Emily Kuriloff, Psy.D. presents Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Legacy of the Third Reich. Donna M. Orange, Ph.D., Psy.D. Discussant.
During the 1930s and 1940s, European psychoanalysts held fast to their professional identities despite a profoundly destabilizing reality. From Budapest to Paris, the Nazis disrupted the work of this group and threatened their very lives; that a good part of the community endured in exile is itself remarkable. And yet, in the end, the twentieth century belonged as much to Hitler as it did to Freud.
This presentation will address the question: What effect do the personal histories of traumatized theorists and clinicians have upon their work, and thus the direction of the psychoanalytic traditions that recent generations have inherited?
In researching her book, Kuriloff was prompted to lean heavily on personal interviews conducted with analysts who lived during the period, or who have studied the Holocaust. In her presentation, the author will read excerpts from her book, Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Legacy of the Third Reich—particularly those pertaining to Heinz Kohut and his psychoanalyst/ historian son, Tom Kohut. These dialogues revealed more to her about the impact of the catastrophe upon psychoanalytic theory and praxis than did material found in print. The presence of the living person also allowed Kuriloff to inquire about implication, and to check her intuition against those of another who was, and perhaps still is, closer to the events and their terrible personal ramifications than the author will ever be.
March 24th, 2016
LOCATION:
NIP Conference Room
250 West 57th Street, Ste 501, NYC
More info here.
