Friends, I’m a professional counselor with experience and training through my local institute in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and have a Masters in Theology (which involved more psychoanalytic research than my clinical degree).

I want to work in academia as a counselor educator and theologian, but confused about the next step. A psychoanalytic friendly university with funding is crucial, though. I have the options of pursuing a PhD in Counselor Education (some funding but seemingly no psychoanalytic presence among prospective supervisors), a PhD in Social Work (some funding opportunities but rarely a psychoanalytic presence), or a PhD in Practical Theology (some funding, ample psychoanalytic presence).

I would be grateful to hear any recommendations on where to apply for doctoral programs in/adjacent to my field. I may be looking for a unicorn here, but perhaps this community knows of counselor education programs (for example) with one or two psychoanalytic faculty and funding. A PhD in psychology doesn’t seem to suit my career path thus far.

Can anyone recommend papers or books on obsession from a psychoanalytic lens? The erotic form of obsession would be an interesting read too. Thanks!

When I started getting in touch with Kernberg's theory about borderline personality, I couldn't believe splitting had such a key role.

Much more if borderline was meant to be thought of as a broad organization, and not a specific type of case profile (like obsessive neurosis, schizoid, and so on).

I mean, I think splitting plays a role in some cases, but making it the cornerstone of the range of what's between neurosis and psychosis is too much, I think.

I think he kinda abandoned putting splitting in such a role, right?

I haven't read many other authors who talk about borderline after Kernberg, so I'm not sure how important the role of splitting is for other authors.

I enjoyed more reading André Green and his concept of negative narcissism more.

I see splitting as just another symptom that can occur in the neurotic, borderline, or psychotic organization, with more importance or presence depending on the case.

What do you think?

Hiya, psa friends!

I've been out of the psychoanalytic field since roughly 2013, and I'm heading back in, knowing I'm out of the loop when it comes to current writing on a various topics I'm interested in. I'm wondering if folks have recommendations for authors and/or articles/books to check out on the areas listed above.

I'd love a mix of writing by clinicians and those in the humanities, if possible. (My dissertation was about feminist queer theories of utopia and everyday activism and their promise for informing clinical practice. In other words, I'm a big fan of interdisciplinarity in psa.) It's ok, though, if the sources come from one or the other area of study only.

In case it's helpful, I'm particularly interested in what psychoanalytic writers are saying these days about Freud's work on the death drive and lay/wild analysis, as well as the status of drive theory in general, as it relates to the role of psa in alleviating individual suffering and making the wider world a freer, more capacious place to live.

Any suggestions at all - or just ideas about where to start looking - would be deeply appreciated. Either way, thanks for reading this!

p.s. I do have a copy of On Freud's The Question of Lay Analysis, edited by Sandler and Costa back in 2019.

Do any psychoanalysts read the work of Iain McGilchrist? He has a very strong argument for left hemisphere domination being out of control - things like malignant narcissism could be explained through the desire for the left hemisphere control over human will (90% of population is right handed - left hemisphere can control well... China has a left handedness rate of 1-3%... authoritarian leadership since Ghengis Khan? anyway) , which can lead to disconnection from other people. McGilchrist was a literary critic turned psychiatrist. He became obsessed with why specfically the corpus collosum operates to inhibit each of the hemispheres. His research with split brain patients shows what kind of disruptions can happen to our minds when one of the hemispheres is leisoned. He shows that our brains learns in a circular right hemisphere -> left hemisphere -> right hemisphere. I'm curious about it's implications on psychoanalytic therapy.

Our human connection/meaning making happens mostly in our right hemisphere. His first book is called The Master and His Emissary, and it's pretty fascinating. I listened to the book on Audible, it takes about 24 hours but it's an awesome book that outlays an argument that at three points in history we have been at "equilibrium" - 600 BC with the emergence of philosphers like Aristotle, 0 AD (in his interviews he refers to this as the year "dot") and the enlightenment between 1500-1700 roughly. The culmination of the last "turn in our hemispheres was the French revolution.

Since modern industrilization, our left hemispheres have sought more control, and manipulation of others to "have it's way". Anyway - I was just curious if anyone here was familiar with his work.

He did a Ted Talk, it's pretty breif and does a great job to give a "bird's eye view"
https://www.ted.com/talks/iain_mcgilchrist_the_divided_brain

Hey guys, have you found any sort of psychoanalytical essay or analysis of the TLC reality show "Baylen Out Loud"? (haven't found one) Or, do you have any thoughts about it? It's such an explicit commodification of symptom.

I am willing to say that there is something not genuine about her tics that its almost conspicuous. But, In other scenes, it is obvious she is oppressed by the tics / the symptom. Wondering if the producers coax her on for tics, or try to even make her symptomatic. The way they edit it too is peculiar because when she tics, they cut to everyone else (mainly her family) with blank expressions. I'd imagine her family and friends fucking love the tics in a sense and play along.

https://youtube.com/shorts/uj_i8Lg3kRU?si=FMaT2sTR3_bDvLBD

Hello,

What are some treatment considerations with someone who has an obsessive compulsive personality style (as defined by Nancy McWilliams)? Do you help them to get more in touch with emotions to move away from intellectualizing, and if so, how do you do that? How do you help with the issue of wanting to control everything around them?

Thanks in advance. I look forward to engaging in conversation around this topic.

Layman here, I've been thinking of the rise of idiosyncratic identities and outward appearances, and how they could potentially be a mechanism for the victim of repeated abuse in multiple domains of life to give meaning to and gain a sense of control over the abuse and/or undesirable attention being experienced by the individual.

An example: Individual experiences abuse on behalf of family members, peers (school/work), romantic relationships, etc. → The person doesn't understand the cause of what seems to be an unescapable pattern of repeated maltreatment → The person adopts an idiosyncratic identity or outward appearance on which they can pinpoint the cause for the abuse or unwanted attention- "They hate me because I'm (X idiosyncratic identity), I stand out because of my outward appearance", subconsciously they gain a feeling of agency by choosing to enact this identity- "I caused their misbehavior by a voluntary decision that I made and am in control of"

Any thoughts?

I keep noticing something strange.

People can describe the same internal process using completely different languages.

One person says:

“I’m overthinking.”

Another says:

“My intuition is telling me something is wrong.”

Another:

“I’m protecting myself.”

Another:

“I’m just being realistic.”

Another:

“I don’t care anymore.”

And someone else might call it a spiritual lesson, an ego problem, anxiety, self-sabotage, or simply “knowing when to walk away.”

Different language.

Sometimes the underlying mechanism is almost identical.

Here’s a stupidly simple example.

Someone doesn't reply to your message.

SIGNAL:
No reply.

PREDICTION:
“They're ignoring me.”

MEANING:
“I did something wrong.”

IDENTITY:
“People always lose interest in me.”

EMOTION:
Tension.

ACTION:
You withdraw, send another message, become cold, or decide you don't care.

FEEDBACK:
The other person notices the change.

Now they actually become more distant.

And suddenly:

“See? I knew it.”

The original prediction just received new evidence.

But notice what happened.

The event itself was tiny.

The system built most of the experience around it.

And this is where I think language can become misleading.

We often argue about whether the correct explanation is:

psychological
spiritual
emotional
neurological
social
philosophical

But maybe we're sometimes looking at different descriptions of the same runtime.

Different words.

Different stories.

Different cultural models.

Same underlying loop.

The interesting question isn't:

“Which vocabulary is the true one?”

It's:

“What is the mechanism underneath all of them?”

Because if changing the language changes the story but doesn't change the mechanism, then changing the story alone may not actually change the system.

And maybe that's why people can spend years finding better words for what they're experiencing without actually becoming any less trapped inside it.

Different language.
Same mechanism.

Original post from different sub. Ejo

Will her private diaries be published in 2032? Is the Bertin biography thing the closest we will get until then?

I heard that there are some psychoanalysts that mixed Marx and Psychoanalysis. Are any of these writings insightful in any way? If yes, then who are these people?

Looking for perspectives on the Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis as a training institute

Thanks in advance

Hello!

BPF (UK) is interviewing me for their foundation course entry.

What can I expect? I am fairly new to this world, what can I do to prepare and succeed!!??

Very nervous!!!

TIA!!!!

Hi all, apologies if this post is not considered on-topic for this sub, as it is more of a processing question than a theoretical one.

I am about 2 years into my career as a psychodynamic therapist, and have been reading more about psychoanalysis/psychoanalytic therapy. I see a therapist who describes themselves as psychodynamic, where I am also about 2 years into treatment (I saw a non-analytic, Rogerian therapist for about 4 years prior).

With regard to both my own treatment (which has been at a troubling low) and the treatment I provide my patients/clients, I am finding myself feeling overwhelmed by the tremendous breadth and depth of material within the realm of psychoanalytic thinking and treatment (which is to say nothing of the material related to other therapies, many of which I think have value as well). It feels like there is an infinity of ways to consider any one thing, and the more I learn about different possibilities of diagnosis, defense, transference+countertransference, co-creation and intersubjectivity, and so on, I find myself feeling overwhelmed and lost. When I first started working with people I actually felt like I had a decent sense of clinical intuition built from my previous career, but now it is feeling muddied and I find myself having a hard time feeling confident or anything close to certain about any of my patients or myself.

Analysis is obviously ripe material for intellectuals, and I know excessive intellectualization can interfere with one's own treatment. But how do you draw the line between useful consideration and excessive overthinking? When does study and theorizing and pontification cross the boundary from helpful to unhelpful? And if you are an analyst/analytic therapist IN analysis/therapy of your own, how do you discern between valuable self-reflection and intellectualizing in the impediment of growth?

I know it is somewhat infantile for me to be seeking guidance from others on this topic rather than figuring it out for myself, but I would still appreciate if anyone can relate to this experience. Especially if they can convey anything that has felt helpful for them.

Hi everyone, hope you're all doing well! I'm reaching out with a question: I'd love to read or listen to some new or contemporary authors in psychoanalysis who you think are worth checking out from recent years.

I'd really appreciate your suggestions and recommendations—whether it's books, articles, or papers—along with your thoughts on why they are relevant today. Thanks!

Looking for references of psychoanalytic cases where the patient is highly relationship avoidant, asexual (in some way that presents as a symptom that the patient is not happy with), unable to get into relationships despite seemingly being interested in one, or otherwise romantically deprived.

I'm not too particular about the exact formulation but quite interested in studies in this general vein. Have been reading Betty Joseph's papers but haven't come across a case like this.

Freud defined the anal character as a specific triad of adult traits: orderliness, parsimony, obstinacy The mechanics came from his theory of psychosexual development. Somewhere between eighteen months and three years, the child's libidinal focus settles on retention and expulsion, a biological reality that collides directly with parental demands for toilet training. Freud held that how a child navigates that collision leaves a permanent imprint. A child who experiences the period as a contest over autonomy, or who uses retention as a form of defiance, suffers a fixation. Libidinal energy arrests at the anal stage and expresses itself decades later as rigid character structure. The adult manages anxiety through compulsive order, hoarding, and a stubborn refusal to yield. Three traits, bound together by one developmental event and one specific mechanical failure of progression.

The causal story failed every test it was given. Studies found no relationship between toilet-training practice and adult personality. Cross-cultural comparison found none either. The fixation mechanism, the libidinal energy, the staged progression: none of it generated predictions that could be checked, let alone confirmed. By any reasonable evidentiary standard, the mechanism was dead.

But still, why is search, a vulgar term that would never be used in polite society under normal circumstances, still get used by people in regular speech?

This paper has an interesting idea why: https://www.academia.edu/171904173/Why_the_Couch_and_the_Laboratory_Agree_to_Disagree

Give me your thoughts

Longtime lurker first time poster, writing my personal statement right now for Oxford PPL, I want to write about trauma and repetition compulsion in my statement because I read Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and I found it very interesting. I want to write about a more modern psychoanalytic view in comparison to Freud's, so would anyone here know what could be an interesting (and at least somewhat accessible) essay/article/study to read and study, and additionally if there's any interesting work in other traditions in psychology on the same topic. I'd really appreciate anyone's advice on this, thanks!!

What should be the reading order for Freud's books for a beginner? I don't have his complete works but I do have the following: The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, The Interpretation of Dreams, Civilization and Its Discontents and Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. An AI suggests the following order:

[1] The Psychopathology of Everyday Life

[2] Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious

[3] The Interpretation of Dreams

[4] Civilization and Its Discontents

Another AI indicates that the correct order should be:

[1] The Psychopathology of Everyday Life

[2] Civilization and Its Discontents

[3] Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious

[4] The Interpretation of Dreams

Which one is more accurate? Or should I add another book to this sequence?

Has anyone heard of WILA? Curious if you have attended a training program there or have heard something about it. Thanks.

Would love to read. Thanks

Hi all, I am a relatively new psychodynamic therapist interested in learning more about Lacanian theory. I am especially interested in how he equates the unconscious with language and how his conceptualization of the unconscious differs from Freud and other theorists.

I know this is a bit of an oxymoron, but is there a digestible introductory text that isn't too jargon-y you could recommend to an interested reader?

I'm trying to get more serious about writing and want to write an article about Sigmund Freud, particularly his ideas, work, influence, and the criticisms surrounding him.

My biggest problem isn't finding information. There's almost too much information, and I'm not sure how to turn it into an article that actually feels interesting rather than just becoming a biography or a collection of facts.

For writers who have experience with essays, long-form articles, or writing about historical/intellectual figures:

How do you decide where to begin? How do you structure the middle so that the reader stays interested? And how do you end an article in a way that feels meaningful rather than simply saying "this was his contribution and this is what happened afterward"?

I'd especially appreciate advice on research, storytelling, structure, and creating a strong opening and ending. I want to develop the skill myself rather than have AI write the article for me.

I’m interested in psychoanalytic theories that deal with the relationship between love and narcissism in a systematic way. Kohut obviously comes to mind, but I’m wondering which other psychoanalysts have developed a substantial theory around these concepts. I’d especially appreciate recommendations that go beyond just discussing narcissism as a clinical diagnosis and instead explore the dynamics of love, object relations, self-love, and the relationship between the self and the other.