The authors, activists, and analysts in this issue hail from India, the US, China, Japan, Myanmar, and the UK. Not coincidentally, they are engaged in a deeply creative and moral struggle that shows how the future of psychoanalysis and democracy relies upon our ability to let go of the false structures that we live in and that live in us. They describe the dislocated experience of losing both internal and external homes.
Long before psychoanalytic language existed, voices from the Indian subcontinent sang of surrender in both ordinary and extraordinary ways. Kabir, a fifteenth-century poet-saint, along with other Sufi-Bhakti mystics, moved through streets, riversides, and marketplaces, composing verses that challenged authority, hierarchy, and rigid forms of identity. Their practice was embodied in song, rhythm, and dance, moving toward freedom, encounter, and transformation and away from doctrinal certainty.
“Why do you Chinese need psychoanalysis?” The question came from my instructor at the Chicago Institute, delivered not with malice but with genuine curiosity. “Don’t you have Buddhism, Taoism, all these ways to regulate mental health?” I remember the silence that followed. The other Chinese trainees and I exchanged glances across the Zoom screen—yes, we were among the first to train remotely, Chicago being notorious for its large Chinese population. The question hung in the virtual air like smoke, and I found myself nodding slowly, thinking: He’s right. He’s absolutely right.
The complexity of the patient-analyst dyad increases when the two have different cultural backgrounds. I am an analyst-in-training who has worked and lived in many contexts, in Japan and the UK. In Japan, I have lived as a third-generation Zainichi Korean. Zainichi refers to Korean immigrants or their descendants (in Japanese, 在zai means “present” and 日nichi means “Japan”). Japan adopts jus sanguinis: Nationality and citizenship are determined by one’s parental heritage, not the country of birth (jus soli). In addition, one cannot hold dual citizenship. After Japan colonised Korea in 1910, Koreans were forced to become Japanese.
The complexity of the patient-analyst dyad increases when the two have different cultural backgrounds. I am an analyst-in-training who has worked and lived in many contexts, in Japan and the UK. In Japan, I have lived as a third-generation Zainichi Korean. Zainichi refers to Korean immigrants or their descendants (in Japanese, 在zai means “present” and 日nichi means “Japan”). Japan adopts jus sanguinis: Nationality and citizenship are determined by one’s parental heritage, not the country of birth (jus soli). In addition, one cannot hold dual citizenship. After Japan colonised Korea in 1910, Koreans were forced to become Japanese.
On 28 July 2025, four people were killed in a mass shooting in their Park Avenue office tower in central Manhattan. Among the victims were Wesley LePatner, a senior executive at Blackstone and a mother of two, and Didarul Islam, an off-duty police officer working in private security who served as a building guard and management employee. The gunman, Shane Devon Tamura, aged twenty-seven, ended his own life after the attack. Like so many similar incidents, this was not merely another chapter in the relentless American cycle of gun violence…It has now become, at least for this writer, a parable of what happens when people are reduced to functional market value and usage: a world where human beings come to see themselves, and are seen by others, as assets or failures, winners to be rewarded or discards to be forgotten.
have you seen an apocalypse not in a movie but on the streets outside your window have you smelled the air of a chaos tamed by the weapons of armed soldiers have you heard of the silenced screams of the medical workers who were also civilians amongst civilians have you tasted the blood of either of these two murderers—COVID and Coup
When a postcard arrived from a friend, I was in my late teens, living in the passive-aggressive air of the bright grey sky in a tiny room in Kobe. The picture on the postcard was seemingly drawn hastily in a graffiti-like style in pale pastel colours. In it, a woman in pyjamas with dark, messy hair is sitting on a single bed, slightly hunched over and covering her mouth with her hands. She appears lost in thought, blankly bemused, as she stares at an open suitcase in front of her, waiting to be filled, with piles of books lying next to it. From her strangely impassive face, I heard an inaudible voice oozing out—“What shall I do?”
The Great Ocean Road, a single-lane ribbon at the top of sheer bluffs outside Melbourne in Australia, is called the Shipwreck Coast. It’s so named after the hundreds of boats that journeyed from Europe in the nineteenth century looking for safe harbor—and finding anything but. One hundred years later, my own family journeyed from America to Australia, looking for safe harbor. Though by the 1990s, Qantas and in-flight service had supplanted the clippers and barques that smashed into the cliffs so long ago.
Grief has been on our minds lately, both my patient’s and mine. In addition to the anguish inherent in his transatlantic move and resultant “regressus ad uterum,” our work has also touched upon the grief we share with many of our fellow Americans at the loss of another home, another nurturing womb: that of the very country he grew up in and to which I moved.
This reflective piece traces a journey through Bulgaria and Albania, weaving together encounters with strangers, political history, and the inner experience of foreignness. Moving from monasteries and mountain villages to bustling Balkan cities, the essay explores how travel exposes the boundaries between self and world.
Sara Mansfield Taber (1954–2024) lived a life of curiosity, writing, and service. A memoirist, teacher, and social worker, she authored seven books and mentored writers around the world. Through projects supporting healthcare workers, Afghan students, and immigration advocates, she used writing as a tool for resilience, connection, and understanding.
After the 2024 election, a small group of volunteers in Durham transformed their concern into action. Engaged Defenders for Democracy grew from a simple email chain into a grassroots movement organizing weekly demonstrations, civic engagement campaigns, and a national community dedicated to empathy, inclusion, and defending democratic values.
Young people today are growing up amid collective trauma—from school shootings and climate anxiety to social media pressure and economic uncertainty. Bounce Back Generation works with youth in underserved communities to build resilience, teach emotional regulation, and transform trauma into strength through storytelling, mentorship, and neuroscience-based tools.
We are the Light is a forum and gathering place offering free and open expression to women from around the world whose voices are seldom heard and whose futures are threatened. The education and health of women, attention paid to the development of girls and women, and inclusion of the outlooks of women are critical to the welfare of the world.
The essays in ROOM 10.25 are as raw and urgent as any we have received. Their authors hail from Sudan, Palestine, Israel, Croatia, and the US. They write about what it feels like to be living a split screen. They write about how we split words from context. They write from inside a refugee camp in Gaza and from inside the federal building in New York.
We can’t split something off when we’re surrounded by it. The same forces flattening Gaza are showing up here under different names—economic inequality, xenophobia, the rollback of human rights. I’m trying to bridge the divide between denial and collapse, to find ways of staying engaged without turning away.
My first day volunteering at immigration court began with a medical emergency. A man had collapsed in his wheelchair while DHS officers surrounded his terrified family. When I identified myself as a physician, they demanded proof before allowing me to help. In that moment, I understood what it meant to live in a country where mercy requires credentials—and where witnessing itself can feel like an act of resistance.
In Gaza, we live in a state that feels like waking up after a long night of fragmented, restless sleep. It’s as if you’ve spent the night on the edge of fear—between the hum of drones, the echo of explosions, and the relentless pounding of your own heart. You wake up with a head that feels as heavy as the earth itself, your eyes swollen and tired, your body limp and worn. Conversations are dull, voices are low, emotions seem colorless … not because of sleep deprivation, but because of hunger, despair, and a prolonged absence of safety.