Musing Psychoanalysis

Notes at the intersection of Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, Science, Culture and Religion.

Hi,

My name is Ali. I am an early career psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst in training at The William Alanson White Institute, New York. I am in private practice and faculty at The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Elmhurst Hospital, where I provide clinical care to my patients and teach budding psychiatrists. 

I was called to psychoanalysis through my experiences with patients as a medical doctor, experiences of everyday life and as I ricocheted away from the suffocating constrictions of working with the Human within reductionist biological frameworks. As a young, bright-eyed, psychiatry resident, I stumbled across Leston Havens’ book “Approaches to The Mind - Movement of the Psychiatric Schools from Sects to Science” and I have not looked back since. While still a third-year psychiatry resident, I embarked on full-time training in Relational/Interpersonal Psychoanalysis, an experience that has been nothing short of thrilling. That said, as I studied different theorists and worked with different supervisors, I often found distinct conceptual and theoretical ideas being muddled together. At other times, essentially the same or similar ideas were described in a manner that made them appear unique. Related to this, there is a historical tendency within psychoanalysis, as with other fields examining human experience and inquiry, to assert that it is the Only valid means of knowing. I believe this stance has been and continues to be to the detriment of psychoanalysis as a field, but arguably of benefit to individual theorists and their schools. Psychoanalysis, too, struggles to relinquish its illusions. Palpating this strain as I progressed through my training, I began keeping notes to organize and connect ideas, and to explore those who drew from other fields and what motivated them to do so.

While keeping notes may be tedious, not keeping them is perhaps even more so. Hence this substack than my private notebooks as sharing them here introduces deliberation on my end, but more importantly are invitations for engagement and conversation with you. 

While these are my notes (and meanderings), a general yet open direction of Musing Psychoanalysis is a modest attempt to:

1. Traverse the varying and converging landscapes of psychoanalytic theory and practice.

2. Muse in the vexing spaces where psychoanalysis, as a tool to examine human experience, intersects with the scientific method, culture, society and religion in the hopes of Consilience¹: that these broad and often antagonistic spaces of inquiry at one level can be, in part, be seen as harmonious at another level of examination.

3. Examining the explicit and more commonly implicit Weltanschauung² of different psychoanalytic theories, more carefully - and deliberately so - when it is proclaimed that a theory or orientation is free from having one.

Wittingly but not uncommonly without discretion, I have been influenced by the ideas of Charles Peirce, Sigmund Freud, Oskar Pfister, Carl Jung, Hans Loewald, Harry Guntrip, Ronald Fairbairn, Donald Winnicott, Eric Fromm, Henri Ellenberger, Rollo May, Victor Frankl, George Devereux, Nancy McWilliams, Jaak Panksepp, Nassir Ghaemi, Paul McHugh, Leston Havens and Muhammad Iqbal (but really it was my early objects!). 

All of the content shared here is free to access. I would appreciate your support through critical and constructive engagement with these writings along with subscribing [link below] which is free.

Thank you for your support and readership³. 

Ali : )

1. Wilson E. Consilience. The Unity of Knowledge (1999). Pg 8. “Consilience is the key to unification. I prefer this word over "coherence" because its rarity has preserved its precision, whereas coherence has several possible meanings, only one of which is consilience”.

2. Welt (“world”) +‎ Anschauung (“outlook, view”). German for “worldview” or “philosophy of life”.

3. Musing Psychoanalysis represents my opinions and those of my guests to the space. The views and opinions expressed are our own and do not represent that of our places of work, institutes of training or its affiliates. While I make every effort to ensure that the information I am sharing is accurate, I welcome any comments, suggestions, or correction of errors. In no way does reading, emailing or interacting with my content online establish a doctor-patient relationship. Please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions.