THE NEW YORK PSYCHOANALYTIC SOCIETY & INSTITUTE:
INTERDISCIPLINARY COLLOQUIUM ON PSYCHOANALYSIS & CULTURE
247 East 82nd St., between 2nd & 3RD, NY, NY
Thursday October 15, 2009, 8:15 p.m.
The Spit and Image: A Psychoanalytic Dissection of a Colloquial Phrase
Eugene Mahon, M.D. will discuss how the phrase “he is the spit and image of his father” or “she is the spit and image of her mother” has been around for many centuries. It is striking how poetic colloquial speech decided centuries ago to wed a crude, concrete concept like spit and a more abstract idea like image to capture the uncanny feeling the mind must have experienced on being confronted with an almost perfect likeness! Intriguing as it is to try to conceptualize the depth beneath the linguistic surface using anthropological evidence, a psychoanalytic case study yielded the free associative evidence that cracked the mystery.
For info contact:
Lois Oppenheim oppenheimL@mail.montclair.edu
Laurie Wilson ljw1@nyu.edu
For information about our training programs please visit us at: www.psychoanalysis.org