"We are a group of analysts working in the greater context of the analytic world, but as a group, we have a profound analytic group process that's evolved and in profoundly successful ways - we've become a group that contains one another, and deals with great difficulties. Mel has given a taste of where we go to an emotional authenticity that's very compelling… Somehow, we've gotten to a place where nobody seems to be hungry in the group. You're not hungry for affirmation or support, so that there isn't a sense that people are waiting to say something smart or do something smart or make a brilliant interpretation, and there's enough resources left over that the tendency is so powerful to look to enhance somebody else's sense of aliveness and creativity." J.P.

I feel very lucky in this group, because I received a gem of a gift that was unexpected. We were going along as a group in this wonderful way. I would look forward to speaking with everybody every four weeks. We got a lot of work done. We also became part of each other's lives in our own way. However, there was always reality around us that we had to cope with. And suddenly, last year, I had a catastrophic medical event in which I had routine surgery that went extremely well, and when I went to leave the hospital, I had a cardiac arrest, and then basically six weeks of ICU care, and lived because I was in a hospital. But it is this group that then took on even more of a meaning for me, because I felt the presence of everyone near me in this group always, and it did give me the sense that the group had also morphed into its own living, breathing entity that really kind of enveloped me at a very painful time. I realized we could go back and forth as a group, actually quite easily, between clinical work, psychoanalytic thinking, and the harsh realities of time, illness, whatever that would intrude or were surrounding us as a group. To me, this was kind of a miracle of a gift. It's been life-saving, really life-saving." P.W.

"Developing a sense of one another in how not only we talk, but who we are. That friends are people I feel I can be fully open with and not have to worry about it, to feel free and even when I say things that I might question or regret or feel self- conscious or embarrassed about with friends - it's held, and I feel this has happened in this group, that there is a way in which we very tenderly hold one another, and there's something about that space, perhaps it's an analytic space. I feel we do it with our patients, but I feel with our peers. It's a very precious thing indeed." M.M.

Episode Description: This episode of the podcast takes a step back from our usual focus on how an analytic mindset can improve the lives of those in our care - either on or off the couch. Today, we consider how we can and do care for ourselves and each other. We are a group of six analysts who have been meeting regularly for 10 years. We evolved from a thirty-year group originally devoted to the study of analytic writing. We now meet to share our lives and our work in what Peggy Warren calls "a living and breathing entity." We discuss "what we need as analysts to go on with this work", how time and illness has changed us as a group, how we feel we can share ourselves without inhibiting self-consciousness, and how what Mel Bornstein calls a 'love of life' can serve as an organizing spirit for what we do. We take up how the group is embedded into a creative process, individually and together. Jon Palmer closes our meeting by noting "there's a lot of love in this room - a necessary condition for us all to grow."

Our Guests: Stephen Bernstein, Jonathan Palmer, and Peggy Warren are on the faculty of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. Melvin Bornstein is on the faculty of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. Mark Moore is on the faculty of the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia, where Harvey Schwartz is also on the faculty, and of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York.

Watercolor by Jonathan Palmer

"In addition to the easy convenience of bathing two children together, or three children together, there are other motivations of bathing them together. Parents are less aware that there is an excitement in seeing the children naked - although convenience is what's stated first, I think other things do go into it. Through development reactions to the genital difference and nudity will change, and I believe that being aware of those changes is very useful for parents to make decisions about what they want to do in their family, about family nudity, toileting, bathing, running around naked."

Episode Description: Ilene demonstrates the many influences on mothers' engagements with their daughters which include their own remembered and forgotten pasts, cultural influences and their unique imaginations. She mentions the startling messaging in the famous movie "Gigi", "Thank heaven for little girls...so helpless and appealing, without them what would little boys do." We discuss the power of girls wishing to be like their mothers and how that at times conflicts with their wishes to also individuate from their mothers. The book demonstrates differences among new parents around the blue/pink choices for boys and girls, and she also discusses the many feelings parents have associated with family nudity. A special distinction is made between a three-year-old asking 'Do I look pretty?' vs 'Am I pretty' - each having very different meanings to the child and to her parents. We touch upon 'whining', self-stimulation, and what being a 'girly-girl' means to parents. We close with Ilene sharing with us how real her granddaughters found this work to be.

Our Guest: Ilene Lefcourt established the Sackler Lefcourt Center for Child Development in 1982. She was the Director, led the Mother-Baby-Toddler Groups, and provided Developmental Consultation to parents for over 35 years. She taught Child Psychiatry Residents and Parent-Infant Psychotherapy Trainees about her work. She has been a faculty member at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research since 1995. Ms. Lefcourt is currently in private practice in New York City. She is the author of Parenting and Childhood Memories: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Reverberating Ghosts and Magic, Mother-Baby-Toddler Group Guide: A Psychodynamic Approach, When Mothers Talk: Magical Moments and Everyday Challenges, and Mothers and Daughters: The First Three Years. Visit Ilene's website: http://ilenelefcourt.com/.

Recommended Readings:

1975, Fraiberg S. Adelson E., Shapiro V., Ghosts in the Nursery, Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry, 14, 387-421

1993, Lieberman, A ., The Emotional Life of the Toddler, Simon and Schuster

2005, Lieberman, A., Angels in The Nursery, Infant Mental Health Journal.

Vol. 26(6)

1995, Stern, D. The Motherhood Constellation, Basic Books

"All my writing before this has been poetry, and over the years in my books of poems I found the lines kept getting longer. I think the move towards prose had me working on this journal form, which I've not done. Many people write their journals their entire lives. For me, it's a more dipping in and out of this form of work. I began this segment when my father-in-law was dying, and it began as a small series of prose poems about his decline. What I found myself wanting to do then is weave in stories from work, how they were intersecting with what was going on at home. And the thought that all analysts, all therapists, live in this zone of interwoven stories where we're following multiple narrative threads at once, but we tend to talk to each other in terms of one case story at a time. So it was important to me to have all those levels present, because that's really what a lived life is, is being immersed simultaneously and in all of those."

Episode Description: Alice's 'meditative memoir' invites us into the multiple narratives in analysts' lives both within and outside of their offices. She shares how we inevitably bring our own experiences into each clinical hour which forms part of the musicality of the work. Her attention remains on the inside/outside aspects of the body, the mind and our world views. Mortality is never far from her awareness and is reflected in the work she engages in with her patients. She introduces 'Blake' to us and how after 12 years of vital work together, he dies quite prematurely. We discuss the intimate nature of analytic work and how it becomes part of our own inner life. Alice shares a saying of her at times 'directionally challenged' grandfather, "We are headed in the proper general direction" - a theme applicable to many venues of life and psychoanalysis. We close with her reading a poem of Galway Kinnell which concludes with "The still undanced cadence of vanishing"

Our Guest: Alice Jones, MD is a personal and consulting analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. She is the author of seven collections of poems and Cadence of Vanishing, a memoir. A collection of essays titled Poetry, Depth, and Endings in Psychoanalysis: Distant Music is forthcoming from Routledge in 2026.

Recommended Readings:

Alice Jones. (2025) Ever Ending. Psychoanalytic Quarterly. 94:3. 497-517.

Alice Jones (2020) Vault. Apogee Press.

Alice Jones (2025) Leavings. TAP Magazine.

Thomas Ogden (2025) Inventing Psychoanalysis with Each Patient. International Journal of Psychoanalysis. 106:3, pp 471-488.

Ellen Pinsky (2025) Driven to Write: 45 Writers on the Motives and Mysteries of their Craft. Routledge.