Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Volume 34, Issue 1 (2024)
Psychoanalytical Dialogues is a journal that emphasises dialogue on complex and sometimes thorny topics in psychoanalysis. Each article in the journal has two written responses. This explicit effort to create dialogue is especially relevant to the theme of this issue.
This journal was being put together in November 2023, the editors write:
“7 weeks after Hamas’ horrifying attack on Israel and Israel’s devastating retaliation. Daily, we are bombarded with images of destruction and desperation, and a shared vision for peace and security feels both elusive and essential. This ongoing human rights catastrophe, saturated with intergenerational trauma, has fractured communities worldwide and within psychoanalysis; dialogue and recognition of the Other often feel impossible.”
Authors in this issue explore the unbearable as it comes into clinical work.
In The Untelling Robert Grossmark builds on the idea that enactment is a form of narration in action. He offers a detailed description of work with a patient to illustrate different modes of enactment. Dominique Scarfone M.D. and Jade McGleughlin respond to Grossmark
The death of the analyst is the focus of the next two articles. When the Analyst Dies and the Patient Goes Missing: An Ethical Crisis in Psychoanalysis by Kirsten Lentz; and Death’s Chair: Sitting with Loss by Rachel Kozlowski. Jeannie Blaustein and Stephanie R. Brody respond.
In “Notes from the Field,” a panel comprised of three clinical narratives by Spyros Orfanos, Lisa Lyons, and Marty Cooper, which chart their harrowing personal and cross-cultural journeys as they work with traumatized, courageous Afghan students from the American University in Kabul who were forced to flee their country as the Taliban assumed power in the last days of August 2021, following the chaotic US withdrawal.