The role of psychodynamically informed therapists in complex socio-political realities

In this issue of our newsletter, we focused on the role of psychodynamically informed therapists in current sociopolitical conflicts. That is why we have chosen to review Otto Kernberg’s paper: Malignant Narcissism and Large Group Regression.” Psychoanalytic Quarterly 89(1):1-24, 2020.

This article gains in appropriateness by the minutes, as we see conflicts, natural catastrophes and new regimes come to exist all over the world. In the first section of the manuscript, Dr. Kernberg reviews the major contributions of Freud, Bion, Turquet and Volkan on group psychology, highlighting how, at all different levels of grouping, from individual to large groups, when regression develops and the normal social structure that assures the individual of his status in the society disappears, a search for a “second skin”, a second identity that returns individual security begins. In reviewing these masterful contributions.

Social instability and the defensive behaviours of large groups

Otto depicts how, during threats, groups adopt defensive behaviors similar to the paranoid-schizoid position described by Melanie Klein, splitting, denial, omnipotent control, projective identification. In the headline section of this newsletter, Oleksii references his attention and awareness to these feelings and phenomena as his own population goes through massive destruction during the war (Read the article).

Silvia Bernardi

Silvia Bernardi, MD, is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University. After graduating from medical school in Florence Italy in 2006, Silvia emigrated to the USA to work intensively in neuroscience research, studying the bases of the interaction between emotions and cognition. Silvia completed her residency in Psychiatry at Columbia and has since practiced privately in New York. She trained in Transference Focused Psychotherapy and continues to see patients for medication management and psychotherapy while conducting her research to unlock further knowledge to support the biological underpinnings of TFP and borderline personality disorder.