Gustave Moreau: Oedipus and the Sphinx (1864) | Photo by Ed Uthman

A FAMILY ROMANCE by Jeri Isaacson

In mythology, in fairy tales, and in psychoanalysis, losing one’s sight often indicates that a disaster has occurred, an event so unbearable that it is no longer possible to look at it. Yet in the ongoing scourge that is the Trump administration, Trump cannot bear that we look away from the disaster.

Illustration by Mafe Izaguirre

VAGINAL VERITAS by Jill Gentile

In a recent interview1, Adam Phillips ventured the hypothesis that psychoanalysis was invented to address the problem of misogyny. This was a bold and unusual statement, and though we’ve long been initiated into Phillips’s refreshing, even scandalous, takes on often otherwise mundane or familiar assumptions, this seemed, at least to me, an astonishing statement, striking not because it was outlandish, but because it was utterly, perceptively true.

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Letters to Room: Stefanie Hofer

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 Fellowship has made changes to its Halloween celebration.

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THE ANNIVERSARY by Hattie Myers

Anniversaries exist as a demand to remember and, as such, they have a great deal in common with the work of psychoanalysis. Looking back from the vantage of ROOM’s first anniversary, it is amazing to recall that ROOM might not have happened at all but for a fortuitous accident.

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GROWING ROOM by Hattie Myers

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 not a blog. It is not a tweet. It is not a newsletter at one with the news. ROOM is a re-occurring place of reflection…

Photo: Markus Schreiber, AP. © 2017 The Associated Press.

THE BRAND by Jeri Isaacson

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 confessed, a little sheepishly, that her new shirt had “trendy” sleeves…

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MAKING ROOM by Hattie Myers

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 not to isolate themselves…