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Dr Claudia Sheftel-Luiz: From Freudian Psychoanalysis to Modern Psychoanalysis

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Let’s start from the beginning, Claudia! I read your mother started with her journey in psychoanalysis, and then you grew yourself into this tradition. Could you tell us about how your journey in this field began? Well, my mother’s father was from Argentina & he was very, very disturbed. In fact, he died in a mental institution. He suffered from severe bipolar disorder, including violent manic episodes. But she was able to leave South America and study music with their assistance. Although she was able to escape the disease, she was understandably numb. And she went to Italy with my father, who was also a refugee from Russia. There was a lot of trauma and some mental illness on that end as well. And they reasoned that if they remained away from us, they would shield me and my sister from the illness. They went on tours because they were musicians, and we were raised by nannies. They thought that if they called us, we would sob. So they didn’t call us. My sister and I were a mess by the time we were eight or nine. As Galit Atlas would say, we had inherited some of the ’emotional inheritance’. We also had new trauma from our carers. As a result, my mum realized she needed to do something to help us. She brought us to America and found us these fantastic psychoanalysts. It was only luck and destiny that led her to the psychoanalyst, and the entire family changed. We were living together. We started to talk. We had a completely different family dynamic, and by the age of 16, I knew this was the path I wanted to take. Meanwhile, my mother, who had been a musician and subsequently an interpreter at the United Nations, began studying it. She really wanted to understand me and my sister. She wanted to understand mental illness. She wanted to understand what creates healing. She wrote her dissertation on us and she turned the family history around. So I’ve been in the psychoanalytic world because she ascended through the ranks–I was there as a child–and in the entire milieu of this New York modern psychoanalysis. I was able to witness a few generations and what happens when you have an emotional inheritance. (I adore this word, instead of mental disease, which is so dreadful). So, when there are emotional inheritances, it takes several generations to change the DNA, since the first generation must change their actions. But the second generation is still experiencing the feelings and trying to find a vocabulary for the distortions, cognitive disorders, mood disorders, impulse disorders, or whatever you’ve inherited. And then when you raise your own children, it’s really not until the third generation that you see freedom. True freedom- from the disorders where there is mentation right out of the gate, ego strength right out of the gate, trust, and resilience right out of the gate. So I consider myself extremely fortunate to be a second-generation analyst in a system capable of studying intergenerational processes. I think you’re putting it so poignantly that psychoanalysis is not just healing you and healing your traumas, but how it is also so powerful that it can change generations and what we call the trans-generational trauma. That’s really how longitudinally it can also work. I believe that with an inherited trauma, particularly thought disorders, which are the most severe, you can expect to see a lot of improvement in a 30-year analysis and the ability to develop some mind, but you will not see that person who can function in the world, get married, and work. So the psychoanalytic work is one of generational healing. This also takes me back to when I was reading about you, that there is something really authentic in you. (Once again, that is the term that springs to me whenever I view your work, including your book).It’s a very genuine work, in my opinion. It’s written in terms of your own cases and how you’ve fallen and failed, and how you’ve recognised and welled with your patients. I believe it’s such an authentic, permeable expression. Yeah. I love that you’ve observed that because it’s crucial to the training. Nothing was off the table when I was training to be a psychoanalyst. You researched yourself and your peers. Everything was discussed. The line between personal and private was fairly thin. We used ourselves as clinical examples and worked with our own countertransference and character. So I learned to be clinical, and that helps a lot with the shame that comes with being disordered. It’s very painful to be disordered. And when you start to realize in a sense that you are crazy, that your mind is playing tricks on you because we all know that we hurt, but we don’t yet know how we defend; we can’t see our defences until very late. And seeing that fills us with shame. So being able to be clinical about oneself definitely helps with that embarrassment. And I believe this is what you’re getting from me, which I love because it really helps you become a good analyst, is being able to be clinical about your own life. So you feel this, this authenticity, which is sometimes also confused with self-disclosure in the psychoanalytic realm is actually helpful… I believe so because, with patients, everyone comes in regressive, and it’s really not about you as a person, it’s about them. And something happens in a different dimension that has nothing to do with the manifest content, or with the actual conversation. That’s that evenly hovering attention that a patient can feel if you are with them. Yeah, sure. I’m just thinking about the ethics or training that has been instilled in us… This concept of how much we disclose, and how honestly and eloquently you put out your life history, I’m sure your patients are aware of it as well. Do you think it gets in your

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The Inevitability of ‘Routines’

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Do you like Pages better or Word?What a random question, right.. well, it might surprise you but yours truly spends a minute deciding which one to open to write the newsletter! (As if the ‘right’ format will make the ‘(w)righting’ seamless.) While on some level this may seem an absolute BS, but I’m a creature of habit and I have learnt to see value in the conundrum of ‘space & time’ for any form of thinking, being & feeling.Like,I can only write with Jazz playing at the back (and so plays Sinatra at this point);I can only be my therapist self when I’m in my chair. Basically, I’m a cat, living in my own world of routines. While for Freud there’s no concept of time in the unconscious, there ought to be an organising agent that situates psychic continuity in the reality. For me, that’s the reverie of space & time, aka, the Inner Rhythm. What I’m trying to build towards is something quite simple, and hence rejected by the hustle & grind culture, or practically anything that is designed to render us anxious- like deadlines!!I’m talking about the rhythm of being. What is your rhythm of being? We never talk about it.I’d love to know, really?Do you wanna build a snowman? All we talk about are the notes of music- we keep a checklist, we keep a tab on our productivity, we have a to-do list but there’s no app to measure how it all comes together.There’s no one coming to weave our notes of the mind into psyche. How could they? This reminds me of a podcast where the analyst (forgetting the name) made a clever statement- that “psychiatry is mindless, and psychology is brainless”.From where I sit, I hear in that quoted statement an inherent incompletion, a deep & wide gap.The world without music, even of nature, is pierced empty; it gives an imagery of an abandoned, no-one’s land. A town that is all concrete without any semblance of life. Now cut paste this idea to the inner world & imagine how barren the psyche could feel without a rhythm. I never see you any moreCome out the doorIt’s like you’ve gone away! (Sometimes I think about the titles I pick to write on, almost trying to make my life difficult. Anyhoo…) So, what is your rhythm? I was reading, a while back, The Rhythm of Music by Ogden (yeah, you’ll soon realise I repeatedly read a few thinkers). He opens the paper saying “In the course of this discussion, I will ask the reader to listen to his listening” (* weeping *— leave it on to the psychoanalyst to make things poetically difficult). He goes on to explain it (pheww) as “to listen to the ways he (the therapist) listens and hears listening to an analytic session”. Somehow, I find myself readily inviting of this idea for it opens the window for fiction & anonymity in therapy, in ways that otherwise a non-rhythmic role would not. To be able to transition from the listener to the listener’s listener, from the knower to the unknown, from the conscious listening to the reverie- basically, any transition or movement needs a rhythm, and any analytic listening demands this swaying. Now, I can slowly see my writing becoming more about analytic listening, than the inner rhythm. But that’s perhaps the liberating format one needs in order to listen, read, write, think & be in the world of Psychoanalysis. To be able to flow, float and fuse is the work of rhythm; to be able to survive ruptures is the possibility of rhythm; to be able to reckon & reconcile is the goal of rhythm. Let’s just put it this way- Winnicott writes in On the Capacity to Be Alone, “the goal for the child is to be alone in the presence of the mother”, what our piece is brewing First name is to replace (not literally, if ever you take anything in psychoanalysis in literality), replace the mother with rhythm. The goal for the therapist, or the inner world, is to integrate in the presence of a rhythm. So let me put our favourite men in the field to use! — Freud- Okay, I don’t know if to stick the idea of Biorhythms to Freud or his bestie William Fliess, but it’s certain that this idea was conceived between them.Basically, the concept of biorhythm proposes human lives are influenced by rhythmic cycles of physical, emotional, and intellectual states recurring over 23, 28, and 33 days respectively, & that our behavior and performance fluctuate based on these purported cycles.Now, I don’t know why mister didn’t follow through this idea when most women can vouch for it (maybe that’s why!), however, the ideation around rhythms & psychic functioning goes long back. — Winnicott- If one is to read closely, for Winnicott, the experience of childhood, if not a rhythmic, is a disaster. From the rocking of the infant by the mother, to the child forming a sentence by tying sounds & syntax in a rhythm to the possibility of play made accessible via rhythmic movements, Winnicott’s understanding of psychic & bodily movements is tied via “the rhythms of his need for sleep and for wakefulness, of his need for engagement with others and his need for isolation, the rhythms of hunger and satiation, the rhythms of breathing and heartbeat” (1956). He goes on to build on the idea of ‘attunement’, one of his most significant contributions, parallel to the importance of rhythmic experiences in early development — Thomas Ogden- More than others, Ogden is dedicatedly invested in the idea of rhythm. For him, rhythm symbolises an inseparability that makes human experience fundamentally possible. In other words, his idea of rhythm in psychoanalysis refers to the unconscious patterning of bodily experiences, affects, and fantasies that shape an individual’s sense of being. Ogden wrote a paper on rhythm for god’s sake!!! The point isss that aware or not, our TLC is a product

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Psychoanalysis and Play

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What is play, you might ask…I know & don’t know either. (that’s basically what you can say about anything in Psychoanalysis to sound bougie) But let’s start somewhere- so, what is play for you?(sigh! the joy of asking awkward questions to put someone on the spot… )However, isn’t that the charm of Psychoanalysis- to divulge us into gazing at the most ordinary page of our story with the most fascination? Like a child watching a leaf fall from the tree, surrendered in a moment of both wonderment and excess! Aghhh.. what would I give to be lost in that kind of private play… wouldn’t you? In case you didn’t notice, I’m pledged to understanding Psychoanalysis as a play with words- as an art of storytelling (Adam Phillips), an art of listening (Salman Akhtar), an art of interpretation (Freud). Anyhoo, the note of appreciation for Psychoanalysis’s own childlike wonderment aside (although I don’t think we’d be asking this question if it wasn’t for it…), when did you actually stop playing? #deep.#blackhole.#donotwanttogo.#activateresistance. Does someone know why we’re split when it comes to writing or thinking about our own (dis)embodied play? Why do we have to include a century-old discourse to talk about it? And is it even play if a thinker has to think it? This piece, despite my attempts at the opposite, is coming from a place of both curiosities, & deep sadness. A sadness reckoning an almost strategic, developmental loss.And then to write about curiosity & play, in a playful way, well, something’s amiss. So let me do the easier bit… let’s make do with the concept of play psychoanalytically. Yeah well, I see you know a writing on play cannot be done without Winnicott, & Freud, & Bowlby and who not, and I know you’re watching how I would (fail to) compress this life-size work on play in a paragraph… But, a girl can, & must try. It might surprise you, but in psychoanalysis, play is not seen as a leisure activity, it is not even an attribute of the child, it is not in the act of it- rather, play is a form of communication and expression that provides insights into the unconscious thoughts, feelings, and conflicts.Shocker, right? Let’s just prep our floaties as we jump into the shallow end of its Psychoanalytic iterations now. Something Old: So, to start from the beginning- let’s take a whimsical stroll into Winnicott’s microcosm, where the concept of play is never just a child’s pastime, but a working-through of the unabsorbed, overwhelming reality.Yes, literally, Winnicott believed that children play to master anxiety… (stay with this thought a second more, and you’ll agree). Now, imagine you’re the little you (disobedient, I’d prefer), brandishing your toy truck (gender neutral!). As you cater to yourself in that make-believe worlds, you’re not just passing the time—you’re crafting your reality. In Winnicott’s world, play isn’t just a distraction; it’s the theatre where the unconscious scripts unfold, where impulses are enacted, where sensual gratifications are allowed. But here’s where it gets juicy- for him, play isn’t just for kids. Winnicott saw play as the ultimate antidote to the drudgery of adulthood where inhibitions & vulnerabilities are unveiled. Something New: Now, have you heard of Jill Miller? No, I’m not just putting common syllables together, she’s a real person, in fact a student of Anna Freud.It’s interesting we’ve learnt to be versed with the old more than the new, the alive. What does that say about play?! Anyhow, now picture that tiny (still disobedient, I hope) you, are handed a blank paper & a bunch of broken crayons. That’s classic Miller- compelling a canvas to invite the exploration of thoughts and emotions through various mediums, from art and music to movement and storytelling. Why I feel she belongs in the category of the ‘new’ is her attitude of inviting the patient to cultivate a sense of wonder and curiosity about the self. She ascribes certain features of play to the work of the therapeutic alliance- the symbolism in play advent of spontaneity transference- countertransference and the therapist’s attunement, to pin a few. So somewhere between all of it, play becomes a therapeutic tool for the pre-analytic parts of the self. Something Blue: Let’s put a few men adjacent to each other on this.For Freud, play came to be pleasure seeking (a shift he made from seeing it as wish fulfilling); for Erikson (1963), play forms an ‘emotional laboratory’ in which the child learns to master his environment and come to terms with the world; for Piaget play is a movement from functional to symbolic order- that is, it carries within the capacity to symbolise objects for them to be manipulated as metaphors for the reality. And one can go in any direction from here, but what remains intact throughout is the lucid understanding of play in the psychic organisation. It is one of those rare concept explained simply & repeatedly in Psychoanalysis (pheww), and that is not to say it’s not exponentially complex, it is only to say that play holds in itself an undebatable element of narcissistic mastery over the (primal) preoccupation with the self & the object.Yeah, quite blue, right? Something Borrowed: Time we borrow play. What a strange thing to say, right? Neither can one borrow time, nor play, and yet the unconscious dares to string them together in a singular breath.I believe that’s what’s amiss.What I mean is, “I hope all my readers are going to fall under the spell of some kind of curiosity. Reading a novel without curiosity is a deadly process- we all remember it from high school” (Ian McEwan). That no matter how much this piece makes sense, logically, it can’t render itself a play-mate, when the internal deficit of curiosity is unaddressed. P.S. I love ending on random tones of feelings, and while it would be cliché to call that play now, I’d like to believe that it is… my version of play. P.P.S. What’s your version?

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The Impossible task called ‘Writing’!

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Well, this month’s highlight has been ‘writing’ (what a vague way to start, right?!). Let me give a bit of context- it’s 5:03 am, I’m sitting with an espresso, my cats sleeping in their usual spots, still dark outside, and slow jazz playing in the background. I live for this moment, basically. And at this dawn of perfection- I’m deciding to write about, Writing. Well, I recently organised a writing workshop with some dear colleagues, “haiku for Psychotherapists”, & I realised that I (must) write to dialogue… Writing is how I (can) express love or feel loved, it’s my paintbrush to create the beautiful and the ugly. It’s the most private relationship I’ve had, lived and been careless with. Writing is how my grief shows up; it’s how I endorse my enactments. I’m no longer talking about academic writing, am I? (if I was talking about that anyway). I’m talking about writing not as an act, but as an emotional currency. How else does it explain both withdrawal & yearning that floats in it?From something as understated as writing a text message, to receiving as intense as a love letter; we’re caught up in the battle of seeing, & being seen. Alas, to the mind in emotional debt, anything that requires giving language to feelings feels like labour. Writing is how we connect (with the self & the other), and withdraw (from the self & the other)- lately, more the latter for me. Now, what got me back to writing? That’s a tough one… if I tell you, I’ll have to kill you! (please tell me you also make bad jokes to evade…). Perhaps, this is what I’m talking about- writing as a reverie of our intimate relationship with the self– the one that I have been estranged with since past few years.Quick context part 2- I loved writing, presenting & publishing till 2020. I loved the guise I had at University of Essex, or IIT, or where-ever words were enough.Writing was a part of the being, until one day it was hard to be. Coming to the point, … I always say that the impact of the lockdown on the collective psyche will only be known in generational hindsight, which is both true, and convenient!I’m not here to write about my (shared) shock & grief of betrayal, loneliness, loss, absurdity, helplessness (simply because that would be brave…), but I believe I’ve reckoned that it will always be a part of me, and my writing. And hence, I got back to writing (lucky you!!!!), out of recognition- that I can no more pretend it’s an external deed for me; it’s a lived panorama of my relationship with the unkept parts of me.Writing is what we do from a place of vulnerabilities, and it gets torn & illegible when those vulnerabilities are shamed & unsafe. Now I write to build a relationship with those irrevocable parts of the self, to not deprive them of the chance of recognition, to not make them central, but ordinary. I write (this piece especially) to speak to similarly withdrawn parts of your self, which might show up as flamboyance, or as absence; which might be supported by silences or the therapy hour; which might be making you who you are, or masking who you really are. I write to those tattered parts of you and invite them to form a relationship with the tattered part of me- my writing.We may not heal together, but we can be safely unhealed together. What helps me keep my head above water when it comes to Writing? Just some things I realised the hard long way (& you might want to save it!!) Write like you drink!Work of an artist, any artist, is to make the other feel less lonely. Adam Phillips has repeatedly said that “one of the main problems with his psychoanalytic colleagues is that their writing is so boring”- now as a psychoanalyst, I’m certain his concern is not with the monotony of the work, but with losing the reader interim for un-fun reasons. When in doubt, Write!Psychoanalysis is not just a ‘talking cure’, but a ‘writing cure’-and I can stretch myself to say that after reading a bunch of letters that Freud wrote to his dear best friend Fliess. One would find such ordinariness of struggle in them- the difficulty of finding patients, the longing for the companionship of a colleague, the development of an idea (that eventually became concepts of Psychoanalysis).So basically, write because you can! What kind of a person writes to restrict? Ogden says, and I passionately agree, “When analytic writing is good, it is evident that the author’s intent has not been to be ‘poetic’ (if it were, the sentences would feel embarrassingly contrived). Rather, the words and phrases have unself-conscious poise” (Ogden, 2005). Writing like Dreaming!Freud rightly figured, “Patients don’t get better by free association, they get better when they free associate”. To write like free association is a private invitation to the self. What am I trying to say? Well, if you know me by now, you know the answer is, “I don’t know”! Just that, I’m happy to be giving writing another chance, & hoping it drives home a point. Has it evolved & densified in the last few gap years; I don’t think so.But it has gotten, digestible.I no longer must regurgitate it, it’s getting flavorful, even if it’s not my known & favourite flavour. But, well, I’ll develop a taste. P.S. You don’t have to be a writer to write, you just have to not be a stranger.

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Demystifying ‘Dependency’ in Relationships

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Notes using attachment theory & contemporary psychoanalysis This is a nice title, no?! Yeah, it’s not mine. This is what young Sigmund says to his aunt when he finds the dark of the night to be discomforting. Guess he knew that this dark of the night, & the dreams enclosed would lure him in! Darkness aside, (for now), this newsletter is one of those pieces that I didn’t write in one go (like a brain vomit!). I wrote a little of it every dawn, and I’m quite proud of that. Of course proud because the writing here is more dense, but also because Anar has finally learnt that I will not attend to her throwing things until 7 am, so she lets me write in peace now. Speaking of cats- the popularly detached, independent creatures… I came across the term ‘dependency paradox’ very recently (yeah I live under a rock); and since then, I haven’t been able to brush it off my mind. It’s such a clever term- enticing, evoking & giving (clearly, I’m a sucker for playful language). But more than that, this term is gripping because ‘dependency’ is not an unfamiliar nemesis to any of us- we may love it, we may hate it, but we can’t hide from it. No seriously, if you feel you’re not emotionally dependent on anyone, I’d wait for the bubble to burst. And this is not a challenge or predicament, it’s just the reality of being human. Having attachments is like one of those tests, where you click on the pictures that have street lights or the cars to prove that you’re not a robot (you know what I’m talking about, right?). To be human is to find comfort in the (real or imagined) presence of the other; and sh*tt starts falling when that presence is not guaranteed (Alexa, play abandonment trauma, insecure attachments, neglect, on repeat!). Now, if like a very special patient of mine, you’re someone sitting on the ideals of Bhagvat Gita and detachment, let me tell you something that got crystallised through the course of our work- “people who believe in the idea of detachment are fundamentally attached to the idea of being detached” (clever right?!). But that was not the only thing that got etched. Through, and with my patient’s lived theorisation of detachment, came along multiple whispers: First one is the strongest, for understandable reasons- Salman saab (Prof Salman Akhtar) suggests that patient has intuitively developed their ‘cure’- “That much psychopathology can result when the function of ‘letting go’ is ill-developed or hypertrophied” (2021). Second one is brewing as a nascent theory detachment as an addictive state trying to manage intolerably painful & confusing affect. A study by Cacioppo et al. (2009) portrays what it is like to be someone unable to rest in an un-integrated state. The study shows that people who feel no one is looking out for them, develop a crude sense of hyper-independence. In other words, developing dependence on detachment as an object that is used in place of where a connection could’ve been. And the third one that validates my meaning-making in analysis via literature- “Zindagi bhar ek lamha nhi guzra” (a moment that didn’t pass in the lifetime)- a repetition-compulsion, a frozenness that can be felt in the patient’s marriage to the idea of detachment, less as an experience, more as a response learnt very early to an impasse. So what is the Dependency Paradox? The Dependency Paradox is that the more fully we can depend on our relationships and trust them as our secure base, the more independent we are able to be (Levy, 2021). Nobody becomes secure or individuated in the absence of a relationship, but, in the presence of them. Obviously, how can one grieve or separate from something that doesn’t exist? And so, often, the work of therapy is to find the ghosts (of the past/ of the dead relationship) to claim that they exist(ed); that one is not living without them, but in spite of them. The patient doesn’t learn to be silent; they learn to be silent in the presence of the therapist. The work of therapy is, on a good day, to reintegrate into being, the disavowed, demystified dependency. To allow dependency on the self is to tolerate love and care- it’s to tolerate the self. In allowing the infant to depend on the (m)other, the mother is communicating to the infant that their needs (aka they) are valid, and tolerable. On the other end, the mis-attuned or dismissed need for dependency hardly ever leaves the relationship fractured; the impact is internalised, and the self is rendered excessive. In other words, hyper-independence is not a defence because of the marred relationship, but for the marred relationship. “I’m too much” is the learnt narrative and the desire for dependency is bartered for the promise of a relationship. Let’s swiftly also go to Winnicott- the cute old white man who developed wonderful works out of observing how a wooden spoon is negotiated between the mother & the infant! He elaborates on three phases of the developmental journey: ‘absolute dependence’, ‘relative dependence’ and ‘towards independence’ (1965), possible in the unperturbed presence of a ‘holding environment’ that concerns itself with the preoccupation with the baby- simply because the survival of the baby, psychically and literally, depends on it. And even then, drumrolls he argues, drumrolls continue that complete silencewe’re never fully independent (dayummm!!) At best, we are in a pathway towards independence, using the templates of our good-enough childhood to deal with impingements of reality. He (cited in Mitchell and Black, 1995, p125) used the phrase “environmental deficiency disease” to make the point that mental health difficulties like psychosis, depression or addiction were not vacuumed internal dispositions, but a catastrophic failure on the part of the ‘good enough environment’ woven into the psyche. Basically, we’re all suffering from relationships (That, should be in the DSM). But here’s what I figured out: The idea of ‘attachment’ is

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Climate Change and Mental Health

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This has to be my first time speaking about the heat to everyone. This has to be the first time everyone has spoken about the heat to me. I mean, of course, Global warming is real. But for those of us who have the luxury to survive the heat- physically & mentally, on most days, have the responsibility to reflect on it- not just as a climatic crisis, but as a shared psychosocial fabric of human experience. Whilst I wanted to pen a jolly newsletter, I think that ship has sailed (to wherever there is water). Because from where I see, I see people of certain classes working under that ruthless sun, I see dogs drinking filthy water from anywhere possible, I see poverty- of economy, thought & compassion under a bright sun. That we’re waking up to a literally burning world all around. How does that feel? And sure some of us have the massive undertone of privilege where our air-conditioned world doesn’t seem to be burning, but let me break it to you, then it’s melting. For someone who works from home, with 24×7 air conditioning & pets not having to scavenge for water in the scorching sun, my world shouldn’t be withering either, and yet here I am recovering from a self-imposed quarantine & depleted cathexis. So, this newsletter is to inform you that if: Your routines & task lists have sharply fallen off Your energy to respond to social relationships has declined Your mind & body demand a shutdown Your mental health & self-care is marred with unexplained fatigue, you can blame the heat. Sounds rather convenient, isn’t it? So, let’s look at ‘science’. In a notable (& not so ethical) study at the University of Richmond, researchers exposed rats to either normal room temperature or extreme heat conditions, mimicking the effects of a severe heatwave (around 104°F) for several hours per day over several weeks. As the weeks passed, the heat-exposed rats began to exhibit concerning changes. Their behaviour grew increasingly anxious, as if constantly on edge. When tasked with navigating mazes, their spatial memory faltered, leaving them disoriented. Within their tiny brains, a storm was brewing (obviously). Inflammatory markers rose, and stress hormones surged, disrupting the delicate chemical balance, that their life coaches & motivational speakers could not undo. Even the brain activity patterns shifted (despite journalling!!!), reflecting the strain imposed by the unrelenting heat. The researchers watched with concern, realizing that- .1 104°F/40°C is the new ‘cool’ when temperatures in many parts of the country touched 122°F/52°C, & 2. this experiment was a microcosm of the mental health challenges that climate change like, extreme heat could bring to human populations in a warming world. Several other ‘experiments’ have been messing with the rodents to ascertain a simple point- that the temperatures/ climate impacts your mental health detrimentally. Ingenious, right?! And I’m not even getting into the class, caste, race or gender differences herein which would only make psychic survival & growth look bleak for one more than the other. Psychoanalyst Donna Orange (2017), “The climate crisis and social injustice are not two separate issues, but rather are one single, inextricably connected issue”. Perhaps, it must appal you how little such obvious facts about your mental health are spoken about. It must anger you that we’re left to find meaning in our internalized pathology of our dysfunction, in a productivity-oriented world. It must rile you to demand a response to this ‘climate crisis buttoned with the pervasive mental health crisis’ CRISIS. I hope it does, for otherwise we’re too the rats in the oblivious experiments of the industrial maze. So where do we go from here? There is no more denying that the destruction of the earth has a clear correlation with the destruction of the mentalized (Fonagy) world. There is no more denying that the rising temperatures are impacting how we live, feel, and relate with each other in subtle unhealthy adaptive ways. There is no more denying that our psychosocial fabric is melting. The problem here is that I can’t quote Freud or deploy Winnicott to direct us to work through this permeable crisis. This is a concern of the modern world that bereaves us of insight, yet also allows us the freedom to forge new ones. Some ongoing reflections in the praxis that are engaging with this crisis give ample ground to start this conversation. We need to re-engage with history, & the planned subversion of it. Our ruptured relationship with the non-human world speaks of a mass psychic withdrawal that one has not yet come to be acquainted with. While the paucity of natural habitat & living has become a new normal, if not a lavish tourism product, our conscious-unconscious relationship with it remains unformed. Simply speaking-what is the experience of breathing air that has forever been below average in AQI, on good days? Can we mourn or be anxious about the fact that the objects in the mirror are closer than they appear to be? For a long while the climate crisis made us feel like we’re in the Ice Age (movie), and that the crisis is in the far future. Can the clinic give language to the breakdown of these defences? Can, as therapist, we become curious about the resistance at large in addressing this issue? Can the existential be clinical? In her thoughtful paper, A Traumatized Sensibility on a Hotter Planet (2022), psychoanalyst Susan Kassouf speaks of the need to move away from denial and, rather than avoiding catastrophic thinking, actually develop a capacity towards catastrophic thinking. She suggests that speaking from our shared ‘climate trauma’ can cultivate a sensibility of relating, activism & resilience that, for now, seems like the only hope for psychic survival. So this is where I pause, hoping today would be less hot for those who don’t have the luxury to write about ‘how hot it is’. Whilst we write, read & reflect from a place of privilege, I’m unwaveringly certain

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