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Letter from Birmingham by Elizabeth Trawick

Letters

My thinking has been simpler, less developed. Yesterday morning, I did three sessions: one phone, two FaceTime. At the end, I was overwhelmed with emotion, struggling to hold myself together. My last patient had her own version of “I’m not accomplishing anything.” I realized that she is working so hard in unrecognized ways: caring for her ninety-four-year-old father when she just remarried a few months ago, needing to social distance from a beloved daughter who is coming to town, having the strength to do this, her own terror and needs for care, etc. The familiar storms that batter us now. I said to her simply…

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THE ANNIVERSARY by Hattie Myers

Editorials

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

Editorials

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…

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MAKING ROOM by Hattie Myers

Editorials

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…

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ROOM WITH A VIEW by Hattie Myers

Editorials

In the weeks after 9/11 the IPTAR Clinical Center received a grant to fly in mental health professionals from Ireland, the Middle East, and South America to talk about the experience
of doing psychoanalysis in the midst of existential terror. Hundreds of therapists practicing in New York came…