Constructing a Daydream in A Field of Dreams: Magical Wombs Part I
By Categories: Movies

A magical place where conflicts are resolved, parents and children reunited and death overcome

Field of Dreams is based on the novel Shoeless Joe, by W. P. Kinsella. It follows the book closely in most respects, although paring down the cast of characters. On the face of it, the plot seems childish. A man plows under his Iowa cornfield to build a baseball field that will call back Shoeless Joe Jackson and other major league baseball players of bygone eras. Nevertheless, a number of adults, not all unsophisticated, were absorbed by the film and moved to tears by its finale.

Field of Dreams opens much like a patient coming to a therapist for a consultation, with a short history and a symptom. Continue reading Constructing a Daydream in A Field of Dreams: Magical Wombs Part I

Body Talk: Looking and Being Looked At in Psychotherapy by Janice S. Lieberman
By Categories: Books

Reprinted with permission of the publisher of The PANY Bulletin

Psychoanalytic Association of New York
Volume 39, Number 3 Fall 2001

Book Review:

Body Talk: Looking and Being Looked At in Psychotherapy
by Janice S. Lieberman

Jason Aronson, 2000, 305 pp.
Reviewer: Leon S. Anisfeld, D.S.W.

Continue reading Body Talk: Looking and Being Looked At in Psychotherapy by Janice S. Lieberman

Toward Understanding Loneliness in Women
By Categories: Books

Reprinted by permission of The PANY Bulletin

Psychoanalytic Association of New York
Volume 39, Number 1 Spring 2001

Book Review
Toward Understanding Loneliness in Women
A Book Essay on Judith Hearne, Turtle Diary, and Ella Mason and Her Eleven Cats
by Arlene Kramer Richards, Ed. D. and Lucille Spira, Ph. D., C.S.W.

Many women come to treatment complaining that they are alone and lonely. others who are without partners do not complain about their loneliness, but rather focus on anxiety and feelings of helplessness. Loneliness is a concept and experience that has been of some interest to psychoanalysts and novelists alike. Aloneness and loneliness can be discrete; one can be lonely in the midst of others as well as comfortable when alone (Satran,1978; Buchholz,1997.) But chronic loneliness can be toxic (Fromm Reichmann, 1959.)

Continue reading Toward Understanding Loneliness in Women

“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).

American Imago – special edition
By Categories: Music

The spring issue of AMERICAN IMAGO (Vol 64 No. 1) is a special edition on Music and Psychoanalysis. It was organized by me (Julie Jaffee Nagel, Ph.D.) and is dedicated to the memory of Stuart Feder, M.D.

Contents include:

  • Preface: Peter Rudnytsky
  • Taboo and Biographical Innovation: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert: Maynard Solomon
  • Melodies of the Mind: Mozart in 1778: Julie Jaffee Nagel
  • Music and Primary Process: Proposal for a Preliminary Experiment: Linda A.W. Brakel
  • The Sound of Memory: Music and Acoustic Origins: Alexander Stein
  • The Limits of Empathy:Warren Poland
  • Musings of a Musicophiliac: Brett Kahr
  • Book Review: Gustav Mahler: A Life in Crisis by Stuart Feder, M.D. Reviewed by Aleksandar Dimitrijevic