Discussion of “Psychoanalysis in the Meantime”

ABSTRACT

The article discusses Lisa Beritzhoff’s article titled “Psychoanalysis in the Meantime” (this issue). The author highlights how Beritzhoff avoids the use of a psychoanalysis that is indifferent. She does offer concepts and the standard fodder for a psychoanalytic audience. However, she also introduces something less common; she steps the reader into a world where she shares some of her personal experiences working with refugees in Moria’s transit camp on the island of Lesvos, Greece. She offers new words to describe the reality she encounters. With the new language Beritzhoff scaffolds what would otherwise be an intolerable reality that could shut down the reader. Instead, her piece becomes a page-turner that surprises and hopefully engages a psychoanalytic audience longing to become more involved with pressing social issues. The discussion also highlights ideas crucial to expand psychoanalysis’ reach and develop a practice for the people, rather than for a people.

This article refers to:

Psychoanalysis in the Meantime

View responses to this article:

Psychoanalysis Moving in Places It Rarely Goes: To the Meantime and Beyond

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Notes on contributors

Paola M. Contreras

Paola M. Contreras, Psy.D., is a Psychoanalyst Member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (BPSI). She is an Assistant Professor at William James College. She was the 2019 recipient of BPSI’s Arthur R. Kravitz Award for Community Action and Humanitarian Contributions.