Robert Tyminski
Biographic Data
| ID | 4494482 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert Tyminski |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert |
| FAMILY NAME | Tyminski |
| SIGNATURE | TYMINSKI R |
| AFFILIATIONS | SAN FRANCISCO |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6324-8052 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 30 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Looking at Mosaics in the Alhambra
The author describes a recent visit to the Alhambra—a complex built over centuries during Islamic rule in the Iberian peninsula. This culminated in the Nasrid empire (1232–1492), based in Granada where the Alhambra is located; the armies of Ferdinand and Isabella completed the reconquest of all of Spain in 1492. The Alhambra presents an amazing window into Islamic architecture. Its mosaics are especially interesting for their complicated geometri…
Perimeters That Shape Who We Are
This article explores the use of the term boundaries within psychoanalytic theories and suggests a more inclusive word perimeters to reflect many of the clinical quandaries seen in contemporary analytic practice. The history of the concept of boundaries is reviewed with attention to how vaguely it has often been understood. Sometimes, it has referred to an interface between internal and external realities, and at other times, it has referred to s…
Response to Marchiano, Papert and Withers
Teenagers Falling Down a Rabbit Hole
This article looks at the contemporary phenomenon of adolescents and children spending increasing amounts of their time on screens. Some of this was accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is a way to conceptualize what happens when someone goes down a rabbit hole, becoming lost online. Usually, it is more of a nightmare than just a bad dream. The psychological effects can include a pull toward magical thinki…
Looking at Botticelli
The author writes about the recent exhibition of Botticelli’s art, primarily focused on his drawings, that was presented at the San Francisco Legion of Honor. Botticelli lived in Florence during the Early Italian Renaissance. A brief overview of Botticelli’s life and his times is provided. Although he was well regarded as an artist during his lifetime, his art was largely forgotten for nearly four hundred years. Botticelli’s reputation grew durin…
Looking at Vermeer
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam held a major exhibition of the artwork of Johannes Vermeer from February 10 to June 4, 2023. Twenty-eight of his paintings were gathered in one place, the largest exhibition ever of his oeuvre. The author not only went to this exhibition but also traveled to Vermeer’s hometown of Delft where the artist spent almost his entire life. In addition to reviewing the design and layout of the exhibition as well as the art sho…
Humanizing Different Archetypal Expressions of Gender Expansiveness 1
This article explores the concept of gender expansiveness. This term refers to a person's self-identifying as gender fluid, genderqueer, transgender, non-binary, gender diverse, or gender nonconforming. Young people, including older children and adolescents, increasingly are experimenting with crossing gender lines. This trend can be understood as a sociocultural process for humanizing more terrifying archetypal forms of gender diversity. Using H…
Diva
Diva was a French film released to European audiences in 1981 and American ones in 1982. Directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix, this film comes from the 1970s cinéma du look movement that used striking imagery to portray social outsiders and express their alienation from society. This article summarizes the film, its characters, cinematography, and innovative musical score by Vladimir Cosma. Recurring motifs in the film emphasize a tenuous fragmentati…
Back to the future
Analysts and psychotherapists are beginning to have more thorough and probing discussions about how the COVID‐19 pandemic has affected their work. Shifting to online teletherapy has been necessary due to the public health measures put in place to curtail the spread of the virus. Much of the existing literature addresses how using online platforms for teletherapy works for adults. This paper instead looks at its effects on working with children an…
Case response I
The Psychological Effects of Immigrating
Adolescents coping with the Covid‐19 pandemic
COVID-19 has upended the way analysts and psychotherapists practice. Many use the phone for their sessions, many are using video platforms, and many use a combination of the two. Work with adolescents is very challenging in this new modality because of the loss of in-person connection and immediate non-verbal cues. The public health restrictions put in place to manage COVID-19 spread are at odds with the adolescent tasks of adventuring, experimen…
Is Identity a Fiction
To what degree is identity illusory, even somewhat dreamlike? This article follows that thread, developing it through experiences related to being a refugee as well as a foreigner. Usually, these life events mean crossing various perimeters, not only borders but also perimeters of culture, language, legal status, social norms, and much more. These perimeters can be used to define us; however, this often results in a felt loss of a person’s indivi…
Apocalyptic themes in times of trouble
Boys and young men more frequently live out aspects of their psychic and social alienation online. This paper explores some of the risks and dangers that can arise from retreats into the two-dimensional world of cyberspace. It focuses more specifically on videogaming called MOBA, multi-player online battle arena games, in which players point and shoot at others. A case example emphasizes the clinical problems emerging from violent fantasies that …
Just black sometimes’, part 2
In this second article about work at a refugee centre for unaccompanied minors in Berlin, the author discusses his encounter with Syrian and Afghani adolescents who were enrolled in the program. Issues around adaptation to a new culture are explored with attention to the dynamics of conformity and marginalization. The questions of what happens to adolescent refugees separated from their families, and how their identity formation is shaped by this…
Just black sometimes’
Analysts are increasingly grappling with making space for the discussion of turbulent and disturbing current events in their practices. This social disorder raises questions about the role of social activism and advocacy for groups suffering discrimination, persecution, violence, and displacement. Jung too commented on the immediacy of political happenings that show up in our practices with 'violence'. The author discusses an organizational consu…
Male Alienation at the Crossroads of Identity, Culture and Cyberspace
I’m broken." When a boy or man says this, he is expressing deep alienation from himself and the world. Something’s wrong, and he usually cannot begin to explain why. What brings boys and men into psychotherapy or analysis? Many of them struggle with access to their inner worlds. Experiences of alienation can lead to destructive and self-destructive behaviors, including addiction and violence. This book explores the reasons for this and considers …
Robert Tyminski on Political Life
“Damn politics!” My father, Frank Tyminski, made this remark more times than I could ever remember.From the mid 1960s to the late 1970s, he was a councilman in the town of Salina, outside Syracuse
Journal reviews
Lost in (cyber)space
This article explores the intense psychological effects of compulsive Internet use, which has become increasingly common among adolescent boys and young men. Two cases are presented and discussed to illustrate some of the psychic distortions around thinking and feeling, as these occurred in the analysis of a mid-adolescent boy and of another patient in later adolescence. A kind of narcissistic omnipotence grounded in magical thinking appeared to …
Not Just About Time
Joseph Cambray's book on synchronicity, Synchronicity: Nature & Psyche in an Interconnected Universe, gives a detailed, excellent review of Jung's definition and theory of this concept. The book provides many historical insights that demonstrate how Jung's thinking evolved and how it relates to the fields of physics, chemistry, and psychology as well as medieval alchemy. Cambray shows readers the philosophical and scientific contexts in which Jun…
The Medea Complex—Myth and Modern Manifestation
The Medea complex refers to a disturbed mother-child relationship with obvious destructive aspects, and it evokes a central theme that Jung articulated in his writing about the Terrible Mother. The best-known story of Medea is based on the mythical figure portrayed in Euripides's fifth-century BCE play. The complex, as well as this story, includes elements of betrayal, abandonment, stealing, and vengeance directed at helpless children. Two case e…
The Psychology of Theft and Loss
Why do we steal? This question has confounded everyone from parents to judges, teachers to psychologists, economists to more than a few moral thinkers. Stealing can be a result of deprivation, of envy, or of a desire for power and influence. An act of theft can also bring forth someone’s hidden traits – paradoxically proving beneficial to their personal development. Robert Tyminski explores the many dimensions of stealing, and in particular how t…
Psychology of Theft and Loss
Problems with that Reflection in the Mirror
This article reviews Eros and the Shattering Gaze: Transcending Narcissism by Kenneth A. Kimmel. Using a phenomenological approach, the author combines myth, folktales, Biblical stories, film, and clinical vignettes to offer a variety of perspectives on the problem of masculine narcissism. He divides his book into three sections: the hopeless romantic, a predatory use of relationships, and the deconstructing of an armored selfhood through encount…
Male Alienation at the Crossroads of Identity, Culture and Cyberspace
I’m broken." When a boy or man says this, he is expressing deep alienation from himself and the world. Something’s wrong, and he usually cannot begin to explain why. What brings boys and men into psychotherapy or analysis? Many of them struggle with access to their inner worlds. Experiences of alienation can lead to destructive and self-destructive behaviors, including addiction and violence. This book explores the reasons for this and considers …
The week the couch arrived
Changes in the therapeutic environment can elicit intense and unpredictable responses from patients, who then react to the new elements with their own unique thoughts, fantasies, emotions and behaviours. When the change is very specific, and when it entails implications for the treatment itself, these patient responses can coalesce around more profound experiences of the transference as well as of the countertransference. The author, as a candida…
Adolescents coping with the Covid‐19 pandemic
COVID-19 has upended the way analysts and psychotherapists practice. Many use the phone for their sessions, many are using video platforms, and many use a combination of the two. Work with adolescents is very challenging in this new modality because of the loss of in-person connection and immediate non-verbal cues. The public health restrictions put in place to manage COVID-19 spread are at odds with the adolescent tasks of adventuring, experimen…
Just black sometimes’
Analysts are increasingly grappling with making space for the discussion of turbulent and disturbing current events in their practices. This social disorder raises questions about the role of social activism and advocacy for groups suffering discrimination, persecution, violence, and displacement. Jung too commented on the immediacy of political happenings that show up in our practices with 'violence'. The author discusses an organizational consu…
Humanizing Different Archetypal Expressions of Gender Expansiveness 1
This article explores the concept of gender expansiveness. This term refers to a person's self-identifying as gender fluid, genderqueer, transgender, non-binary, gender diverse, or gender nonconforming. Young people, including older children and adolescents, increasingly are experimenting with crossing gender lines. This trend can be understood as a sociocultural process for humanizing more terrifying archetypal forms of gender diversity. Using H…
Apocalyptic themes in times of trouble
Boys and young men more frequently live out aspects of their psychic and social alienation online. This paper explores some of the risks and dangers that can arise from retreats into the two-dimensional world of cyberspace. It focuses more specifically on videogaming called MOBA, multi-player online battle arena games, in which players point and shoot at others. A case example emphasizes the clinical problems emerging from violent fantasies that …
Just black sometimes’, part 2
In this second article about work at a refugee centre for unaccompanied minors in Berlin, the author discusses his encounter with Syrian and Afghani adolescents who were enrolled in the program. Issues around adaptation to a new culture are explored with attention to the dynamics of conformity and marginalization. The questions of what happens to adolescent refugees separated from their families, and how their identity formation is shaped by this…
Lost in (cyber)space
This article explores the intense psychological effects of compulsive Internet use, which has become increasingly common among adolescent boys and young men. Two cases are presented and discussed to illustrate some of the psychic distortions around thinking and feeling, as these occurred in the analysis of a mid-adolescent boy and of another patient in later adolescence. A kind of narcissistic omnipotence grounded in magical thinking appeared to …
The week the couch arrived
Changes in the therapeutic environment can elicit intense and unpredictable responses from patients, who then react to the new elements with their own unique thoughts, fantasies, emotions and behaviours. When the change is very specific, and when it entails implications for the treatment itself, these patient responses can coalesce around more profound experiences of the transference as well as of the countertransference. The author, as a candida…
Frames of Mind
Eva C. Ihle and Robert F. Tyminski , “Frames of Mind, “Jung Journal, Summer 2007, 1:3, 67-74. Review of Margaret Wilkinson, Coming into Mind: The Mind-Brain Relationship: a Jungian Clinical Perspective, Hove, UK, Routledge, 2006. In this book Wilkinson examines findings in neuroscience as they apply to analytical psychology. Ihle and Tyminski consider Wilkinson’s writing from the standpoints of neuroscientist-clinician and of analyst-clinician. E…
Fleeced
The story of Jason and the Argonauts begins against a background of family treachery, describes a quest to resolve this betrayal, and ends with the filicidal Medea back in Greece. For Jason, the Golden Fleece symbolizes a perfect object that will complete his life. The pursuit of perfection suggests parallels to problems of addiction and compulsion. This journey for the Golden Fleece mirrors an addict’s craving for the perfect experience. Jason, …
Transference Flows in Waves on Water
This film review discusses the Israeli-German coproduction of Walk on Water. A comparison is drawn between the relationship that develops between the two main characters and the relationship that emerges in therapy. A discussion of the two characters' projections onto one another also reveals how transference and countertransference flow at the edges of our similarities and differences. This film, along with its seductive musical score, stands al…
The Substrate of Transformation in Psychotherapy and Analysis
The author reviews Margaret Wilkinson’s latest book, Changing Minds in Therapy: Emotion, Attachment, Trauma & Neurobiology. Wilkinson skillfully incorporates a wealth of knowledge and recent neuroscience research with useful and thought-provoking applications for clinical practice. She highlights the central importance of the brain’s right hemisphere for emotional processes, implicit memory, and relationships. Her ‘double helix’ model of treatmen…
Problems with that Reflection in the Mirror
This article reviews Eros and the Shattering Gaze: Transcending Narcissism by Kenneth A. Kimmel. Using a phenomenological approach, the author combines myth, folktales, Biblical stories, film, and clinical vignettes to offer a variety of perspectives on the problem of masculine narcissism. He divides his book into three sections: the hopeless romantic, a predatory use of relationships, and the deconstructing of an armored selfhood through encount…
Not Just About Time
Joseph Cambray's book on synchronicity, Synchronicity: Nature & Psyche in an Interconnected Universe, gives a detailed, excellent review of Jung's definition and theory of this concept. The book provides many historical insights that demonstrate how Jung's thinking evolved and how it relates to the fields of physics, chemistry, and psychology as well as medieval alchemy. Cambray shows readers the philosophical and scientific contexts in which Jun…
The Medea Complex—Myth and Modern Manifestation
The Medea complex refers to a disturbed mother-child relationship with obvious destructive aspects, and it evokes a central theme that Jung articulated in his writing about the Terrible Mother. The best-known story of Medea is based on the mythical figure portrayed in Euripides's fifth-century BCE play. The complex, as well as this story, includes elements of betrayal, abandonment, stealing, and vengeance directed at helpless children. Two case e…
The Psychology of Theft and Loss
Why do we steal? This question has confounded everyone from parents to judges, teachers to psychologists, economists to more than a few moral thinkers. Stealing can be a result of deprivation, of envy, or of a desire for power and influence. An act of theft can also bring forth someone’s hidden traits – paradoxically proving beneficial to their personal development. Robert Tyminski explores the many dimensions of stealing, and in particular how t…
Psychology of Theft and Loss
Lost in (cyber)space
This article explores the intense psychological effects of compulsive Internet use, which has become increasingly common among adolescent boys and young men. Two cases are presented and discussed to illustrate some of the psychic distortions around thinking and feeling, as these occurred in the analysis of a mid-adolescent boy and of another patient in later adolescence. A kind of narcissistic omnipotence grounded in magical thinking appeared to …
Journal reviews
Robert Tyminski on Political Life
“Damn politics!” My father, Frank Tyminski, made this remark more times than I could ever remember.From the mid 1960s to the late 1970s, he was a councilman in the town of Salina, outside Syracuse
Just black sometimes’
Analysts are increasingly grappling with making space for the discussion of turbulent and disturbing current events in their practices. This social disorder raises questions about the role of social activism and advocacy for groups suffering discrimination, persecution, violence, and displacement. Jung too commented on the immediacy of political happenings that show up in our practices with 'violence'. The author discusses an organizational consu…
Male Alienation at the Crossroads of Identity, Culture and Cyberspace
I’m broken." When a boy or man says this, he is expressing deep alienation from himself and the world. Something’s wrong, and he usually cannot begin to explain why. What brings boys and men into psychotherapy or analysis? Many of them struggle with access to their inner worlds. Experiences of alienation can lead to destructive and self-destructive behaviors, including addiction and violence. This book explores the reasons for this and considers …
Just black sometimes’, part 2
In this second article about work at a refugee centre for unaccompanied minors in Berlin, the author discusses his encounter with Syrian and Afghani adolescents who were enrolled in the program. Issues around adaptation to a new culture are explored with attention to the dynamics of conformity and marginalization. The questions of what happens to adolescent refugees separated from their families, and how their identity formation is shaped by this…
Is Identity a Fiction
To what degree is identity illusory, even somewhat dreamlike? This article follows that thread, developing it through experiences related to being a refugee as well as a foreigner. Usually, these life events mean crossing various perimeters, not only borders but also perimeters of culture, language, legal status, social norms, and much more. These perimeters can be used to define us; however, this often results in a felt loss of a person’s indivi…
Apocalyptic themes in times of trouble
Boys and young men more frequently live out aspects of their psychic and social alienation online. This paper explores some of the risks and dangers that can arise from retreats into the two-dimensional world of cyberspace. It focuses more specifically on videogaming called MOBA, multi-player online battle arena games, in which players point and shoot at others. A case example emphasizes the clinical problems emerging from violent fantasies that …
Adolescents coping with the Covid‐19 pandemic
COVID-19 has upended the way analysts and psychotherapists practice. Many use the phone for their sessions, many are using video platforms, and many use a combination of the two. Work with adolescents is very challenging in this new modality because of the loss of in-person connection and immediate non-verbal cues. The public health restrictions put in place to manage COVID-19 spread are at odds with the adolescent tasks of adventuring, experimen…
Back to the future
Analysts and psychotherapists are beginning to have more thorough and probing discussions about how the COVID‐19 pandemic has affected their work. Shifting to online teletherapy has been necessary due to the public health measures put in place to curtail the spread of the virus. Much of the existing literature addresses how using online platforms for teletherapy works for adults. This paper instead looks at its effects on working with children an…
Case response I
The Psychological Effects of Immigrating
Diva
Diva was a French film released to European audiences in 1981 and American ones in 1982. Directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix, this film comes from the 1970s cinéma du look movement that used striking imagery to portray social outsiders and express their alienation from society. This article summarizes the film, its characters, cinematography, and innovative musical score by Vladimir Cosma. Recurring motifs in the film emphasize a tenuous fragmentati…
Teenagers Falling Down a Rabbit Hole
This article looks at the contemporary phenomenon of adolescents and children spending increasing amounts of their time on screens. Some of this was accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is a way to conceptualize what happens when someone goes down a rabbit hole, becoming lost online. Usually, it is more of a nightmare than just a bad dream. The psychological effects can include a pull toward magical thinki…
Looking at Botticelli
The author writes about the recent exhibition of Botticelli’s art, primarily focused on his drawings, that was presented at the San Francisco Legion of Honor. Botticelli lived in Florence during the Early Italian Renaissance. A brief overview of Botticelli’s life and his times is provided. Although he was well regarded as an artist during his lifetime, his art was largely forgotten for nearly four hundred years. Botticelli’s reputation grew durin…
Psychology (22 works) · Psychoanalysis (17 works) · Art (13 works) · Social Psychology (12 works) · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications (10 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works)