"When I train candidates I always say start with Freud, learn the interpersonalist, learn the object relations folks, know from what you come, even if you want to be a radical interpersonalist, a radical relationalist, because having that stuff in your back pocket is organizing and creates an ideal to which you can aspire or choose not to follow, but at least you'll know what you're not following. My perspective on this stuff really comes from the idea that before we are free to break the rules, we need to know what the rules are and we need to be well grounded in them."

Episode Description: We begin by appreciating the evolution of some fundamental practices in psychoanalysis. We consider the meanings of 'rules' and 'guidelines'. Joyce shares with us her current thinking on answering patients' questions – for some, it's helpful, for others, not. We discuss the use of the word 'fantasy' with patients as contrasted with 'guesses' or 'imaginings'. Joyce considers the many ways that patients terminate their treatments and how frequently it does not accord with traditional models of ending. We consider reluctance to leave the treatment relationship from both sides of the couch – analysts, too, have needs satisfied in this work and can play a part in the nature of the ending. Joyce relates how some former patients remain in contact with their analysts, and that isn't necessarily problematic. For others, "being able to 'go it alone' represents an extraordinary achievement." She concludes that "termination remains an ideal worth holding onto. But loosely."

Our Guests: Joyce Slochower, Ph.D., ABPP, is Professor Emerita of Psychology at Hunter College & the Graduate Center, CUNY. Joyce is faculty and supervisor at the NYU Postdoctoral Program, the Steven Mitchell Center, the National Training Program of NIP (all in New York), the Philadelphia Center for Relational Studies in Philadelphia, and the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California in San Francisco. She has written Holding and Psychoanalysis: A Relational Perspective (1996) and Psychoanalytic Collisions (2006). She is co-Editor, with Lew Aron and Sue Grand, De-idealizing relational theory: a Critique from within and Decentering Relational Theory: A Comparative Critique (2018), both of which received the Gradiva award in 2019. Her latest book, Psychoanalysis and the Unspoken, was published in 2024. She is in private practice in Manhattan.

Recommended Readings:

Grand, S. (2009). Termination as necessary madness. Psychoanal. Dialogues, 19: 723–733.

Kantrowitz, J. (2025). A Personal View of Terminations and Endings. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 94:361-379

Levine, H. B. & Yanoff, J. A. (2004). Boundaries and postanalytic contacts in institutes. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 52:873–901.

Loewald (1988). Termination analyzable and unanalyzable. Psychoanal. Study Child, 43:155–166.

Peddler, J. R. (1988). Termination reconsidered. Int. J. Psychoanal., 69:495–505.

Schachter, J. (1992). Concepts of termination and post-termination patient analyst contact. Int. J. Psychoanal., 73:137–154.

Slochower, J. (2022). Sequels. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn., 70:845–873.

Slochower, J. (2024). Psychoanalysis and the Unspoken. NY, London: Routledge.

"I'm not suggesting that repression has lost its place as a fundamental defense mechanism. Repression remains central, coherent, and fundamental to the founding of the unconscious. It is what makes certain contents inaccessible to consciousness, and what we access as psychoanalysts through dreams, play, symptoms, and associations. That remains true. What I was observing, and I'm still observing more now, is something different. When I see children and adolescents that are more capable to work on a task while doing homework, and at the same time listening to music, and at the same time texting with somebody - I don't think that they are real. This is my point. I don't think they are real. This multitasking way of living is part of life today… The clinical question for us becomes this - when does this multiplicity become a symptom? When does it interfere with the capacity for depth, for intimacy, for a sustained emotional contact? I think that this is what we need to see, to study and to differentiate in our consulting room."

Episode Description: We consider how changes in our culture may impact the individual's intrapsychic space and from that the nature of the psychoanalytic encounter. Virginia comments on the diminishing of the paternal symbolizing function and with that a change in the 'rites of passage' that adolescents traverse - now the rituals are "created by the young people themselves" as contrasted with those passed down by their elders. This, she feels, has resulted in "intimacy becoming spectacle" and for many, the analytic session is where "the construction of intimacy may begin." She shares clinical material with us from 40 years ago and contrasts the nature of her interventions with her contemporary treatments. Now, "I appreciate the mystery in the process and that we create meaning with the patient." Virginia closes with seeing analytic treatment as "an invitation to a process of thinking that, to remain alive, must be rethought."

Our Guests: Virginia Ungar M.D., training analyst at the Buenos Aires Psychoanalytic Association (APdeBA). She specializes in child and adolescent analysis, was the Chair of the IPA's Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis Committee (COCAP) and of the IPA Committee for Integrated Training. She was awarded a Konex of Platinum in 2016. She is the former President of the International Psychoanalytic Association (2017-2021).

Recommended Readings:

Etchegoyen, H. (1986) The fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique, chapters 25 and 26, Karnac, 1991.

Meltzer, D. (1968). A note on analytic receptivity. In A. Hahn (Ed.), Sincerity and other works: Collected papers of Donald Meltzer, Karnac Books, 1994.

Meltzer, D. (1988). The apprehension of Beauty, chapters 1, 2, and 4, Clunie Press, Perthshire, 1988.

Sontag, S. (1966). Against Interpretation, Against Interpretation and Other Essays, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York.

Ungar, V. (2017) Letter from Argentina, Vol 98, 3, IJP, 2017

"We are a group of analysts working in the greater context of the analytic world, but as a group, we have a profound analytic group process that's evolved and in profoundly successful ways - we've become a group that contains one another, and deals with great difficulties. Mel has given a taste of where we go to an emotional authenticity that's very compelling… Somehow, we've gotten to a place where nobody seems to be hungry in the group. You're not hungry for affirmation or support, so that there isn't a sense that people are waiting to say something smart or do something smart or make a brilliant interpretation, and there's enough resources left over that the tendency is so powerful to look to enhance somebody else's sense of aliveness and creativity." J.P.

I feel very lucky in this group, because I received a gem of a gift that was unexpected. We were going along as a group in this wonderful way. I would look forward to speaking with everybody every four weeks. We got a lot of work done. We also became part of each other's lives in our own way. However, there was always reality around us that we had to cope with. And suddenly, last year, I had a catastrophic medical event in which I had routine surgery that went extremely well, and when I went to leave the hospital, I had a cardiac arrest, and then basically six weeks of ICU care, and lived because I was in a hospital. But it is this group that then took on even more of a meaning for me, because I felt the presence of everyone near me in this group always, and it did give me the sense that the group had also morphed into its own living, breathing entity that really kind of enveloped me at a very painful time. I realized we could go back and forth as a group, actually quite easily, between clinical work, psychoanalytic thinking, and the harsh realities of time, illness, whatever that would intrude or were surrounding us as a group. To me, this was kind of a miracle of a gift. It's been life-saving, really life-saving." P.W.

"Developing a sense of one another in how not only we talk, but who we are. That friends are people I feel I can be fully open with and not have to worry about it, to feel free and even when I say things that I might question or regret or feel self- conscious or embarrassed about with friends - it's held, and I feel this has happened in this group, that there is a way in which we very tenderly hold one another, and there's something about that space, perhaps it's an analytic space. I feel we do it with our patients, but I feel with our peers. It's a very precious thing indeed." M.M.

Episode Description: This episode of the podcast takes a step back from our usual focus on how an analytic mindset can improve the lives of those in our care - either on or off the couch. Today, we consider how we can and do care for ourselves and each other. We are a group of six analysts who have been meeting regularly for 10 years. We evolved from a thirty-year group originally devoted to the study of analytic writing. We now meet to share our lives and our work in what Peggy Warren calls "a living and breathing entity." We discuss "what we need as analysts to go on with this work", how time and illness has changed us as a group, how we feel we can share ourselves without inhibiting self-consciousness, and how what Mel Bornstein calls a 'love of life' can serve as an organizing spirit for what we do. We take up how the group is embedded into a creative process, individually and together. Jon Palmer closes our meeting by noting "there's a lot of love in this room - a necessary condition for us all to grow."

Our Guests: Stephen Bernstein, Jonathan Palmer, and Peggy Warren are on the faculty of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. Melvin Bornstein is on the faculty of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. Mark Moore is on the faculty of the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia, where Harvey Schwartz is also on the faculty, and of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York.

Watercolor by Jonathan Palmer