If you have been following my blog, you know by now that I enjoy using film and TV characters to discuss and illustrate psychoanalytic concepts. I've discussed
Coping During the Pandemic: The Getty Museum Challenge or Between Art and Quarantine.
Staying home for more than two months now is not easy. Many people are struggling with the quarantine and being around their families 24/7, working from home or not having a job at all. Actors and influencers are stepping up to the challenge and producing content from their homes, keeping us entertained and engaged from afar.
While nurses and doctors are battling COVID-19 on the frontlines, others are stuck at home, bored, stressed, or demotivated. It is...
Artwork and Psychoanalysis: How Art Saved a Boy, Whose Mother Struggled with Addiction
Under quarantine
Since the shelter in place order began here in Illinois, my kids and I have been watching a You Tube series called "Draw Every Day with JJK". It helps us keep a routine and it gives us something to look forward to every day at the same time. The series teaches us a lot about how to draw comic book characters, come up with our own stories, how to use colors, motion lines and speech bubbles to communicate a story through pictures...
Since the shelter in place order began here in Illinois, my kids and I have been watching a You Tube series called "Draw Every Day with JJK". It helps us keep a routine and it gives us something to look forward to every day at the same time. The series teaches us a lot about how to draw comic book characters, come up with our own stories, how to use colors, motion lines and speech bubbles to communicate a story through pictures...
Psychoanalysis with Children and Adolescents: Making Space for the Unconscious
Psychoanalytic theory and practice is based on extensive research and observation of infant and childhood development. In fact, as a part of my psychoanalytic training in working with children and adolescents, I had to observe the development of an infant and his relationship to his mother for two years, for a couple of hours every week. Much of what we deal with in psychoanalysis involves experiences prior to language development or beyond words and you can...
5 Books You Should Read to Learn More About Psychoanalytically Informed Clinical Work
For better or worse, psychoanalytic concepts are interwoven into so many theories and schools of thought that it feels overwhelming to simply name them all. The everyday usage of words like “the unconscious,” “Oedipus Complex,” “transference,” “dream analysis,” “projective identification,” etc. serve to help us identify a common way of speaking about clinical issues but can also be used to repress what is really at work in the subject and in the clinic. As patients become...
Art and Esthetics in Psychoanalysis: The Expression of the Subject
I used to work at the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School - a residential treatment center for severely emotionally disturbed children and adolescents; a home away from home for many, including myself at the time. The Orthogenic School is well known in the psychoanalytic circles, even abroad. The School has helped many...
“The Handmaid’s Tale”: The Human Spirit in the Face of Atrocity
I heard about the Handmaid’s Tale when it first came out on Hulu last year from my neighbors and friends. At first, it sounded too dark and dramatic to watch so I avoided seeing it for just about a year. When people continued talking about the series and one of you even recommended that I see it , I decided to take the plunge. Needless to say, I ended up obsessing over it, caught up on...
Abortion, Rape and Domestic Violence in the HBO Drama “Big Little Lies”
I am on my way to the Annual Training in Lacanian Psychoanalysis in Quebec City, Canada, lead by the teaching analysts at the Freudian School of Quebec. I have a copy of “Big Little Lies” in my carry-on and my memories from watching the HBO Series last summer. The topics of the feminine, the masculine, women and motherhood have been recurring issues that the School has examined, along with the main topics discussed such as “Transference and...
Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy, Loss and Self Injury in the HBO Series “Sharp Objects”
Sharp Objects
The HBO Series "Sharp Objects" based on the New York Times Bestseller novel by the author of "Gone Girl" Gillian Flynn addressed serious psychological problems of childhood abuse, sexual violence, self-harm, suicide and even murder (Warning: this post contains some spoilers). I grabbed...
The HBO Series "Sharp Objects" based on the New York Times Bestseller novel by the author of "Gone Girl" Gillian Flynn addressed serious psychological problems of childhood abuse, sexual violence, self-harm, suicide and even murder (Warning: this post contains some spoilers). I grabbed...
School Violence and Sexual Assault on Men: #MeToo Movement & “13 Reasons Why” Season 2
It has taken me some time since the first blog post on 13 Reasons Why to get to the second, and for a good reason. What I am about to talk about makes me cringe on the inside (alert, this blog posts contains spoilers for the series 13 Reason Why and may be triggering to those, who have a history of sexual violence in their past). I have heard stories similar to these...
