"You have to understand the revolution of psychoanalysis as the idea that everything we represent both conceals something about our being-and-becoming as much as it reveals it. Once you are open to that, you, in a way, have entered the world in which free association is necessary, because free association, in my frame of reference, is not just uncensored talking. It's not just that. It's something that very specifically unsettles the rationality and the realism of discourse, such that it allows dimensions that were occluded or more accurately repressed than suppressed to come to the surface to a greater degree. In other words, we practice free association because it's freeing, and it's freeing of something that is essential to our being."

Episode Description: Barnaby begins by describing how free association is a process that is not limited to speaking with increasingly less censorship. It is a process that is foundationally disruptive to the "repetitiously-compulsive way in which 'knowledge' has impeded the movement of being-becoming." He sees psychoanalysis less as a process of learning about oneself, an epistemological enterprise, and more as an opportunity of expanding one's sense of self, an ontological experience. As such, Barnaby sees free association as "inherently anti-technical, anti-theoretical and anti-authoritarian." We consider the use of the word resistance as opposed to hesitancy. He, like Pythagoras, emphasizes the role of the analyst as "a friend who accompanies you on a journey, facilitating your perseverance on the road to a happier life." Barnaby elaborates the experience of 'listening to listen', the importance of introductory psychotherapy and where 'reverie' fits into his thinking. He closes with "The psychoanalyst's enjoyment of their patients...is a spiritual praxis of 'finding the joy in' - that is, being steadfastly aware of an exultancy in the liveliness of life that girds even the most tragic of circumstances."

Our Guest: Barnaby B Barratt, PhD, DHS is a psychoanalyst, somatic practitioner, sexuality consultant, and student of tantric meditation. He is the author of the "Rediscovering Psychoanalysis" trilogy: What is Psychoanalysis? (2013), Radical Psychoanalysis: An Essay on Free-associative Praxis (2016), and Beyond Psychotherapy: On Becoming a (Radical) Psychoanalyst (2019).

Recommended Readings:

Free-associating with the Bodymind. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 22: 161-175, 2013.

Opening to the Otherwise: The Discipline of Listening and the Necessity of Free-Association for Psychoanalytic Praxis. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 98(1): 39‑45, 2017.

Oedipality and Oedipal Complexes Reconsidered: On the Incest Taboo as a Key to the Universality of the Human Condition. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 100(1): 7‑31, 2019.

Reconsidering Regression in Psychoanalysis: Notes on a Central yet Controversial Concept and its Relation to Free‑association. Psychoanalytic Review, 107(2): 489‑512, 2020.

What is expressed in 'Free‑Association'? Theoretical notes on the Erotic Poetics of 'Freier Einfalle.' Psychoanalytic Review, 109(4): 381-410, 2022.

From "polymorphous perversity" to polysexuality: A note on psychoanalytic ideologies and the critique of hegemonic normativity. Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 23: 225‑232, 2022.

"I believe that to be inspiring, we have to have conviction. Conviction is the central thing to me. Conviction about treatment itself, and conviction about the way that we do treatment. I saw two analysts at two different times of my life, and they were very different. They had very different theoretical backgrounds, but one thing they had in common was their conviction - the conviction in the idea that this treatment was going to help me have a richer life, and I found that inspiring. I found them inspiring. I think that sometimes, in the effort not to be indoctrinating, not to engage in logical positivism, not to be seen as authoritative, I think we can err in the direction of a relativism that doesn't allow us to have the full-bodied conviction that I think we need in order to inspire people to stay the course of treatment and candidates to stay the course of training."

Episode Description: We begin by considering how clinicians can be inspiring to their patients - in actuality, not just as transference figures. She emphasizes that at times one must be 'palpably steadfast' when taking a stance against patient's abusive inner objects. Sandra makes the point that the themes the analyst attends to are also born from their own psychologies, not just from the patients. She considers the position of 'passionate neutrality' and how that is always unreachable. She quotes at length from Rilke in his sense of being 'enriched by loss'. We discuss mourning and the importance of the emotions that surround it. Balancing suffering entails an abundance of curiosity, hope, purpose, and especially joy. Sandra finds that "joy can counter feelings of life being limited by our sorrows."

Our Guest: Sandra Buechler, Ph.D. is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the William Alanson White Institute. She is the author of Clinical Values: Emotions that Guide Psychoanalytic Treatment, Making a Difference in Patients' Lives which won the Gradiva award, Still Practicing: The Heartaches and Joys of a Clinical Career, Understanding and Treating Patients in Clinical Psychoanalysis: Lessons from Literature, Psychoanalytic Reflections: Training and Practice, Psychoanalytic Approaches to Problems in Living, Poetic Dialogues, Erich Fromm: A Contemporary Introduction and Languages of the Heart: Personal Essays on Poetry and Clinical Practice (Routledge, in preparation).

Recommended Readings:

Buechler, S. (1999). Searching for a passionate neutrality. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 35, 213-227

Buechler, S. (2010). No pain, no gain? Suffering and the analysis of defense. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 46, 334-354.

Buechler, S. (2021). Empathy with strangers: Personal reflections. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 57:3-4, 446-472.

Buechler, S. Shattered Illusions of a retired psychoanalyst. Paper presented at the IARPP conference in Valencia, Spain, June 16, 2023.

Baer, U. (2005). The Poet's Guide to Life: The Wisdom of Rilke. Modern Library.

Rilke, R.M (1934). Letters to a Young Poet. Norton.

Seiden, H. (2016). The Motive for Metaphor: Brief Essays on Poetry and Psychoanalysis. Karnac.