Ellen Pinsky
Biographic Data
| ID | 4055268 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ellen Pinsky |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ellen |
| FAMILY NAME | Pinsky |
| SIGNATURE | PINSKY E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Candidate, Boston Psychoanalytic Institute. |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 15 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Driven to Write
In this essay, I tell my personal experience of my therapist’s sudden death, linking that stunning loss to my development as a writer, and also to a subject long-neglected: the analyst’s mortality. The profession’s striking evasion compounded my need to understand what the loss could mean in relation to psychoanalysis itself. Practical and ethical contradictions within our discipline can be represented by the double meaning of “mortal:” The analy…
Response to “On
"Response to “On: Letter from Boston”." The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 97(1), p. 179
Traumatic Ruptures
(2015). Traumatic Ruptures: Abandonment and Betrayal in the Analytic Relationship. Edited by Robin A. Deutsch. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly: Vol. 84, No. 4, pp. 1023-1031
Letter from Boston
Mortality, Integrity, and Psychoanalysis (Who Are You to Me? Who Am I to You?)
The author narrates her experience of mourning her therapist's sudden death. The profession has neglected implications of the analyst's mortality: what is lost or vulnerable to loss? What is that vulnerability's function? The author's process of mourning included her writing and her becoming an analyst. Both pursuits inspired reflections on mortality in two overlapping senses: bodily (the analyst is mortal and can die) and character (the analyst …
The Potion
This essay treats Freud’s “Observations on Transference-Love,” written a hundred years ago, as the quintessential psychoanalytic document, defining the clinical setup, charting its dangers, and providing ethical precepts for guiding treatment. Above all, in the context of those ethical questions, Freud’s paper confronts the immense power and necessary strangeness of the transference—that form of love, or erotic bond, that fuels the healing proces…
Physic Himself Must Fade
Physic Himself Must Fade: A View of the Therapeutic Offering through the Lens of Mortality Ellen Pinsky (bio) On love, on grief, on every human thing, Time sprinkles Lethe’s water with his wing. —Walter Savage Landor I did dispute the pessimistic poet’s view that the transience of what is beautiful involves any loss in its worth. On the contrary, an increase! Transience value is scarcity value in time. —Sigmund Freud (1916 [1915], p. 305) I No so…
The Olympian Delusion
Loewald Panel
Mortal Gifts
The absence of theoretical and practical provisions for the patient whose therapist dies or becomes seriously ill reflects underlying problems regarding termination. Therapy is unique among human intimacies in that its goal is separation, a paradox that informs both the near-silence of early termination theory and the confusion in more recent writing. The therapist's emotional involvement must be understood through the therapeutic relationship as…
The Olympian Delusion
Physic Himself Must Fade
Physic Himself Must Fade: A View of the Therapeutic Offering through the Lens of Mortality Ellen Pinsky (bio) On love, on grief, on every human thing, Time sprinkles Lethe’s water with his wing. —Walter Savage Landor I did dispute the pessimistic poet’s view that the transience of what is beautiful involves any loss in its worth. On the contrary, an increase! Transience value is scarcity value in time. —Sigmund Freud (1916 [1915], p. 305) I No so…
Loewald Panel
Mortality, Integrity, and Psychoanalysis (Who Are You to Me? Who Am I to You?)
The author narrates her experience of mourning her therapist's sudden death. The profession has neglected implications of the analyst's mortality: what is lost or vulnerable to loss? What is that vulnerability's function? The author's process of mourning included her writing and her becoming an analyst. Both pursuits inspired reflections on mortality in two overlapping senses: bodily (the analyst is mortal and can die) and character (the analyst …
The Potion
This essay treats Freud’s “Observations on Transference-Love,” written a hundred years ago, as the quintessential psychoanalytic document, defining the clinical setup, charting its dangers, and providing ethical precepts for guiding treatment. Above all, in the context of those ethical questions, Freud’s paper confronts the immense power and necessary strangeness of the transference—that form of love, or erotic bond, that fuels the healing proces…
Mortal Gifts
The absence of theoretical and practical provisions for the patient whose therapist dies or becomes seriously ill reflects underlying problems regarding termination. Therapy is unique among human intimacies in that its goal is separation, a paradox that informs both the near-silence of early termination theory and the confusion in more recent writing. The therapist's emotional involvement must be understood through the therapeutic relationship as…
Loewald Panel
The Olympian Delusion
Physic Himself Must Fade
Physic Himself Must Fade: A View of the Therapeutic Offering through the Lens of Mortality Ellen Pinsky (bio) On love, on grief, on every human thing, Time sprinkles Lethe’s water with his wing. —Walter Savage Landor I did dispute the pessimistic poet’s view that the transience of what is beautiful involves any loss in its worth. On the contrary, an increase! Transience value is scarcity value in time. —Sigmund Freud (1916 [1915], p. 305) I No so…
Mortality, Integrity, and Psychoanalysis (Who Are You to Me? Who Am I to You?)
The author narrates her experience of mourning her therapist's sudden death. The profession has neglected implications of the analyst's mortality: what is lost or vulnerable to loss? What is that vulnerability's function? The author's process of mourning included her writing and her becoming an analyst. Both pursuits inspired reflections on mortality in two overlapping senses: bodily (the analyst is mortal and can die) and character (the analyst …
The Potion
This essay treats Freud’s “Observations on Transference-Love,” written a hundred years ago, as the quintessential psychoanalytic document, defining the clinical setup, charting its dangers, and providing ethical precepts for guiding treatment. Above all, in the context of those ethical questions, Freud’s paper confronts the immense power and necessary strangeness of the transference—that form of love, or erotic bond, that fuels the healing proces…
Traumatic Ruptures
(2015). Traumatic Ruptures: Abandonment and Betrayal in the Analytic Relationship. Edited by Robin A. Deutsch. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly: Vol. 84, No. 4, pp. 1023-1031
Letter from Boston
Response to “On
"Response to “On: Letter from Boston”." The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 97(1), p. 179
Driven to Write
In this essay, I tell my personal experience of my therapist’s sudden death, linking that stunning loss to my development as a writer, and also to a subject long-neglected: the analyst’s mortality. The profession’s striking evasion compounded my need to understand what the loss could mean in relation to psychoanalysis itself. Practical and ethical contradictions within our discipline can be represented by the double meaning of “mortal:” The analy…
Psychoanalysis (10 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications (6 works) · Law (3 works) · Psychoanalytic theory (3 works) · Psychotherapist (3 works) · Sociology (3 works) · Abandonment (legal) (2 works) · Aesthetics (2 works) · Computer Science (2 works)