“A large group [of analysts] sitting in the circular Tavistock manner talked about their reactions to the state of the world. It wasn’t just about the law about Poland and the Holocaust but also about the populist movements that were gaining ground in many places. The psychoanalysts were saying ” What can we do? What can psychoanalysts do?” I thought to myself “Well, the IPA holds a wealth of expertise, certainly psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic thinking can make a difference in our troubled world.”
Harriet Wolfe, MD
San Francisco
Episode Description:
Dr. Wolfe begins by sharing with us a pivotal moment in her decision to run for office. It was when she encountered political censorship, false facts, and indoctrination that she chose to seek a leadership role in the IPA. She describes her plans to bring our specifically psychoanalytic skills to make a difference in the larger social arena. She shares with us the variety of people and programs that are currently functioning in relation to the wider world. She feels that we can continue the tradition of being involved in our communities that originated in the 1920s and ‘30s in Europe. In sum, Dr. Wolfe asks and challenges, “We have so much to offer why don’t we share it with the world.”
Our Guest:
Harriet Wolfe, M.D., is President of the International Psychoanalytical Association, Past President of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, and Training and Supervising Analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. Her scholarly interests include clinical applications of psychoanalytic research, organizational processes, female development, and therapeutic action. She has a longstanding commitment to psychoanalytic public health intervention. She has co-authored a number of psychoanalytically informed guided activity workbooks for children, parents, and teachers to help children cope with natural and manmade disasters. She teaches analysts-in-training, psychiatric residents, and junior psychiatric faculty about the psychodynamic understandings of severely ill patients and the value of listening to listening to a la Haydee Faimberg in the clinical setting. She has a private practice of psychoanalysis and individual and couple’s psychoanalytic psychotherapy in San Francisco.
Thank you
in psychoanalytic depth we need touch the bottom before coming to the surface (and not suffocate on our ways into & out of depth and depths )
I particularly value your conversation on geography and analysis : we live in a space curved around an for us attractive globe – if I am not mistaken.
As yet.
I am a psychanalysand in preposthumous years,
cordially Yours
Peter
Gonggrijp
I wrote a long comment thanking you very much Dear Harriet for this important interview , and it has been erased automatically . I will concentrate it now , insisting with you ( paraphrasing Emannuel Levinas , that Ethics as Asymetric Responsibility towards the Other ( s) is Primary to Psychoanalysis understood as : Psychoanalytic Understandings and Findings as well Practice , ( on individual basis as well as on group and socio politic basis
Thank you very much Dear Harrriet Wolfe for this interview. I am deeply agreeing with you . As. analysts , and our connection with the reality of the Unconscious , ( of its impact upon individual lifes as well as groups lifes , and their interactive relationships with societal and political issues …) , as persons having a huge experience with humans psychic funcionning , we have responsibility to assume and offer something of this experience to the largest world , While I have been our Israel Psychoanalytic Society , we have created a Center of Psychoanalytic Studies while we are not only adressing professionnals interested in Psychoanalysis but desserving on a volunteer basis , several institutions in need of expanded analytic knowledge. Since the beginning of the pandemy , our present President.Yudith Trieste has initiated two large what’ s app sites titled respectivly : Place for thoughts , and Worrying Psychoanalysts … A number of scientific presentations have delt with Politics , Fascism , Antisemitism , Racism etc … And my last point , I have been specially impressed by the report that you do here , related to the very moment that helped you to decide to apply for Ipa presidency : this meeting at Warsow , directed by Shmuel and Mira Erlich , while a negationist position has been taken by the Polish government …. You are helping us here to Think and rethink about the task that we have as analysts as to place Ethics as ” responsibility towards the other ( s) ” as primary to Psychoanalysis !!! Thank you again
Thank you for this conversation. I just think that psycoanalis must go out off the coach and bravely face and help to make the World a better place.
Bravo pour cette conversation magnifique dans ses propositions et la précisions des idées. je les trouve très proches des miennes . Comment mettre en œuvre ces idées ici .Ayant été déjà psychanalyste dans de nombreux lieux publics et en cabinet. Malgré mon souhait, je suis très isolée pour la réalisation de ces idées qui me sont chères.
Respectueuses et cordiales salutations
Alice Aguettant
[Bravo for this magnificent conversation in its proposals and the details of the ideas. I find them very close to mine. How to implement these ideas here. Having already been a psychoanalyst in many public places and in practice. Despite my wish, I am very isolated for the realization of these ideas which are dear to me. Respectful and cordial greetings Alice Aguettant]