OUTSIDE OF HISTORY by C. Jama Adams
Engaging with marginalized social histories and recognizing the psychic consequences these histories hold for the treatment dyad poses a challenge for psychoanalysis…
BURIED NECK DEEP by Lama Z. Khouri
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…
AFTER THE LYNCHING MUSEUM by Elizabeth Trawick
“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. I am cringing. I do not know what Toby…
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE DEMOCRATS? by Carolyn Ellman
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…
ESTRANGEMENT EFFECT by Aneta Stojnić
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…
PSYCHOANALYSIS’ FOURTH WALL by Isaac Tylim
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….
PROGRESS NOTES by Hattie Myers
Room never knows where the next submission will come from. With every essay, poem, photograph, image of art, piece of music, or description of activism…
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.
DUTY TO SPEAK by Betty Teng
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 to these images also to reflect on the ongoing fact that Donald Trump and his supporters’ aggressive words, policies and actions
against these already vulnerable people — against what is vulnerable in us all — has been traumatizing or re traumatizing for far too many.
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…