We are pleased to publish Alice Maher’s op ed piece – especially on the eve of our Future of Psychoanalytic Education conference on Dec. 1 & 2 – an ecumenical conference that is bound to influence us all.

Alice says: “The ability to tolerate time, tension, paradox, and ambiguity, to develop greater capacity for empathic imagination, and to be able to learn and change in relationship to an Other, are essential elements of a good analytic process. They need to become goals for our society as well.”

This is exactly what this first ecumenical conference aims to accomplish.

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Harnessing Thanatos : Is it possible to analyze the forces of war in a way that leads to real change? by Alice Lombardo Maher, M.D .

I find that I’m unable to address the topic of conflict among analysts without focusing on the larger phenomena of prejudice and war. If it’s true that there’s more dissention within the analytic community than outside it, it’s because we’ve yet to find ways to address group conflicts on a scale larger than our individual consulting rooms, so the same dynamics that lead to war are emerging in bold relief from within our own community. If we can discover ways to use analytic tools to address the problem of large-scale inter-group conflict, we have an opportunity to unify our paradigms and give society an invaluable gift. If not, the problem will continue to play itself out in our own society, and our “Tower of Babel” will eventually collapse.

Freud taught us that the need to disavow aspects of our selves can lead to symptoms, problematic relationships, and self-destructive acting out, but the opportunity to give voice to those forbidden thoughts, over a long period of time and struggle, can be healing. But his model of thanatos gave us no useful tools, and a feeling of impotence, in relation to social forces. Individual analyses tend not to deal with prejudice except as it arises as part of a dynamic construct in the treatment. But can a democratic analyst analyze a patient to become a better republican? Can a Kleinian analyst give birth to a Freudian or a Relationist? Continue reading Harnessing Thanatos