The Return to the Office with Marilia Aisenstein, Part II

Psychoanalysis On and Off the Couch

I observe what many of the French analysts and my supervisees say [about online treatment] - they are absolutely happy by how fantastic the patients talk, they talk much easier than before, they have dreams, and they relate their dreams and even sexual fantasies which they never did before. I understand them of course because they talk to them as easily as they would talk to a taxi driver that they will never see again.

Episode Description: We begin by recalling our first conversation in March 2020 (Episode #43) at the beginning of the lockdown in Paris and the switch from in-person to online analytic treatment. We discuss the impact of the missing bodies in the office and its implications for the freedom that some patients now feel to be more open. Marilia wondered about how analysands will feel when they return to in-person treatment after revealing more online than they would have otherwise tolerated. This forced experiment in technique will hopefully shed light on what is essential in our work in contrast to what are non-essential "rules."

We also discuss her 45 years of practicing analysis, her deepened comforts in aloneness, and her view on the future of our field.

Our Guest: Marilia Aisenstein is a Training and Supervising Analyst in the Hellenic Society and the Paris Society and past president of the Paris Society. She has served as the IPA's Board representative to the Executive Committee and the past president of the International New Groups Committee. She has been the Editor and co-founder of the French Review of Psychosomatics and President of the Paris Institute of Psychosomatics.

Her most recent book translated into English is Desire, Pain, and Thought.

Episode referred to

http://ipaoffthecouch.org/2020/03/31/episode-43-a-report-from-paris-with-marilia-aisenstein/