Letter from Philadelphia by Harvey Schwartz
I’m noticing that my relationship to the experience of self-disclosure is being affected by this health crisis we are all in the midst of…
Letter from Bilbao by Cristina Escudero
Thank you for the valuable ideas you are sharing in this space. I appreciate it so much. It gives me a lot of support to do my job. Thank you for the generosity and time that you are taking now in sharing your experiences. In this post, I want to limit my ideas to the topic of technologies and treatment. Two weeks ago, I found myself in a very different and new scene. As I have had no experience in remote treatment, I have tried to do my best to maintain a psychoanalytical frame…
Letter from Pittsburgh by William F. Cornell
I am heartened that we have this shared space for the days and weeks ahead. I have been at my office for four days now and have worked with the majority of my clients by phone or Skype, although a significant number have chosen in-person sessions. We have modified our office setting to make this as safe as possible. I feel somewhat fortunate in that part of my practice for some time now has been on the phone or Skype…
Letter from New York by Michael Diamond
The president stubbornly and arrogantly persists in directing his own personal reality show, which in fact exposes an ongoing assault on reality itself and on the public’s intelligence. Our protests and resistance often situated in the public squares and streets of American cities, large and small, have been taken away…
Letter from Guadalajara by Carmen Cuenca Zavala
I have been reading most of the emails I can from all countries, and it helps me to feel accompanied in difficult moments, as well as it helps me to think about and to elaborate upon an experience that perhaps is overcoming us and is totally new.
Letter from Buenos Aires by Juan Pinetta
It is very interesting how this conversation is holding us all together, for in this state of affairs, our sense of safety is taxed to the limit. Even children who are the age of my daughter are dying. The situation is worrying. So I wonder: What remains of the thinking apparatus in times of catastrophe when we must make catastrophic changes?
Letter from Jerusalem by Yehuda Fraenkel
The magnitude of emotional load together with ethical and clinical questions puts us in a total “terra incognita” state. I think that the need for coherence in external chaos is indeed universal, yet to us are both a demand and praxis of psychoanalytic practice engaging intrapsychic chaos.
Letter from Beirut by Rosemarie Nassif
I am a candidate from the Lebanese association. As you may know, the last six months have been very hectic in Lebanon: first, the revolution movement…
Letter from Birmingham by Lee Ascherman
There is much to be disturbed about. We are socially isolated while surrounded by reports of death, risk to life by an invisible assailant, and countless tragedies compounded by mismanagement and blame. We are not sure our hospitals will be available to provide care if we or loved ones need it. Compounding all this is an economic crisis of depth and unclear duration.
Letter from Genoa by Cosimo Schinaia
Some days ago, I received a phone call from a friend of mine who is a doctor of general medicine. He wrote that he appreciated my essay on coronavirus posted on IPA´s website but that it is not too useful for him. The doctors in the hospital and in the medical offices are at risk of falling into a serious burnout…
PLAYING WITH GUNS by Stefanie Hofer
At first, their silence made me wonder if I had overreacted to the presence of toy guns at the church event due to my experience with gun violence. My husband, Jamie Bishop, was murdered during the Virginia Tech massacre on April 16, 2007, the deadliest school shooting in US history.
Letters to Room by Samera Nasereddin and Leni Winn
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 and the community…
UNDERSTANDING, CHARLOTTESVILLE by Jared Russell
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…
THE PRESIDENT TWEETS LIKE A BIRD by Eugene Mahon
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: A Psychoanalytic Fairy Tale (Karnac,2015) and a volume of poetry, Bone Shop of the Heart (IPBooks, 2017).
TYRANNY: A CONFESSION by Diane Seuss
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 fourth collection, Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in May 2018. She has published widely in literary magazines including Poetry, The Iowa Review, and The New Yorker. Diane lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
A TOAST
Sheldon Bach is a Training and Supervising Analyst and on faculty at IPTAR, He has written five books on psychoanalysis, most recently “Chimeras and Other Writings: Selected Papers of Sheldon Bach” (IP Books, 2016).
INAUGURATION DAY 2017 by Joan V. Liebermann
Joan V. L iebermann is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in private practice in Washington, DC and a clinical faculty member at the George Washington University School of Medicine.
DEATH by Arlene Kramer Richards
Arlene Richards is a training and supervising analyst at IPTAR and poet. Her most recent book is Myths of Mighty Women. (Karnac 2015).