Voices from ROOM: A Podcast for Analytic Action

This week, Aneta and Isaac talk with licensed clinical social worker Max Beshers. Beshers applies analytic thinking in spaces ranging from private practice to anti-racism reading groups to local activism efforts in Chicago geared towards ending police violence. Beshers contends with what 'radical' means now and the fear stoked by being seen as too radical or not radical enough. Beshers unveils a personal history with identity politics that strives to find the place between the elastic and the rigid, the descriptive and the confining, as he engages with a diverse patient base and larger community."Over the years, “radical” as a leftist political stance has tempted and haunted me. I was and am inspired by the wildly creative visions of a different world, without racism, without violence, without prisons, and yes, even without police."— Beshers, "Free Radicals" ROOM 2.25

In this discussion, Sue Grand, a faculty member at NYU specializing in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, explores the seductive elements of fascism. She connects toxic masculinity with charismatic leaders and examines how gender dynamics play a role in right-wing ideologies. Sue reflects on the allure of authoritarian rhetoric, especially during the Trump years, and the psychological factors at work in identifying with aggressors. The conversation emphasizes the importance of open dialogue and community support in resisting oppressive forces.

This week, Aneta and Isaac speak with Mary B. McRae, who describes her experience growing up in a segregated southern Black community, migrating to NYC as a teen, and her revolutionary days in groups like the Black Panther Party. Highlighting the importance affirmative action programs had for her generation, she reminisces about the doors that were open and closed to her as she made her way from being a young single mother to becoming a research psychologist, tenured professor, and current president of William Alanson White Institute.Read Mary's work in ROOM:"As a child, I played in this graveyard with other children. The pain and joy of those memories, owning our first house before losing it and migrating to New York. Not remembering difficult times or suffering is like dementia, a fear of repetition. I am the baby girl, the sixth of seven children, a sharecropper’s daughter." - Mary B. McRae, Notes from a Sharecropper's Daughter, ROOM 10.24

This week, Aneta and Isaac speak with Katie Burner, a therapist raised inside the Latter-day Saints faith. Burner unpacks how her Mormon upbringing and experience at institutions like Brigham Young University affect her relationships with her clients. Seeing both Mormon and non-Mormon patients, Burner navigates transference and countertransference inside her practice alongside a shifting relationship to the religion itself.

This week, Isaac and Aneta speak with Jill Gentile about how the liberatory and inclusive projects of democracy and psychoanalysis reflect and enable patriarchy. Suggesting that castration fantasy was psychoanalysis’s original conspiracy theory, Gentile draws our attention to the non-binary, non-unitary vaginal space as a repressed signifier of the multiplicity of otherness. Channeling Winnicott, she suggests that the birthing fantasies, misogyny, and the overt exclusion of others during Trump 1.0, which has led to the societal breakdown that Trump 2.0 portends, may provide the opportunity for collective renewal. "It is not accidental that the Trump era is characterized by a preoccupation with borders, immigrants, walls, reproductive surveillance, and a general fear of feminine space." - Jill Gentile, "Vaginal Veritas," ROOM 6.19

This week, Aneta and Isaac speak with Dr. Robert Frey about his work in international medicine and his direct action against the use of nuclear equipment to mine for oil in Western Colorado. Frey details how humor, identity, global politics, and environmental emergency may all congeal at moments of protest. Moreover, Frey emphasizes the critical interconnectedness that can be created by both political engagement and medical care when individual feeling is galvanized into collective action.

This week, hosts Aneta Stojnić and Isaac Slone speak with Michael Krass, a psychoanalyst and the president of the Contemporary Freudian Society. Krass shows how the disavowal of unconscious racism by liberal white Americans has contributed to the spread of openly racist attitudes and actions on the right. Following the presidential election results, many are juggling an external political reality with an internal pain, revulsion, or withdrawal; all reactions which Krass suggests show a failure at having truly known this nation, this climate, and ourselves.

This week, hosts Aneta Stojnić and Isaac Slone speak with psychoanalyst Jyoti Rao on her view of social justice activism as an interpretation of society itself. Rao unpacks how recent student activism across the US has disrupted the status quo just as clinical analysis aims to disrupt and mobilize the individual psyche. In this space of this discomfort, Rao suggests we may be invited to remember our humanity in the gut-wrenching love felt for civilians caught in the conditions of war. Read Jyoti's work in ROOM:"The humanitarian catastrophe underway calls for a redoubling of our commitment to care about the lives and well-being of others, a central aspect of psychoanalytic ethics that does not end at the consulting-room door." — Jyoti Rao, "Student Activism as Interpretation" ROOM 6.24

This week, hosts Aneta Stojnić and Isaac Slone speak with Tom Hennes, founder of Thinc Design. Hennes discusses his apprehension around the phrase "Never Forget" and its possible weaponization against accurate social and political memory. Through theory, fieldwork, and history, Hennes demonstrates how his past design work in the 9/11 Memorial Museum and his current work reshaping Riker's Island are impacted by a need for dialogue to create truly restorative justice.  Read Tom's work in ROOM:"The problem with traumatic loss is that it cannot be forgotten. Cannot even easily be placed in time so that it will cease to be an ever-present simulacrum of reality. I am coming to the idea that Never Forget is directed in a constraining way toward those inside these events." — Tom Hennes, "We Say 'Never Forget'" ROOM 6.24

This week, we had the pleasure of talking with Dr. Dean Hammer, a consummate Activist-Practitioner who refutes silence in the face of malignant normality. Hammer explains the pull of quiet compliance, especially during times of atrocity. We spoke with him about where his work in the classroom, the protest, and the clinical setting overlap.Dr. Hammer seeks a psychoanalytically informed community that invests in peace even as it operates with an awareness of the walls imposed by the justice system, the academy, and the flag under which it operates. We welcome you to read his essay "Reflections on Ploughshares Eight," published in ROOM 10.23.Thank you for listening,Your hosts, Isaac Slone and Aneta Stojnić Voices From ROOM will return in September. While we're away, we welcome you to listen to past episodes. We appreciate your ratings and reviews and can't wait to share a new season with you this fall.