Some Thoughts on the Loss of a Spouse: A Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist's Perspective

By Sally Bloom Feshbach, Ph.D.

Emerging from a taxi in front of the radiology center, I naively stepped into the waiting arms of my handsome leather-jacket clad husband. "Honey," he said, enclosing me in his strong arms, "what I am about to tell you will change your life forever. I'm so sorry!" Those words, harbingers of his mortality, ushered in our new life, and from that day forth, this paper began germinating. How do two therapists, long-time best friends and students of separation and loss, prepare themselves for death?


Click here to read the rest of this post...


[permanent link] [0 comments]

Attachment Is Where You Find It

By Fern W. Cohen, Ph.D.

Some time in the fall, our youngest child Josh came home for his first weekend since we had left him, somewhat forlorn (both he and we), a freshman at college. For me, his departure had been the most poignant and difficult of three, heralding as it did an end to the period of mothering that had given me such a strong sense of self and fulfillment. Now Josh was back, casually dragging along a monstrous duffle stuffed with a two-week accumulation of laundry as he entered the apartment. This was not, he said, an unusual time span but one that he had determined would be manageable between washes, an idea he had floated the previous summer when he and I had shopped for clothing and necessaries for school. That he had even thought about that aspect of life away from home was quite in character with this most organized of our children, although I thought I might have detected a touch of sheepishness when he said it was quite by chance that the opportunity to do the wash had coincided with his first trip home.

At least seventy five pounds worth of opportunity.

For me.


Click here to read the rest of this post...


[permanent link] [0 comments]

Living Large: My Expanded Life as a Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist

By Teresa Rose, Ph.D.

Pondering what it means to be a psychoanalytic psychotherapist has prompted a great deal of free association and deep thinking. It touches me in many profound ways, and to try and tease out the meanings has been a challenge, albeit an exciting one. Overall, my analytic identity is so tightly entwined with my personality that it is hard to separate them. The more I learn and study, the more I apply analytic concepts to most aspects of my life, not just in my practice. In fact it is impossible not to do so. Writing about this topic, I found it difficult to focus on any one area of my life, so I gave up, and embraced all the ways it affects me.


Click here to read the rest of this post...


[permanent link] [0 comments]

The Perils (and Joys) of Living as a Psychoanalytic Therapist

By Dora Ghetie

It is 7 p.m. on a Friday night. I am sitting at the bar, in one of my favorite restaurants, waiting for my date. This is my first date with Andrew. Normally I would be nervous but I have been on so many first dates lately, I feel totally confident. Being on a first date is strangely similar to conducting an intake. I cannot help it-as a fifth year doctoral student, soon to become full-fledged psychologist, I am immersed in therapy: doing therapy, being in therapy, and reading about therapy. This is my life. My fondness for psychoanalytic therapy is a further problem. All day long I listen for what is not being said and I try to look for patterns and how they show up in the transference. I cannot turn it off. So before long I ask my dates: tell me about your family. What's your earliest memory? What kind of relationships have you had? Do you dream? Just like an intake. Hmmm…maybe that's why there have been so few second dates.


Click here to read the rest of this post...


[permanent link] [0 comments]

Etudes on Loss

By Jill Salberg, Ph.D.

For many first and second generation American Jews the Holocaust stands as the defining event in their lives. Much like the list recited at Yom Kippur: Who escaped, who didn't, who went to Palestine, who to South America, who was hidden, who was revealed. The list could go on and on but the fundamental event defines it all: who lived and who died. For me the story is more ephemeral, about what was lost, sacrificed in order to live. And this story started thirty years before, while the seeds of the Shoah were growing, during the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. This era brought thousands of Jewish immigrants to America while the doors still remained opened. I always felt I was one of the fortunate ones, my grandparents left long before Hitler, long before an Anschluss, a final solution. I have only begun to fully comprehend that their good fortune was mixed with great separations, hardships and loss.


Click here to read the rest of this post...


[permanent link] [0 comments]