A Sea of Mothers by Ann Augustine

Essays

[…] It may be that my security comes not simply from a “good enough” mother, as Winnicott theorizes, but from “good enough” mothering—a multitude of mothers who created a collage of mothering and a patchwork of sufficient “reliable holding” for me to draw on. I also wonder whether there is a different kind of security that grows in the gaps of not having a mother—that some of my security comes not in spite of, but perhaps because of, these early losses. As I look back, I know that in the free-falling, I grew a sense of being carried—not by any one person, but by life itself.

Rights of Passage by Isaac Slone

Essays

In the elementary school common room, boys congregated in one area, and girls congregated in another. I stood in the middle, grappling with a painful sense of disconnection. Folding in with either group was impossible. I was alone in noticing the binary division.

Second Chances by Delia Kostner

Essays

[…]At the clinic, I became part of a lively swirl of women who provided me with the guidance and intimacy I lacked at home. They were my family as my family became increasingly unavailable. Women ran the show. It was a heady time. It was 1974, the Roe v. Wade decision just made abortion legal, and an earlier state law gave teenagers free access to reproductive health services. There was enough funding to never turn anyone away for lack of money.

Backstory by Aaron Bourne

Essays

I sit across from the Washington elite. I work to access their thoughts and dreams as they evolve in the therapeutic relationship. It can look like a one-sided process, but it most certainly is not. When it goes well, my clients pour their pain into the space I provide. Because this year marks two decades of continuous practice for me, I find myself reflecting on the deeper nature of these relationships. What is the stuff of therapy? Who am I to them? Who am I really in this space? I suppose these are standard twenty-year questions for any clinician.

Beyond Reason by John Alderdice

Essays

For some years I have been warning publicly that we are heading into a third global conflict, and this, at times, led me to feel quite down about the prospects for humanity. This third global conflict is not simply a rerun of the disasters of the twentieth century, for before 1945, however terrible a war was and however many people died, the world would repair itself and in time the population of the world could be restored. With the threat of nuclear war and the reality of climate change, humankind has brought about the very real danger of our own demise.

Breaking Narratives by Diana E. Moga

Essays

I am writing to share my personal narrative and reaction to recent events at APsaA and in the Middle East. I am Jewish, and I lived in Israel from the time I was five, when we immigrated to Israel from Romania in the midst of the Lebanon War, to the time I was fourteen, when we left as the sirens wailed during the Gulf War. I watched Holocaust documentaries every year on Remembrance Day from the time I was eight years old.

Dragging Psychoanalysis by Eric Shorey

Essays

[…] I don’t think it’s melodramatic to say that the field of psychoanalysis remains guilty for its historically hideous treatment of LGBTQ+ and gender-nonconforming individuals—a history which this event is trying to reconcile with. It’s no secret that until frighteningly recently, homosexuality and transgender identity were thought of as mental disorders, and the psychoanalytic “debate” about the pathological nature of non-heterosexual identity remains frighteningly echoed alive today.

A World Not Good Enough by Abdel Aziz Al Bawab

Essays

The demand for Palestinian erasure arises from a larger socio-historical structure, present mentally as a blueprint that maps out people’s presupposed positions in the world. Positions imposed historically through violence and valued differentially according to colonial logics. This map is unconsciously pulled upon to be reproduced externally, in an injurious gesture echoing the original colonial trauma that birthed the world attempting to be reproduced.

A Sovereign Nation by William F. Cornell

Essays

It had been a morning of running errands, and I was driving home to make lunch. I live on a major thoroughfare in the heart of Pittsburgh, adjoining the neighborhood of Garfield, a predominantly Black working-class neighborhood. As I turned the corner, I found the street blocked by police motorcycles and patrol cars. I was ordered to turn around. I parked nearby and then returned on foot to my street, again to be stopped by a patrol officer, who demanded to know where I was going. When I pointed to my house, he asked for my ID and then told me to go ahead to my house but “No farther; we are in the midst of an active shooter situation.” The neighborhood was in lockdown.

A Lack of Interest by Elle Wynn

Essays

The obsessions I look into the least in session are those centered around true crime. Call it countertransference; call it a lack of professional curiosity. Label it what you will, but what remains is an utter absence of interest in the very stories that keep many of my clients perched on the edge of their seats, breathless as they recount a tale that has captured their full attention that week.