What happens in the therapeutic dyad when regular, reciprocal conversations are not possible, when our patients communicate with us in strange and at times mystifying ways? What extraordinary efforts do we make to connect with patients whose communications are enigmatic?
Over the course of this weekend, we will explore the challenge and rewards of conversing with people who experience and utilize language in non standard ways, whether due to neurodivergence, sensory differences, artist temperament, psychosis etc.
Psychoanalysis is uniquely attuned to both the minutiae of verbal utterances but also to ellipses of the unconscious and the unspoken.
Locating oneself in this dialogue is akin to ‘swimming in space’, with the weight and significance of words taking on new and unfamiliar proportions in an effort to discover new ways to listen for the unique signifiers of self expression.
We will hear from a few of us who try, through writing, poetry and psychoanalysis.
Coordinators: Jessica Arenella, Ph.D. and Ona Lindquist, LCSW
GUEST FACULTY:
Jessica Arenella, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist who specializes in working with people diagnosed with schizophrenia and psychosis. She served as President of the International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis- US Chapter (ISPS-US) from 2014-2020 and was a founding member of Hearing Voices NYC. Dr. Arenella is a William Alanson White Institute drop out and occasional guest faculty member at New Directions.
Ona Lindquist, LCSW is a psychoanalyst and senior supervisor in private practice in Brooklyn, NY specializing in work with creative and performing artists. She has taught and supervised at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health, The Karen Horney Institute, and The New School for Social Research. Her articles include, What a Blackbird Told Me is Real and Alive; A Barter To Be: A Psychoanalysis in Art and Verse; and One Glorious Noise: How the Voice of Bruce Springsteen Entered my Consulting Room. Before becoming an analyst, she was a conceptual artist. Her project in the 1980’s, Objet Vend’art by Vendona was about making and dispensing art for the masses. View her visual memoir of the project at: objetsvendart.com.
Jade McGleughlin is past president, personal and supervising analyst, board member and faculty member of The Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis. She is on the editorial boards of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and Studies in Gender and Sexuality. She is in private practice in Cambridge, MA, providing consultation, supervision, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Her writing focuses on gender, the negative, the analysts’ necessary nonsovereignty, experimental and ontological psychoanalytic writing, and uses of visual art to articulate problems in representation. Her book, Clinical Story telling, Art and the Problems of Being: The Analyst’s Necessary Vertigo is published with Routledge. She is a portrait painter.
Ruth Ozeki is an author, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest, whose work has garnered international acclaim for its ability to integrate issues of science, religion, environment, and mental health into unique, hybrid, narrative forms. She is the author of four novels: The Book of Form and Emptiness, A Tale for the Time Being, All Over Creation, and My Year of Meats. Her nonfiction work includes a memoir, The Face: A Time Code, and the documentary film, Halving the Bones. Ruth is affiliated with the Everyday Zen Foundation and is the Grace Jarcho Ross Professor Emerita of Humanities at Smith College.