A conversation with American psychoanalyst Mel Slavin, one of the leaders of the relational movement. We invite you to join the third Zoom event in our series Here and Now – Conversations with Leaders in Psychotherapy. In this session, Dr. Aner Govrin and Dr. Sharon Ziv Beyman will discuss with Dr. Malcolm Slavin questions such as: Why should the patient feel that the therapist is changing during the course of therapy, how does the therapist's personal stance on the finitude of life shape the way he gives renewed meaning to the patient's life story, and how do our patients explore the way we as therapists experience their anxiety, pain, and anger around common human issues of connection and loss?

What distinguishes Malcolm Selwyn's relational thinking is his way of looking at clinical questions in the broadest human terms. He tends to think of the clinical encounter not in terms of failure or regression, but as a vital encounter between the patient and therapist's responses to universal issues, including the relationship to death, self, and others. The central questions that stand out throughout his writings are: Why is giving meaning so essential to human existence? How do significant moments in the therapeutic encounter enable movement and change in the patient's coping with fundamental issues of life?

“Like any two strangers, therapists and patients operate from very different and, to some extent, almost always conflicting subjective worlds, needs, worldviews, and ultimately, interests,” Slavin and Kriegman write. “Often, their interests will inevitably clash… Analytical traditions mistakenly attribute conflict between therapist and patient to drive conflicts, referential failures, or a perfect mismatch of the therapist to the patient’s needs. Instead, we believe that the differences ultimately arise from genuine conflicts of interest.” (Slavin and Kriegman, 1998, 251).

Malcolm Owen Slavin, PhD, is the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Psychoanalysis (MIP) where he is a teacher, instructor, and past president. He is on the faculty of psychoanalytic institutes worldwide, a director of the IARPP, the International Association for Referential Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, and the International Council for Psychoanalytic Self-Psychology (IAPSP).

Mel is an associate editor of:

Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Contemporary Psychoanalysis.

His first book (with Daniel Kurgman) was:

"The Adaptive Design of the Human Psyche: Psychoanalysis, Evolutionary Biology and the Therapeutic Process."

His book :

"Original Loss: Grieving Existential Trauma in Art and the Art of Psychoanalysis" (Routledge)

is about to be published by Routledge and examines how art and psychoanalysis help us deal with existential trauma. Mel is currently working on a collection of essays called

"Why the Analyst Needs to Change"

A title taken from his previous work with the same name.