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The Flores settlement mandates that children be detained no longer than twenty days. The administration is proposing to change this, and the Department of Homeland Security has proposed an indefinite detention period…
“Bravery,” Coline Covington, a psychoanalyst living in London, told me last spring, “exists in the eyes of the beholder. No one who has done something…
ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action was created in 2017 in response to a bewildering and frightening political reality…
The world listens as Donald Trump, President of the United States, on a state visit to the United Kingdom bemoans the fact that Prime Minister…
Politics is about power — who has it and who doesn’t. Politics is also about ethics, fairness, justice, and governing assumptions about the state of nature…
William Blake was outraged by the idea of a bird in a cage, it being a violation of the natural order. One can only imagine what he would think…
Eugene Mahon, MD, is training and supervising psychoanalyst at Columbia Psychoanalytic Center for Training and Research. He has published three books—A Psychoanalytic Odyssey, Rensal the Redbit, and Boneshop of the Heart—and numerous articles on psychoanalysis. He practices in New York City.
Engaging with marginalized social histories and recognizing the psychic consequences these histories hold for the treatment dyad poses a challenge for psychoanalysis…
In the summer of 2016, several IPTAR clinicians began to meet with administrators at the International Rescue Committee to discuss forging a partnership in which IPTAR therapists would provide pro bono services to IRC clients who are refugees resettling in NYC.
Lately, a dream I had twelve years ago has been coming back to me. I dreamt that my four-year-old son (he’s sixteen now) was buried neck deep in the middle of a neighborhood and surrounded by modest houses…
I paint to create a space “to be,” a space to reflect and connect me back to the physical world. My images spring when I pause to be “in the moment” and absorb where I am and what’s happening. When making cursory sketches or snapshots, I’m drawn especially to characteristics that transcend time and exist outside of narrative and that mix the everyday and the transcendent, the scripted and the spontaneous.
Rachel Neve-Midbar, MFA, is the author (under the name Heimowitz) of the chapbook What the Light Reveals (Tebot Bach Press, 2014). Her work has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Spillway, Prairie Schooner, and Georgia Review. She was recently a finalist for the COR Richard Peterson Prize, winner of the Passenger Prize, and she has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Rachel completed her MFA at Pacific University in 2015 and is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Southern California.
“Nigger take this! Take it, I tell ya!” Howard yells at the black carhop. It is 1951 in Macon, Georgia. I am eight years old. My brother, Toby, is six. We are in the back seat of a 1948 Ford. I am cringing. I do not know what Toby…
For all of its potential to do good, psychoanalysis has tended to focus on problems that can be narrowly viewed as stemming from intrapsychic and familial problems…
What happened to the party of the working class? When did the Democratic party become a party that neglects the poor? When did politicians stop fighting for economic equality…
As a young candidate transferring from the field of performing arts and theory into psychoanalysis, I am struck by their provocative resonances. In addition to theoretical connections, I have noticed between psychoanalysis and performing arts/performance studies…
The “fourth wall” is a technical device used by actors. It works in the following way: Actors choose a spot in the back of the theater, internalize it, and move on with the action, bypassing the potential interference of….
There has been a curious omission in the public debate following Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on allegations of sexual assault…
This conference takes up the issue of Transformations in relation to the fears currently contaminating our visions of the future…
Kaja Weeks is a poet and essayist who often writes of music and healing. In addition to being a graduate of New Directions: Writing with a Psychoanalytic Edge, Weeks maintains a career as a clinic-based developmental music educator, which integrates the work of Stanley Greenspan and Serena Wieder. When young children’s ability to engage and grasp verbal language is compromised, she harnesses the power of vocalizations and relational rhythms to elicit communicative interaction.
Room never knows where the next submission will come from. With every essay, poem, photograph, image of art, piece of music, or description of activism…
When our yoga teacher first taught us to visualize the space between two joints in our body and then to breathe into that space to open it up, we followed her instructions avidly…
I’m in a dissociated state. Other people might say I’m numb, robotic, going through the motions, “not all there.” But I’m a psychotherapist, so I recognize this sense…
The news about Venezuela is as alarming as it is strange. Each day brings a new mix of tragedy and absurdity. Venezuela is no longer a country…
A girl scavenges for food in the streets of Caracas. From 2014 to 2017, a visual essay about the starvation crisis in Venezuela by the photojournalist Federico Parra.
I got on an M train, thinking it was an F train, I wasn’t paying attention, and rode it out to Williamsburg by mistake. I looked up from the story I was reading about two mathematicians, one of them losing his mind, where am I…
Dreams, words, ideas, memories, contradictions—all of it is wrapped together in your feelings. The moment of leaving nears. The departure is certain…
Trump. I am discombobulated because of Trump. I binge watch TV – not Fox, MSNBC. He has infected everything: my dreams, my conscious, my unconscious, dinners with my family, my work.
As I thought about the horror of separating young children from their families at the U.S. border, what came to mind was the London bombings during World War II…
A young woman from Namwon known for her virtue captured the unwanted attention of the newly installed magistrate who was arrogant, cruel, and narcissistic…
Sylvia Flescher is a psychiatrist/psychoanalyst and the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. Her paper “Googling for Ghosts” grew out of her long-standing participation in New Directions and was published in the Psychoanalytic Review. In it, she describes the powerful effect on her of her mother, Anna, being honored at Yad Vashem as a Righteous Among the Nations.
This conference takes up the issue of Transformations in relation to the fears currently contaminating our visions of the future…
Mariño’s work evokes the privation and moans of those who suffer a deep crisis similar to the post-war artistic expressions…
We cannot just cross our arms presented with this tragedy. Venezuela needs your help.
IPTAR’s Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Program and The Anni Bergman Parent-Infant Program thank over 147 representatives across The United States for cosponsoring Congresswoman Rosa Delauro’s resolution: H. Res. #927…
We will discuss with authors various topics arising from their pieces published in ROOM 2.18
Leah Lipton, LCSW, is a psychoanalyst and collage artist in New York City. She is a supervisor at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy (ICP) and a faculty member at ICP and the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center (PPSC).
Anniversaries exist as a demand to remember and, as such, they have a great deal in common with the work of psychoanalysis. Looking back from the vantage of ROOM’s first anniversary, it is amazing to recall that ROOM might not have happened at all but for a fortuitous accident.
When I was asked to write a piece for this newsletter on the subject of play, work/life balance or the analyst at play, I began gathering materials as I usually do in my writing process, and then I wait and see what thoughts begin to germinate…
Sara Mansfield Taber is the author of Born Under an Assumed Name: The Memoir of a Cold War Spy’s Daughter, as well as essays, social commentary, and literary journalism. A psychologist and social worker, she has taught creative nonfiction writing for twenty years. Chance Particulars: A Writers Field Notebook for Travelers, Bloggers, Essayists, Memoirists, Novelists, Journalists, Adventurers, Naturalists, Sketchers, and other Notetakers and Recorders of Life will be published May 2018.
At first, their silence made me wonder if I had overreacted to the presence of toy guns at the church event due to my experience with gun violence. My husband, Jamie Bishop, was murdered during the Virginia Tech massacre on April 16, 2007, the deadliest school shooting in US history.
Diane Seuss’s most recent collection, Four-Legged Girl, was published in 2015 by Graywolf Press and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open (2010) won the Juniper Prize and was published in 2010. Her fourth collection, Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in May 2018. Recent poems have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, and The New Yorker. Seuss was raised in rural southwest Michigan. ‘Still Life With Dictator’ originally appeared in Crab Creek Review.
On October 14, 2017, I moderated an event called “Duty to Warn” in New York City. The event was one of several held nationally on that day. The topic was on the psychological fitness of Donald Trump to hold the office of president of the United States. The proximate reason…
I wish I knew exactly what drew me in. I do recall what I brought: a bullet and my late husband’s dried wedding boutonniere. Melissa Ichiuji, the workshop teacher, was afraid the bullet could explode easily. I reassured her it wouldn’t. I just never imagined something solid could explode without impact.
For a while after I came to the U.S. in August 2016, I continued to have dreams which seemed to show that although I had physically moved to the U.S., my mind still needed time to catch up to that move. In those dreams, I missed my flight to New York because I arrived late to the airport, or I didn’t get ready to leave for…
This collage was made as I was transitioning, from film making to psychoanalysis. It is torn
up road maps of everywhere I have ever lived.
The publication of Diane Seuss’s poem, “Still Life with Dictator”, in this issue of ROOM made me think of another poem about another dictator which appeared in circumstances very different from these. I refer to the poem on Stalin…
The folks in the images appearing with this essay hold the traumas of racism, immigration, natural disaster and genocide. I show these faces because they reflect experiences of trauma so many of us Americans contain, directly or intergenerationally. I point to these images also to reflect on the ongoing fact that Donald Trump and his supporters’ aggressive words, policies and actions
against these already vulnerable people — against what is vulnerable in us all — has been traumatizing or re traumatizing for far too many.
We will discuss with authors various topics arising from their pieces published in ROOM 2.18
“Political” is part of a series of experimental paintings which are mediations on the concepts of transience and impermanence. Specifically, I am interested in the “mono_ no_ aware” state. The bittersweet appreciation of a moment or as some say the ahh-ness of the experience.
It is hard to be deluged with requests to donate between now and Nov. 2018. But it’s so important. We are asking for donations of ten dollars.
IPTAR: THE LJGOULD CENTER FOR SYSTEMS-PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDIES | Citizen Forum | One Year Later.
THIS BODY OF WORK EMERGES following the death of my mother. Driven to find what is within, as an artist and psychoanalyst, and now as a motherless child, I become aware that the very effort is based on questions without answers. No amount of digging, desire or toil will let me penetrate what is inside (the Unconscious, the Body, Death). I listen as a psychoanalyst, dig and mold and craft as an artist. I am in the presence of what is no longer living, yet that which still seems to be animated, undergoing transformation.
It feels impossible to begin this introduction to Room 9.17 without mentioning the attack in Charlottesville even though, by the time you read this, that horrific August weekend will likely be occluded by whatever will have happened next. ROOM is not a blog. It is not a tweet. It is not a newsletter at one with the news. ROOM is a re-occurring place of reflection…
The day in April that Ivanka Trump appeared on the dais with Angela Merkel at the Women’s Summit in Berlin, I was in my office. I was listening to a vibrant and astute young woman in her twenties as she confessed, a little sheepishly, that her new shirt had “trendy” sleeves…
Our first Room Roundtable was held on June 11, 2017 with approximately 20 people in attendance…
We are grateful to both Leni and Samera for letting us share their words publically and for giving us the idea of having a ‘Letters to ROOM’ section. The creation of ROOM is an unfolding process between the editorial team and the community…
The presenters will discuss the political and sociological dynamics of populism from a psychoanalytic perspective…
For the previous issue of ROOM, I contributed a piece that argued against the idealization of tolerance, diversity and understanding that I see so many in the psychoanalytic community currently engaged in. I’m aware that some readers…
Due to the current political and social hostilities that surround us everyday I felt compelled to create a piece that was inclusive and stressed…
Eugene Mahon M.D., is a Training and Supervising psychoanalyst at Columbia Psychoanalytic. His articles have been published widely in major psychoanalytic journals. His books include A Psychoanalytic Odyssey: Painted Guinea Pigs, Dreams, and Other Realities (Karnac, 2014), Rensel the Redbit: A Psychoanalytic Fairy Tale (Karnac,2015) and a volume of poetry, Bone Shop of the Heart (IPBooks, 2017).
There was a time when I thought that two words—gay and lesbian— and therefore two letters—g and l— sufficed. I now know—in fact I think I always did—that the words gay and lesbian never really did justice to the exceedingly complex variability…
“…I sit in my Manhattan apartment feeling elated and full, perhaps because a woman has been nominated as the VP candidate and it feels as though anything is possible…
Diane Seuss is a poet whose most recent collection, Four-Legged Girl (Graywolf Press, 2015) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her second book, Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open, (U. of Ma. Press, 2010) won the Juniper Prize. Her fourth collection, Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in May 2018. She has published widely in literary magazines including Poetry, The Iowa Review, and The New Yorker. Diane lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
A patient in her early thirties recently admitted that she hadn’t voted, yet again…
If these little drawings were simpler, if they focused on color or form, they might be more likely to be understood for their essential character. They might inspire something…
IPTAR: THE LJGOULD CENTER FOR SYSTEMS-PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDIES | Citizen Forum | Riding the Waves of a Changing World.
From 1934 -1945, the Rundbriefe was a top secret newsletter that circulated among a small group of socially and politically committed refugee psychoanalysts. Otto Fenichel, its founder and one of Freud’s most eminent followers, urged this small group of analysts not to isolate themselves…
IPTAR’S PARTNERSHIPS: SANCTUARY FOR FAMILIES, NEW YORK. Service provider and advocacy organization for victims of domestic abuse…
IPTAR’S PARTNERSHIPS: PILOT PROGRAM WITH REFUGEES, NEW YORK. A growing group of IPTAR members and psychology interns and externs have been involved…
Susan Katz is a photographer, writer, and psychotherapist in private practice in NYC, NY.
In the epigraph, Jimi Hendrix’s poetic alter-ego expresses skepticism in regard to being seen and heard. Does he pose a question: “Can you see me?”; a demand: “Can you see me!”; or perhaps a plea: “Can you see me…please”?…
Joan V. L iebermann is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in private practice in Washington, DC and a clinical faculty member at the George Washington University School of Medicine.
Currently based in Brooklyn, Violette Bule studied at the Escuela Activa de Fotografía in Mexico City and holds a Diploma in General Studies from the Centro Nacional de la Fotografía in Caracas. Her work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as Tokyo Wonder Site…
When I got ready to see patients on the morning of November 9th, I wanted to wear a hoodie to work. My army green hoodie is something I reserve for errands and weekends, but that post-election morning…
I try to rise up each time the pits of Trump fears and anger draw me down. Many people speak of the tangle of old fears…
Ani Buk is a Training Analyst and on Faculty at the Contemporary Freudian Society and the Graduate Art Therapy Program of New York University, as well as the Kint Institute, a post-graduate program focused on the use of the creative arts therapies to treat traumatized populations.
Since the election of T as president many people who can see nothing positive in him whatsoever, either as human being or politician…
In the weeks after 9/11 the IPTAR Clinical Center received a grant to fly in mental health professionals from Ireland, the Middle East, and South America to talk about the experience
of doing psychoanalysis in the midst of existential terror. Hundreds of therapists practicing in New York came…
Arlene Richards is a training and supervising analyst at IPTAR and poet. Her most recent book is Myths of Mighty Women. (Karnac 2015).
IPTAR: THE LJGOULD CENTER FOR SYSTEMS-PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDIES | Citizen Forum | Riding the Waves of a Changing World.
I try to rise up each time the pits of Trump fears and anger draw me down. Many people speak of the tangle of old fears…
Eugene Mahon is a Training and Supervising psychoanalyst at Columbia Psychoanalytic. His forthcoming volume of poetry BONE SHOP OF THE HEART is in press with IPBooks.
Sitting down to write these words on Inauguration Day felt like the exact right thing to be doing. For this is another inaugural — of ROOM. Perhaps we can even…
An eighty-four year old woman who has been in therapy for years for chronic anxiety has a satisfying and still thriving career, a solid marriage…
When I got ready to see patients on the morning of November 9th, I wanted to wear a hoodie to work. My army green hoodie is something I reserve for errands and weekends, but that post-election morning…
With 25.4% of the United States population identifying as Evangelical Christian, and with 81% of Evangelicals voting for Trump, we cannot afford Freud’s attitude quoted here in the left side bar. Where religious…
