"How do we continue doing this work when the socio-political realities are unimaginable? I've been living in Paris the last few years, and I continue to have a full caseload in Tehran and other cities. There was a time that the internet was cut off for our Iranian patients, so there is reality, and then there is a reality that actually affects the frame - they couldn't contact their analyst. But in the middle of all of these things, something very interesting came up, which is, some patients, as soon as there was the possibility of contacting me, they would find a way. There were other things that came up in the supervisions I was doing, particularly if the analysts were outside of Iran and the patients were in Iran. For example, one thing that came up in the supervision was that the analyst would write to the patient all the time, saying, "Are you safe? Are you okay?" That's not something I chose to do. When we discussed this and reflected upon this in the supervisions I felt like the analysts were feeling quite guilty for feeling that they are in a safe place and the patients weren't, or they were at times terrified of the aggression that could be awaiting them in the session. It was in a sense like a little bit of an acting out on the part of the analyst."
Episode Description: We begin by acknowledging the ongoing war and Gohar's safety in Paris while many of her patients remain in Iran. We explore what this gradient in danger between analyst and analysand means and evokes for both parties. Gohar notes that many supervisees contact their patients to ask, "Are you OK?" and she invites them to reconsider this response. She also describes working with Russian colleagues, many of whom were abandoned by their Western supervisors after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This leads to a discussion of analytic work with patients whose political views sharply differ from those of their analysts. Gohar reflects on Jonathan Lear's concept of "radical hope" and shares her perspective on the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. She closes by reminding us that, even with those we regard as 'other,' "our emancipation is inherently intertwined, whether we like it or not."
Linked Episodes:
Our Guest: Gohar Homayounpour PsyD is a psychoanalyst and author. She is a member of the International Psychoanalytic Association, the American Psychoanalytic Association, the Italian Psychoanalytical Society, and the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (NAAP). She is a Training and Supervising Analyst of the Freudian Group of Tehran, of which she is the founder and past president. She is a member of the scientific board of the Freud Museum in Vienna and of the IPA group Geographies of Psychoanalysis. She serves on the editorial board of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Vestigia and Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society. She is also the editor-in-chief of the series Psychoanalytic Notebooks, published in Iran by Ghatreh Publishing House.
Her first book, Doing Psychoanalysis in Tehran won the Gradiva Award and has been translated into many languages. Her latest book is Persian Blues: Psychoanalysis and Mourning.
Recommended Readings:
Homayounpour, G. (2012). Doing Psychoanalysis in Tehran. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Homayounpour, G. (2022). Persian Blues: Psychoanalysis and Mourning. London: Routledge.
Lear, J. (2006). Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Busch, F., & Delgado, N. (Eds.). (2024). The Ego and the Id: 100 Years Later. London: Routledge.
Lorena Preta (2024). Geographies of Psychoanalysis - Encounters in Tehran. London: Routledge.
Bolognini, S., & Nicoli, L. (2024). Freud and the Changing World: Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Its Troubles. Bicester, UK: Phoenix Publishing House.