{"title":"Nonverbal Expression of Solicitude.","authors":"Julianna Vamos","doi":"10.1057/s11231-026-09565-6","DOIUrl":"10.1057/s11231-026-09565-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article explores the premise that if there is respect and hospitality in caretakers' contact, the adult-baby cooperation has the possibility to take place and give a developmental impulse for the child. Three clinical descriptions are used to illustrate how the adult's adjustment, including tender hands and how they create the space for the baby's contributions so he/she can become an active partner. The everyday routine of the infant's bodily care is an especially important area of we-ness experiences. The importance of self-initiated motor development and the baby's initiatives protect the baby's own developmental rhythm and creates the provision: an enlightening environment and primary preoccupations much discussed by Ferenczi and the Budapest school.</p>","PeriodicalId":52458,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":" ","pages":"271-280"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147950107","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"With Ferenczi for a Decolonial Psychoanalysis.","authors":"Jô Gondar","doi":"10.1057/s11231-026-09560-x","DOIUrl":"10.1057/s11231-026-09560-x","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>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.</p>","PeriodicalId":52458,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":" ","pages":"158-172"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147976998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Orpha and Creativity-Alda Merini: Poet of Trauma.","authors":"Maria G Connolly","doi":"10.1057/s11231-026-09562-9","DOIUrl":"10.1057/s11231-026-09562-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>My study is inspired by the clinical and meta-psychological contributions of Sándor Ferenczi, an underexplored voice, in the psychoanalytic understanding of creative processes. Ferenczi discusses fragmentation and reconstruction in the realm of creativity, and the creative reconstructive power of Orpha (Ferenczi, 1932a), a force against psychic death, following traumatic experience. To illustrate the creative process, I refer to the discourse on trauma and creativity, in the diary of the Italian poet Alda Merini (1986), fuelled by her post-traumatic narrative of her history of physical, psychological and sexual abuse. Literature here serves as a psychic space and a base for reconstruction in and after the transition to a new broken existence.</p>","PeriodicalId":52458,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":" ","pages":"245-258"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147950174","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mother tongue and the language of tenderness: lost and found.","authors":"Endre Koritar","doi":"10.1057/s11231-026-09563-8","DOIUrl":"10.1057/s11231-026-09563-8","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper explores the impact of early aesthetic experiences on the developing psyche. The sound bath in the environment experienced by the fetus and then newborn is registered as implicit memory in the non-repressed unconscious and imparts a sense of belonging or alienation, depending on the nature of the early maternal object relations. In the case of the child, displaced from the early mothering culture by flight and emigration, an added stress is acculturation and loss of the familiar sights, sounds, smells of the homely culture, but also the loss of musicality of the language. The clinical material will illustrate how an alienated youth was able to belatedly mourn the loss of his mother tongue and culture after he was drawn back to visit his birthplace. The aesthetic experiencing of his hometown's native culture and learning of his early life experiences from his caretakers opened crypts of past traumas long buried and led him to explore the nether regions of his mind in analysis. The paper also argues that it was the patient's self-preservative instinct that led him to search for his past. The work of construction and reconstruction in the analysis provided him with a narrative that animated his weakened life instinct providing him with renewed meaning and purpose in his life.</p>","PeriodicalId":52458,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":" ","pages":"227-244"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147935394","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Catastrophe and Creativity: From Fragmentation to Emergence.","authors":"Judy K Eekhoff","doi":"10.1057/s11231-026-09558-5","DOIUrl":"10.1057/s11231-026-09558-5","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper explores Ferenczi's path towards truth: the honest emotional link between patient and analyst that occurs first and foremost on a somatic level. The body does not lie. However, the perceptual registration of the soma when used defensively can be destructive instead of creative. The paper explores truth as it relates to the beauty of love and the catastrophe of loss. It follows emotion in relationship, thought as a reflection of intersubjectivity, and the role these play in structuralizing of mind. All these processes are both catastrophic and creative. They are essential for truth to be found.</p>","PeriodicalId":52458,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":" ","pages":"213-226"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148007635","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Maridel Canteli, Mabel Cambero, Nicolás Cardona, Beatriz Celorrio, Oscar Alfredo Elvira, Alba Gasparino, Agustín Genovés, Gabriela Goldzen, Rogelio Ruiz Salerno, Marcos Tabacznik, Pablo Jorge Valle
{"title":"Between the Tale and the Dream: Sándor Ferenczi-Trauma and Dreams.","authors":"Maridel Canteli, Mabel Cambero, Nicolás Cardona, Beatriz Celorrio, Oscar Alfredo Elvira, Alba Gasparino, Agustín Genovés, Gabriela Goldzen, Rogelio Ruiz Salerno, Marcos Tabacznik, Pablo Jorge Valle","doi":"10.1057/s11231-026-09556-7","DOIUrl":"10.1057/s11231-026-09556-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The analysis of the story \"The Curse\" by Canetti (1977; it could have been a dream) allowed us to address concepts such as early trauma in Ferenczi, trauma in Freud, the body as a register of deep pain that houses perhaps even deeper psychic pain. Trauma occupies a principal place. It is a real trauma that cannot be linked; it is split off. In this sense, Ferenczi proposes thinking about the constitution of the infantile ego as an extension of the adult ego, thus this ego can operate as a structuring or de-structuring of the early trauma. The narration of this story allows us to think about the traumatic events in two stages. One is inferred, and the other is heartbreakingly manifest. One speaks to us about object relations, and the second deals with the real experience and refers to the failure in primary libidinal cathexis.</p>","PeriodicalId":52458,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":" ","pages":"202-212"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148151811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fairbairn's Rationale for Excluding Good Objects from the Unconscious: Clinical Implications.","authors":"Ron B Aviram","doi":"10.1057/s11231-025-09540-7","DOIUrl":"10.1057/s11231-025-09540-7","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>W. R. D. Fairbairn developed a unique metapsychology that began as controversial but eventually transformed the trajectory of psychoanalytic ideas by emphasizing the innate need for real relationships. His conception of the unconscious differs from Freud's and provides the foundation upon which he elaborated a new model of the mind. Fairbairn describes the first object relations theory by linking a part of the self to unconscious bad objects. While many clinicians have been hesitant to accept his proposition that good objects do not become part of the dynamic unconscious, it is argued that this is a clinically useful and valid model of human psychology. For Fairbairn, the good object is a preconscious internalization and available for engagement with the external world without distortion. His model of the mind, focusing on the unconscious, helps clinicians conceptualize how early relational experiences limit satisfying contemporary life.</p>","PeriodicalId":52458,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":" ","pages":"44-68"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146013226","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Integrating Developmental Understanding into Psychoanalytic Supervision: Siloed No More.","authors":"C Edward Watkins","doi":"10.1057/s11231-025-09545-2","DOIUrl":"10.1057/s11231-025-09545-2","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Blackman (2025) provided an instructive developmental stage perspective on the psychoanalytic supervision process. But other highly instructive developmental supervision perspectives-created outside the borders of psychoanalytic ideology-have largely been ignored within the psychoanalytic supervision literature. In this complementary comment, I introduce and consider some of those often-unconsidered pan-theoretical developmental supervision models and their additive value for psychoanalytic supervision, with special emphasis being placed on the beginner/novice phase supervisee.</p>","PeriodicalId":52458,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":" ","pages":"115-121"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146151245","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Veronica Csillag, Margaret Boucher, Tara Chivukula, Alpana Choudhury, Stephanie Unwin-Kuruneri
{"title":"The color of envy: a socio-cultural perspective.","authors":"Veronica Csillag, Margaret Boucher, Tara Chivukula, Alpana Choudhury, Stephanie Unwin-Kuruneri","doi":"10.1057/s11231-025-09541-6","DOIUrl":"10.1057/s11231-025-09541-6","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This collaborative paper has grown out of the discussions of a virtual study group consisting of four women of ethnically and geographically diverse backgrounds, from San Francisco, Austin, and New York City. Racially/ethnically, the members are of South Asian, African and European descent. We have been exploring a range of subjects, including envy. We have been discussing the emergent envy in these clinical vignettes from the perspective of the Kleinian approach which centers on internal mental states, unconscious conflicts and internalized objects as well as exploring envy from a social, cultural, and racial angle as historically represented by the humanistic and interpersonal schools, and more recently by relational psychoanalysis. These orientations may seem to be incompatible but, in fact are always inseparably interconnected as we all have psyches and we all also live in the social-cultural realm.</p>","PeriodicalId":52458,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":" ","pages":"88-114"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147482495","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Prescience and Premonition.","authors":"Nilofer Kaul","doi":"10.1057/s11231-025-09544-3","DOIUrl":"10.1057/s11231-025-09544-3","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper observes the emphasis on the past in psychoanalysis and the relative neglect of the future. Paradoxically, there is a prevalence of 'post' and a relative absence of 'pre.' It is important to fill in these missing links. I have suggested that 'prescience' is a variety of omniscience and shares much of its impulses. The paper discusses three manifestations of prescience and suggests different ways of interpreting these. It is finally argued that Bion's idea of 'premonition' be thought of as a technical tool that can counter this unnoticed form of false knowledge that may be sabotaging the analysis in ways that are hard to capture.</p>","PeriodicalId":52458,"journal":{"name":"American Journal of Psychoanalysis","volume":" ","pages":"24-43"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147482571","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}