential flow of the patient resistances, countertransference resistances, supervisory interventions and new patient behaviors signifying resistance resolution.
Complex Problems Require Complex Solutions: Donnie: A Life Apart, in Harm Reduction Psychotherapy: A New Treatment for Drug and Alcohol Problems, ed. Andrew Tatarsky, Jason Aronson, NY, 2002.
The article chronicles the successful 6-year treatment of a poly-addicted, socially isolated young man who had been severely and repeatedly traumatized through abandonment, sexual and physical abuse and neglect during early childhood.
Becoming Able to Feel Hate: The Treatment of a Psychotic, Somatizing Patient, Modern Psychoanalysis, 15:63–78, 1990.
A study of the successful treatment of a severely disturbed homicidal and suicidal woman. All psychoanalysts sooner or later must deal with patients whose intense, unacknowledged suicidal and homicidal wishes lead them to commit self-destructive or object-destructive acts...
The Alcoholic's Self Destructiveness and the Therapist's Role in Mobilizing Survival Energies, Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly, Summer, 1986.
The alcoholic is caught up in a life-threatening course of compulsive self destructive behavior which he is powerless to stop on his own...
The Compatibility of the Disease Concept with a Psychodynamic Approach in the Treatment of Alcoholism, Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly, Spring, 1985.
Controversy exists regarding treatment approaches to alcoholism. The disease model or the psychodynamic model have been advocated as though they were mutually exclusive. This paper discusses how both can be utilized...
Group Treatment of Substance Abusers in the Mental Health Service of a Health Maintenance Organization: Health Insurance Plan of Greater New York, Chapter in Social Work in Health Settings: Practice in Context, ed. Toba Schwaber Kerson, Longman, Inc., 1982.
Seven substance abusing patients in differing stages of use and recovery were put into a time-limited therapy group. At the end of the group the two sober members of the group started using again, suggesting that such groups need to be more heavily weighted with recovering people or made heterogeneous in stages of recovery.
How to Conduct an Alcoholism-Focused Intake: A Verbatim Illustration, Social Work Treatment of Alcohol Problems, Monograph #5 of Treatment Series, Rutgers Center for Alcohol Studies, 1984.
Two verbatim intakes of the same patient are offered; one focusing on the patient's presenting problem of her troubled relationship with her husband and the other focused on the woman's drinking. The recordings show the efficacy of focusing on the drinking first to resolve the woman's problems.
The Decision Group: A Technique for Beginning Treatment in an Alcoholism Clinic, Health and Social Work, November, 1979.
The Decision Group was designed to fill the needs of individuals applying for treatment at an alcoholism outpatient clinic and to reduce time lost to the clinic as a result of broken appointments. The group succeeded in engaging patients in treatment, motivating them to accept identification as alcoholics, and maintaining high attendance. The author describes the group's accomplishments and suggests ways that future groups could avoid problems encountered in running the Decision Group .
Social Workers as ‘Enablers’ in the Treatment of Alcoholics, with S.L.A. Straussner, Social Casework, January, 1978.
Seeking underlying causes to explain the disease of alcoholism detracts from the treatment process and can enable continued drinking behavior.