PLAYING FOR REAL by Eugene Mahon
Room’s definition of itself as a “sketchbook of psychoanalytic action” got me thinking: What is psychoanalytic action? Is it action informed by considerable analysis of all its components and determinants?
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Room’s definition of itself as a “sketchbook of psychoanalytic action” got me thinking: What is psychoanalytic action? Is it action informed by considerable analysis of all its components and determinants?
Before I read this book, which I heard about not long after it was published in 2013, I thought it would turn out to be a worthy effort to apply psychoanalytic and interdisciplinary thinking to the nightmare subject of climate…
The writing is clear on the wall and has been for some time now for anyone open to facts. Demographics in the US all speak to the demise of the Republican Party as currently constituted.
It has been over a year that I had sent you my piece “Playing with Guns” after attending a church Halloween Festival for children that had many games centered around toy guns. I am happy to report that Blacksburg Christian…
“Bravery,” Coline Covington, a psychoanalyst living in London, told me last spring, “exists in the eyes of the beholder. No one who has done something…
The world listens as Donald Trump, President of the United States, on a state visit to the United Kingdom bemoans the fact that Prime Minister…
Politics is about power — who has it and who doesn’t. Politics is also about ethics, fairness, justice, and governing assumptions about the state of nature…
William Blake was outraged by the idea of a bird in a cage, it being a violation of the natural order. One can only imagine what he would think…
Eugene Mahon, MD, is training and supervising psychoanalyst at Columbia Psychoanalytic Center for Training and Research. He has published three books—A Psychoanalytic Odyssey, Rensal the Redbit, and Boneshop of the Heart—and numerous articles on psychoanalysis. He practices in New York…
Engaging with marginalized social histories and recognizing the psychic consequences these histories hold for the treatment dyad poses a challenge for psychoanalysis…
In the summer of 2016, several IPTAR clinicians began to meet with administrators at the International Rescue Committee to discuss forging a partnership in which IPTAR therapists would provide pro bono services to IRC clients who are refugees resettling in…
Lately, a dream I had twelve years ago has been coming back to me. I dreamt that my four-year-old son (he’s sixteen now) was buried neck deep in the middle of a neighborhood and surrounded by modest houses…
I paint to create a space “to be,” a space to reflect and connect me back to the physical world. My images spring when I pause to be “in the moment” and absorb where I am and what’s happening. When…
Rachel Neve-Midbar, MFA, is the author (under the name Heimowitz) of the chapbook What the Light Reveals (Tebot Bach Press, 2014). Her work has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Spillway, Prairie Schooner, and Georgia Review. She was recently a finalist…
“Nigger take this! Take it, I tell ya!” Howard yells at the black carhop. It is 1951 in Macon, Georgia. I am eight years old. My brother, Toby, is six. We are in the back seat of a 1948 Ford.…
What happened to the party of the working class? When did the Democratic party become a party that neglects the poor? When did politicians stop fighting for economic equality…
As a young candidate transferring from the field of performing arts and theory into psychoanalysis, I am struck by their provocative resonances. In addition to theoretical connections, I have noticed between psychoanalysis and performing arts/performance studies…
The “fourth wall” is a technical device used by actors. It works in the following way: Actors choose a spot in the back of the theater, internalize it, and move on with the action, bypassing the potential interference of….