Author: Arnold D. Richards

Letter to the NY Science Times
By Categories: Letters To Editors, NYPSI Centenary 1911-2011

To The Editor NY Science Times

The thrust of Benedict Carey’s article on dreams is that dreams have to do with memory and cognition, not, as Freud proposed, with emotional motivation. However, the findings presented in this article do not address adequately the fuller context of our knowledge about the nature of dreams, or about their meaning and their use in psychoanalysis. Mark Solms, for example, has assembled a very persuasive body of neuroscientific studies supporting the view that dreaming has to do with motivation and desire as well as cognition. Carey cites Allen Hobson without noting that Hobson, along with most of his research colleagues, has abandoned his original theory that dreams are the product of random neural firings. A hundred years of psychoanalytic research and experience show that much can be learned about people’s mental and emotional lives through dream interpretation and other psychoanalytic methods. Time Magazine had it right. Freud is NOT dead.

Arnold D. Richards

Click Here to Read the New York Science Times Article

Germany’s largest synagogue reopens
By Categories: Announcements

synagogue.jpgI thought this article from the Guardian would be of particular interest to those who were in Berlin for the IPA Congress and went on the tour of Jewish Berlin which included a visit to the Synagogue before restoration:

Germany’s largest synagogue, an architectural and historical landmark in the centre of Berlin, will reopen today after extensive restoration work.

The red-brick Rykestrasse synagogue is to be reopened in the presence of former members who were forced to flee Nazi Germany. It was set on fire on Kristallnacht on November 9 1938, when synagogues and Jewish businesses were attacked and destroyed on Nazi orders…
Click here to read the article. Click here to see accompanying photos.

Letter to the New York Times Editor re: Patching Up the Frayed Couch
By Categories: Letters To Editors, NYPSI Centenary 1911-2011

To the Editor:
I would like to add to the article Patching Up the Frayed Couch recognition of the contribution to psychoanalytic scholarship made by members on the New York Psychoanalytic Society The editors of two of the most important journals in psychoanalysis the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the Psychoanalytic Quarterly were for decades members of NYPSI.

Just as the venerable New York Times has been reinventing it self the article points out for me the need for NYPSI and psychoanalysis to reinvent ourself for a new time.

Arnold Richards

Member NYPSA
Former Editor JAPA

Click here for Link to the New York Times Article: Patching-up the Frayed Couch

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/nyregion/thecity/09anal.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=thecity

“Collective Psychological Processes in Anti-Semitism”
By Categories: Controversial

I thought this article by Dr. Avner Falk, “Collective Psychological Processes in Anti-Semitism,” would be of interest since this month marks the sixth anniversary of the United Nations World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa. Although the UN General Assembly had authorized the conference in Resolution 52/111 in 1997 to explore effective methods to eradicate racial discrimination and to promote awareness in the global struggle against intolerance these noble goals were undermined by hateful anti-Jewish rhetoric and anti-Israel political agendas, prompting both Israel and the United States to withdraw their delegations from the conference. Click here to read this article was published in the March 2006 issue of Jewish Political Studies Review (18:1-2).