Again, the Personal is Political and Psychoanalytic: Sue Grand and Jill Salberg in Conversation with Masha Borovikova Armyn

ABSTRACT

In the papers by Sue Grand and Jill Salberg that form the panel, When the Personal Helps Us Write the Political, both authors use autobiography to activate the text as they explore ever more elusive dimensions of whiteness. In lieu of the traditional panel discussion, a more personal approach seemed fitting. In conversation with interviewer Masha Borovikova Armyn, the stakes involved in exposing personal and political struggles on the written page are examined both as acts of storytelling and, at a more granular level, in marks of a social unconscious that peeks out of the text in decisions such as how to spell racialized terms.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sue Grand

Dr. Sue Grand is faculty and supervisor at the NYU Postdoctoral program in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis; faculty the Mitchell Center for Relational Psychoanalysis; faculty, National Institute for the Psychotherapies; a visiting scholar at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, and a fellow at the Institute for Psychology and the Other. She is the author of The Reproduction of Evi: A Clinical and cultural Perspective and the Hero in the Mirror: From Fear to Fortitude, as well as the co-editor of several books on trauma and Relational theory. She is on the board of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. She is in private practice in N.Y. and N.J.

Jill Salberg

Jill Salberg is Faculty and Clinical Consultant/Supervisor at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, the Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Studies, ICP and member of IPTAR.

Masha Borovikova Armyn

Masha Borovikova Armyn, Ph.D., M.F.A., is a psychologist on the island of Manhattan. A one time writer and all-time procrastinator, she is certified in hand-to-hand, broadsword, and rapier & dagger combat, and an uncertified mother of dragons.