Sarah Ackerman
Biographic Data
| ID | 4055225 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sarah Ackerman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sarah |
| FAMILY NAME | Ackerman |
| SIGNATURE | ACKERMAN S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6833-2402 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Breadth psychology
Freudian psychoanalysis holds a conception of personhood in which patients are divided by a conflict between their outward presentation and their hidden, inner turmoil. The Freudian analyst too is split, occupying a position within the patient's internal dialogue while also listening in from outside of it. Addressing the analyst as both self and other, the patient's confidentiality is necessarily preserved but also inherently violated. As digital…
Lacan In America
Thanatos
Freud’s Red Thread
The concept of an “unconscious sense of guilt” bedevils Freud throughout his life, rearing its head in at least twenty-four of his major works and working behind the scenes in many others. In a sense, we can see Freud’s oeuvre, and psychoanalysis more generally, as a discourse of unconscious guilt. While Freud frames the oedipus complex as the central defining dynamic of human experience, the unconscious sense of guilt is arguably the underbelly …
The Analyst’s Desire
When it comes to psychoanalysis, it sometimes feels as if everything there is to say has already been written. Many of us need to write to gain a distance from which to appraise our work, but few o
Fred Pine
A Diagnosis for Psychoanalysis in the 21 st Century
This paper assesses the history of psychoanalysis in the United States in order to inform a “professional memoir” of the author’s experience of analytic training in the 21st Century. The mix of historical and personal landscapes supports a contention that there is something missing or lost in American psychoanalysis, that psychoanalysis has lost sight of the radical and subversive nature of unconscious processes. I argue that only by returning to…
Impossible Ethics
The proper practice of psychoanalysis repudiates a rule-based code of ethical conduct. A conflict exists, however, between Freud’s rejection of the Biblical commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself and his development of psychoanalytic techniques that demand something very much of this ilk. Other essential conflicts in analytic practice include the impossibility of removing the analyst’s desire from the analytic relationship, the unruly natu…
I May Allow Myself to do This”
An autobiographical interpretation of latent meanings in Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams is undertaken in order to explore oedipal themes in Freud’s writing and their role in his resistance to writing the book. By looking at how the book performs its message, in presenting a collection of Freud’s personal dreams that talk to each other and inspire meaning-making, we can see how readers are drawn into the role of interpreters/analysts. This proce…
(How) Can We Write about Our Patients
The ethical underpinnings of writing about patients are explored, the question of how best to undertake the writing of case reports being subordinated to a more general question about the ethics of choosing how or whether to write. An unsolvable paradox is encountered here: that we need to write or speak about our clinical work in order to conceptualize and understand the work we are doing, but that in the very gesture of doing so, we are breakin…
Reading Beyond The Interpretation of Dreams
Exploring Freud’s Resistance to The Oceanic Feeling
This paper takes up Romain Rolland’s description of a nearly universal “oceanic feeling” and considers Freud’s avowed disinterest in this concept. Herman Melville elaborates and expands the concept of the oceanic in the text of Moby Dick, juxtaposing Ishmael’s oceanic reverie while up high on the masthead with Ahab’s focused determination to destroy Moby Dick. Melville’s extension of the concept recasts the oceanic as an aspect of Freud’s recomme…
Is Infant Research Useful in Clinical Work With Adults
Impossible Ethics
The proper practice of psychoanalysis repudiates a rule-based code of ethical conduct. A conflict exists, however, between Freud’s rejection of the Biblical commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself and his development of psychoanalytic techniques that demand something very much of this ilk. Other essential conflicts in analytic practice include the impossibility of removing the analyst’s desire from the analytic relationship, the unruly natu…
Exploring Freud’s Resistance to The Oceanic Feeling
This paper takes up Romain Rolland’s description of a nearly universal “oceanic feeling” and considers Freud’s avowed disinterest in this concept. Herman Melville elaborates and expands the concept of the oceanic in the text of Moby Dick, juxtaposing Ishmael’s oceanic reverie while up high on the masthead with Ahab’s focused determination to destroy Moby Dick. Melville’s extension of the concept recasts the oceanic as an aspect of Freud’s recomme…
I May Allow Myself to do This”
An autobiographical interpretation of latent meanings in Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams is undertaken in order to explore oedipal themes in Freud’s writing and their role in his resistance to writing the book. By looking at how the book performs its message, in presenting a collection of Freud’s personal dreams that talk to each other and inspire meaning-making, we can see how readers are drawn into the role of interpreters/analysts. This proce…
Thanatos
A Diagnosis for Psychoanalysis in the 21 st Century
This paper assesses the history of psychoanalysis in the United States in order to inform a “professional memoir” of the author’s experience of analytic training in the 21st Century. The mix of historical and personal landscapes supports a contention that there is something missing or lost in American psychoanalysis, that psychoanalysis has lost sight of the radical and subversive nature of unconscious processes. I argue that only by returning to…
(How) Can We Write about Our Patients
The ethical underpinnings of writing about patients are explored, the question of how best to undertake the writing of case reports being subordinated to a more general question about the ethics of choosing how or whether to write. An unsolvable paradox is encountered here: that we need to write or speak about our clinical work in order to conceptualize and understand the work we are doing, but that in the very gesture of doing so, we are breakin…
Reading Beyond The Interpretation of Dreams
Is Infant Research Useful in Clinical Work With Adults
Exploring Freud’s Resistance to The Oceanic Feeling
This paper takes up Romain Rolland’s description of a nearly universal “oceanic feeling” and considers Freud’s avowed disinterest in this concept. Herman Melville elaborates and expands the concept of the oceanic in the text of Moby Dick, juxtaposing Ishmael’s oceanic reverie while up high on the masthead with Ahab’s focused determination to destroy Moby Dick. Melville’s extension of the concept recasts the oceanic as an aspect of Freud’s recomme…
(How) Can We Write about Our Patients
The ethical underpinnings of writing about patients are explored, the question of how best to undertake the writing of case reports being subordinated to a more general question about the ethics of choosing how or whether to write. An unsolvable paradox is encountered here: that we need to write or speak about our clinical work in order to conceptualize and understand the work we are doing, but that in the very gesture of doing so, we are breakin…
Reading Beyond The Interpretation of Dreams
I May Allow Myself to do This”
An autobiographical interpretation of latent meanings in Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams is undertaken in order to explore oedipal themes in Freud’s writing and their role in his resistance to writing the book. By looking at how the book performs its message, in presenting a collection of Freud’s personal dreams that talk to each other and inspire meaning-making, we can see how readers are drawn into the role of interpreters/analysts. This proce…
A Diagnosis for Psychoanalysis in the 21 st Century
This paper assesses the history of psychoanalysis in the United States in order to inform a “professional memoir” of the author’s experience of analytic training in the 21st Century. The mix of historical and personal landscapes supports a contention that there is something missing or lost in American psychoanalysis, that psychoanalysis has lost sight of the radical and subversive nature of unconscious processes. I argue that only by returning to…
Impossible Ethics
The proper practice of psychoanalysis repudiates a rule-based code of ethical conduct. A conflict exists, however, between Freud’s rejection of the Biblical commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself and his development of psychoanalytic techniques that demand something very much of this ilk. Other essential conflicts in analytic practice include the impossibility of removing the analyst’s desire from the analytic relationship, the unruly natu…
The Analyst’s Desire
When it comes to psychoanalysis, it sometimes feels as if everything there is to say has already been written. Many of us need to write to gain a distance from which to appraise our work, but few o
Fred Pine
Lacan In America
Thanatos
Freud’s Red Thread
The concept of an “unconscious sense of guilt” bedevils Freud throughout his life, rearing its head in at least twenty-four of his major works and working behind the scenes in many others. In a sense, we can see Freud’s oeuvre, and psychoanalysis more generally, as a discourse of unconscious guilt. While Freud frames the oedipus complex as the central defining dynamic of human experience, the unconscious sense of guilt is arguably the underbelly …
Breadth psychology
Freudian psychoanalysis holds a conception of personhood in which patients are divided by a conflict between their outward presentation and their hidden, inner turmoil. The Freudian analyst too is split, occupying a position within the patient's internal dialogue while also listening in from outside of it. Addressing the analyst as both self and other, the patient's confidentiality is necessarily preserved but also inherently violated. As digital…
Psychology (12 works) · Psychoanalysis (9 works) · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications (9 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Psychoanalytic theory (7 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics (4 works) · Countertransference (3 works)