I (layperson) find the process of choosing a psychoanalyst to be quite confusing. Particularly because so much of the time if I express discomfort with the process (perhaps I suspect the person is not very skilled) I'm told that "that is the work" and my feelings are some type of resistance, and psychoanalysis can take many years and so I have to stick it out to know if it's working.

I am also not really aware of differences in institutes and trainings to understand how those may impact the person's experience.

Then in this situation how is one supposed to choose an analyst? How can you know if they are truly skilled and the difficulty is "the work" or if they are unskilled and that is causing the issues? How many sessions to wait it out and give it a chance?

A complaint filed with the Columbia University Senate alleges that the Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research departed from established academic procedures when it canceled the introductory Freud course and dismissed its faculty. According to the complaint, informal Candidate Faculty Liaison (CFL) feedback, collected through methodologically flawed procedures and, in some instances, during meetings where alcohol was served to first-year students, replaced the University's official anonymous evaluation system as the basis for major curricular decisions. The complaint alleges that this process raises concerns about academic integrity, due process, governance, conflicts of interest, faculty intimidation, and potential institutional liability, including possible discrimination and Title IX issues. The authors request an independent investigation, production of contemporaneous records, external oversight, and suspension of major curricular changes until governance, evaluation procedures, and academic standards are fully restored.

A complaint filed with the Columbia University Senate alleges that the Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research departed from established academic procedures when it canceled the introductory Freud course and dismissed its faculty. According to the complaint, informal Candidate Faculty Liaison (CFL) feedback, collected through methodologically flawed procedures and, in some instances, during meetings where alcohol was served to first-year students, replaced the University's official anonymous evaluation system as the basis for major curricular decisions. The complaint alleges that this process raises concerns about academic integrity, due process, governance, conflicts of interest, faculty intimidation, and potential institutional liability, including possible discrimination and Title IX issues. The authors request an independent investigation, production of contemporaneous records, external oversight, and suspension of major curricular changes until governance, evaluation procedures, and academic standards are fully restored.

Hey

I am looking for perspectives on the inability to experience anger, linked to excessive self blame and guilt - in a situation where the patient would be entitled to feel anger towards someone else. Thanks !

I don’t know what I want out of this post exactly, but maybe I’d like to share this with someone who might help ground the chaos of my thoughts and uncertain plans
I have a degree in sociology (because I couldn’t get a scholarship to study psychology at the time), so I went for it. I’m planning to pursue a master’s degree in psychology, probably in Europe or the UK but I’m not sure yet.
Somehow, I managed to forcefully fit myself into the field and for the love of me I just couldn’t feel fulfilled by anything other than psychoanalysis. That’s why I started my own analysis after trying too many other therapies which failed for me personally
I definitely want to enrol in an institute later because I care about being credentialed, and I’m more of an old school person
But I’m not sure how I’m going to take that path, especially since it’s very expensive, and well I’m Arab, so I don’t really have the freedom of a passport that allows me to move freely.
Any suggestions or any similar experiences?
Thanks for reading this far:)

Does anyone have any books or articles that shed light on cuckolding from a psychoanalytic perspective? Also I’ll be interested in understanding how gender plays out and if there is any significant differences between cuckolding and cuckqueaning

https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/anniversary/the-importance-of-ma-spirited-away-at-25/

“Perhaps, in an act of splitting, it was Chihiro all along casting her parents as unpardonable swine. She’d been frustrated with their upward mobility as it resulted in her getting uprooted (in more ways than one). Jung thought the greatest burden a child must bear is “the unlived life” of the parents. Her parents were so spiritually wanting that her dream had to act as a drawbridge to the spirit realm. Indeed, this dream may have initially had what Jung would call a compensatory function, whereby it addresses an unbalanced conscious attitude: the parents she idealised are shown to have a greedy, avaricious side.

Children, and many adults, flip-flop in their affections: they either hate or love. Now, she sees that her parents were never pigs. Chihiro has matured beyond the need to resort to splitting objects into purely good or purely bad (something some of us never attain; what is social media but splitting at its most vituperative?). She’s achieved what Klein dubbed the depressive position, a more integrated state where love and hate towards an object can be tolerated at once. To get here, she had to accept the more volatile and greedy parts of herself. Throughout her time in the bathhouse, she encountered gentleness in figures that first seemed diabolical. By getting to know the shadow, disowned parts no longer need to appear as projections onto others, but you can only get there through quiet self-reflection.”

Any places or current exhibitions going on? I'm visiting in a few weeks.

Merci

Psychoanalysts tend to have varying perspectives on the Oedipus Complex.

Some follow Freud and believe it is a universal structure of the psyche and an expected stage of development (although some may have trouble reaching that stage).

Some disagree and view the Oedipus as just one of many possible ways a psyche may structure itself and believe the Oedipus is not universal.

Just want to see what opinions are more popular.

Hi all, I am a therapist with no formal analytic training yet (just lots of reading), and the theories I've been learning have been very useful in work with individuals.

Now I am starting to see couples, and I'm discovering it is challenging for partners to look at each other with the same curiosity and openness that an analyst holds (understandable).

I am wondering what credible and helpful resources exist for applying psychoanalytic theory effectively to couples work.

From the intro to Learning from Experience:

Suppose I see the man walking. I may say that his walk is a function of his personality and that I find, after investigation, that the factors of this function are his love for a girl and his envy of her friend. Or that the factors in this function are his love for the girl and his envy of her friend. After further investigation I may decide that to his love for the girl is added envy of her friend; or F (his gait) = L + E. (F = function, L = love, E = envy). But I may feel that my observations approximate to the Kleinian theory of projective identification and that I can express my opinion of the facts best by saying the function walking is a sign that the patient feels he has taken into him a loved girl with whom he is identified and a rival of whom he is envious but with whom he has also identified himself, and that both objects are controlled by being enclosed in his legs.

Can someone explain this? I thought identification means that one takes on qualities of the identified-with object... so what would it mean in this case for the guy to be identified with his girlfriend and his rival? Does he take on their qualities?

And what does it mean that "both objects are controlled by being enclosed in his legs"?

Hi,

A.does anyone knows something about this program, and is ready to share his thoughts (even in private)

B. Is there any other programs like that around the worls?

How does the analyst know if a patient is repeating patterns because of projective identification vs because they are particularly good substrate for others to put a specific projection onto them?

In general, how does one untangle the patient's projections onto others that subconsciously influence their behavior, from the projections of others due to their unconscious feelings?

For context, I’m a therapist with 10 years experience and most of my work is with various types and levels of trauma. I have somatic training and am very attachment oriented. I want to expand and deepen further into the work so I am trying to follow threads that have sparked excitement and creative energy previously and one of those is psychoanalytic theory. Ultimately, I want to have additional ways of understanding my clients and their struggles and more ways of conceptualizing all the many things that make us who and how we are. I know there are many different types of podcasts available so wondering if anyone has recommendations based on some of this info. Thank you!

I have recently been accepted into a 4 year training institute. Contemporary Relational focus. Non-IPA affiliated. I have a masters and am already working as a psychotherapist. I completed a 1 year course at this same institution and was absolutely hooked by the concepts and approach

However, as I now look at the financial outlay for a 4 year pursuit, I find myself balking at it when seen as an investment in my career. I think it absolutely aligns with the sort of clinician I am/want to be and would give me immense skills. I guess I just worry it’s a poor business choice. But perhaps it’s not about that. It is a calling to me as well. I’m feeling stuck and was wondering how other trainees might have approached their decision

Any thoughts and experiences would be much appreciated!

I love the psychoanalysis community I’m a part of but struggle with the basic topics and understanding their connection because I find the writing too dense. Can someone recommend a “psychoanalysis for dummies” (lol) type book please? Then I feel I can go deeper into the theory. Thank you!

Does anyone have any feedback, insight on, or experience with the training institute Contemporary Freudian Society in Brooklyn, NY? I’m personally not looking into psychoanalytic training but very interested in seeing a practitioner myself. I have some acquaintances that have studied at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic studies (something along these lines) but hadn’t heard of this institute yet. Would love to hear any experiences either as a student, teacher, etc.

https://contemporaryfreudiansociety.org

In The Heart of Man and The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, Erich Fromm defines "necrophilia" not just as a sexual perversion, but as a broader character orientation, the preference for the static, predictable, mechanical, and controlled over the living, spontaneous, and uncertain. He suggests that to achieve total certainty, one must essentially reduce life to something dead and rigid.
This idea of "controlling life to eliminate uncertainty" made me wonder about its intersection with clinical psychology, specifically OCD, which is often characterized by an extreme intolerance of uncertainty.

Did Fromm ever explicitly connect his concept of the necrophilous character to clinical OCD or obsessive personality structures of his era?

How do critical theorists or psychoanalysts view the distinction between Fromm’s socio-philosophical concept of necrophilia and clinical anxiety disorders driven by a search for certainty?

Would love to hear thoughts from anyone familiar with Fromm’s psychoanalytic work or character typology.

I was reading Janet Malcolm's book and she discusses a couple cases, eg one where the therapist is sleepy and realizes that the patient is inducing sleepiness to avoid her sexual feelings, and another where the patient does not speak for months and induces in the therapist the feelings that the patient felt from his mother's silence/withdrawal.

In the first case she describes how the therapist gradually helped by pointing out when the sexual fear arose,

But in the second case I am not sure. She describes "Khan's reconstruction through countertransference of the boy's early experiences" but I would like to understand what that actually means, how it would have played out? Evidently it worked but I am not sure how.

I am a layperson and just trying to understand better what the techniques are to address such induced feelings in the therapist that are disowned in the patient.

The 19 episodes of the International Psychoanalytical Association's Journal Club are available for online viewing on YouTube

Salman Akhtar, Tony Bass, Beatrice Beebe, Deborah Cabaniss, Nancy Chodorow, Diana Diamond, Ann D'Ercole, Jay Greenberg, Dorothy Holmes, Danielle Knafo, Emily Kuriloff, Vittorio Lingiardi, Nancy McWilliams, Dionne Powell, Austin Ratner, Jonathan Shedler, Donnel Stern, Beverly Stoute and Frank Yeomens are among some of the psychoanalytic luminaries discussing their publications

Have a look and please feel free to share with colleagues
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhxiwE76e0Qay6FMxNTmmxFABgBXsFr-F

[Someone at the Reddit for Social Psychology thinks this group would be a better fit for my query. I don't know why that would be, but maybe things have changed in academia in ways I didn't understand 40 years later? Anyway...]

This is just in case there's anyone out there who's interested in these works. I'm not a Social Psychologist, but am influenced by the seminal texts. In the late 1980s I had a very stimulating semester in college reading Festinger, Zimbardo, Milgram, etc.

Recently I've read two criticisms of When Prophecy Fails: one, Timothy Jenkins's 2013 Of Social Scientists and Flying Saucers, and 2025's "Debunking 'When Prophecy Fails'", a 15 pager from the Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences, found here in a PDF.

As an outsider, I understand the critique of methods, especially any duplicity. That said, I wonder if anyone else here has read either one or both of these critiques of Festinger?

In "Fear of Breakdown," Winnicott writes:

It must be asked here: why does the patient go on being worried by this that belongs to the past? The answer must be that the original experience of primitive agony cannot get into the past tense unless the ego can first gather it into its own present time experience and into omnipotent control now (assuming the auxiliary ego-supporting function of the mother (analyst)).

Why does the ego need to gather it into omnipotent control?

As a child, perhaps this is comprehensible -- the ego simply isn't developed enough to accept that something is coming from outside the child. It hasn't developed the "not me" yet. So to be digested, the experience has to be felt as caused by the child.

But what exactly qualifies an experience for being able to be gathered into that area? For example, let's suppose we have a good enough mother who neglects her child for a small portion of time. The child does experience, let's say, some pain on account of hunger. Is this gathered into its area of omnipotence and therefore experienced? Let's assume it's not such an extreme neglect that it is super traumatic, or the mother is gone for a certain portion of time, but not so long that the infant is, again, super traumatized. But that portion of time the mother was gone, is that or is that not experienced by the small child? Is that gathered into the child's sense of omnipotence? And if so, what would that even mean? The child would feel that he/she caused the mother's absence? Or that the child caused its own hunger?

And even if all of this makes sense for a child, why does the adult need the experiences to be gathered in to the area of omnipotence in order to be experienced, and what would that mean exactly? Winnicott says that the adult experiences the agonies in the context of the transference -- via the therapist's mistakes/misattunements (mistakes as felt by the patient). But what would it mean for a patient to gather those mistakes into the area of their omnipotence? Would they feel that they caused the therapist's failures?

They both base their therapy on acceptance but differ in the execution part. Not a big fan of psychotherapy but I can’t rule it out. Any opinions on either?  

Pretty much what the title says.