“ I think that the analyst has to be in touch with his anxiety in order to be able to understand the patient’s anxiety. But he has to not be drowned in such anxiety in order to be able to be the helpful object. ”
Ilany Kogan, MA
Rehovot
Episode Description:
Dr. Harvey Schwartz welcomes Ilany Kogan, who is a Training and Supervisory Analyst at the Israel Psychoanalytic Society. She is one of the founders of the Psychotherapy Centre for the Child and Adolescent in Bucharest, Romania. She worked as a supervisor of the IPA study work in Istanbul and she currently supervises throughout Germany and in Rumania.
Ilany Kogan worked for many years with Holocaust survivors and she has published extensively in this area. She was awarded the Elise M. Hayman Award for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide (2005) and the Sigourney Award (2016) for her lifetime work. She is the author of many books, most recently in 2020: Narcissistic Fantasies in Film and Fiction: Masters of the Universe, prior to that Canvas of Change: Analysis Through the Prism of Creativity, The Struggle Against Mourning, Escape from Selfhood: Breaking Boundaries and Craving for Oneness and others.
In today’s episode, you will hear about Ilany´s devotion to her patients and the ways she identifies their life forces. She dives deep into the essence of hope and creativity since many of her patients, as we all do as humans, struggle with locating the good objects inside us. Ilany is devoted to freeing up the positive, hopeful, and creative energies in individuals. This is especially vital when we are limited by neurotic distortions, families that have struggled with the effects of the Holocaust, and for all of us now since we are struggling with terrible uncertainties in the midst of this pandemic.
Key Takeaways:
[7:45] Ilany Kogan shares what her clinical and theoretical work has taught her about the vital role of creativity in life and especially in critical times.
[9:35] Resistance is the best way the person knows how to deal with conflicts at a particular moment which deserves respect.
[12:31] What is the meaning for the dyad when both analyst and analysand share the same danger?
[13:55] Analysts have to work through their own anxieties in order to be able to help the patient dealing with his own anxiety.
[15:46] Ilany Kogan talks about the concept of death anxieties.
[18:05] She believes that the creativity of the analyst is dealing with the changes imposed by the pandemic.
[19:32] Interpretation can be difficult to use during a period of stress.
[20:58] Ilany Kogan talks about the challenges that some analysts encounter in metabolizing the anxieties of the patient and returning it to them in tolerable form.
[21:43] Ilany Kogan shares a clinical example.
[29:14] Through analytic work the past can be left in the past.
[29:50] What sustains her during these difficult times?
Mentioned in This Episode
IPA Off the Couch – www.ipaoffthecouch.org
Recommended Readings
Narcissistic Fantasies in Film and Fiction: Masters of the Universe, Ilany Kogan
Canvas of Change: Analysis Through the Prism of Creativity, Ilany Kogan
The Struggle Against Mourning, Ilany Kogan
Escape from Selfhood: Breaking Boundaries and Craving for Oneness, Ilany Kogan
Posted for Ilany Kogan:
Thank you so much, Warren, for your wonderful comment.
Since in the interview I mainly spoke about the creativity of the analyst, I wish to add some words regarding the creativity of the patient. Nurit, the patient I described in the interview, informed me during the lockdown that she wants to write a book about her parents’ lives including the complex relationship she had with them.
In my view, the analytic process during this difficult period enabled Nurit to mobilize her creativity. Her creative activity had the purpose of facilitating a better differentiation between herself and her parents, between her present life and her parents’ past experiences, between reality and fantasy. The creative process could thus strengthen Nurit’s perception of reality and reinforce her life forces.
Thank you again, Harvey, for giving me the opportunity to add this.
Warm regards
Ilany
Ever since I first read work by Ilany Kogan, I have remembered her name to read whatever more she wrote. She writes with a rare sensitive incisiveness expressed in the voice of a novelist, fresh and deep. It was good now to get to hear some of her spoken voice itself. Her first hand experience as well as deeply considered study of the actuality of the horrors of the holocaust, of practicing analysis under bombing in the shared stress of patient and analyst in a sealed room, each with gas mask available, plus under the current pandemic, all provide a unique richness of understanding of a situation new to many of us. Perhaps especially because of her special interest in creativity, I find her contributions uncommonly helpful as well as immediately relevant.
I look forward to hearing these podcasts. Thank you for making this available.
Catherine Corotis