Death as rupture, mourning as repair: A relational rendering of grief.

This paper honors Jeremy Safran's legacy of scholarship and pedagogy through the lens of his emphasis on rupture and repair. Challenging a Freudian rendering of mourning as ultimately giving up a lost object, the author draws on Nicholas Abraham and Maria Torok's application of Sandor Ferenczi's concept of introjection to offer a relational rendering of the grieving process.

Psychoanalysis of the unspectacular.

From the perspective of a poet and first-year psychoanalytic training candidate, this paper develops Jeremy Safran's ideas about the dialectic between psychoanalysis and Buddhism by drawing an analogy between their processes and those of a poetry practice to define an alternative to pathological dissociation under capitalist systems of value. The paper details the writer's experience of working a day job in an office and the pathological dissociation which she subsequently attempts to overcome and critique through writing poetry. Various poems written at work are shared and analyzed as evidence. Drawing from Safran's edited volume, Psychoanalysis and Buddhism, the author then identifies aspects of Zen Buddhist meditation practice and the psychoanalytic process that focus on connecting with reality, however conflicted, as opposed to escaping it. This paper was written under the mentorship of the psychoanalyst and Zen teacher Barry Magid.

EMBRACING DISAPPOINTMENT AS PSYCHOANALYTIC PRAXIS.

Psychoanalysis involves studying how people maintain not knowing what they "know." As a result, how psychoanalytic psychotherapists orient toward what their patients may be experiencing but cannot say is at the core of psychoanalytic praxis. Jeremy Safran's unique psychoanalytic sensibilities were a model for how to yield to feeling states and relational dynamics that are at the heart of therapeutic action, but which all too frequently get bypassed. This brief recollection highlights how Safran's commitment to open inquiry and mutuality-not just with his patients but also with his students-continues to impact the field.

The Innate Story Code.

Code biology reveals a great many codes beyond the genetic code as integral to biological functioning. Recent scholars have linked the growing field of code biology to analytical psychology, confirming that the encoded information inherited by the human organism is indeed massive and capable of great sophistication. In this discussion, I will expand on this project by showing how developments in embodied cognition reveal a code that links the world of universal emotional responses to common experiences to the world of embodied visuospatial narratives--i.e., the "archetypes" of analytical psychology. Viewed in this manner, archetypes become spontaneous symbolic narratives that symbolize universal emotional responses to typical human environments. Such symbolic narratives aim toward adaptation, and use a universal code that maps such situations to visuospatial narratives, with the adaptor being the human body itself.

Finding one's way.

The following is a meditative reflection on an anecdote from Jeremy Safran's Psychoanalysis and Buddhism. Moving through Safran's description of an important moment in his development as a student of Buddhism, the author weaves images, practices, and ways of being and feeling into an homage to Safran's legacy integrating psychoanalytic and Buddhist praxis and epistemology.

The enchanted unconscious, impasses, negotiation and surrender: Jeremy Safran in dialogue with the Rebbes of Ishbitz/Radzin.

Dr. Jeremy Safran had a unique talent to seamlessly weave together clinical work with his broad knowledge of philosophy, history, and theology. Alongside his commitment to researching the minutest clinical interactions, he was conscious of the broad values of the nature of the good life that underpinned his analytic approach. This paper will explore the concepts of the enchanted unconscious, clinical impasses, negotiation, and surrender, suggesting that these concepts together provide insight into Safran's larger philosophy of life. It will then provide the approach to these concepts of the Rebbes of Ishbitz/Radzin, a school of Polish Hasidic thought. It will conclude with an exploration of how both Safran's psychoanalytic approach and the Ishbitz/Radzin Rebbes' Hasidic approach to the Torah provide distinct insights and applications of these concepts, which can be mutually enriching for both disciplines.

Remembering Jeremy Safran: continuing the conversation.

This introduction provides an overview to this special issue honoring the work and legacy of Jeremy D. Safran. Born of the Jeremy Safran Memorial Conference, held on April 2nd, 2023, this issue features a wide range of contributions from leaders in the field, former students, and early career professionals whose work engages and develops central ideas from Safran's work and reflects on his impact on their own clinical work and scholarship. Themes center around the three domains of Safran's major contributions: pedagogy; psychotherapy integration; and Buddhism, spirituality, and psychoanalysis. We observe among the contributions an experiential reconnecting with the deeply relational commitments of our friend and colleague.

The heart of healing: Echoes of Sándor Ferenczi's legacy in Jeremy Safran's relational commitments.

In this duet of two voices honoring Jeremy Safran's legacy, the authors celebrate some points of resonance between Sándor Ferenczi's groundbreaking relational interventions and Safran's approach to the therapeutic relationship as the heart of healing. Karen Starr first highlights Ferenczi's now well-known creative experimentation with technique and his emphasis on and care for the relational dimension of psychoanalytic treatment. Jill Bresler then links Safran's career-long dedication to the therapeutic alliance to Starr's introductory remarks, honoring Safran and Ferenczi's shared dedication to expanding options in clinical practice through focus on the relationship. Recalling Safran's naming Ferenczi as a key figure in psychotherapy integration's origin story, Bresler reflects on her own learning from Safran's groundbreaking transtheoretical research into the mutative aspects of psychotherapy and his translating a psychoanalytic focus on the therapeutic relationship to CBT researchers and practitioners.

Psychoanalysis and the Experience of Homelessness.

Psychoanalysis is often viewed as a practice relevant only to educated people of means. This article describes a project that matches psychoanalytically trained clinicians with unhoused and formerly unhoused adults in a large urban community. D. W. Winnicott's ideas about impingement, the holding environment, fear of breakdown, and careful monitoring of the analyst's interiority have proven to be most valuable theoretical and clinical tools. A decade-long case example demonstrates the challenges and healing potentials of the work.

Freud in Bulgaria: Psychoanalysis, Literature, Translation: An Experience with the Singular.

This contribution considers a monthly seminar, Literature and Psychoanalysis, that has been taking place at Sofia University (Sofia, Bulgaria) since 2017. Three of the seminar's founders reflect on the transferences between literature and psychoanalysis, and on the ways in which literature and psychoanalysis can meaningfully converse. The exchange also touches on the fate of Freud's textual legacy in communist and post-communist Bulgaria.

Empty Heart Disease: Teaching and Learning in China.

Drawing on 15 years of experience teaching psychoanalytic theory and therapy primarily from an object relations perspective to Chinese psychotherapists onsite and online, the authors present their learning about Chinese culture, social history, and philosophy, and the Chinese way of communicating about emotional experience. Their essay is imbued with the Chinese use of metaphor and psychosomatic symbolization, particularly involving the heart. They elaborate on the Chinese concept of Empty Heart Disease, comparing and contrasting it to Western concepts from literature, sociology and psychoanalysis, namely spleen, anomie, dead mother, and schizoid, empty, false, and narcissistic self-states. They expand upon and extend the empty heart concept to various age groups and symptom presentations in China, illustrated by a vignette from individual psychoanalysis with a woman and three vignettes from applied psychoanalysis of a couple with no intimacy, a child with an obsessive psychosomatic symptom, and an adolescent school dropout who was self-harming and suicidal in response to academic pressure. Having emphasized the connection between symptom presentations and social life and times, they discuss the impact of trauma, its transgenerational transmission in China, and the impact of unprecedented economic growth and social change on individuals, couples and families.

Do we know our place? The role of psychoanalysis in public life.

The contributions to this Psychoanalytic Controversies section explore the question of what psychoanalysis may be able to contribute to thinking about some of the challenges currently confronting humanity and how such communications can be made effectively. This introduction to the section frames the debate with some reflections on anxieties that have been expressed about the application of psychoanalytic ideas beyond the clinical context, the risks of insularity, the need for appropriate humility, and the reality of the embeddedness of analytic practice, in particular social, cultural, and historical contexts. Contributions from Claudia Frank, Sudhir Kakar, Eli Zaretsky, Michael Rustin, Pratyusha Tummala-Narra, Magda Khouri, and Sally Weintrobe are introduced.

Sure It Works in Practice, but Does It Work in Theory? Appreciating Fred Pine.

Fred Pine is a major contributor to contemporary Freudian analytic work. He expanded the breadth of clinical psychoanalysis by showing how the analyst could integrate ever expanding perspectives in analysis, and he expanded its depth through greater insight into how development affects psychic structure and, thereby, the context within which unconscious conflict and compromise is experienced and processed. Both of these-his expansion of potential variables implicated in the process of dynamic conflict and his developmental focus on structural deficit-have led to a way of Freudian thinking that is highly assimilative and integrative. Pine's focus on integrating disparate points of view-not different theories, but clinical observations that are featured in different overall theories-illuminates clinical possibility and nuance. Pine's work leads to questions about the relation of psychoanalytic theory to analytic practice and the definition of contemporary Freudian psychoanalysis itself.

Sandplay Therapy and Active Imagination: What Are the Similarities and Differences? Reflections about Jung's Writings on Active Imagination.

Jung stated that active imagination is a fundamental component of the second phase of an analysis that can continue even outside the analytic setting. Since it can be conveyed through various expressive techniques, such as writing, drawing, and painting, it is possible to argue that all forms of psychotherapy based on art (e.g., poetry, dance, and theater) originate from Jung's contribution about active imagination. This paper focuses on Sandplay Therapy as one of the forms of expression rooted in active imagination. Apart from some critical differences between the two analytic processes (e.g., active imagination is usually prompted in the last phase of the analysis, while Sandplay Therapy might be used since the first sessions), there are several convergences. Among the principal analogies, consciousness lends its expressive means to the unconscious, which decides what to depict. Also, the resulting image is determined from both the consciousness and the unconscious and is related to the person's conscious situation. Finally, I suggest that Sandplay Therapy-aside from contributing to the subsequent development of active imagination itself (as suggested by Dr. Carducci)-might also be used to practice active imagination in a "facilitated" and protected setting. It would help let the unconscious come up while creating the image in the sandtray, and it fosters the confrontation between the unconscious and the consciousness through the contemplation of the image in the sandtray.

When psychoanalytic dyads are forced into the virtual world.

The Covid pandemic changed the daily routines for millions of people. This was the case for those who were gainfully employed, especially for those who work as psychoanalysts and psychodynamic psychotherapists. At least for a good while, the practice of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis moved from the consulting room to the virtual world of the internet. The author explores the impact virtual therapy had on three different patients. One began a three time a week analysis during the pandemic. The duo met virtually for a year and a half before their first in person meeting. The other two patients had begun twice a week analyses a few years before the pandemic, met virtually for two years, until in person sessions restarted. The patients and the author describe their experiences.

The elephant in the zoom: will psychoanalysis survive the screen?

While screen-mediated analysis long predated the pandemic, it was largely seen as non-equivalent to in-person treatment by analysts and patients alike. When COVID forced us to move our entire practices to the screen, our concerns about its limitations were replaced by relief; we could continue doing analytic work during a terrifying and challenging time. Three years later, many have chosen to continue practicing remotely for reasons that are no longer driven by fears of exposure. We mostly minimize or deny our earlier concerns about the limitations of screen work. Have we chosen convenience, ease, and a personal sense of safety over togetherness, while ignoring the underbelly of remote work? This paper identifies the convergence of several forces underlying our decision to stay remote, including guilt and anxiety about privileging our own self-interest, unmourned losses and collective PTSD, fear of the future and existential anxiety about living in a techno-culture that threatens to replace us. Our denial of these powerful forces makes it easy to rationalize a decision to embrace remote work and disavow the threat it poses to our field.

RELATIONAL DIMENSION VERSUS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.

Thirty years ago, we proposed the similarity between the functioning of artificial intelligence and the human psyche, suggesting multiple parallels between the Freudian model proposed in the "Project for Psychology for Neurologists" and the connectionist theories applied in the generation of parallel distributed processing systems (PDP), also known as connectionist models. These models have been and continue to be the foundation of general artificial intelligences like ChatGPT, evolving and gaining prominence in everyday life. From the earliest applications in psychiatry, recreating computationally simulated modes of illnesses, to the use of deep learning models, especially in the field of computer vision for tasks such as image recognition, segmentation, and classification. Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) are employed for tasks involving sequences of data, such as natural language processing, or models based on the Transformer architecture, like BERT and GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), which have revolutionized natural language processing. In this present work, we analyze the significance of the emergence and exponential growth of these types of tools in the field of healthcare, from medical diagnosis and patient care to psychological attention and psychotherapeutic treatment, exploring the changes and transformations in the forms of subjective expression that are arising. We also examine and argue for the importance and validity of the relational dimension proposed by our psychoanalytic approach in contrast to the potential use of these tools as treatment models.

Tran in April: The Analysis of A Transgender Adolescent With Notes on the Metapsychology of Gender Transition.

The aim of this article is twofold: firstly, to describe the seven-year analytic treatment of a TG adolescent (F "April" to M "Tran") and, secondly, based on the clinical observations, to propose a reflection on the intrapsychic events linked to gender transition. We could witness during this analysis that the dissonant anatomical sex, which is at the heart of the gender dysphoria, resists mentalization and consequently its psychological integration. The psychic events of transition, understood here on the model of a mourning process, could denote the various strategies necessary to the TG individual to negotiate the obstacle of mentalization.

Hearts and minds: The technopolitical role of affect in sociotechnical imaginaries.

Sociotechnical imaginaries (SIs) have emerged as a popular and generative concept within Science and Technology Studies (STS). This article draws out the affective component of SIs, combining a review of relevant literatures with an empirical case study of an anti-fracking imaginary in Ireland to suggest how we might theorize an affective technopolitics of SIs. The literature review identifies three key aspects of SIs that would benefit from a more coherent conceptualization of affect: the utopian, productive, and collectivizing dimensions of imaginaries. Emotions such as desire and fear appear prominently in the SI literature, but in ways that require development. Using empirical examples from my research, I outline what this developed understanding of emotions in imaginaries might look like. I examine the role that emotions played in the development and settlement of an anti-fracking imaginary in Ireland, highlighting how the intensive, multimodal, and dynamic nature of affect underpinned the productive, collective, and utopian dimensions of the SI. I conclude with some remarks about how this developed theory of emotion positions STS researchers to address issues of humanity, representation, and the building of better worlds.

BACK TO THE FUTURE WITH SENECA'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY IN MIND.

This paper regards Seneca's practical philosophy as ancestor to psychoanalytically informed psychotherapy and as a progenitor of ongoing contemporary praxis in applied ideas of mind. Facing forward into the Anthropocene, as psychoanalysis encounters Artificial Intelligence, the convergence with contemporary psychoanalytic psychotherapy of value concepts developed from Antiquity is discussed. Drawn from Seneca's Letters on Ethics, constellations of significant ideas present in ancient practical philosophy resonate with similar configurations developed two millennia later, and central to the practice of contemporary psychotherapy.