The Anxious Amalgam of the Wish for “Recognition/Revenge/Reparation”: Discussion of Rina Lazar’s “What Are We Doing There? A Therapeutic Tale”

Sam Gerson, Ph.D., is a founder and Past-President of the Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology (NCSPP) and of the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC), where he is currently on the faculty and serves as a Training and Supervising Analyst. Dr. Gerson is an Associate Editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and an Editor for Studies in Gender and Sexuality and the Psychoanalytic Quarterly. In 2007 he received the Elise M. Hayman Award for the Study of Genocide and the Holocaust from the International Psychoanalytic Association for his paper entitled “When the Third is Dead: Memory, Mourning and Witnessing in the Aftermath of the Holocaust.” His most recent published paper is entitled “Hysteria and Humiliation” and appeared in Psychoanalytic Dialogues in October 2011.
Correspondence should be addressed to Sam Gerson, Ph.D., 2252 Fillmore Street, San Francisco, CA 94115. E-mail: