You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Dr. Dodi Goldman, training and supervising analyst of the White Institute, offered a stimulating exploration of generational dialogue, which he defines “as a transitional space in which two terrors recognized by psychoanalysis—merger and isolation—can somehow be mediated.” He explained that movement through the lifespan confronts a person with a new “version of the self and the influences that other generations” have on the self. This can promote a self-reviewing process in which one evaluates what to hold on to and what to let go of, “what to give in love, and what to give in hate, who to be like, and who to be different from[?] The individual is challenged to seek a way to remain separate but interrelated without collapsing into merger or isolation.”
Goldman notes that at “various points in the life cycle, searching for a way to love without losing one's self often rekindles the need for generational dialogue. People need time and space to create new versions of themselves without abandoning the ‘me’ that feels most familiar. These developmental junctures challenge individuals to navigate both vertically and horizontally: to hold in mind both differences and similarities between generations, tolerate collisions between them, find a place among their peers, and imaginatively elaborate who they are gradually becoming” (p. 7). “Generational dialogue may be part of how a person comes to have a vitalizing sense of reality.” To accomplish this, “the individual must experience reality as discovered and composed rather than simply transposed. Compliance with external reality—simply fitting in—and fealty to fantasy—finding no way to fit in—are, psychically speaking, dead ends. While people benefit from the valuable brakes previous generations place on their fantasy life, they must also stake a claim to creatively make their place in accordance with their own pattern. Successful identification—in the traditional sense of a somewhat passive and grief driven taking in of paren