Beyond Freud

A dose of common sense.

Lawrence D. Blum M.D., Leon Hoffman M.D.

Home for the Holidays

What happens during holidays and family festivities? Our routines change, our moods change, and there is a mixture of feelings.

Three Identical Strangers

Psychoanalysts study how people, including themselves, unconsciously deceive themselves. Three Identical Strangers forecloses that discussion.

Manipulators of Our Unconscious Desires

We all are vulnerable to the entreaties of hucksters and tricksters.

Countertransference in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy

By recognizing the complex interplay between patient and analyst in the sessions, the analyst helps the patient understand the nature and origin of his/her maladaptive interactions

How Psychoanalysis Helps: Part 2

A major tool utilized in a psychodynamic therapy is what is labeled as addressing or analyzing the transference.

How Psychoanalysis Helps

Why do people seek a talking treatment?

An Unexpected Sight in the Rearview Mirror

It is unusual, at age 75, to suddenly view more than 50 years of struggles in an entirely new light.

Towards a Reinvigoration of Our Pluralistic System

How can we promote the value of a pluralistic system with checks and balances? Economic revitalization is not enough.

Medication For Life

Some people need medication to live. Are others put on unneeded medication for life?

Voting for the Magic Wand, or Trump's Phallic Victory

Voters are influenced by powerful fantasies that pundits don't talk about.

Madness and Guns

The ability to control anger, and to distinguish fantasy from reality, are difficult tasks to master. What does this mean for access to weapons?

Are We Living in Salem Circa 1693? Lessons for America 2016

A great deal has been written about the dangers of ultra-nationalistic leaders in today's world. But only recently, have we begun to talk about the potential dangers of groups.

Therapeutic Euphemism: Niceness Isn't Always Kind

The use of euphemistic language in psychotherapy, by either the patient or the therapist, can be a therapeutic obstacle, but understanding this usage provides opportunity.

Why Are Painful Emotions So Hard to Handle?

Throughout development, maturity lessons need to be learned and re-learned in order to best master the inevitable disappointments of life.

Can Psychoanalysis Make You Smarter?

No therapy claims to make people smarter, but I wouldn’t be surprised if sometimes psychoanalysis does just that. Psychoanalytic therapies are those treatments in which the therapist’s job is to help people face what they have repressed and what they don’t want to know. They can help clear up blocks to learning.

Growing Up Without Therapy

Now and then I have met someone who seems to have grown up, without therapy, into a relatively balanced, contented person, little encumbered by internal conflicts. As a psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, I continue to wonder how to account for this. Emotional maturity is difficult to accomplish on one's own.

Transference: Empirical Study

There have been several questions asking about the empirical studies related to the construct of transference. I thought it might be useful to list a selected bibliography from the literature, including comments in italics from some of the articles.

The "Listening Cure": The Past Influences the Present

The therapist's attuned listening: A psychodynamic therapist listens to a patient's current concern, develops a strong therapeutic relationship, and jointly with the patient tries to understand the nature of the patient's symptoms and problems. This understanding may be facilitated by examining together the patient's ideas about the therapist (the transference).

Fathers and Daughters

The greater the dad’s comfort in relating to his daughter both as a girl with a girl’s body as well as a whole person, the more comfortable he can be during the onset of her sexual development in adolescence. It is not just mom’s comfort with her own sense of herself as a woman that helps a girl develop comfort with her sense as a developing woman, but also dad's comfort.

Fathers and Daughters

That fathers play a critical role in an adolescent girl’s development is a fact that we cannot underestimate. Fathers may not realize their important role, particularly in the midst of a screaming battle—but they are important protectors for their teen-aged daughters—including protectors of their daughter’s self-esteem during a vulnerable period of life.

Listening attentively to our children

The importance of careful listening

Why I Love Psychoanalysis and You Might, Too

A career as a psychoanalyst may be more rewarding than you have imagined. More engaging work is hard to find.

Listening to Stories Patients Tell: Beyond DSM-5

Psychiatry needs to devote more energy and funds to study the interplay between psychosocial forces and brain functioning, most importantly stressing the centrality to the diagnostic process of listening to a patient describe the story of his or her life. To provide the best treatment for people suffering with mental problems, the twain must meet.

DSM Fantasies

The DSM is built on the fantasy that we can ignore fantasy and mind in psychiatric diagnosis. A further remarkable fantasy of the DSM is that doing so leads to more scientific, rather than less scientific, diagnosis. This article explores some of the key fantasies upholding the DSM.

"I Had a Normal Childhood."

It is not unusual for a patient to tell me that he or she had a normal childhood. This always alarms me. Childhood has so many conflicts and worries, so many triumphs and disappointments - how can one reduce it to a notion of normality? What does invoking this concept conceal? Maybe the idea of a normal childhood is a wishful, childlike fantasy.

Penis Size: A Consideration of Fantasy and Reality

Many men are worried about penis size and concerned they may be "too small." Psychoanalytic therapies help many men become more mature and less worried that they are inadequate.

The Candidates and the Wish to Kill

All people have wishes to kill. How these wishes are handled has a profound influence on personal and national politics. Democrats tend to be more uncomfortable with their aggression and to inhibit its expression. Republicans tend to be more comfortable with their aggression and to express it more freely.

Moms in the Workplace

To feel more in charge of their own feelings and create a better balance between work and home, moms who work outside the home need to accept their own ambivalent feelings and try to ensure that their spouses or partners participate in homemaking and child-rearing activities.

Behavioral Health Reports Are Depressing Me

Behavioral health reports are depressing me. This feeling exists only in my mind and doesn't alter my behavior.

Helping Parents Help Kids Face Trauma

All people respond to trauma and stress in their own individual ways. Practitioners who have learned the art of listening are most helpful to people in time of stress and crisis.

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