Participation cost: 50 NIS

*Conversation in English*

For more than four decades, Robert Stolloro (with his partner George Atwood) has been involved in the idea that psychoanalysis is a kind of phenomenological inquiry. This inquiry has far-reaching implications for the field of trauma. Influenced by the personal loss of his late wife Dede in 1991, he came to the realization that human existence is inherently traumatic. To protect ourselves from trauma, we create the illusion of protection and security. He uses a Heideggerian perspective to convey the idea that we are all traumatic even if we have not experienced difficult events. Because of our own finitude and that of our loved ones, trauma is built into the fabric of our existence. Every trauma brings us face to face with the traumatic dimension of finite human existence itself. The goal of psychological therapy is to integrate finitude into the fabric of life so that it need not be evaded by dissociation and other pathological defense mechanisms. In the therapeutic process, trauma becomes part of who we are and our world, instead of having to protect ourselves from it. The goal is not healing; the goal is integration.

In this conversation, Aner Guvrin and Sharon Ziv-Beiman will discuss with Robert Stoloro the implications of phenomenology for psychotherapy. Among the topics: How should the therapist deal with alienation and loss of meaning in traumatized patients? How does Stoloro propose to fully enter the patients' world and feel their suffering, and how does this process differ from Kohut's empathy? Should psychotherapists be open to the traumatic experiences they have gone through in order to help the patient undergo change? How can therapy help in the process of trauma integration?

Robert D. Stolorov, Ph.D

Member and supervising analyst at the Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles; founding faculty member at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity, New York; and clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine.

He is the author of

World, Affectivity, Trauma: Heidegger and Post-Cartesian Psychoanalysis (2011)

and of

Trauma and Human Existence: Autobiographical, Psychoanalytic, and Philosophical Reflections (2007),

Co-author of

The Power of Phenomenology: Psychoanalytic and Philosophical Perspectives (2018), Worlds of Experience: Interweaving Philosophical and Clinical Dimensions in Psychoanalysis (2002), Working Intersubjectively: Contextualism in Psychoanalytic Practice (1997), Contexts of Being: The Intersubjective Foundations of Psychological Life (1992), Psychoanalytic Treatment: An Intersubjective Approach (1987), Structures of Subjectivity: Explorations in Psychoanalytic Phenomenology and Contextualism (2014[1984], 2nd ed.), Psychoanalysis of Developmental Arrests: Theory and Treatment (1980),

and of

Faces in a Cloud: Intersubjectivity in Personality Theory (1993 [1979], 2nd ed.).

He has written alone and jointly more than 200 articles.

He holds degrees in both clinical psychology and psychoanalysis from the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP).

He received the prestigious Haskell Norman Prize for Excellence in Psychoanalysis from the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis in 2011,

And also in the award

the Hans W. Loewald Memorial Award from the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education in 2012.