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PSC 79(1):270-271 (2026) • DOI: 10.1080/00797308.2025.2526983

New Voices 2026: Thoughts on Self and Identity in a Changing World

Authors: Laura Whitman MD, Lissa Weinstein PhD

Laura Whitman MD

Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, Private Practice

255 West End Ave, Suite 1A, New York, NY 10023

Training and Supervising Analyst at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research; Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Dr. Whitman teaches psychoanalytic technique, process, and theories of development, as well as psychodynamic psychotherapy for children and adolescents. In 2020, she received the Edith Sabshin award from APSA for excellence in non-candidate psychoanalytic education, and in 2023, the Howard Klar award for excellence in teaching candidates. Dr. Whitman has recently written book essays about relationships across time (JAPA, January 2022), and child and adolescent analysis (JAPA, January 2025). She is in private practice in Manhattan, seeing individuals of all ages.

Lissa Weinstein PhD

New York Psychoanalytic Institute

Professor in the Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology at the City College of New York and the Graduate Center, a graduate and faculty member of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, and a fiction writer. She is the head of Graduate Education in Psychology at APSA, and on the editorial boards of and . Her interests include the interrelationship of neurobiology and psychoanalysis, the clinical process – specifically changes in pronoun use, metaphor and repetition during analysis, as well as film and literature studies. She won the Heinz Hartmann Jr. Award winner with Dr. Arnold Wilson for their papers on the work of Lev Vygotsky and psychoanalysis. Recent publications include The Neurobiology of Personality Disorders: Implications for Psychoanalysis and Personality disorders, attachment and psychodynamic psychotherapy, both with Larry Siever, M.D., Physiological and developmental contributions to the Feeling of Reality, and Towards a Clinical Integration of Theoretical Perspectives with Steven Ellman, Ph.D, and Why Bion? Why Now? Novel Forms and the Mystical Quest. Her film papers have appeared in , , , and the .

Abstract

For our second New Voices collection we asked child psychoanalytic supervisors and instructors to ask their students if they would like to contribute an essay utilizing psychoanalytic concepts to our journal. For subsequent volumes we are planning on casting a wider net by soliciting papers from younger colleagues through national and international organizations. Though we began the section in hopes of engaging younger colleagues in psychoanalytic writing, without specifying any particular topic, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the submissions we received all focused on aspects of identity and of the self.

The papers showcase how identity and the self are altered by societal changes, technology, status in the work hierarchy, and the capacity to make choices. All these issues engage with contemporary psychoanalytic developmental theory and with concerns of the larger world today: immigration, cyberspace, educational traditions, and the rights of children and adults to make their own choices.

Alison Qiang offers us a poignant analysis of the film “Minari.” Minari is a plant native to Korea that can survive adverse conditions. The film is about a Korean family that immigrates to a farm in the North American Midwest. Qiang delineates how the second generation mourns their parents’ and grandparents’ lost country and culture of origin, using ideas from Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia (Freud, 1917). This essay will resonate with immigrants, their children, and their grandchildren. Qiang describes how the sense of self is affected by the longing for and curiosity about the country of origin.

Justyna Zapolska, Ph.D. traces the evolution of saying no from the assertion of autonomy in infancy and toddlerhood to identity formation in adolescence and adulthood. She writes with humor and insight about the developmental need to say no. In order to define oneself, all of us must not only decide who we are, but also who we are not. Zapolska illustrates the importance of this