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.
Chair: Stefano Bolognini
Panelists: Paula Ellman, Nancy Goodman, Douglas Chavis
Discussants: Dana Birksted-Breen, Abel Fainstein
Stefano Bolognini began the panel by stating how all of the panel papers were diverse, emotionally moving and not only consisted of deep reflections on psychoanalytic theory and technique, but also considered the cultural influence psychoanalysis has had on society and humanity in general.
The first paper, entitled “Finding the Infantile, Finding Unconscious Fantasy with the Traumas of Now and Then”, by Nancy Goodman, introduced Goodman’s model of “finding theater” where there are “multiple stages jutting out into space of the theater” with ladders that connect the stages, and separate stages that produce sound and music out to the audience. These distinct stages, according to Goodman, are in place to transport the baby’s internal world to blend with the “feel, body, sensation, and imagery” of the developing unconscious fantasy life, and there is a “special theater” where the mind is open to both analyst and analysand, joined through transference and countertransference in both wishes and fears. According to Goodman, the way that the “too much” of trauma becomes symbolized assists our acceptance of how the unconscious infantile also becomes symbolized, and that it is the unconscious reverberation in the minds of both analyst and analysand that allows the darkened, repressed, yet unsymbolized stages of the repressed to come to the forefront.
The space of “finding the theater,” according to Goodman, is “dynamic and stable,” and can be used as a structure for analytic work to hold and contain the disarray of both life and death forces. Goodman asserts that despite the changes necessary to continue analytic work in the time of COVID-19, the model of finding theatre has surprisingly continued to function as a valuable concept, and fantasy has often been absorbed in the absolute terror experienced by both the analyst and analysand throughout the cri