Choosing Thoughts??–and Feelings???

The idea of our choosing thoughts and/or feelings is a strange one, especially in a psychoanalytic setting, where free association, or the spontaneous free-flowing outpourings of the mind, is so valued. However, I have found, for example, in starting a couple session, that it is useful for the couple to voice an “appreciation” of each other, even when, or especially when, they come in tense and angry with each other. It is remarkable how the atmosphere changes when people can summon up some positive thoughts and feelings about the other in the midst of hard feelings. It helps a process of more open, creative airing of difficulties with less blaming. John Gottman, the prominent marriage researcher, has found that couples who are able to insert comments of lightness and bonding in the midst of a argument, are more likely to stay together in the long run. There are other reasons for consciously changing a thought or a feeling. It is a well established tenet in Alcoholics Anonymous that when the thought of picking up a drink hits, the person can take control of it by changing it either by substituting a new thought like a prayer, a calming image, a mantra, or any (preferably positive) idea. The thought/impulse can also be altered by changing one’s behavior in the moment such as picking up the phone to call someone to talk to in that dangerous moment, or–and this is one I’ve always enjoyed– as one sponsor said to her sponsee, “If you’re sitting down, stand up; if you’re standing up, sit down!”

Since feelings give rise to thoughts, changing a thought can change the underlying feeling. This can be thought of as a mental discipline, like meditation, in which one is changing thoughts  by noticing them and refocusing on the breath. There is evidence that putting this aspiration into practice actually changes the way the brain works. We are all subject to familiar thoughts, feelings, beliefs and behaviors based on neural pathways in our brains that have been “hard-wired” in our lives by repetitive experience, particularly in the presence of intense negative emotions. Psychotherapy aims to produce this change. Psychoanalytic neurobiological researchers, among them Dr. Susan Vaughn, in “The Talking Cure”, have shown that that is exactly what happens in therapy.

A most striking example of  purposefully changing aspects of one’s personality is described by Dr. Jill Taylor Bolte, a brain scientist herself, in her book “My Stroke of Insight,” in which she details her experience and observation of her left brain shutting down as a result of a stroke. She then recounts her recovery, which entailed her having to learn, literally and painstakingly,  how to establish new neural pathways in the course of getting her left hemisphere and its functions back “online.” She says

Although I wanted to regain my left hemispheric skills, I must say that there were personality traits that tried to rise from the ashes of my left mind that, quite frankly, were no longer acceptable to my right hemispheric sense of who I now wanted to be…the question I faced over and over again was, Do I have to regain the affect, emotions or personality trait that was neurologically linked to the memory or ability that I wanted to recover? For instance, would it be possible for me to recover my perception of my self, where I exist as a single, solid, separate from the whole, without recovering the cells associated with my egotism, intense desire to be argumentative, need to be right, or fear of separation and death? Could I value money without hooking into the neurological loops of lack, greed, or selfishness?…My stroke of insight is that at the core of my right hemisphere consciousness is a character that is directly connected to my feeling of deep inner peace. It is completely committed to the expression of peace, love, joy and compassion in the world. [Bolte, Jill Taylor (2006 ) My Stroke of insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey, The Penguin Group: NY, NY]

She goes on to document many techniques she employs–it’s a lifetime job–to engineer new neural pathways which will regulate her thoughts, feelings and experience; ones she feels will be in her best interest, unlike ones she had before. I mentioned a few of these techniques earlier.

Changing our thoughts and feelings (and often, accompanying behavior) is hard work, but anyone can do it, and it yields extraordinary benefits, when possible. There are some caveats to this whole endeavor, however. Sometimes it is not possible. Some things are quite entrenched in our psyches and can only be changed with the help of a healing process and another person. If we can turn a negative into a positive by whatever means that’s great. But sometimes negativity does not give way just like that and needs to be respected, aired, explored and understood.

VF http://valeriefrankfeldtphd.com/

Emotional Attunement vs. Emotional Dissonance

A patient recently reported to me the following story: Her 20 year old daughter and friends got stuck in the building's elevator as the group was returning from a scavenger hunt, a party activity that was part of the girl's birthday celebration. The fire department had to be called to get them out. The next day, a neighbor who knew the party had taken place, asked my patient how the party went. The mother told her it had been great except for the part about the elevator. The neighbor responded, "Why didn't they take the stairs?" The mother was a bit flummoxed by this, and answered, "Well, I'm quite sure had they known the outcome in advance, they would have taken the stairs!" The neighbor repeated her question. The mother responded, "I guess they wished they had, once they were stuck." She walked off, puzzled and annoyed. Why didn't the neighbor ask, for example, "Were the kids OK?" "Did it take long to get them out?" These would be emotionally attuned responses.

The neighbor created what I am calling Emotional Dissonance. The emotional message behind the response has nothing to do with the emotional message underlying the first communication. There is, in fact, an implied criticism, the exact opposite of what might ordinarily be expected. The mother was annoyed and felt validated in her general sense of wanting to avoid contact with this neighbor. However, think about what effect such ongoing communications would have on a child. At the very least, confusion. At worst, feeling pretty crazy and doubtful of her own instinctual reactions.

VLF

COMMITMENT

Commitment in a relationship is like a rubber band. Picture two people encircled by a large, flexible, but strong, rubber band. The band allows each to pull away and come back comfortably and to twist and turn individually. However, the fact of the band remains constant. Each knows the other is there regardless of the comings, goings and twists. I liken the going out and back and the "twists" to people living their own lives and trying out new aspects of their personalities while always having the bond of the commitment there to hold them. The bond actually enables more individuation to happen, on the one hand, and a deepening of the relationship, on the other. VLF

MAD MEN FINALE

“Tomorrowland”, the finale of “Mad Men” Season Four…left me reeling. When Don impulsively proposed to the ever-affable, ambitious “Maria von Trapp”-like secretary Megan…I thought this must be a dream! And in a way it was. Part pitch, part proposal. How vividly it conveyed the intoxicating tug of repetition compulsion in romantic love. Don doesn’t want to deal with his tortured, fabricated past as his paramour Dr. Faye has encouraged him to do. He wants the imagined freedom of the pain-free “fresh start,” the new and instantly improved beautiful wife/life which, of course, doesn’t really exist. The engagement ring is meant to disengage him from his past. Why Don can just create a storyboard of an enchanting tomorrow with Megan mirroring all the attributes he needs to rectify the appearance of his domestic life. Not to take anything away from Megan, but Don is going backwards as much as he may be going forwards in an attempt to master his chronic sense of emptiness. Flashback to Don’s “Kodak Carousel” presentation—the finale for Season One. As the pitch-perfect pictures of his loving, soon-to-be broken, family rotate in the Kodak Carousel projector, Don says: “ …in Greek, ‘nostalgia’ literally means the pain from an old wound. It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device is not a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards and forwards and takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called ‘The Carousel.’ And it lets us travel the way a child travels around and around and back home again to a place where we know we are loved.” 

Don is back on “The Carousel,” going backwards and forwards, around and around again. He is seeking the forever of love, trusting his heart once more—but will this just be another spin, another not-so-merry-go-round? I wonder what will happen when the music stops.

J.H.

Our Pets

I was in EMDR training (a technique for working with trauma) and participants were asked to train by trying out the technique on each other. To begin, it was suggested people use memories that, on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being neutral in level of disturbance and 10 being the worst imaginable, to pick something less than a 5, and someone mentioned something about a pet. The trainer jumped in, saying, “Oh no, no pets. Pets are going to be above a 5.” People murmured or chuckled, resonating with agreement. It struck me how meaningful our pets can be to us, from our early years into old age. I have a patient who talks about one of her dogs that was her soulmate, that she felt understood her on a cellular level as no human ever had. Another person I know of grew up feeling that the family dog saved her sanity in a crazy-making household in which only the dog was experienced as trustworthy and constant. In a DVD, “Sparky the Service Dog,” the training of Sparky and his human are chronicled. Sparky enabled his owner to leave the house and function normally after she had been housebound for years because of crippling anxiety and phobias resulting from multiple traumas. The dog’s consistent equanimity was the only thing that the owner could count on to sooth her and, in essence, protect her from her own feelings. There is a special bond, a comfort and love that we can experience from our dogs that is indeed satisfying to the soul.  For further fulfillment, sure, we need our more complex human partners, who may provide a lot more excitement, growth, interest, sexual and other gratification, and companionship, but are also bound to supply more conflict, tension, unpredictablility and needs for personal satisfaction which may clash with ours, as compared to our dog (with the exception of when he has to go to the bathroom).

Furthermore, as you know if you have ever tried, our partners are a lot harder to teach tricks.

VLF

MAD MEN: A Former ‘Mad Woman’ Remembers…

At Sterling Cooper Draper Price, the proverbial Chinese Wall has fallen as Season Four draws to a close with this Sunday’s finale. Lucky Strike is up in smoke and burning a hole in SCDP’s pocket as other clients follow suit. The gloves are off—even the Playtex gloves that “protect a woman’s touch” are off. With the bankroll dwindling, no one remains untouched—fired or not everyone feels the burn, it is only a question of degree. For anyone who has ever been laid-off—and even understood why under the circumstances he/she was “chosen”—it is still a shock. The first time I was laid-off, I was five months into my first advertising job at a pretty swank place reportedly having trouble paying for its pencils—yes, we actually used pencils. One morning I walked in, only to see my boss’s furniture in somebody else’s office. (Never a good sign.) Shortly, thereafter “Charlie the Ax” called me in to his office and said, “Hey, Kid, wanna go to Paris?  Here’s a check.”  With all of two weeks’ pay in the envelope, I decided to stay in town. The next day, my cube was gutted, belongings dumped on the floor and my desk was moved to a senior partner’s corner office. Enchanté.

Charlie had the right idea, I should have gone to Paris. Instead I got a new job—one that stuck at least until I was ready to move on.  Times are tough and losing a job is no fun, but it can teach you things. Early on, I started to get comfortable with job insecurity. The acceptance of this impermanence helped me when the tides would inevitably turn again…and again.  Hey, who wants 30 years at the same old job and a gold watch anyway!!  In the ad biz, 30 seconds is practically an eternity, right Charlie?!!

Stay tuned for the finalé.  At least we know, the end of Season Four is just the start of Season Five…

 J.H.

When our Thoughts Don't Match our Reactions, Feelings, and Memories

Have you ever noticed that you had a reaction to an event or person that made you think “Gosh, I must be overreacting,” or, “Wow, I wonder where those feelings came from,” because in your mind the feelings didn't seem to fit the occasion? For example, in a couple I see, whenever Marsha (the wife) worries about their child, Laura, Stanley (an otherwise loving and sensitive husband) gets annoyed and responds, “Oh, here we go again!” Of course, Marsha doesn't take kindly to that remark and it interferes in their relationship. But Stanley can then reflect, and say, “I don't know why I get like that; she has every right to have these feelings, and I actually respect her for them; I just can't help it.” Or, in another example, let's say our cell phone goes through a dead zone, our call is dropped, and even though nothing that urgent was being discussed and the call wasn't with somebody telling us we won the lottery, or anything on that level, and our day was basically going well, and we're not a rage-aholic by nature; nevertheless we find ourselves suddenly having a tantrum and wanting to drop kick the phone across the street. Intellectually our reaction just doesn't make sense and we're in the position of feeling really upset on one level, (feelings), puzzled on the other (thoughts), and split within our self. This is what happens to we humans (animals don't have that problem—they just get to have feelings without accompanying thoughts or judgments) when something emotionally important from our past is triggered by a similar event or confluence of events, or feelings, sensations, or even a smell. If we desist from wrecking our phone, apologize to our significant other, just let the feeling pass and go about our business, it's not a big deal. It becomes a big deal when we repeat the same thing over and over and find we can't control it, or act on it in a way we regret, and then it's useful to do a little self-analysis. Sometimes just noticing it or sharing it with a trusted friend is good enough and we can change our behavior. When that's not working, talking in therapy can help. On an extreme level, in the case of PTSD, when we are run by an old trauma, therapies like EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) can help. What needs to happen is to have our natural observing abilities connect with the old (and it can be very old, it doesn't matter how many years have gone by) memory and the old feelings associated with it in the context of a healing process.  Then we begin to make more sense to ourselves and to feel integrated.

VLF

“I HATE YOU, MOMMY!” What To Do When Our Kids Are Mad

More on the trials and tribulations of parenting. But first, a story. One spring day in New York, a gunman walked into a Jewish community center day camp and shot five people, including three young boys. Jimmy, a 3 year-old boy, was at the day care center and witnessed the shooting. Afterward, The New York Times reported that the child told a reporter, "The bad monster ran away. " Clinging to his mother, he asked her what the wounded children had done wrong. HAD DONE WRONG!! This is a poignant example of children's need to blame themselves. It’s up to us as parents to help our kids redirect blame outward and protect them from becoming self-attacking adults.

We can do this by applying some analytic understanding to our parenting. We can help our child feel OK about his angry feelings, and use the anger for his benefit rather than for self-defeat. This is not easy, because our children are going to open up our own unresolved wounds. But if we’re reasonably OK with our own feelings, and can not get too overwhelmed by or censor our kids’ intense feelings, we can help. And the result will be a child who loves and appreciates himself with all his feelings.

Most of us regard anger as scary and bad, because our parents thought it was scary and bad. The result is that when our kid is angry with us, she cannot direct the anger outward, because it is not acceptable us, through no fault of our own.

The best-case scenario is when, even if feeling angry ourselves, we can respond to our child empathically and non-punitively often enough to be constructive. Of course, sometimes we will have our own meltdown, but when we do, we can still pick up the pieces.

Here are some examples of responses to angry kids that let them feel accepted. Some of us may have felt uncomfortable and counterintuitive responding like this, but have also found that it was truly relieving to the child and allowed him ultimately to feel good about himself and his feelings. Of course, specific responses have to be modified to the specific child.

Angela: Mommy, I hate you!

Mother (who is taking child off the playground against her wishes; uses same intensity as child): I know! I’m being a mean mom right now! Or: You’re right! Because it’s time to go home and you were having so much fun today!

OR

Tommy: You let me fall off my bike!

Mother (is blameless actually, but accepts the blame): How could I let that happen to you!

OR

Charlotte: Brian (the younger sibling) bit me!

Mother: I will have to have a little talk with Brian. Let’s see that bite.

It takes some self-acceptance on our part to accept these feelings, and it’s hard, no question about it. It’s a learning curve for most of us because we’re probably dealing with our kids very differently from the way we were raised, but it is well worth the work. Yes, we have to deal with being yelled at, but in the long run, it’s going to help produce a kid with self-confidence who can make her way in the world. What could be better than that?!!

VLF

Episode Eight “The Beautiful Women” of MAD MEN

Don favors pool laps to lapping pools of rye.  Out of breath, out of shape (ok, not really…this is Hollywood), the physical and mental push of exercise is helping Don to center himself.  As he respectfully pushes the limits of his physicality, he feels safer and stronger in himself. He can even entertain the idea that he might be able to have some control over how he feels. We see Don writing in his diary, his narrative voice superimposed as he chides himself for being like “a girl” for this touch of interiority. At one point, he refuses the advances of Dr. Faye, stating that ‘this is as far as I can go right now.” In Winnicottian terms, Don’s is “containing” himself (for now), no longer spilling in an alcohol-induced delirium. He is back to being in charge and encouraging others to do the same, i.e. he advises Peggy to step up to plate regarding an impudent copywriter and not hide behind his authority.

As Don better contains himself, he becomes less of what Allison the lesbian activist would call “vegetable soup.” In regard to Abe, a bohemian revolutionary admirer of Peggy, Allison summarizes her feelings about men as such:

“It’s like men are this vegetable soup

And you can’t put ‘em on a plate or

eat ‘em off the counter,

so women are the pot.

They heat ‘em up, they hold ‘em, they contain them.

But who wants to be a pot

Who the hell said we’re not soup?….

But you know I wouldn’t have helped Abe out if I didn’t think he was some very interesting soup.”

The more open-minded Peggy questions the rigid notion that men are the soup and women the pot.  As the final scene of MAD MEN suggests the pot of gendered identity is certainly astir. The closing scene showcases the prowess of the firm’s ladies: Joan, Dr. Faye, and Peggy. Leaving for the day, music in the air, each one regally floats on to the lobby elevator.  There they stand, together yet apart. Like dueling ballerinas atop a jewelry box, they wait for the dance to begin.

And wonder who will take the lead.

J.H.

Response to Merkin's "My Life in Therapy"

 For those seeking a career in the psychoanalytic realm or treatment, Daphne Merkin’s New York Times article, “My Life In Therapy: What Forty Years In Therapy Has Taught Me” gives one pause.  Merkin while appreciating therapy as “a safety valve” that “buffered her and prodded her forward,” questions the “veneer of caring,” the degree to which a therapist really listens, really holds a patient in his mind: “Did he ever think of me when I wasn’t in front of him.” Among the multitude of disappointments, she notes “no therapist ever offered to take me home or adopt me so much as a single night, like the British child psychiatrist D.W. Winnicott , (my ideal shrink) did with one of his patients.” 

Would Winnicott have been the “perfect therapist” or fit,  Merkin was in search of?  Or would he have been the Winicottian “good enough” therapist who while generally empathic and attuned to the patient’s wishes, often disappoints. A paradox in therapy is that a certain amount of failure is necessary for a successful treatment. It is more a question as to how lapses and ruptures are metabolized in the overall treatment so that the therapist survives as “good enough.”  In a paradoxical way, the perfect therapist would hardly be perfect.  For that would deny the patient the capacity of being in a more “real” relationship, to struggle with the limits of empathy and to develop a more resilient approach to others’ otherness. 

For all the analytic modalities—from Freudian to Self-Psychology to Interpersonal—as therapists we are asked to participate in and observe a patient’s world of attachment.  Transferentially, we are to be hated, to be loved, and, ultimately, ambivalently embraced in a way that helps a patient shift towards a more creative, genuine, spontaneous true self—to paraphrase Winnicott. 

For those considering analytic training, looking for the “perfect” institute.   PPSC offers something far better:  a caring, creative, rigorous mix of modalities, a diverse, brainy and committed faculty—in short, a level of complexity that resists easy answers and quick fixes. And in Winnicottian terms that is beyond “good enough.”

J.H.

Cocktail Hour Goes 24/7: Is Don A Goner?

Six episodes into Season Four of  “Mad Men,” and Don Draper has broken his cardinal rule regarding sex and the office, stolen a rotten tagline to win a pitch, and robbed Peggy of any glory for “his” Clio—   and, oops, he forgot to pick up the kids!  With Don, not only is the proverbial “center not holding,” but the surface is going to pot. Red-eyed and incoherent, as he tries to sell the client the Life cereal creative: he is the picture of un-life—a ghost of himself.  He is literally being spirited away dram by dram, glass by glass, bottle by bottle. Self-psychologists might see his addiction as an attempt to bolster his fluctuating self-esteem, enhance his grandiosity as well as to self-soothe his feelings of emptiness.  For underneath all of Draper’s charisma, lives the renounced terror of being a nobody—or worse a fraud.  Two seasons ago, Don read from Frank O’ Hara’s   Meditations In An Emergency:

 “Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern...”

C’mon Don. Your life is a lot more than a box of cereal.

J.H.

PSYCHING OUT MADMEN

TV critic, Linda Stasi, suggested that “Mad Men” might be described by the famous tagline “the antidote to civilization.”  In the show’s celebration  of vice, the super ego appears to have little sway over the libidinal and aggressive surges of the id.  Yet, the show is anything, but one-dimensional.  Don Draper may not be a paragon of virtue, but he may be a paragon of vice—a bad boy with a moral compass, at least in some areas. 

In the first episode of Season Four, the question looms: “Who is Don Draper?”  Womanizer. Drunk. Raging Egomaniac.  Or…Sympathetic Dad.  Principled Boss.  Creative Talent of Conviction.  While Don doesn’t have all the pieces together, he has the ego strength to appreciate duality and knows how to hold disparate pieces together, i.e. how to market a two-piece bathing suit (i.e. bikini) in the chauvinistic early sixties.

To Freud’s question: what do women want?  Draper advocates that women “should not” have to choose between decency and allure.  That women can have both—a radical proposition.  Yet to the refraining question: Who is Don Draper?  Like the bikini, it’s not a one-piece answer.  He’s got to have some skin in the game.    

                                                                                                                    J.H.

MOVING OUT OF THE SHADOWS

Over the weekend, in an effort to escape the heat, I spent an afternoon at the Rubin Museum.  I was particularly taken by Bill Viola’s video called Three Women.  I found it haunting.  In the piece, three women of different generations emerge through a waterfall as if coming to life and then retreat behind it.  In the video, the eldest woman emerges from behind the water, then the middle, followed by the youngest woman.  Each emerges as if in her own time.  In front of the water they are clear images, each individuals, though clearly related, sharing different facial features and colouring.  Then the eldest woman turns and re-enters the waterfall, and she once again becomes a shadowy figure in black and white.  She beckons to the younger women one at a time.  And they follow her, taking on the vague, shadowy appearance of the elder woman.  Led by the older woman, they hold hands, turn and walk away.  We see each of the younger women turn towards us with longing as if they wish to let go and return to our side of the waterfall.  It made me think about the idea of feeling emotionally alive when we are able to follow our own dreams and wishes. 

I have been thinking about how hard it is to separate from our parents.  The pull we feel to connect to the generations that preceded both them and us. We both long to stay connected and to feel loved by our parents.  To belong.  No matter how old we are.  Sometimes this means that we end up following them to places we don’t really want to go.  But we also have dreams for ourselves that may take us in different directions.  Can we risk stepping out?  Like the younger women in the video, longing to stay and leave at the same time.   How do we live our own lives if we follow them where they want and need to go? How do we stay connected and separate at once?  How do we lead our own lives and feel loved?  Is it possible to hold the tension of both/and rather than giving in to either/or?

When I saw the video it was the longing that grabbed my heart – the sadness embedded in the longing.  I wanted to encourage the younger women to let go and run.  To tell the elder woman to let them go, to push them towards the viewers’ side of the waterfall.  To help the younger women maintain their personhood, their aliveness by staying on this side of the waterfall.  Leaving the eldest woman might be hard for the younger women; that might be sad, too.  But a different kind of sad.  A sadness made bearable by the aliveness of knowing that each exists as her own person. 

                                                                                                    P.T.



Are Parents Happy?

This week's New York Magazine has a cover story about recent research that suggests that people with children are not so happy.  Does this mean the Baby Boom is ending?  There seems to be a trend in the media to have cycles in which they promote or discourage parenting.  Maybe it's the recession.  For me, though, this article raises some challenging questions.  First of all, what is happiness? How is it measured? And second, whoever said living with children would make you happy? 

I grew up in a family where everyone had several kids and loved being parents but noone ever claimed  it was easy or pleasant.  Oh yes, there are moments of bliss.  Holding a sleeping infant in your arms, smelling his damp, sweet scalp, celebrating accomplishments, or just basking in tender family moments.  But, any parent will tell you that those are peak moments in the midst of a lot of stress, distress, heartache, frustration, tedium, and smelly chores.  This is no secret!  Never was! Like any big job - being a surgeon, landscaping, fishing, building things - it is mostly hard work, lots of risks, and a great feeling when it all works out ok.

That brings me back to my earlier question, how do we measure happiness?   I'm "happy" when I get a legal parking space in front of my house.  I'm "unhappy" when I have three inches of water in my basement.  But those feelings are shortlived and don't compare to how much I love my home in total.  I have to walk my dog in all kinds of weather, and fight with him to let me clean his ears, and those vet bills! OK, so you know what comes next...yes, I have a picture of him on the desktop of my computer. 

Love and happiness are so complicated and changeable, but we know when we have them, even when we are on the downside of their cycles.  They cause the deepest pains, and the greatest joys, the worst anxiety and the greatest contentment. 

I guess this article really got to me because I am a year away from an empty nest and the hardest parenting days are over.  My house already seems quieter and I find myself staring into strollers longingly.  This is another hill on the parenting roller coaster.  Loss.  Loss of the baby, the toddler, the pre-schooler, the sixth-grader, the teenager. They never come back.  And all I can remember are the good times, the busy times, the feeling that my life was not my own and that was a good thing.

I guess that's why so many people look forward to being grandparents.  No one ever asks "Are grandparents happy?

                                                                                         L.C.,

Celebrating the Ornsteins

On Nov 7, 2009, the Lifetime Achievement Committee of PPSC hosted an all-day celebration of the lives and work of the renowned self-psychologists Anna and Paul Ornstein. The Ornsteins each read from papers specially prepared for the conference and answered questions posed by Judy Levitz and Amy Schaeffer. Discussant Shelly Doctors provided a background for placing the Ornsteins' work in a larger psychoanalytic context. What permeated the presentation was a profound type of kindness and an appreciation for love and familial bonds as evidenced by the Ornsteins' gracious manner with their hosts and their fond description and their children, all three have grown to be trained medical and analytic professionals.