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This collage was made as I was transitioning, from film making to psychoanalysis. It is torn up road maps of everywhere I have ever lived.
The publication of Diane Seuss’s poem, “Still Life with Dictator”, in this issue of ROOM made me think of another poem about another dictator which appeared in circumstances very different from these. I refer to the poem on Stalin…
The folks in the images appearing with this essay hold the traumas of racism, immigration, natural disaster and genocide. I show these faces because they reflect experiences of trauma so many of us Americans contain, directly or intergenerationally. I point…
“Political” is part of a series of experimental paintings which are mediations on the concepts of transience and impermanence. Specifically, I am interested in the “mono_ no_ aware” state. The bittersweet appreciation of a moment or as some say the…
THIS BODY OF WORK EMERGES following the death of my mother. Driven to find what is within, as an artist and psychoanalyst, and now as a motherless child, I become aware that the very effort is based on questions without…
It feels impossible to begin this introduction to Room 9.17 without mentioning the attack in Charlottesville even though, by the time you read this, that horrific August weekend will likely be occluded by whatever will have happened next. ROOM is…
The day in April that Ivanka Trump appeared on the dais with Angela Merkel at the Women’s Summit in Berlin, I was in my office. I was listening to a vibrant and astute young woman in her twenties as she…
We are grateful to both Leni and Samera for letting us share their words publically and for giving us the idea of having a ‘Letters to ROOM’ section. The creation of ROOM is an unfolding process between the editorial team…
For the previous issue of ROOM, I contributed a piece that argued against the idealization of tolerance, diversity and understanding that I see so many in the psychoanalytic community currently engaged in. I’m aware that some readers…
Due to the current political and social hostilities that surround us everyday I felt compelled to create a piece that was inclusive and stressed…
Eugene Mahon M.D., is a Training and Supervising psychoanalyst at Columbia Psychoanalytic. His articles have been published widely in major psychoanalytic journals. His books include A Psychoanalytic Odyssey: Painted Guinea Pigs, Dreams, and Other Realities (Karnac, 2014), Rensel the Redbit:…
There was a time when I thought that two words—gay and lesbian— and therefore two letters—g and l— sufficed. I now know—in fact I think I always did—that the words gay and lesbian never really did justice to the exceedingly…
“…I sit in my Manhattan apartment feeling elated and full, perhaps because a woman has been nominated as the VP candidate and it feels as though anything is possible…
Diane Seuss is a poet whose most recent collection, Four-Legged Girl (Graywolf Press, 2015) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her second book, Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open, (U. of Ma. Press, 2010) won the Juniper Prize. Her…
A patient in her early thirties recently admitted that she hadn’t voted, yet again…
If these little drawings were simpler, if they focused on color or form, they might be more likely to be understood for their essential character. They might inspire something…
From 1934 -1945, the Rundbriefe was a top secret newsletter that circulated among a small group of socially and politically committed refugee psychoanalysts. Otto Fenichel, its founder and one of Freud’s most eminent followers, urged this small group of analysts…
Susan Katz is a photographer, writer, and psychotherapist in private practice in NYC, NY.
In the epigraph, Jimi Hendrix’s poetic alter-ego expresses skepticism in regard to being seen and heard. Does he pose a question: “Can you see me?”; a demand: “Can you see me!”; or perhaps a plea: “Can you see me…please”?…
