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.
This discussion of Almas Merchant’s case investigates the metaphor Merchant uses for shared identification with her patient, being “knotted together.” It considers the potential for overuse of, and romanticization of, identification, including presumptions about “community” in community psychoanalysis. It calls for interrogating normative, unmarked forms of psychoanalysis that do not get the euphemistic designation of being “community” psychoanalysis. It relates these current tensions to similar tensions present in the 1970s with the emergence of the concept of burnout in the free clinic movement, as experienced and reported by psychoanalyst Herbert Freudenberger. It concludes by considering future possibilities by looking at the work of mutual aid group Bronx Móvil and pointing toward community psychoanalysis’ potential engagement with community organizing.