Amy Schwartz Cooney and Rachel Sopher. Vitalization in psychoanalysis

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Amy Schwartz Cooney (NYU, National Institute for the Psychotherapies [NIP], Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and private practice in NYC) and

Rachel Sopher (NIP, Psychoanalytic Perspectives, and private practice in NYC).

Vitalization in psychoanalysis: Perspectives on being and becoming

In Vitalization in Psychoanalysis, Schwartz Cooney and Sopher develop and explore the concept of vitalization, generating new ways of approaching and conceptualizing the psychoanalytic project.

Vitalization refers to the process between two people that ignites new experiences and brings withdrawn aspects of the self to life. This book focuses on how psychoanalysis can be a uniquely creative encounter that can aid this enlivening internal process, offering a vibrant new take on the psychotherapeutic project. There is a long tradition in psychoanalysis that addresses the ways that the unique subjectivities of each member of the therapeutic dyad contribute to the repetition of entrenched patterns of relating, and how the processing of enactments can be reparative. But this overlap in subjectivities can also bring to life undeveloped experiences. This focus on generativity and progressive action represents a significant, cutting-edge turn in psychoanalysis. Vitalization in Psychoanalysis represents a deep meditation on this transformational moment in the history of psychoanalytic thought.

Pulling together work from major writers on vitalization from all the main psychoanalytic schools of thought, and covering development, theory and clinical practice, this book will be an invaluable guide for clinicians of all backgrounds, as well of students of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.

Table of Contents 1. Vitalizing Enactment: A Relational Exploration 2. An Allegiance to Absence: Fidelity to the Internal Void 3. Activating life in the analytic encounter: the ground of being in psychoanalysis 4. The Generative Unconscious and the Capacity to be Fully Alive 5. Between Mythos and Logos: Surrender, Vitalization and Transformation 6. Vitalizing Engagement: the Generative Transformation of the Project of Psychoanalysis 7. Reawakening Desire: Shame, Analytic Love, and Psychoanalytic Imagination 8. Moving from within the Maternal: The Choreography of Analytic Eroticism 9. Vitalization as a Case-Specific Emergent Process 10. Vitality, Attunement and the Lack Thereof 11. The Analyst As Catalyst: Cultivating Mind In The Shadow Of Neglect 12. What Makes Time Fly? Loewald’s Concept of Time and the Resuscitation of Vitality

... Editor(s) Biography Amy Schwartz Cooney, Ph.D., is on faculty at the New York University (NYU) Post-Doctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. She is on the Board of Directors and is faculty/supervisor at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP) and at the Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Studies. She is Joint Editor in Chief of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and is in private practice in New York City.

Rachel Sopher is Board Director, Faculty and Supervisor, National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP) Training Institute; Faculty and Supervisor, National Training Program for NIP; and Faculty, Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Studies. She is Editor-in-Chief of Psychoanalytic Perspectives and maintains a private practice in New York City.

Reviews "To live or to exist in less than aliveness or deadness. Such is the profound question at the heart of contemporary psychoanalytic theory and treatment and this expertly curated volume brings together the leading writers on the vitalizing possibilities that inhere in contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice. We encounter patients dominated by states of non-aliveness, absence, dysregulation, trauma and neglect; and clinicians who utilize elements of their own presence, reverie, countertransference and shere courage to facilitate, kindle and ignite life, libido and vitality. Reading this book is an exercise in parallel process: each unique chapter will itself inspire, enliven and vitalize the reader; and will help all clinicians as we struggle with our most difficult and challenging patients." -Robert Grossmark, Ph.D., teaches and supervises at NYU Postdoctoral Program, The National Institute for the Psychotherapies, The Eastern Group Psychotherapy Society

"Since the Winnicottian and Bionian ontological revolution in psychoanalysis, analysts have been more focused on helping our patients 'to be' than 'to know.' As Winnicott outlined what allows a person to develop a capacity to be, we began to understand more about ways that we are also not allowed to be. A focus on deficits in symbolization, parental absence and deadness have now led to an increasing interest in experiences and metaphors of vitalization. This volume is a gift in helping us to understand how profoundly stark life can 'be' without a sense of aliveness. A talented collection of analysts from the Independent, Kleinian, and Relational traditions contribute to our understanding of this crucial concept in contemporary psychoanalytic theory. These essays probe intersubjective processes of how vitalizing processes emerge, are enacted, and integrated. There is also a keen interest in the kind of object the analyst is becoming in the analytic process, one who can find new parts of the patient’s inner life and play. Schwartz Cooney and Sopher’s volume embodies how analytic concepts such as deadness continue to evolve as key analytic writers bring to the matter their own struggles with finding vitality inside their patients and aliveness within the analytic process." - Steven Cooper, Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute; Associate Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School and Chief Editor Emeritus at Psychoanalytic Dialogues

"This is a rich and absorbing book, full of original descriptions of the void and its place in psychopathology. There seem to be myriad ways of arriving at empty states, but even more interestingly, a variety of routes out of them. The clinical accounts are very moving, and read like chapters out of a terrific novel: there is endless patience, 　endurance, stamina, terrible boredom, suspense and real excitement for patients and analysts alike. Read and enjoy." - Anne Alvarez, Ph.D., M.A.C.P, Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist and teacher and retired Co-Convener of the Autism Service, Child and Family Dep't. Tavistock Clinic, London

"This important volume highlights some of the most essential aspects of human existence: enlivenment, desire, generativity and hope. In highly creative and sophisticated ways, it brings to life critical ideas on therapeutic action, transformation, the capacity for a full existence and the role of psychoanalysis in reviving vitalization." - Dr. Galit Atlas, faculty member in the postdoctoral program in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis at New York University and author of The Enigma of Desire

Transcription: August Baker: Welcome to New Books and Psychoanalysis. I'm August Baker, your host today. Today we are talking about a theoretical book and one that, when I read it, really affected me emotionally to tell you the truth. I kind of read it with a lump in my throat and I talked to someone else who had the same reaction. So it's a pretty special book. It's called Vitalization in Psychoanalysis: Perspectives on Being and Becoming, 2021. I'd like to just mention a couple of reviews before I welcome our guests. Anne Alvarez reviewing the books said, "The clinical accounts are very moving and read like chapters out of a terrific novel. There is endless patience, endurance, stamina, terrible boredom, suspense and real excitement for patients and analysts alike." Steven Cooper, kind of sketching the history of psychoanalytic thought, says "[inaudible 00:01:13] is the kind of cutting edge right now," and he kind of traces a movement, starting with an older focus in psychoanalysis on interpretation and knowledge and then coming to Winnicott and [inaudible 00:01:27] and eventually to a focus on deficits and symbolization, and now this current work on experiences and metaphors of vitalization. So our two guests, Dr. Amy Schwartz Cooney, has a private practice, teaches, writes, supervises and is joint editor in chief of Psychoanalytic Dialogues. Welcome, Amy. Amy Schwartz Cooney: Thank you. August Baker: Rachel Sopher also has a private practice teaches, writes, supervises and is editor in chief of Psychoanalytic Perspectives. Welcome, Rachel. Rachel Sopher: Thank you. August Baker: So the book is Vitalization in Psychoanalysis and I imagine some of our listeners, all of our listeners, have heard the term psychoanalysis and probably each of them has their own associations to it. What are we meaning by psychoanalysis in this context? Amy Schwartz Cooney: Rachel, do you want to start? Rachel Sopher: Oh, sure. That's such a good question and there's so many different definitions of what psychoanalysis means and it's changed so much over the years since the beginning with Freud. Right now, to me what psychoanalysis means is it's a way of thinking, it's a way of framing interactions between patient and their analyst and so for me, it's just a state of mind and a way of thinking. What about you, Amy? What do you think? Amy Schwartz Cooney: I agree with that and I think that it's a project that I regard to be about growth and transformation. It's an intense emotional process and because we are both a relational psychoanalyst, I think I can speak for both of us to say that we do really feel that the centrality of the relationship in the room within the patient between their real others, fantasy others, past, present is at the heart of what is transformative and mutative about psychoanalysis. Rachel Sopher: Absolutely. August Baker: Just before we started talking, I mentioned to Rachel that I had benefited from reading an article she wrote about relational psychoanalysis with Steven Kuchuk, and you say that there might be some misunderstanding that relational psychoanalysis is more here and now secondary process material and that it's not really dealing with the unconscious and you're saying that's kind of a mischaracterization. Rachel Sopher: Yeah, I think it's kind of a straw man argument that people use to discredit the relational perspective, relational outlook on psychoanalysis. It doesn't take away anything. There's nothing lost in this perspective of looking at the interaction between the two and that being the way that things change, the transformative point, is between the couple, patient-therapist couple. It includes everything and includes unconscious communication and includes the bodily physical sensations and referee and dreams and all of that. August Baker: So the analyst being more willing to be personally involved and to work with their subjective reactions? Amy Schwartz Cooney: Well, to acknowledge that they are personally involved and that they are subjective. So relational psychoanalysis just historically evolved as a critique of the classical model and the notion of neutrality and abstinence with an acceptance of the inevitability of the analyst's participation, conscious and unconscious. I think in these contrast between classical and relational, like Rachel was saying, that there can be these reductive straw dogs. Yes, it's true. I think that relational psychoanalysis maybe runs the risk of being too based in the here and now and too much about the mutual process in the here and now, whereas the classical model runs the risk perhaps of being too much about solely the interpsychic world of the patient, but actually I think relational analysis comprises both and probably as does the contemporary Freudian perspective. We just happen not to be as immersed in that position. August Baker: Right. Okay. That actually was my next question. I just wondered about your own background and what has led to vitalization. Are there particular theorists who have been particularly important for both of you in leading to these ideas? Amy Schwartz Cooney: Well, for one, I would say that our conversations, Rachel and I are good friends and colleagues and for whatever reasons we have connected around a real interest what psychoanalysis is in terms of the question of past, present, damage and repair versus creation and emergence. It's just something that she and I found ourselves both talking about a lot. I think that I can say that both of us have kind of an object relational orientation, meaning that we're very interested in the way people take in their relationships and live them out. The idea of vitalization really came out of largely this very vitalizing, exciting relationship that I think that we've created together. On a kind of specific level for me in a study group that I was in, I started to read Anne Alvarez, and while she comes from a totally different place theoretically in that she's really a contemporary Kleinian who's integrated beyond and regulation theory and so forth and works with children, her work is incredibly progressive and hopeful and geared towards the future even with patients who have been regarded as the most hopeless and inaccessible. That's where I kind of hooked into the idea, but it was really in conversation with Rachel that this all got exciting and [inaudible 00:08:25] to be. August Baker: Great. Rachel, do you have any other ... Rachel Sopher: No, I would just totally agree with what Amy said. I remember we had known each other just over email first, back and forth. When we met in person, I remember our conversation felt alive right away. Our first conversation was about Anne Alvarez. I don't know if you remember that, Amy, and it was just so exciting to meet someone who I felt so aligned with and was so excited by the same ideas. Anne Alvarez is very inspiring in that she does look towards what can be created. There is this kind of hopeful energy to the writing and to her clinical examples that give you hope for something new, that something new could and can be created between two people. That was so enlivening to talk to Amy about that, and I would say my other influences is I have an object relational tilt. I would consider myself a relational analyst. I love Winnicott, Beyond, Thomas Ogden, the goodies, the classic people. August Baker: In terms of how you would define vitalization now, we can give a definition. I thought actually it was quite beautiful in your introduction. You were writing it in March of 2020, which was very significant time for all of us, and you wrote about being in that time but also seeing the springtime in the park. I thought that was a beautiful metaphor for what vitalization might be. But please Amy, correct me if I'm wrong or do you have a working definition of vitalization? Amy Schwartz Cooney: Well, I was writing that vitalizing enactment, so I was trying to sort of reimagine an idea that's very core to relational psychoanalysis and really many different schools right now, which is this idea of analyst and patient meeting unconsciously in ways that are either disassociated or repetitive but are understood to be pathological and that enactments are meaningful in so far as they can be worked through, survived and processed. My idea was that enactments, the coming together of two minds unconsciously, can also be propulsive and can bring unlived experiences or nascent experiences. That's my particular spin on the idea and my particular interest was thinking about the way that we not only repair the old, but actually come together and create things that are new for both people in the diad, for the analyst and the patient. August Baker: So true. Yeah, I get this. There's one point you talk about uncovering and mourning the old versus creating and generating the new. Another was archeology as an older way of looking at it or repairing and now we're talking about bringing something to life. I said a little bit in the beginning about Steven Cooper's view of how this was the cutting edge. Either one of you, can you talk to the audience a bit about how this is the cutting edge or how it fits into the past? Rachel Sopher: I guess I could just start out, experientially I've been finding more ... in my work that I've been finding more patients who are struggling with deadened experiences inside or pockets of deadness inside. I don't know that it's been addressed in a systematic way by psychoanalysis. So first of all, just in terms of the content, I think that that is something new, but I think also with relational psychoanalysis and the relational turn, we call it, there's opportunities for more. There's opportunities for more than just the archeological model of uncovering the old. There's something new and alive that is created between two people. So there's opportunities for so much more that can be created, generated and like Amy said, it's something new for both patient and analyst. Amy Schwartz Cooney: I would say that bothness is part or is inherent to what is mutative. Just to extend a bit and address what Steven Cooper I think was talking about is this kind of question or this place that the field is at right now, which is thinking about or querying the relationship between interpretation, symbolization and nonrepresentational, non symbolized action in the field and kind of unconscious action, things that occur that aren't about interpreting the truth of the patient's past experience but creating something unbidden, as Danielle Stern would say, new and emergent through the relational field. I think that Steven was kind of getting at that movement in the field from interpretation to relationship and even just querying that question about interpretation, representation, symbolization. August Baker: Right. I picked that up a lot and I think my impression is there are a lot of people who think that psychoanalysis means learning something about, "Oh this was my childhood and now I'm this way because of this happened in my childhood." I think you're saying that's really not a fair characterization of what is going on. Amy, if we could talk about ... you have a case study of Joel and you have this term vitalizing enactment, which you already introduced. I wondered if you could also back up some and tell us about what an enactment is. Amy Schwartz Cooney: The notion of enactment sort of is related to this idea that we were talking about earlier, about analyst and patient each bringing unconscious aspects of self into the room and into the relationship, and an enactment in its most basic way is this meeting of unconsciousnesses but in ways that have frequently been construed as repetitive of old problematic patterns or dissociated traumatic experience. So an enactment, that term means something that occurs, like an acting in actually as opposed to acting out, rather than a talking out, thinking out, interpreting it out. It's an event and usually it's kind of a seismic event where all of a sudden somebody says or does something or there's a feeling that had never been there before or suddenly your patient is angry at you and you had no idea what you were stumbling into or heard or in love. Or something big occurs that one or both had no idea was coming, and then we have frequently thought if we can just make it through without destroying the entire treatment, we can make sense of this and make use of it generally through interpretation and symbolization and move on. An enactment is sort of an unconscious collision. August Baker: Then a vitalizing enactment as opposed to a regular old enactment? Amy Schwartz Cooney: Yeah. Well, big E enactment as Anthony Bass made these distinction between a big E enactment, which is that huge collision and a small E, which is just sort of the day to day bumping against one another- August Baker: Sure. Is an enactment something that the analyst does or something that the patient [inaudible 00:17:08]? Amy Schwartz Cooney: It's something that happens in the relationship and it's frequently thought that it's initiated by the patient, but it can be initiated by the analyst as well. That's a very relational idea that the analyst is bringing their own unconscious in all its complexities into the room and can actually be driving a process at times without knowing it. August Baker: Okay, I understand. So the old model was you're just using interpretation. That was the 1950s model, right? Amy Schwartz Cooney: Well, that's the high water mark, that the analyst is mature enough and trained enough and expert enough that they can discern like a surgeon the truth of the patient's experience. They can interpret that to the patient and that will make the unconscious conscious and therefore resolve conflict and resolve psychopathology. August Baker: That's a high water mark also because some patients aren't able to do that or that's not the way they're going to work in the analysis. Is that right? Amy Schwartz Cooney: Yeah, and most people just don't think that way anymore. Don't think that there is a single truth, don't see the analyst ... don't see therapeutic action as just around interpretation. Even the contemporary Freudians don't. August Baker: Okay, but I interrupted you. Again, so revitalizing enactment as opposed to a regular one. Sorry to interrupt in that. Amy Schwartz Cooney: Enactments are generally considered to be both ubiquitous and potentially dangerous and destructive because they come from these areas of pathological repetition or dissociated trauma. My thought, and this is related to what Alvarez was talking about, is that we also meet in areas that are part of the unconscious that isn't just shards of painful trauma, but are pieces of ourselves that we have not yet had the chance to fully bring to life, and that sometimes patient and analyst meet in areas that are embryonic for both of them. There's something about the meeting that can be vitalizing in that it brings a new experience to life both in the process of the treatment and within and between both partners. August Baker: Your case study of Joel was just really powerful, I must say. We don't have time to go through the whole thing, but there were a couple of ... just to drop in a couple of quotes you said in there, one I found very interesting was that you did a vital vitalizing enactment and are reaching out to him. It was very powerful and afterwards you were thinking, "I don't know what that did. Maybe nothing. Maybe something big. Maybe ..." But I found it very interesting, here's a quote. It made a big change and eventually one of the things that happened was he was talking about ... the patient, Joel, was talking about how he liked basketball and he told you the story of a Knicks game, of a player who wasn't usually playing and came in and did great and the team won and you said, "I was taken with his recounting of the Knicks game, this story of redemption and hope, succeeding against all logs and coming to life when least expected. Although I had many clever connections to make, I said only, "How amazing, how great." I just thought that was very interesting and it's an example of this not necessarily having to put it into words. Amy Schwartz Cooney: Yeah, and even feeling, and particularly with this patient, that words could stop things, could actually deaden things and that what was so extraordinary about that moment or that session was his aliveness. It didn't really matter what we were talking about, although obviously this game itself was such a hope, was such a wish and such a lovely metaphor for who he might be, but I think for many analysts when they question is this psychoanalytic or not, that it's really like the valance or affect, what's happening in the room rather than the content exactly that feels so important. It's like sometimes the valance can be all around the past. It's not like the past is insignificant at all, but it's just ... I think what Rachel and I were trying to think about other aspects of mutative action that are more forward moving and not necessarily that old equation linking past to present and the causal thing. I just knew with this patient that something novel was happening and were I to go back to those sort of traditional, restrained interpretations that I was taught to make in my own training, I felt that it would deaden it, that it would stop something quite wonderful that was happening. August Baker: Yeah. I could feel that it was enlivening for him, that it was great to be able to share that. Rachel Sopher: Can I just add something? August Baker: Yeah, sure. Rachel Sopher: Because I totally agree with everything that Amy's saying. I think we have these choice points as clinicians where we can either choose to go into the repetitive old pattern and make connections that way, which can be extremely useful, or to invite the patient into something new and the invitation into something new is not just a new part of themselves, it's an invitation into a new way of relating with us and it's an invitation for us to also step into that with them. I think that that's really part of the meaningful part of this kind of vitalizing enactment is exactly that moment. I mean, I don't know if you agree, Amy. Amy Schwartz Cooney: I totally agree and thank you. I think that was a really important clarification of what our process is and what the choices are that we're constantly sifting through. August Baker: You had this notion of countertransference urgency. Could you explain that a little bit? Amy Schwartz Cooney: Yeah, I actually took that phrasing from Anne Alvarez because when she talked about this patient, Robbie, this autistic, unreachable boy who was slipping away from her before a break, it was like this heartbreaking vignette in her book. She said that she reached out to him out of countertransference urgency and looked him right in the face and was like, "Robbie, Robbie come back to me." I was so struck with the parallel of my experience where I felt like I can't let this guy go and just drift away into his nether zone, and in part because it stirred up something in me that, as I said, related to my own history and what it's like to watch a parent disappear. August Baker: That was very profound and I also had the sense reading your case study that he may have been pushing in a way, that you got to this point where you were really frustrated and you were unable to reach him and he may have been pushing it there to that point where you were ... that was just my take on it. I don't know if you felt that. It's something that both people create. Amy Schwartz Cooney: I totally agree with you and I think that there came a point, I kind of called it the tipping point, where it became unsustainable and I think that he was unconsciously pushing me and trying to ... one of the things that we say in psychoanalysis is sort of the patient teaches you how to be their analyst. I think that in some way he was doing that. He just kept saying, "No, not that way, not that way, not that way, not that way," until something new emerged. Rachel, do you have that sense also that sometimes in change moments that the patient is in a way leading you? Rachel Sopher: Oh, absolutely. It's almost uncanny the way that ... when you look backwards, when the enactment happens and you look backwards at where you've been, you can kind of see the progress of that, the progression of that towards that moment where I think there are these little subtle changes or subtle little enactments, like you said, that happen on the way that lead to this kind of transformative moment. August Baker: I remember hearing Andrea Celenza talk about ... she had this patient where he got to the point where he was ... I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was very threatening and she said that she often tells people about this patient and people say, "Well, of course you got to that. He was threatening you because he was communicating such and such," and that's understandable. Her response was, "They missed the point. He had to get me to the point where I was rattled." Rachel Sopher: Exactly. You know what Winnicott calls these? He says you have to live an experience together. What Winnicott actually says is the mother and baby live and experience together and I think that's what we do as well. We have to live through it with the patient in order to ... that's the emotional hook. There has to be some kind of energy behind it, some kind of passion or affect behind it that drives the movement of the therapy forward. August Baker: I also keep imagining when I read about these things that the patient finds something new. I know you mentioned this in the book, I couldn't find the quote, but the patient finds something new or feels, "Geez, I'm alive in a new way now," that's also very painful when you think about what you've lost. It's not an all pleasant thing. It's actually pretty painful. Go ahead. Amy Schwartz Cooney: I think feeling alive isn't just feeling happy, it's feeling. I don't know who said this, but it was sometime during the pandemic when, I don't know, I was reading something or watching something and it was about what is the purpose of life? The purpose of life is to live it, not to hide in your room and not to feel nothing. It's to feel the joy, the sorrow, the pain, the yearning, the disappointment. That's all vital. August Baker: I'll go back to Celenza again, I think says that people tend to think as you get older you get more dead and she's totally against that as it is not true. In a way that's another way ... I don't think this is so pathologizing because you're talking about people who can get this way just by living, can become numb just by living or not because anything in particular happened wrong. Amy Schwartz Cooney: I think in your case that you were really grappling with very deadened parts of the patient. Rachel Sopher: Yes, absolutely. You're right that it doesn't have to be that something has gone wrong, but that we could get just numb to experience and then we have to ... first we have to realize it and recognize it. I think that that's a big part of the challenge is recognizing the places where we're numb because we can sleepwalk through life feeling like everything is fine, but really be avoiding certain kinds of experiences that bring up painful emotion, so then we're narrowing our lives down further and further and further without even realizing it. I think that's so helpful about analysis is that you start to see the place that ... what's really missing and the ways that you've kept yourself small and then missed out on the whole range of experience. August Baker: Right. Rachel, it's the same with your case of Jenny. It was really moving. I'd like to hear you tell the audience some about this concept of allegiance to absence. I also wanted to just read one of the things that struck me so much. Now, you, "Imagining with great clarity an image of Jenny and me sitting together in my office, an inert body laid out between us, gray corpse like. It rested on a block with intravenous IV tubes coming out of each of its arms. One of the IVs ran from the prostate body to Jenny's arm and the other to mine, each of us connected to this lifeless mass, infusing it with our own blood, each of us feeding it, sustaining it, keeping it on life support in some limbo state between life and death." What a powerful image. Amy Schwartz Cooney: Beautiful. Rachel Sopher: It was a very powerful image. August Baker: For you, I imagine. Rachel Sopher: Yeah, it really was. Quite impactful. I guess I'll start with allegiance to absence [inaudible 00:31:15] the case. It's this idea that not only do we have these kinds of deadened or absent places inside, but that we can be attached to them. Let's say we have a neglectful or absent parent, that's an attachment. There's an attachment to an absence. There can be defenses against letting go that. You would think that if there's something absent or missing or deadened inside, that you would just want to get rid of it. But that can bring up a lot of fear and like you said, it can bring up a lot of mourning and grief for what's been missed out on. There's this allegiance to the absence. There's a holding on, an attachment to the absence, even if it is kind of a bad object, it carries some effective resonance for the patient. So that's that idea. I think that image was so powerful because what it told me was that both my patient Jenny and I were both committed to keeping this absence alive between us, this deadened object alive between us. We were both putting all of our energy, this life blood, into this because she was so committed to therapy, I was so committed to her, and yet there was something so dead between us. So this really brought to light the way we were both in an ongoing enactment of keeping things dead between us, not allowing things to get too lively or too exciting between us. So this really brought to light the way that I had been participating it in it as well and that freed me actually. Once I realized it, I was scared of something alive happening between us too. I couldn't analyze that myself and realize where that came from in myself and then free myself to be more alive with Jenny. August Baker: Again, in your case also, you could see the mutual dance. She actually has a panic attack, it sounded like, or something like that in the session, which is going to really put you at the edge now. This is a volume, of course, and I think one of the things we haven't touched on is that you have your feelers out there for what's happening with the other schools of thought in psychoanalysis and this is a volume that's kind of ... I guess as I understand it, you've seen movements towards vitalization in lots of different schools and this volume is trying to collect all of them together. Could you speak to that and say something about what the different schools are that are represented? Amy Schwartz Cooney: Relational psychoanalysis is a huge umbrella at this point. Relational psychoanalysis started 40 years ago with Steven Mitchell in Greenberg and really started with this idea of the critique of the classical model of the analyst is neutral and so forth, and put forth the centrality of relationships with real people with our internal objects. Since then, it has evolved so much and become an umbrella of schools or thought only united in terms of a belief in the centrality of relationships. This particular collection was really calling from many, many different lines of thought that I feel all fall within the rubric of relational psychoanalysis. Were we to do the book, a second book, for example, I think it would be really interesting to go to a Jungian and to go to a contemporary Freudian to elicit other voices that didn't come in, but these are all voices that I think fall within the broad umbrella of Big R relational psychoanalysis. Would you agree, Rachel? Rachel Sopher: I would. I think that that's exactly how I feel about it. I think our intention was really to bring into dialogue different voices from different backgrounds I think mostly within the relational scope. There is such a wide variation under the relational umbrella that it makes for a really interesting kind of dialogue in my opinion. August Baker: Right. No, I felt that also. I guess running out of our 45 minute hour, I go back to your writing this introduction in March of 2020. Do you have any thoughts generally about vitalization and this unprecedented time that we're going through? Amy Schwartz Cooney: A couple of thoughts. One, certainly that there's a need for it. I was saying earlier that people have responded to the volume I think in terms of gravitating towards the hope for hope. I think that it is a moment where we really do ... what is the Leonard Cohen ... the crack is where the light comes in there, where we're really hoping for the light and hoping for something new and different. I think it's really relevant to going on and living, not repeating and going back and trying to be the analyst that you were or the anything that you were before. I think life has changed seismically, not just because of COVID but I think obviously because of George Floyd and race and the white awakening long overdue, which has also, needless to say, become part of the psychoanalytic conversation. One of the things that I'm thinking a lot about is how to translate these ideas around vitalization, which are so deeply individual into a broader conversation around cultural identity and subjectivity and race and difference. I think it's relevant. I haven't yet formulated that, but that's the direction that I want to go next. Rachel? August Baker: Great. Rachel Sopher: I agree completely. I think that's so very important. I think over the past couple of years we've been fighting to stay alive physically and psychically. I mean, I think especially psychically, I mean, in my experience it's been hard to stay alive to what's happening because it's been so chaotic, so difficult, so filled with grief. I really feel like vitalization is a very important emergent topic right now in the midst of all of that. I think it's also important in the midst of this time when we have to fight to be in relationship with each other, to feel our connections that felt taken for granted before this and now we have to actually intentionally reach out to people and make plans and see each other over Zoom. It can be harder to feel those alive connections with one another, so I think we have to do that much more to stay alive right now. August Baker: Also politically, it just seemed that it was taken for granted that there was a mutual ... Amy Schwartz Cooney: Absolutely. August Baker: Or in retrospect, it seems like there was a mutual respect and now there's like, "No, we don't care about ... we're fine with just not talking." Amy Schwartz Cooney: Isn't it so disheartening? It really is. August Baker: Yeah. Well, unfortunately we're out of time, but I really appreciate you guys, y'all, talking with me today. Thank you so much. Rachel Sopher: It's been such a pleasure. Thank you. Amy Schwartz Cooney: Yeah. It's been vitalizing. It really is and we both so appreciate your interest in the book and in these ideas. The book brings us joy and also makes it feel alive because in the midst of all the horror and trauma, sometimes you can feel like these ideas are so meaningless, so we really appreciate it. August Baker: Yeah, it was amazing. I was just sort of, "Here's a book. Okay, I'll read it," and then it really affected me very strongly, so thank you.