Lynne Jacobs

This commentary on, “The Paranoid-Schizoid Position and Envious Attacks on the Black Other,” by Ebony Dennis, asserts that there are differences between hate and hatred. I discuss white hatred in terms of the chronic stress on white narcissistic adaptations in the face of the history of white dehumanization and erasure of black people.

Questo report fa riferimento alle intuizioni della psicoterapia della Gestalt contemporanea e della psicoanalisi intersoggettiva, per esaminare la relazione tra i sentimenti di speranza, paura e dignità all'interno di un processo terapeutico dialogico. Entrambe le scuole di pensiero enfa-tizzano la relazione tra speranza e paura nel processo dialog...

This report draws on insights from contemporary Gestalt therapy and intersubjective psychoanalysis to examine the relationship between the felt sense of hope, dread, and dignity in a dialogic therapeutic process. Both schools of thought emphasize the relationship of hope and dread in the dialogic process, and this report explores working how a sens...

ABSTRACT What follows is a version of the keynote address that I gave at the European Association of Gestalt Therapy (EAGT) conference in Budapest in September 2019. I was the caboose in a train of six keynote talks. I did not write a formal paper for the EAGT gathering. I mostly allowed my associative process to take me where it would. I wanted to...

Through thorough, well-documented study and precise argumentation, Brickman shows us how the developmental trajectory of psychoanalysis itself is rife with the racist assumptions that developed in the colonizing activities of Western Europe. She brings together the waters Freud swam in: Christianity, capitalism and colonialism, and demonstrates how...

The word dignity encompasses more than we can say of it. It is difficult to define, and yet we work with it every day in our offices. I explore various ideas about dignity, and then examine the place of dignity in the process of analysis and therapy. I draw out psychological components of dignity that are often strong themes in our psychoanalytic w...

Drawing on history, philosophy, and complexity thinking, I address some limitations and possibilities in our theory for tackling the thorny and stubborn problem posed by White-centeredness. Although this article is written largely with White U.S. culture in mind, that situation is a fulcrum for explorations of inclusion and exclusion more generally...

Developing a double-consciousness as a therapist changes the nature of Gestalt therapy dialogue subtly. It means that the dialogue is always occurring between people who are raced, who are placed in specific locations regarding power, privilege, and oppression. This article focuses on encouraging white therapists to practice living with double-cons...

In my response to Frie’s discussion of my article I extend my earlier analysis, focusing on the themes of intersectionality, advantage, and shame. I examine Frie’s own social locations and consider questions of advantage and shame in relation to his locations. I conclude by suggesting that awareness of being advantaged should include humility, comp...

The article describes how my privileged social-location in a White, middle-class suburb shaped my interest in unpacking White privilege and White blindness. I define and elaborate on the implications of one’s “social location.” In unpacking the influences from, and implications of, my social location, I describe the development of a clinical attitu...

This article addresses the issues of white-centeredness and racialization that are inherent in contemporary American society and culture. The aim is to develop a conceptual framework by which dominant culture therapists and analysts might sensitize themselves to the implications of their dominance in the therapeutic process. While racialization is...

Metaphor is a likely place for the meeting of that which is spoken and that which is not. This is so not just because it functions like poetry in its evocation of multiple layers of implication, but also because it is usually embodied speaking. Yet, often the body is forgotten by speaker and listener alike. When speech is understood as embodiment,...

In this brief Commentary, I point the reader to the eloquent, evocative experiential writings that are the forte of the Polsters. While providing some examples of such writing, I also point to a tendency to obscure theoretical contradictions.

In this brief Commentary, I point the reader to the eloquent, evocative experiential writings that are the forte of the Polsters. While providing some examples of such writing, I also point to a tendency to obscure theoretical contradictions.

The intersubjective field concept is a doorway to a dialogical sensibility. A dialogical attitude recognizes just how thoroughly and intimately any effort to understand another implicates both parties in the dialogue. The therapist's task is to engage in a dialogue that stands the greatest chance of enabling the therapist to understand how our pati...

Perhaps more than most psychological concepts, the concept of recognition is central to the most fundamental question: What does it mean to be human? Recognition underscores one of our basic ideas about being human; namely, that our selfhoods emerge from, are maintained within, and contribute to the shaping of our community of other human beings. H...

Our tales of trauma revolve around a serious head injury my analyst suffered, the disruption of his life, our analytic relationship, my treatment, and, finally, the recovery process in which we were both intimately engaged. This is a story about values in psychoanalysis and their intimate implication in the conduct of a successful analysis. It is a...

Dr. Rodin points to our papers as illustrative of the process of mutual development that probably inheres in any in-depth analytic process, and also how our papers illustrate in detail the interplay of mutuality and asymmetry in analysis, even in the most difficult of times. Dr. Rodin also raises very meaningful questions about ethical consideratio...

"Abstract: This paper undertakes to elaborate various understandings of'support', including its complexity, its emergent quality, its intimate interlrvining with creative adjustment, and its bidirectionality. Key words: support, context, creative adjustment, emergence, bi-directionality."

"Editor’s Note: In this article, which will be published in a collection of writing on relational issues applied to ethics, Lynne Jacobs, prominent Gestalt therapist and writer, develops a model of ethics which arises from examination of the field and context in which therapy takes place. She uses vivid examples from her own experience and clinical...

"Abstract: The following article is largely a stream-of-consciousness reflection on being a racially-conscious white therapist in racially divided America. It focuses specifically on working with African-American patients, addressing such themes as white anxiety, white skin privilege, lack of awareness of whiteness as a socio-political power constr...

"Editor's Note: Lynne Jacobs describes how entering and then participating in therapeutic dialogue as a patient is full of potentially shaming experiences. The patient may feel he/she is a 'second class person', easily wounded inadvertently by the therapist who (of course) also has his/her own 'she triggers'. The author reports briefly on three of...

I see self psychology and intersubjectivity theory influencing gestalt therapy mainly in two areas. They reinforce and enrich our developmental perspective on psychopathology and therapy, and they enrich our understanding of contacting, its phenomenology, its psychic function, and its vicissitudes in the therapy process. Assimilating the newer psyc...