Abstract
Amid the swirling issues of the day, we can too easily lose track of what—in the lengthening history of psychoanalysis—remains vital over time. As our ongoing series of reviews of Winnicott’s Collected Works shows, 1 analysts writing decades ago can seem prescient; we may, in our zeal to build toward the future, overlook the groundwork they have laid. Like a well-loved novel, a psychoanalytic text yields new meanings as a reader matures.
Classics Re-Viewed
In this issue of JAPA Review of Books, we present “Classics Re-Viewed”—a new, occasional feature in which we explore the enduring influence of classic works. We are delighted to inaugurate this series with a stellar exemplar of the form: Michael Parsons’s essay on Enid Balint’s Before I Was I: Psychoanalysis and the Imagination. For Parsons, the project is richly resonant; “Enid,” he writes, “was an important figure for me personally in my psychoanalytic life.” Balint supervised Parsons’s first training case and, together, he and Juliet Mitchell helped Balint edit the collection of papers the book comprises. Here, from the perspective of twenty-eight years after its publication, Parsons takes stock of Balint’s influence—some of it long unconscious, and seen only in retrospect—on his development as a psychoanalyst. He also appraises Balint’s contributions with a contemporary eye, finding much that is of enduring value (and an occasional mar, perhaps not visible at the time with the tools then available to Balint).
Theoretical Frameworks
In Jessica Benjamin’s Beyond Doer and Done To: Recognition Theory, Intersubjectivity, and the Third, reviewer Luis Ripoll finds a “creative account of how the mind’s interaction with other minds structures meaning within the interpersonal field and across development.” Drawing on his background in the study of moral philosophy, Ripoll helps us understand how Benjamin brings philosophy and critical theory to bear on psychoanalysis, directing us “to fundamental questions about how individuals establish, with one another’s greater or lesser unconscious cooperation or disharmony, a basic goodness and meaningful generativity in interaction with one another.” He appreciates how Benjamin’s grounding in feminist theory and parent-infant observational research “lead[s] to the unique perspective of acknowledging the infant’s affective impact on a still-developing mother, as well as the more conventionally recognized influence of parenting on the structuring of the infant’s mind.” Ripoll notes that though deeply philosophical, Benjamin’s writing also “felt personal and moving” to him: “By urging readers to examine how we behave with our patients and who we end up becoming in this process,” he writes, “Benjamin became one of several interlocutors I needed to develop my own psychoanalytic voice.”
More than fifteen years have passed since the initial publication of Daphne de Marneffe’s Maternal Desire: On Children, Love, and the Inner Life. Reviewing the second edition (2019) of “this enduring book on maternal life,” Elizabeth Fritsch notes that though de Marneffe addresses a lay audience, “there is a depth to her writing that will likely enrich the work of clinicians.” We agree, and we join Fritsch in lauding de Marneffe’s view of motherhood as “an adult developmental phase.” As Fritsch notes, de Marneffe converges, in this regard, with a number of contemporary theorists: Jessica Benjamin (see Ripoll’s review, described above), Nancy Chodorow, and Rosemary Balsam, to name a few. Where others emphasize disappointment, upheaval, ambivalence, and overwhelm, de Marneffe’s unique contribution lies in her emphasis on the pleasurable, empowering, and growth-enhancing features of motherhood. De Marneffe, Fritsch notes, objects to “the premise that something is inherently disempowering in being a mother caring for one’s children.” Fritsch—whose clinical practice includes a focus on perinatal mood distress—describes how therapeutic work may help a new mother through the downside of maternal ambivalence “to a brighter and more satisfying experience of motherhood”—the fulfillment of maternal desire.
In her beautiful and intimate review of Authenticity in the Psychoanalytic Encounter: The Work of Irma Brenman Pick, edited by M. Fakhry Davids and Naomi Shavit, Shelley Rockwell captures the essence of Brenman Pick’s extraordinary gifts as a clinician, supervisor, teacher, and writer. Rockwell sets the stage for the reader to enter deeply into the sensitive and nuanced thinking that characterizes Brenman Pick’s work. Brenman Pick holds the patient in mind in a multiplicity of ways, “two-handedly,” which can have readers feeling “a bit turned around. ‘which way forward?’—not unlike the patient attempting to accept an interpretation. Yet in pulling apart the threads of a clinical moment, finely splitting its various aspects, an experience of integration is gained—leading to what is so vital to Brenman Pick, an authentic encounter.” Offering an interpretation to a patient, Rockwell tells us, is in Brenman Pick’s view offering something new and often shocking, and will sometimes create disequilibrium. Rockwell describes sensitively and appreciatively the breadth of Brenman Pick’s clinical acumen, thoughtfulness, and ability to contain both vulnerability and aggression. Rockwell brings to life a number of clinical vignettes that highlight Brenman Pick’s unique appreciation for hearing and feeling the patient’s experience with genuine interest and internal resonance, which guides her careful and mindful approach to interpretation: “In these vignettes,” Rockwell suggests, “Brenman Pick can hear the feeling of death under the noise of chatter, see the lifesaving function of a hanging lightbulb, hold the burden of loneliness in the gray-and-white stripes of a pair of trousers—and, in her most detailed clinical account, track movement such that we witness the unfolding of the ‘mutative’ interpretations achieved by deep countertransference work.”
Psychoanalytic Lives: Biography and Memoir
In her review of Joan Wexler’s A Pot from Shards, Irene Landsman’s astute analysis ultimately leads to a central question: what makes a good memoir work? In particular, how might we read a good memoir of a difficult life written by a deeply insightful analyst? By weaving together the rich strands of a deeply examined life, Wexler addresses the many losses and absences in her life by closely examining her most significant childhood relationships, including a father who abandoned her, a mother who neglected her, a grandmother who was inconsistent, and even an imaginary playmate who kept her company. Landsman spotlights Wexler’s extraordinary ability to use her creativity, her ability to draw on the benevolence of alternate models of mothering, and, ultimately, her ability to make use of psychoanalysis to, in Landsman’s words, “achieve the depressive position, leaving behind both her early idealizations and later fury, experiencing both grief and compassion.” Landsman observes that as a psychoanalyst, Wexler narrates the stories of her early life with a profound capacity for interpretation, self-reflection, and insight. “The author,” Landsman tells us, “has clearly spent most of her life trying to understand her absent father, her grandmother, and most of all her mother, but the pot she has reconstructed from shards is, ultimately, herself.”
In Paula Hamm’s review of Joseph Novello’s biography DAG: Savior of AIDS Orphans, Hamm brings us into the life of a pioneer psychoanalyst activist. Angelo D’Agostino was a Jesuit priest and psychoanalyst whose life story “challenges the reader to think deeply about what it means to be human yet have a divine spark.” This biography, published shortly before the Covid-19 pandemic, traces Dag from his early roots in Rhode Island, where his parents immigrated from Italy, to his work in Africa with orphans whose families were devastated by the AIDS pandemic—a virus that, like Covid-19, had massive consequences, resulted in tragic loss of life, and painfully highlighted social inequities. As Hamm writes, Dag “brought to bear all his life experiences up to that moment—love of family, his surgical skills and Washington connections, his spiritual beliefs, and his own true grit.” In reflecting on the life of a man who brought together these often divergent qualities, Hamm invites us to consider the ways in which we each bring value, meaning, and depth to understanding the complexity we encounter each day. Dag’s own words resonate with Hamm, and perhaps with each of us as well: “we are humans, not angels.”
Why I Write
Steven Levy served as JAPA’s Editor-in-Chief from 2004 to 2013. His Why I Write column casts the story of his personal and professional development as “a magic carpet ride.” The literal Persian rug that accompanied his immigrant grandfather from the old country once lay next to Levy’s analytic couch, and now lies beside the writing desk of his eldest daughter, a poet and English professor at Oxford. Levy’s metaphoric journey as a writer began around the family dinner table, but detoured through his medical training. More confident in his math and science skills than in his verbal prowess, Levy “always envied classmates who wrote well, spoke well, and were interested in literature, drama, art—domains where I was uncomfortable and in which I believed I could never succeed.” For Levy as a young doctor, psychoanalysis offered “an escape from math and science.” Levy writes, “I remember fondly connecting with my regular gang of young author friends at the Waldorf in New York. We rarely mingled with the elderly, but our scholarly writing helped create a feeling of togetherness and belonging.” Levy’s lovely essay describes how the magic of words has carried him through a productive career as author, editor, and teacher; and also, how it has connected him with both his ancestors and his progeny.