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Long before psychoanalytic language existed, voices from the Indian subcontinent sang of surrender in both ordinary and extraordinary ways. Kabir, a fifteenth-century poet-saint, along with other Sufi-Bhakti mystics, moved through streets, riversides, and marketplaces, composing verses that challenged authority, hierarchy,…
“Why do you Chinese need psychoanalysis?” The question came from my instructor at the Chicago Institute, delivered not with malice but with genuine curiosity. “Don’t you have Buddhism, Taoism, all these ways to regulate mental health?” I remember the silence…
The complexity of the patient-analyst dyad increases when the two have different cultural backgrounds. I am an analyst-in-training who has worked and lived in many contexts, in Japan and the UK. In Japan, I have lived as a third-generation Zainichi…
The complexity of the patient-analyst dyad increases when the two have different cultural backgrounds. I am an analyst-in-training who has worked and lived in many contexts, in Japan and the UK. In Japan, I have lived as a third-generation Zainichi…
On 28 July 2025, four people were killed in a mass shooting in their Park Avenue office tower in central Manhattan. Among the victims were Wesley LePatner, a senior executive at Blackstone and a mother of two, and Didarul Islam,…
have you seen an apocalypse not in a movie but on the streets outside your window have you smelled the air of a chaos tamed by the weapons of armed soldiers have you heard of the silenced screams of the…
When a postcard arrived from a friend, I was in my late teens, living in the passive-aggressive air of the bright grey sky in a tiny room in Kobe. The picture on the postcard was seemingly drawn hastily in a…
The Great Ocean Road, a single-lane ribbon at the top of sheer bluffs outside Melbourne in Australia, is called the Shipwreck Coast. It’s so named after the hundreds of boats that journeyed from Europe in the nineteenth century looking for…
Grief has been on our minds lately, both my patient’s and mine. In addition to the anguish inherent in his transatlantic move and resultant “regressus ad uterum,” our work has also touched upon the grief we share with many of…
This reflective piece traces a journey through Bulgaria and Albania, weaving together encounters with strangers, political history, and the inner experience of foreignness. Moving from monasteries and mountain villages to bustling Balkan cities, the essay explores how travel exposes the…
Sara Mansfield Taber (1954–2024) lived a life of curiosity, writing, and service. A memoirist, teacher, and social worker, she authored seven books and mentored writers around the world. Through projects supporting healthcare workers, Afghan students, and immigration advocates, she used…
We can’t split something off when we’re surrounded by it. The same forces flattening Gaza are showing up here under different names—economic inequality, xenophobia, the rollback of human rights. I’m trying to bridge the divide between denial and collapse, to…
My first day volunteering at immigration court began with a medical emergency. A man had collapsed in his wheelchair while DHS officers surrounded his terrified family. When I identified myself as a physician, they demanded proof before allowing me to…
My brother, Mamoun, was murdered in Khartoum. I write as a Sudanese psychotherapist, sister, and witness, carrying a grief that lives in my bones. This war has ruptured not only bodies and homes but our sense of self and belonging.…
Every spring, my mother dreamt of Crimea, and that’s how we knew winter was ending. Now, exiled from those shores, I still dream of its herbs, its sea, its air. Eleven years have passed since I last returned. For those…
In late October 2023, Eyal and I began a correspondence. We generated two publications and a film about our histories. In the process, something began to cohere between us. Our dialogue revealed a common humanity. He was willing to understand…
In Gaza, we live in a state that feels like waking up after a long night of fragmented, restless sleep. It’s as if you’ve spent the night on the edge of fear—between the hum of drones, the echo of explosions,…
While the idea of “discovery” holds many meanings, I consider here the way it was and continues to be used as a colonizing concept. Christo-European monarchs used the Doctrine of Discovery to lay claim to land they deemed uninhabited despite…
The floors are red, not as a metaphor, not as a political statement; they are red. And this is what I ask myself: Is our blood even red? Are we made of the same substance, the same suffering, the same…
Such desires must be obfuscated. Indeed, in the face of blatant refusal to protect children, which amounts to relentless aggression against them, we find psychoanalytically curious invocations of protection amidst active harm, a phenomenon observable in abusive families and troubled…
Sunday, May 3, 2026
12-2 PM EDT on Zoom
