Alain Gibeault speaking at IPI, Saturday November 7, 2019

Posted on December 2, 2019December 2, 2019 by Melonie Bell

True to the traditions of French psychoanalysis, IPI’s visiting guest speaker Alain Gibeault, formerly secretary general of the IPA, bases his theory and clinical practice on the metapsychology of Freud. He approaches the first interview with a new patient with four questions in mind.

What kind of meeting is appropriate for this patient — psychoanalytical or something else?
What indications are there that a psychoanalytic approach to treatment could be useful?
How do patient and analyst work together in this interview?
What has triggered the request for help?

Gibeault’s intention is to explore the conscious, pre conscious and unconscious layers of the mind. In keeping with Freud’s topographical approach, he assesses the psychic functioning, faces the emotional storm, and contains the affect that arises as he works to open a psychoanalytic space, giving access to the unconscious and tracing the structural connections between superego, ego and id.

When treating the psychotic patients he sees in a clinic attached to a hospital, Gibeault, inspired by Lebovichi who introduced psychodrama to France, expands his psychoanalytic technique by including a team of seven psychodramatists (a luxury we can hardly imagine in the USA). He also arranges for a psychiatrist to treat the patient as well, keeping medication, follow up, risk assessment, and medical responsibility separate from the psychoanalytic perspective. The point of the profusion of therapists is to spare the patient the threat of engulfment by a single object. Instead, the transference is spread laterally among psychoanalyst and psychodramatists and the task of containment is shared by the team. The introduction of such a third in this way reduces the threat and diminishes the defense of splitting as a defense against engulfment or intrusion by the single therapeutic object.

Neurotic patients can symbolize their distress and keep it internal and so we can treat them in private practice. Psychotic patients cannot do that and so they need a hospital setting and a team approach that includes psychodrama to create for them an external image for contemplation. These patients can address this externally created image more easily than trying to use words to reach insight, while dealing with the stress of looking at a single therapist. The psychodramatists take on the characters assigned to each of them by the patient but they do not wait for role induction. They spontaneously react in ways that do not try to recreate the patient’s experience. Instead they offer something different. This construction of something new in the third reduces the dissociation from which the psychotic patient suffers. Unlike Klein who teaches us to interrupt the negative transference in the first session, Gibeault recommends that we must respect idealization and only later interpret aggression. Only then is it possible to interpret the negative transference — which must be done before termination can be possible.

Submitted by Jill Scharff Saturday November 9^th

Alessandra Lemma: The Effect of the Internet on Sexuality and Identity

Posted on October 8, 2019 by Melonie Bell

Jill Savege Scharff, October 5, 2019.

I am here at the International Psychotherapy Institute weekend conference Technology and Ethics in Treatment and Training: Best Practices. I am sitting in the audience of 60 people at a hotel conference room while the guest speaker talks with us via proZoom. It is now Saturday October 5, 2019. There on a large screen is Alessandra Lemma, Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society and Consultant-Clinical Psychologist at the Anna Freud Centre for Childrenand Families, Honorary Professor of Psychological Therapies at the School of Health and Human Sciences at Essex University, and Visiting Professor, Psychoanalysis Unit, University College, London. She is presenting on the impact of Internet pornography on development. We can see and hear Alessandra. She can see us in general and can hear each one in particular who comes to the microphone and web camera to speak to her. When she moves away or looks down we may miss the end of a word, and she may have to ask us to repeat a word, but by and large we can follow her talk. Some of us would rather interact with her in person, but she lives in London and cannot spare the time to travel here for a weekend conference or for one lecture. This way we are deprived of her actual physical presence but not of her humanity. We have the gift of her presentation, and we get to interact with her and her ideas. And we get to know her as a presenter beyond our experience of her as a writer from reading her book The Digital Age on the Couch. Technology isn’t perfect but it gives access to her knowledge. So what am I taking away from her talk?

I learn that Internet pornography, which obviously fundamentally interferes with sexual desire and development in adolescence, is now leading to sexual dysfunction in young people of the digital generation. Why is this happening in this age of enlightenment about sexuality? They spend their life online and pornography is not only regularly available but also jumps out at them. Ready access to pornography stimulates desire and leads to the delivery of instantaneous satisfaction. There is no need of delay. Under normal circumstances desire experiences a delay before there is the delivery of satisfaction. But in internet pornography there is no need of a journey towards gratification all because it is already there. This collapse of time and space incurs a stultification of psychic development. Psychic development requires delay of gratification, which leads to psychic movement across time, the unconscious mind at work developing its representations of desire and its gratifying objects of satisfaction. Furthermore, pornographic images do not only receive existing fantasies but also project other people’s fantasies violently into the viewer’s body and mind where they take over, creating a “not-me” experience and foreshortening the consolidation of sexual identity.

What makes an adolescent vulnerable to exploitation by pornographic images on the Internet? Alessandra suggests that we need to look backwards to the kind of infancy when an endless sensory, erotic experience occurs without the cognitive resources to make sense of it. Then it falls to the mother to reflect the sexuality of the infant and give the infant time to make sense of it. She delays gratification, which gives the body time to organize its response and fulfill its role as the link between desire and satisfaction, self and other. She develops cycles of frustration and satisfaction that shape the infant’s rhythms, which later underpin the expression of desire in later stages of development. When she fails to do this, the child develops an incoherent mental representation of the body.

Then in adolescence there is a desperate search to find a mirror that will reflect the sexual self accurately and confirm the adolescent’s sexual identity. In the pre-Internet era this was provided by peer groups and teen media during the infinitely lengthy waiting period that was adolescent sexual awakening. Now however the adolescent has been bombarded by sexual imagery in childhood and is now driven to look for reflection in the “black mirror” of the handheld device. The upside is that easy availability of such online mirroring brings a benefit of inclusiveness for those whose sexual proclivities place them in minority groups. The downside is that the adolescent looking for this type of reflection and peer affiliation stumbles upon an orgy of intoxicating sexual possibilities that re-create a view of the primal scene, now constantly open for access. Like an infant in an endlessly sensory state of being, the adolescent does not have the ego development to deal with the overstimulation alone. What is needed is the care and responsiveness of a living breathing other person.

Young people who look for instant, impersonal gratification do not know the value of the work of desire. When they are locked in to a habit of getting aroused and gratified online instantly, they feel that they triumph over desire. In fact they are killing desire. They do not recognize its value in creating movement towards the other. They do not know to wait for that. Learning to derive pleasure from waiting requires psychic work towards maturation. As therapists we can offer a reflective mirror and a relationship that will help these adolescents recover desire, experience anticipation, wait for pleasure, and ultimately enjoy a sexual experience with a partner.

And what about us? How is our digital learning experience different from that of the porno-addicted adolescents? Obviously this is not porn. We are watching and looking at an image, but our desire is for the gratification of learning. It is not a solo activity, and it is not hidden. True, Alessandra arrives the click of a mouse but she appears by careful selection and mutual arrangement. But in this case, there actually is delay between desire and delivery. We have been waiting to work with Alessandra Lemma since April two years ago when she was with us for a whole weekend. She could not offer that amount of teaching and travel given other commitments at this point in her life. So we signed up for the conference on technology and ethics at which she would speak by Zoom. We knew to expect a technology-mediated lecture: It does not intrude on us unbidden.

Looking at the screen and listening to Alessandra is not immediately gratifying: In fact it is slightly frustrating as we strive to catch every word. The image on the screen is inviting but not overstimulating. Yes, the content of the presentation is inducing desire for more, but we share the experience with others in a group setting. With technology, we get to “be with” Alessandra again, sharing with colleagues her brilliant ideas, empathy and responsiveness, and outstanding clinical technique.

In Remembrance: Alice Brand Bartlett, Ph.D.

Posted on August 9, 2019 by Melonie Bell

Alice Brand Bartlett, PhD

1950-2019

Dear Faculty, Students, & Friends of IPI,

Alice Brand Bartlett was a beloved adjunct faculty in the International Institute of Analytic Training, a sensitive and thoughtful supervisor, a supportive mentor, and a valuable friend to many of us at IPI. She died on July 13, 2019 from ovarian cancer. Those of you who knew Alice can rightly imagine that she was lively until the very end, fighting to survive and to continue in a profession she loved so passionately.

Alice was born on October 27, 1950 in Carrollton, Missouri. She pursued an MS in Library Science and became Chief Librarian of the Menninger Professional Library. At Menninger, she held many prestigious posts, including Associate Dean in the Menninger School of Psychiatry. She went on to pursue training as a psychologist and psychoanalyst, at the Fielding Graduate School and Topeka Psychoanalytic Institute, respectively. The American Psychoanalytic Association affirmed her status as a Training and Supervising Analyst in 1996. We all benefitted from her library science expertise, as she became Board Director for the Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing database (PEPWEB), awarded the Sigourney Award in 2018. Just before her death, she served as Director of the Greater Kansas City Psychoanalytic Institute.

While all these accomplishments speak to her intelligence, generative contributions, and respected place in the field of psychoanalysis, most of us knew Alice as kind, compassionate, humorous, spunky, and a bit irreverent. She was devoted to her patients and mentees, as is evident in the way she approached the end of her work with them, conveying genuine care and respect and regretting the loss her death would impose. For IIPT, she was one of our most active adjuncts, facilitating clinical case consultation, providing supervision and analysis, and serving on the ethics committee. We miss her already!

Alice leaves behind her husband Tom and many friends and family. A public memorial service will be held on Saturday, August 17th at 11:00am at the Chapel in Mount Hope Cemetery (17th and Fairlawn). In lieu of flowers, please make memorial contributions to The Greater Kansas City Psychoanalytic Foundation, Greater Kansas City-Topeka Psychoanalytic Center, 1000 E. 24th St., 4E-53, Kansas City Missouri or Col. Potter Cairn Terrier Rescue.

The Contribution and Influence of Enrique Pichon Riviere

Posted on October 12, 2018January 18, 2019 by Melonie Bell

David Scharff steps back into presenter mode this morning. He is talking about Pichon Rivière’s concept of el vinculo, translated as “link”. David is excited to have found a theory that goes beyond Freud who sees development as instinctually driven, linear and predestined in the individual, and beyond object relations theory which sees development arising from the need to relate expressed in internal relationships being built in interaction in external relationships to Pichon Rivière’s more encompassing view of individual and group, self and society. Pichon Rivière focused on the area between two people as well. David tells that Pichon Rivière described the link as a feature of the inside, the outside and the area in between, all connected with experience of previous and future generations on the perpendicular post of a cross and connected to social and cultural associations in the present on the horizontal arm of the cross. We can imagine the link as a network of connections, an endless, interlocking dynamic ring spinning around in space and along time, and it is into this link people are born, and which they change and are changed by as they express their needs for love, safety, nurture and knowing.

IPI faculty prepare for the weekend’s work with guest Joachin Pichon Rivière

Introducing Joachin Pichon Rivière, social psychologist and organizational consultant (and son of Enrique), David announced that in tomorrow morning’s open lecture, Joachin will present Pichon Rivière’s concept of the link in what he called “operative groups” (work and affiliate groups) in institutions.

Jim Poulton weekend cochair asks a question responded to by Lea Setton, David Scharff (presenters) and Karen Greenberg (session chair) on the panel and Joachin Pichon Rivière in the audience.

Until then, we are following Lea Setton’s application of Pichon Rivière’s theory in family therapy. She shows how a family suffers from a major loss. Various family members from time to time become the spokesperson or the symptom bearer for the family wide loss in the present and its reverberations in past trauma and predictor of fears of future failure and shame. Over the years, the family engages with the analyst as the depositary for the family legacy and potential. Their therapy follows a spiral process in which the analyst relates to the symptom, the existent fixed pattern of reaction, makes interpretation which creates a disruption, after which the family enters an emergent pattern with new possibilities for reaching understanding and transformation.

IACFP conference, Lyon, July 2018

Posted on September 10, 2018January 18, 2019 by Melonie Bell

A few members of IPI recently returned from the beautiful city of Lyon at the confluence of the Rhône and Saône rivers in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of France. This was the site of the 3^rd International conference on couple and family psychoanalysis organized by the International Association of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis in July, 2018. The program was packed with multiple tracks of small presentations in one or another single language. At the center of the conference venue lay the main auditorium where panel presentations with translation to English, French and Spanish succeeded one another in rapid succession. There was provision for audience response in the form of written questions on scraps of paper. These questions were not to be answered in the open forum but would be addressed in subsequent small group sessions at which the presenters would not necessarily be present. This felt constraining to us, but we respected that it was the conference design and appreciated why the organizers adhered to it to make room for many points of view and global perspectives.

We were grateful to hear in translation some interesting presentations that we could not have understood otherwise. But we found the design so different from what we are used to at IPI that we experienced quite a bit of culture shock. We did not have the leisure to listen to a fully developed presentation and to engage in a multilogue within the large group of the audience as we do at IPI. We experienced frustration as we submitted to the frame within which we found ourselves. As presenters on the dais ourselves, the best we could do was create a dialogue between presenter and discussant so as to avoid the tedium of presentation and discussion being read aloud and without the benefit of immediate audience response.

Rosa Heiten, Chair of the International Association of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis presents IACFP concerns in dialogue with The IPA committee on Couple and Family Psychoanalysis (Chair, David Scharff) at the Lyon IACFP Conference, July 2018

Imagine our amazement and delight when one of our colleagues from Tavistock Relationships took action. Chris Clulow having kept his discussion short, asked the audience a question. But the audience, previously compelled to silent acquiescence, hesitated to respond. In an astonishing act of freedom, he left the dais and plunged into the audience brandishing his hand-held microphone like a liberating white knight with his lance lowered for the charge. A few hands went up in response, and Clulow extended the microphone towards them as they tentatively negotiated who would go first. Unable to wait, the presenter himself answered the discussant’s question, which gave the conference organizers time to caucus. They reasserted control, and insisted that all questions be written and delivered to the Chair for use in other venues. Chastened, the rebellious Clulow withdrew. A wonderful opportunity was lost, not to be regained in that conference.

It was a moment that highlighted the cultural differences we had come to learn about. It brought home to the English speaking group what a minority we are. Perhaps that is why we hung out together, Americans, British, and Australians. At the end of the day, we Uber’ed to a wonderful dinner that evening at Au Sud where we toasted our new champion, the intrepid Chris Clulow.

Homage for Asbed Aryan

Posted on September 10, 2018January 18, 2019 by Melonie Bell

The members of the International Working Group on Teleanalysis hosted at the International Psychotherapy Institute were sad to learn that Asbed Aryan, who seemed to be getting better, had suddenly lost his fight with cancer. Asbed was such a kind, generous man, which came through so clearly in his clinical work. He was a devoted training and supervising analyst who pioneered the use of technology in distance analysis with a candidate in Armenia, and the author of books on adolescence such as Clínica de Adolescentes co-written with Carlos Moguillansky. We knew Asbed as a committed participant of our International Working Group in Teleanalysis since its inception many years ago, enthusiastically participating from Buenos Aires with his dear colleague Liliana Manguel in our monthly online meeting, faithfully contributing to our meetings even amid treatments for his illness.

Asbed with teleanalysis groups — Asbed with Teleanalysis groups

We first met Asbed in Chicago when separate interests in teleanalysis brought us together for an IPA Congress panel on teleanalysis. Our separate proposals were joined, continents were bridged, and the resulting panel was presented with simultaneous translation and chaired by Charles Hanly. Since then we’ve collaborated successfully on shared proposals for IPA precongress workshops held in Mexico, Boston, and Buenos Aires, research panels, and book chapters, the latest of which “Psychoanalytic Process in Cyber-technology” will be published posthumously in Psychoanalysis Online 4: Teleanalytic Practice, Teaching, and Clinical Research, edited by Jill Savege Scharff (Routledge, October 2018).

We will always remember Asbed’s intensely intelligent contributions from his great experience in this field. What good work he did for psychoanalysis, with great sympathy and devotion for those at a distance from major centers: What fun we had talking half in Spanish, half in English with Asbed at Congress banquets! We remember how much he enjoyed coming with us for dinner at the Cosmos Club in Washington DC. We will miss our loyal friend, and will be holding his family and his colleagues in Argentina and Armenia in our minds and in our hearts in the days and months to come.

In sympathy and affection,

Jill Scharff, Founder, and Caroline Sehon Chair, and members of the International Working Group on Teleanalysis hosted at the International Psychotherapy Institute www.theipi.org

IPI Program Graduates

Posted on May 1, 2018January 18, 2019 by Melonie Bell

Congratulations to our IIPT (analytic) graduate Michele Kwintner and our Core (object relations) graduates, and our clinical consultation program graduates.

cake

Suzanne St. John and Karen Fraley announce the names of the Clinical Consultation Program graduates.

Caroline Sehon (IIPT chair) Michelle Kwintner (graduate) and Janine Wanlass (IPI Director)

Two Year Core Students preparing for their last weekend small group as a cohort (Henriette van Eck, Kelly Seim, Steven McCowin, Christie Dietz)

The graduates acknowledge the support given to them by their group leader (Lorrie Peters)

Core graduates present their group leader with a blanket made of patchwork saris.

The Breadth and Depth of Slavery’s Wounds

Posted on March 9, 2018January 18, 2019 by Melonie Bell

Panel for Case Presentation — Patrizia Pallaro (Conference Co-chair) and Chris Thomas (Conference co-chair and Clinical Discussant) Andrew Price (Presenter) Michael Kaufman (IPI-Metro Chair)

Imagine a young African American man raised proudly by his mother, and now the first generation to go to college. Why might he fall victim to depression and academic failure? What effect does the context of poverty, violence and drug abuse have on such a young man? Dissociating himself from the pain, he breaks from his past. As soon as he sees the possibility of success, he feels the shame of separating from his roots and hurting the loved ones from whom he is growing apart. It is hard for a man in that situation to stay true to himself and aggressively develop his potential, and hard for his mother to believe he will be safe in a world that targets and disables aggressive young Black men. The trauma of slavery generations back reaches far into future generations. How do we stop its transmission?

Featured speaker Dr. Janice Gump addressed the destruction of the attachment bond transmitted across generations and the enslavement that squashed healthy ambition and creativity in young African American men as a result of which mothers are therefore highly protective of their sons. Dr. Gump’s writings and presentation, the clinical presentation by Andrew Price, and discussion in the audience in large and small group affective learning processes alerted us to the impact of enslavement on the United States. White, Black, Hispanic and Asian therapists attending the workshop were privileged to learn from one another as we grappled with the issue of how we contribute to the problems of race. This is so important for therapists, because we have shared the position of the African American male client, all of us struggling with the issues of race, and all of us unable to freely address the obvious.

Audience engagment — Audience engagement

We were grateful for a meaningful experience at IPI in which we could voice our concerns and think together about race relations from an object relations perspective. Several people expressed their appreciation for the group conversation, saying they have been needing opportunities like this and had never experienced anything like it. One person said, “We need to have circles like this all over the world….it’s the only way we’re going to make progress.”

Settings and Modalities in Family and Couple Treatment

Posted on February 6, 2018January 18, 2019 by Melonie Bell

Thursday Feb 1,2018

Panel: David Scharff, Jeanne Magagna, Caroline Sehon

Jeanne Magagna is speaking about working with parents to help their difficult and unhappy children. Of course parents expect the child therapist to be trained in child development and parent effectiveness preparation. But no matter how well trained, the therapist cannot help the child without the parents. She NEEDS the parents to help her treat their child. Together they can build a thinking space where the parents can observe their child more fully, develop a shared narrative of their child and her role in the family, and make links from their experiences as children to their child’s life now. From there, parents at home create a daily routine review of their child’s day, and they can all explore the connections among the child’s experiences and the family history and social setting. In this way the parents build a sturdy emotional cradle in which they hold their child. Feeling secure in this loving, reflective parental cradle, the child grows in self regulation, curiosity and connectedness.

Saturday Feb 3, 2018

We heard from the Scharffs about a brief encounter with a Chinese family. The index patient was a boy who could not make any decision or speak up for his own choices, caught between the unresolved differences of his parents. We heard the therapists describe working with them in an academic setting with a translator and a large audience. They spoke about the boy’s symptom as a distillation of family dynamics and they showed how playing spontaneously with him and his sister could help the boy to find a voice. Then Li Zhen and Mary Morgan discussed the cultural context and the treatment/teaching setting. We usually think of treatment as an intensely private matter but even in this strange setting a therapeutic exchange could occur. Mary Morgan pointed to the importance of the therapists’ internal setting enabling them to relax, engage in word and play, and make a safe, containing therapy space. Li Zhen viewed this family as one that represents not just the parents’ internal conflict but also the generational conflict between grandparents who live by Confucian principles of filial piety and young people who are looking for a way to live in the new China.

Sunday Feb 4, 2018

As the discussion on settings and modalities continues, differences among various approaches are becoming clear. The therapist of an under-5 year old may usefully also do parent counseling or couple therapy with her parents. Others see this as a distortion of the frame. Some of us who begin work with a couple will see only the couple. Others will see whichever part of the couple shows up for the appointment. Those couple therapists with a family orientation may include the children (or even a newborn) for some sessions to explore the couple-as-parents, work on coalitions that replace the vital marital bond, and relive childhood experience that can inform current couple relating. Those with a couple orientation would never break the couple frame like that.

Today Rich Zeitner showed that even though we hold a firm frame for meeting with a couple, we may find ourselves doing individual therapy in the presence of the partner, a difficulty encountered when one partner is identified as mentally ill. It is as though two people are living in one person, said Leora Benioff, and Mariangela Mendes de Almeida advised attending to the theme and the affect that connects them rather than to the projections of internal object relations. Mary Morgan reminded us that a projective identification system like this exists to protect the couple from aspects of themselves that they are frightened of. Mary Morgan reminds us that therapist needs to be patient in allowing the defensive process to continue until it is no longer needed. Damian McCann responded that the modifications in the frame can be an acting out, an acting-in of the transference for subsequent analysis, or a spontaneous or surprising intervention that reflects a shift in the therapist that could release the couple from their entrapment in paranoid-schizoid functioning to depressive concern.

The take away message is that various ways of maintaining and modifying the frame can be helpful or destructive, but the main point is that the therapist needs to examine the impact of any shifts in the frame and use it for therapeutic understanding.

Final Thoughts

Another way to think about the value and meaning of a change in modality or setting is to consider it in terms of whether the therapist is expressing a defensively caretaking function or a truly adaptive containing function. We might also ask if the change made is an innovative movement forward or a regression to a traditional modality out of guilt.
There are individual, couple and family levels of organization. We can intervene at any level but we need to keep in mind what we are doing and where we are going. We want to keep a multiocular vision on individual, couple and family in any of these treatment settings.

And technical considerations aside, within the secure setting we create we are subject to unexpected external forces, liable to error, but willing to acknowledge mistakes and make reparation. We identify with our preferred settings, work from an internal setting that is firm but flexible when deviations are called for, and feel free to engage as a thinking, feeling human being.

Enrique Pichon-Rivière and his theory of the link

Posted on August 10, 2017January 18, 2019 by Melonie Bell

IPI faculty members presented a number of panels, presentations, and precongress workshops at the International Psychoanalytical Congress in Buenos Aires in July 2017. At one of those panels, David Scharff and Lea Setton invited Roberto Losso, Juan Tubert-Oklander and Joaquín Pichon-Rivière, to join them in presenting the ideas and applications of the late Enrique Pichon-Rivière (photo 1 and 2).

During the panel: Joaquín Pichon-Rivière, Juan Tubert-Oklander, Lea Setton, Roberto Losso, David Scharff — During the panel: Joaquín Pichon-Rivière, Juan Tubert-Oklander,
Lea Setton, Roberto Losso, David Scharff

After the panel: Joaquín Pichon-Rivière, Juan Tubert-Oklander, Lea Setton, Roberto Losso, David Scharff — After the panel: Joaquín Pichon-Rivière, Juan Tubert-Oklander,
Lea Setton, Roberto Losso, David Scharff

Later they gathered to celebrate the launch of their edited book The Linked Self in Psychoanalysis: The Pioneering Work of Enrique Pichon-Rivière edited by Roberto Losso, Lea Setton, and David Scharff, in English for the first time. (London: Karnac 2017) (Photo 3).

The book launch: Roberto Losso, David Scharff, Jill Scharff. Joaquín Pichon-Rivière, Lea Setton. — The book launch: Roberto Losso, David Scharff, Jill Scharff.
Joaquín Pichon-Rivière, Lea Setton.

Enrique’s ideas are so original, and his early development so fascinating, that I wanted to share them widely, especially with young people who haven’t a clue about what a therapist or psychoanalyst actually does, or how an analytic approach can help. So I got the idea of writing the story of Enrique as a story to read to our children and grandchildren.

Enrique Pichon-Rivière and his theory of the link.

By Jill Savege Scharff

Once upon a time, there was a little French boy called Enrique who lived in Switzerland and France. When he was four years old, his parents took him with them on a long journey. They left their high class life in Europe and went to live during his youth for the next 17 years with the Guaraní tribe in the jungle of northern Argentina. Enrique saw scary pumas, jaguars, alligators, and snakes in that rainforest, but he learned to stay still and not be frightened.

Enrique spoke French with his upper class parents, but he learned the Guaraní language too, so he got along with the local children, played ball with them, and knew their way of life. When he was eight years old he had to leave the jungle, speak Spanish all the time, and go to school in the town. But he always remembered his time in the primitive world of the jungle.

When Enrique grew up he became a doctor and a psychoanalyst. Most of his friends were psychoanalysts, even his wife. A psychoanalyst is a kind and thoughtful person who helps us put our worries and bad memories into words and doesn’t get upset by our strong feelings. After talking with the doctor for a while, we have a new experience of ourselves in this new relationship. We then feel more confident in ourselves and get along better with our friends, our family, and our teacher or boss.

Enrique noticed that psychoanalysts have problems too, and need help with how they think about things. For example, too many psychoanalysts that he met thought about only one patient at a time, and that person was usually just a grown-up. They forgot about the people we all live with, the children and families, and the world we inhabit together. But not Enrique. He saw the total picture.

Enrique thought about everyone. He helped families to be healthy, talked to boys and girls about their worries, taught other therapists, and even helped companies and their workers to be successful. He always remembered his early life in the jungle, and cared about all people, rich and poor, and every level of society.

He saw the world as being like a soccer field where everyone had an important part to play (even the ball) to make a good game. Every family is like a soccer field in which the children and the parents and the grandparents and aunts and uncles all teach the children how to play and run around with them They all take turns to kick the ball, receive a pass, defend the goal, and learn every position to play their part in the team.

Noting that we live in groups and can’t exist without others, Enrique made his theory of the link. He said that a baby is born into el vinculo, a link that is there waiting to welcome the baby to the world and deal with the impact of the new family member on that world. Our family and our community shape who we will become, and equally we shape our family and our culture. Meeting with a psychoanalyst creates a new link, which changes the original link, and lets us recover our balance.

Here is another of Enrique’s ideas about the link. The past, the present and the future are part of the link. They are in our minds all the time, even when we are not thinking about how they affect us. So it is important to remember what happened before we were born, even before our parents were born, and to look outside our own family to our place in school and wider community, if we want to know who we are. When one of us is suffering, he realized, that one is not the only one with a problem. That one is actually the spokesperson for a hidden group problem. With help from a psychoanalyst, that one can lead the way to solving an unrecognized mystery in the family or community.

Enrique was an original thinker. His ideas were ahead of his time. But he had a problem. Although he loved to teach, he didn’t take enough time to write down his ideas. So he didn’t get full credit for being such a pioneer. Although his students loved his ideas and wrote down what they remembered, they did it in Spanish only. Sadly Enrique’s ideas remained unknown to psychoanalysts in Europe and North America.

That is where The International Psychotherapy Institute (IPI) enters the story. Lea Setton, IPI faculty member and IIPT supervising analyst, read all of the Spanish journal articles by and about Enrique and his theory. She consulted Roberto Losso, IIPT adjunct faculty member, and together they chose the best parts and translated them roughly into English. Then their colleague Judith Filc in New York perfected the translation. Added to that, well known psychoanalysts who had known Enrique before he died wrote in English about their memories of him and what they learned about his ideas. David Scharff, IPI Board Chair, faculty member and IIPT supervising analyst helped them put together all these papers and arranged for them to be published as a book The Linked Self in Psychoanalysis: The Pioneering Work of Enrique Pichon-Rivière edited by Roberto Losso, Lea Setton, and David Scharff (London: Karnac 2017). So now psychoanalysts who can’t speak Spanish can read the book in English and appreciate the powerful vision of this clever Argentine psychoanalyst and his theory of the link. That is the story of how Enrique Pichon-Rivière can now be known to people in Europe and North America — thanks to IPI.

Photos courtesy of Caroline M. Sehon
Text by Jill Savege Scharff

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