From the outset, psychoanalysis has understood itself as a science of the unconscious and has developed specific methods for exploring unconscious fantasies and conflicts. However, even for psychoanalysis, the days of a unified science have passed: contemporary psychoanalysis can be characterized by a pluralism of research methods, theories, and treatment concepts. Concrete examples from the research practice in two large, multicenter therapy outcome studies, the LAC Depression Study and the ongoing MODE study, illustrate the wealth of different research approaches: clinical-psychoanalytic, conceptual, empirical, and interdisciplinary research methods. A graphic is used to show how these different research tools can be fruitfully combined. As will be discussed, contemporary psychoanalysis has developed a stable scientific identity in the midst of contradictions and challenges. Due to this, it no longer has to fear, as Freud did, that it would be "swallowed up by medicine." Rather, psychoanalytic researchers can feel enriched and stimulated by interdisciplinary exchange with medicine, psychiatry, neuroscience, and many other scientific disciplines. Instead of retreating defensively into an ivory tower, scientific dialogues can be carried out with curiosity and an expectation that they not only open doors to global, intergenerational networks but also to innovative developments within psychoanalysis itself.
Chronic depression associated with early trauma remains one of the most treatment-resistant conditions in mental healthcare. Clinical and empirical findings have increasingly suggested that patients with histories of early trauma may benefit differentially from intensive psychoanalytic treatments compared to symptom-focused or short-term psychotherapies. Our conceptual article aims to elucidate the mechanisms underlying sustained therapeutic change in psychoanalysis with chronically depressed, early traumatized patients by integrating clinical psychoanalytic theory, contemporary dream research, and interdisciplinary models of memory reconsolidation. Taking a longitudinal case from the LAC Depression Study as an illustration, this study examines a patient who underwent high-frequency psychoanalysis and demonstrated enduring structural change, which remained accessible for more than a decade after treatment termination. Clinical material from the original analysis and from a later crisis intervention illustrates how embodied memories of early traumatic experiences can be discovered and understood within the transference relationship and gradually transformed through repeated analytic working-through. Particular emphasis is placed on changes in dream processes as indicators of deep psychic reorganization. Using psychoanalytically informed dream research, including the Zurich Dream Process Coding System (ZDPCS), the analysis demonstrates a shift from early trauma-dominated nightmares characterized by helplessness and an absence of a helping object to a later dream reflecting increased affect regulation, symbolic capacity, involvement, and self-agency. These transformations are conceptualized as markers of structural change rather than mere symptom reduction. This article further argues that psychoanalytic processes resonate with contemporary neurobiological models of memory reconsolidation. When embodied memories of trauma are revived within a safe and emotionally attuned analytic relationship, they may enter a labile state that allows for enduring modification and reintegration. From this interdisciplinary perspective, psychoanalysis is uniquely positioned to foster sustained change in patients with chronic depression and early trauma by enabling the re-transcription and reconsolidation of traumatic embodied memories within the analytic relationship. This conceptual integration contributes to a more profound understanding of why psychoanalysis can produce lasting therapeutic effects in a patient population traditionally considered difficult to treat.
In recent years, the concept of agency has become a reoccurring theme in psychoanalysis-easily identifiable in English and American literature, and now beginning to surface in European psychoanalytic writing. We believe that the use of this term is the implicit marker of resurgence of culturalist orientation within the psychoanalytic field, positing a social determinism of the individual's formation, his psyche and his unconscious. The present paper examines the culturalist weight of agency. Therefore, it is important to point out the origins of this term in Judith Butler's work, in order to understand its uses in psychoanalysis. This leads to the study of Lynn Layton's work, where agency plays an important role. Likewise, Layton's use of social psychoanalysis reproduces old culturalist premises in the transferential relation. Joseph Caston, on the other hand, offers a different conception of agency, outside of its culturalist heritage. This leads to Jacques Lacan's theory, offering an unprecedented and structuralist way of situating agency through what he calls "the agent."
Martin Buber's philosophy of dialogue has significant resonances with relational-intersubjective psychoanalysis, yet the communication between these two fields has not been sufficiently explored. Broadly speaking, the concept of the "I-Thou" relationship is akin to mutual recognition, manifesting primarily in two ways: (1) During smooth interactions, both parties can fully engage in the ongoing dialogue, achieving attunement and responsiveness through both nonverbal and verbal communication; (2) During less smooth interactions, both parties remain open to dialogue, negotiate areas of disagreement, and even attempt to repair the relationship after a breakdown. Relational-intersubjective psychoanalysis and related research extends Buber's philosophy of dialogue by emphasizing nonverbal communication in infancy, focusing on intersubjective interactions at the micro level, providing evidence for Buber's concept of "healing through encounter," and considering the complementarity of encounter (interactive regulation) and insight (self regulation).
This article investigates the novel therapeutic approach of "amplified psychoanalysis" through a detailed examination of the Ygg case, which offers a descriptive single-case illustration of the integration of MDMA-assisted therapy with traditional psychoanalytic treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The study explores how subjective experience induced by MDMA can interact with an ongoing analysis, potentially enhancing psychoanalytic processes by facilitating access to unconscious material and helping to move beyond therapeutic impasses. The work is presented as a psychoanalytic single-case clinical narrative, acknowledging the value of such cases for generating nuanced insights into psychological phenomena rather than for demonstrating efficacy. In this case, the integration of MDMA experiences within an established psychoanalytic framework appeared to create specific therapeutic opportunities: the altered states of consciousness were experienced by the patient as allowing more direct access to, and processing of, previously avoided memories and affects. This combination may be particularly promising for OCD, where traditional approaches often face limitations; however, its efficacy requires systematic investigation beyond this psychoanalytic single-case clinical narrative. The clinical process analysis highlights several putative processes of change, including enhanced emotional processing, a strengthened therapeutic alliance, and improved access to traumatic memories. The study aims to contribute to both psychedelic therapy and psychoanalytic practice by offering a novel therapeutic perspective on the treatment of OCD. It suggests that "amplified psychoanalysis" may represent a promising direction for future research with larger samples and formal outcome measures.
This paper explores the relational approach in psychoanalysis not merely as a theoretical model but as a clinical sensibility that has fundamentally altered therapeutic practice across theoretical boundaries. Unlike classical psychoanalytic innovations that emerged from clinical observations, the relational approach represents a new type of innovation-one that challenges epistemological assumptions rather than proposing new psychic facts. Drawing on clinical vignettes and training experiences, this paper examines how relational sensibilities have infiltrated contemporary practice, creating new therapeutic possibilities while generating novel clinical dilemmas. The paper argues that understanding innovation in terms of "sensibilities" rather than just theoretical systems provides crucial insights into how psychoanalytic knowledge develops and spreads in the contemporary era.
The paper makes a detailed argument for retaining as central the importance of intensive immersive in-person analysis for personal analysis and for control cases in psychoanalytic training. Fundamental is personal analysis and evaluation of the capacities of the analyst-in-training including, importantly, a capacity for analytic listening and intervention. A concern is discussed that recent International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) rule changes to propose a less intensive and immersive training may undermine this foundational base. In-person analysis allows simultaneous different perspectives, the rawness of immediate experience including the bodily, the sexual or the aggressive to emerge and be felt, and for the emergence of different types of transference that may include enactments by the patient or by the analyst. These lead to a fuller psychoanalytic understanding and are intrinsic to a capacity for growth needed to become a psychoanalyst. Brief vignettes from complex cases of adult, adolescent and child analysis illustrate this view of the centrality of in-person psychoanalysis.
This paper seeks to convey the spirit that guided the 14th International Sándor Ferenczi Conference. It does not aim to place Ferenczi in a position of mastery, nor to encourage an uncritical adherence to his concepts, but rather to value his openness to mixture and impurity in both theory and the psychoanalytic relationship. It introduces the notion of decoloniality, critiques the colonial legacy in the construction of psychoanalytic theory, and discusses how Ferenczi's ideas can help us to think about and practice a form of psychoanalysis attuned to our time and to our own way of working.
Maternal anger, an intense and often stigmatized emotional experience, has been associated with postpartum mood and anxiety disorders. This biomedical lens obscures its relational and sociocultural roots and remains understudied in psychological and sociological literature, especially from a qualitative stance contextualised in an LMIC. Drawing on Benjamin's feminist psychoanalytic theory and Bronfenbrenner's social-ecological model, this study explores maternal anger as a meaningful, biopsychosocial response to relational ruptures and systemic inequities in an Indian context. Vignettes of two urban Indian mothers from diverse backgrounds were chosen to present their lived experiences with maternal anger. Their in-depth, semi-structured interviews were analyzed using the Interpretive Phenomenological Approach. A relational-intersubjective lens guided attention to mutual recognition/ruptures and affective attunement/misattunement, while the social-ecological model mapped influences across the nested systems. The first theme that emerged was Experience of Anger in Relational Qualms, which included the sub-themes of Betrayal and Abandonment in Intimate Relationships and Erasure of their Personhood. The second theme, Socio-cultural Experience of Anger, consisted of Emotional Burden of the Care and Lack of Support, Suppression and Silence, and Intergenerational Scripts. Reconceptualising maternal anger at the intersection of interpersonal and systemic pressures reframes it from pathology to protest. It becomes an embodied critique of relational, gendered and systemic inequities and calls for perinatal mental health interventions that honor mothers' emotional realities. By depathologizing maternal anger, the lived experiences of the two urban Indian mothers contribute novel insights to maternal mental health and underscore the necessity of feminist, context-sensitive approaches in research and care.
Emotional experience may play a more central role in the origin and treatment of psychopathology than has been previously recognized. A constructionist model of emotional experience holds that in addition to defenses, affective bodily responses may not be experienced as specific emotions because they haven't been conceptualized or mentally represented as such. It is argued that emotional experience is the core feature of three critical steps in the change process: (a) activating previous traumatic memories and formulating the associated specific emotional experiences for the first time, (b) having a series of corrective emotional experiences in interaction with the therapist that convert previously intolerable into tolerable experiences, and (c) experiencing and responding to previously problematic situations in a new way that makes more adaptive responses possible. The interactions between emotion and memory just described are explicated within a modern systems and computational neuroscience framework. This perspective potentially permits a bridging of conflict- and trauma-based conceptualizations of psychopathology and aims both to put psychoanalytic treatment on a stronger empirical footing and to enhance its effectiveness and efficiency.
Background/Objectives: This article is a narrative review that examines the development of attachment from intrauterine life to the first thousand days of a child's life, integrating psychoanalytic, neuroscientific, genetic, and cross-cultural perspectives. Biological, relational, neurological, and cultural factors interact and shape individual differences in socio-emotional functioning. This paper aims to propose a reinterpretation of early attachment, describing it as both a clinical and relational phenomenon and an adaptive process inscribed in human evolutionary history, according to the Four-Domain Integrative Framework described herein. Methods: The review examined three main areas of evidence: early attachment characteristics, cross-cultural caregiving variations, and genetic and epigenetic mechanisms underlying environmental sensitivity. Results: The review first identified seven characteristics of early attachment (proximity seeking, emotional attunement, intrauterine experiences, maternal holding, security patterns, brain plasticity, and maternal stress) which represent developmental mechanisms that generate individual differences in trust, self-regulation, resilience, and psychopathological vulnerability. Second, cross-cultural variations in six distinct caregiving contexts were examined, demonstrating that secure attachment emerges through culturally specific pathways, differentially influencing motor development, sleep patterns, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis maturation, and social skills. Finally, the differential susceptibility model was provided through the analysis of five genetic and epigenetic systems (oxytocin receptor gene, serotonin transporter gene, dopamine receptor gene, glucocorticoid receptor methylation, and fetal programming) that modulate environmental sensitivity. Conclusions: Biological, relational, neurological, and cultural factors interact and shape individual differences in socio-emotional functioning.
This essay is an appreciation of the life and work of Nancy Chodorow, one of the most influential and insightful psychoanalytic sociologists of the 20th and 21st Centuries. Her critical feminist analysis-of mothering and gendering in general-integrated Ego Psychology, Object Relations Theory, developmental psychoanalysis, and structural-functional sociology, opening new visions, which she articulated throughout all of her work. That Chodorow was also a practicing analyst further distinguished her from most of her analytically-inflected academic colleagues. In discussing Chodorow's paper, Seligman agrees that Freud's invention of psychoanalysis offered an essential contribution to sociology, along with its clinical and psychological significance. At the same time, however, she distinguishes between psychoanalysis and work of the seminal sociologists that she cites: The analytic focus on individual minds differentiates it from those theorists' prioritizing the social world and collective experiences and variables.
This study examines the reception and eventual decline of psychoanalysis, which remained outside the psychiatric mainstream in prewar Japan, in the Department of Neuropsychiatry at Keijo Imperial University. It traces the scholarly formation of Kubo Kiyoji, who led the department, and the development of psychoanalytic research within the department. It focuses on the personal and intellectual networks of Japanese psychiatry and on Keijo Imperial University's position within the academic hierarchy. Kubo encountered psychoanalysis through Eugen Bleuler, director of the Burghölzli psychiatric hospital, while studying in Zurich. This exposure provided him with an intellectual framework distinct from the German psychiatry tradition that was dominant in Japanese psychiatry. Consequently, the research output of the Department of Neuropsychiatry at Keijo Imperial University reflected Kubo's interests. The department produced articles introducing psychoanalytic theory and clinical case reports through the early 1930s. At the same time, Kubo adopted psychoanalytic theory eclectically rather than embracing it in its entirety, similar to Bleuler, who had maintained a cautious distance from Freud since the mid-1910s. Furthermore, Japanese psychiatry was shaped by a hierarchical structure centered on Kure Shuzo, a professor at Tokyo Imperial University, within which psychoanalysis remained non-mainstream. Under these conditions, psychoanalytic research at Keijo Imperial University did not become a sustained departmental program and did not develop into sustained collaboration with Tohoku Imperial University, where psychoanalysis was actively pursued. Instead, the department's research gradually shifted toward somatic therapies and other fields with more visible findings, a shift better suited to the department's academic position. Consequently, the discontinuation of psychoanalytic research at Keijo Imperial University was not simply the result of a change in Kubo's personal interests. Rather, it reflected the structural conditions under which Keijo, as a peripheral imperial university, had to concentrate its resources on research fields more favorable to securing academic prestige. By tracing this case, this study suggests that research in the medical faculty of Keijo Imperial University was affected not only by the personal and intellectual networks of medicine in the Japanese Empire, but also by Keijo's position as a peripheral imperial university.
The aim pursued by Freud and Ferenczi in 1910, when they founded the International Psychoanalytical Association-to establish a regulatory body for the safeguarding of psychoanalysis-was supported by the international 'Guidelines for Psychoanalytic Training' developed by Max Eitingon and adopted in 1925. However, resistance to this centralised conception of psychoanalytic training soon emerged. This resistance grew as psychoanalysis spread worldwide across different cultures. The fact that differing approaches and regional autonomy in psychoanalytic training were able to gain a foothold under the umbrella of the IPA was demonstrated by the 2007 decision-still in force today-to grant equal recognition to the three training models: the Eitingon model, the French model and the Uruguayan model. A tension has arisen between central and local authorities regarding the organisation of psychoanalytic training within the IPA, which, depending on its intensity, can be either paralysing or creative for the further development of psychoanalysis. In the author's view, different translations into English of the German term 'Gleichgesinnte' used by Ferenczi highlight these contrasts. "Gleichgesinnte", who form the IPA as "people who think in the same way" (Haynal's translation), may leave less room for cultural differences than "Gleichgesinnte", who form the IPA as "like-minded people" (the author's translation). The author emphasises the value of a democratically legitimised, central authority, which must, however, remain in dialogue with local authorities within the IPA.
This paper offers a psychoanalytic reflection on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, prompted by Shmuel Erlich's recent contribution to The International Journal of Psychoanalysis. While Erlich argues that psychoanalysis is relevant only to the study of contemporary antisemitism and not to the conflict itself, the author contends that psychoanalytic thought remains essential for understanding the unconscious group dynamics that sustain war and collective violence. Drawing on Klein, Bion, Segal and Fornari, the paper explores the oscillation between paranoid-schizoid and depressive modes of functioning, the activation of psychotic defences in situations of catastrophe, and the failure to contain guilt and mourning. These dynamics, although shared by both sides of the conflict, have produced tragically disproportionate consequences, particularly for the Palestinian population. The paper also reconsiders Erlich's reading of antisemitism, its moral implications, and the ethical responsibility of psychoanalysts to resist collective denial and illuminate the unconscious forces that underpin violence and silence. In the spirit of Hanna Segal's call to speak out, it argues that silence in the face of human suffering constitutes a moral failure that psychoanalysis cannot afford.
Several Norwegian analysts trained at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute established a Norwegian psychoanalytic society (IPA-membership 1934). Due to the emergence of Nazism, Wilhelm Reich and Otto Fenichel ended up in Oslo in 1933/4. Their importance for the development of Norwegian psychoanalysis became immense and dramatic. The IPA Congress in 1949 was a disaster for Norwegian psychoanalysis: exclusion from the IPA. Only after many years did the Norwegian society regain its IPA membership in 1975. Norway's first Professor of psychology, Harald Schjelderup, entering his professorship in 1928, was a psychoanalyst, trained in Vienna. Establishing the depth psychological method as a specific scientific method, Schjelderup's main academic project was the integration of psychoanalysis with general psychological science. Ever since, the Norwegian Psychoanalytical Society has maintained a close relationship with the university. During the last twenty years, Norwegian analysts have developed a most successful programme for psychoanalytic psychotherapy in China and participated in training the first Chinese analysts approved by IPA. Thus, they have made a substantial contribution to the IPA-psychoanalytic training in China, resulting in the establishment of the IPA study group in 2022. The inner life of the Norwegian Society has also renewed an enthusiasm through its development of a new training analyst system.
In this manuscript, I describe my experience of the evolving place of teleanalysis in psychoanalytic practice and education, focusing on the central role of the analyst's internal frame in sustaining analytic work across settings. Drawing on clinical, supervisory, teaching, and personal analytic experience, I argue that the usefulness of psychoanalysis depends less on the external setting than on the analyst's capacity to function analytically in the face of absence, uncertainty, and loss. I suggest that a priori views of teleanalysis as "less real" or "less effective" often reflect defensive efforts to avoid these anxieties, foreclosing analytic inquiry. Rather than treating differences between in-office and teleanalytic work as indicators of equivalence or inferiority, I propose that we view each setting as mobilising distinct transference-countertransference configurations that require symbolic elaboration. I consider the educational implications of these observations, arguing that teleanalytic treatment and supervision during training can provide a vital context for engaging, testing, and strengthening candidates' internal analytic frame and psychoanalytic identity. I contend that given the worldwide and widespread adoption of the teleanalytic frame, teaching candidates how to practise analysis while working teleanalytically during their training has become an existential issue for psychoanalysis.
Although the approach of pluralism within psychoanalysis seemed a solution to the interminable battles over theoretical differences that preceded it, it has been far from a panacea. In fact, psychoanalysis as a field and something to be educated in has become chaotic and fragmented. The authors who contributed to this Section on Psychoanalytic Education have suggested a number of paths forward. One path involves teaching candidates to think critically. A number of ways to do so are suggested: (a) always explaining the theoretical rationale underlying analytic interventions, (b) explicitly linking theoretical constructs with the clinical phenomena to which they refer; (c) using developmental research to evaluate different theoretical "psychoanalytic babies"; and (d) disciplined examination of key theoretical differences of opinion. In addition, Freud's writings can be used to promote thinking analytically and to consolidate an analytic identity. Finally, the value of developing a unified or integrated psychoanalytic model is endorsed.