A conversation with
Robert Stolorow

For more than four decades, Robert Stolorow (with his collaborator George Atwood ) has been engaged in the idea that psychoanalysis is a form of phenomenological inquiry. This inquiry is has profound implications in the realm of trauma. Influenced by the personal loss of his late wife Dede in 1991,  Stolorow, influenced by Martin Heidegger's philosophy, came to see that human existence, stripped of its sheltering illusions, is inherently traumatizing. He uses the Heideggerian perspective to convey the idea we are always already traumatized. Because of our finitude and the finitude of those we love, trauma is built into the structure of our existence. Even if we haven't been previously traumatized, any trauma brings us face to face with the traumatizing dimension of finite human existence itself. The goal of therapy is to integrate the trauma psychologically so that it doesn't have to be evaded by dissociative and other pathological defenses. Trauma becomes part of who one is and what one's world is, rather than having to be kept defensively sequestered. The goal is not recovery; the goal is integration.

In this conversation, Aner Govrin and Sharon Ziv-Beiman will discuss with Robert Stolorow the implications of phenomenology to psychotherapy. Among the subjects: How should the therapist cope with alienation and loss of meaning of traumatized patients? what does it mean to enter fully into the patient's world and feel her suffering, and how does it differ from Kohut's empathy? Do psychotherapists need to be open to their traumatic loss for the transformative experience to happen? How can we help the patient integrate her trauma?