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We are pleased to present this select group of six papers, originally presented at the 2021 Conference of the American Association for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work (AAPCSW), A Time to Think, A Time to Act: Caring about the Known and the Unknown. This conference, which was co-sponsored by the AAPCSW’s educational arm, the National Institute for Psychoanalytic Education and Research in Clinical Social Work (NIPER), was held in Philadelphia from November 5-7, 2021. Due to the pandemic, a hybrid format, consisting of live and synchronous virtual technology, was utilized.
Conference presenters were given an opportunity to submit their papers to this Journal, which has its own independent peer review process. In this exceptional issue, we believe the richness and breadth of contemporary psychoanalytic thought is particularly well-represented.
Our journey begins with Richard Kluft’s detailed and comprehensive review of the historical factors that led to the marginalization of hypnosis and dissociation within the psychoanalytic canon, as well as the gradual reintegration of these ideas in the contemporary treatment of dissociative disorders. Liz Johnston examines paranoia relative to the significance of the internet and the “paranoid pseudocommunity,” in making her argument for a reconsideration of the clinical diagnosis of Delusional Disorder. In his paper on the community-based treatment of schizophrenia, Ben Goldstein draws from Lacanian theory in understanding psychic survival in the psychotic’s reconstruction of a world that has been annihilated, while also emphasizing the dual influence of environment and the community mental health system itself in shaping this diagnosis.
Clinical treatment, particularly as viewed through the lens of the transference-countertransference matrix, is a recurring focus of these papers. Intersectionality and intersectional enactments are Joan Berzoff’s unique foci, as she advises that clinicians “listen for the sediments of race, c