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.
From time to time, analytic therapists tend to re-examine their fundamental personal and theoretical perceptions, beliefs, and experiential knowledge of analytic processes. Currently, however, this mental action seems especially urgent amidst the massive volatile social, cultural, and political repercussions of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Our personal and public realities and our ways of living in them have dramatically changed—indefinitely. Moreover, some of the current challenges might change our lives beyond this global crisis and, therefore, analytic therapists need to revisit our conceptualization. To this end, this special issue of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis on current clinical issues in psychoanalysis offers new perspectives on human development, psychopathology, intrapsychic and intersubjective processes, and transference-countertransference relations. In this issue, various contemporary writers present their experiences, reflections, and theoretical suggestions regarding processes of change and personal growth within and outside the analytic process framework. While representing a diversity of analytic perspectives, the contributors to this issue are united in their dedication to introspective observation of their own and their patients' moment-to-moment responses and communications in the analytic space; to learn and formulate something meaningful about human motivations, aspirations, ideals, and processes of change.
Kernberg (2021) addresses the future of psychoanalysis amidst the emergence of competing therapeutic approaches and the criticism raised against its effectiveness while ignoring its enormous scientific and cultural contributions to society. Kernberg believes that what weakens