Exploring connections between mourning, depression and the internal world

Watch Rael Meyerowitz explore new territory via an analyses of Sigmund Freud’s late writings. Rael Meyerowitz is a visiting lecturer and former psychotherapist in our Adult Complex Needs team. Rael’s presented ‘Freud’s Final Phase: Deconstructions in Analysis?’ for our July Trust Scientific Meeting

Our Trust Scientific Meetings are monthly lectures where leading academics and clinicians present a paper or case study on their area of expertise for discussion. The papers cover wide ranging areas, from concrete lessons in clinical praxis to psychoanalytic analyses of issues in society. Past experts have presented on trauma, group relations conferences, diversity in talking therapies, and gender. All our staff, students and alumni are invited to attend the meetings. Members of our Library and Tavistock Society of Psychotherapists (TSP) members can access the recordings via the library.

Rael Meyerowitz recently published the book Mourning and Metabolization: Close Readings in the Psychoanalytic Literature of Loss, drawing upon extensive research and his background in literary criticism. In his Trust Scientific Meeting Rael explored the connections between mourning, depression, and the internal world via the bodily metaphor of metabolization and delved into new territory by focusing on Sigmund Freud’s later texts, with a particular focus on Constructions in analysis (1937). Through an analysis of Freud’s metaphors and analogies in Constructions in analysis, Rael explored the distinction between material and historical truth and its potential parallels with concepts outlined in his book.

Staff, students and TSP and library members can watch the recording of Rael’s lecture to gain new perspectives on Freud’s final phase, and its influence on mourning and recovery.

This Trust Scientific Meeting was Chaired by Hiroshi Amino, convenor for the Trust Scientific Meeting series and Consultant Medical Psychotherapist and Head of the Adult Complex Needs Service at the Trust.

Attendees of the talk said:

“Thinking like this, and listening to people think psychoanalytically, is rare and so insightful and helpful necessary.”

“A fascinating and very helpful paper, that captured what feels to me a very important concept … the process that is ‘worked through’ in the paper is perhaps as (or more) important than the content of what is being written-about. This perhaps reflects the process of therapy/analysis. Metabolization seems a very apt way to think about this. Much to think about, thank you!”

“Fascinating talk, great reminder, and update, on the thinking around Freud’s ideas.”

Interested in hearing about other Trust Scientific Meetings?

Trust Scientific Meetings typically take place on the second Monday of the month, 11.30am until 1pm. Our next Trust Scientific Meeting will be taking place in September, after the summer academic break. Dr Sean Junor-Sheppard, Principal Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist and Child Psychotherapy Discipline Lead for NCCT, will be presenting on ‘The Meaning of Race in the Transference and Counter-transference’.

Current staff and students will be notified of the meeting details via regular communications. Members of our Alumni Society will also have meeting details emailed to them. If you are a graduate of one of our long-courses you can sign up to join the Tavistock and Portman Alumni Society.

Recordings from past Trust Scientific Meetings can be found on our library website for members of the library, TSP, staff and students.