Leading articles

THE VIENNA PSYCHOANALYST wants to give not only already internationally established psychoanalysts, but also still unknown psychoanalysts the opportunity to post a self-written and not yet published article on the FrontPage of our online magazine!

Our Users then can leave comments, ask questions or discuss the articles in our forum. Our aim is to provide an international platform where for the first time anyone interested in psychoanalysis can exchange ideas on certain topics.
Articles are welcome in German and/ or English.

If you are interested, please send your article to
leadingarticle@theviennapsychoanalyst.at


(For reasons of readability, the male form is used with personal names, however the female form is also always intended.)

In our interview series "in conversation with" we will briefly present the authors of the leading articles. We want to give our users the ability to also read the leading article from a different point of view.
This week we have the great honor that one of our Feuilleton author decided to write a leading article for us.
Therefore, her Introduction is now slightly modified compared to others.
You, dear Reader, can read Lea Dohm interview here!


We are very glad to welcome back Lea Dohm from Stadthagen, Germany:

Lea Dohm, née Peplau, married with 2 children. 
Oct. 2000 - Feb. 2006: Study of Psychology at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg
Sep. 2005 - Sep. 2011: advanced training to depth psychology oriented psychological Psychotherapist in the training center of the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Center for Lifelong Learning (C3L).
Aug. 2011 - Jan. 2014: Specialist Journalism by correspondence course Aug. 2011 - Jan. 2014 at the Free School of Journalism Berlin.
Since Feb. 2016: advanced training for psychoanalytically oriented group psychotherapist in Göttingen, Tiefenbrunn.
Since March 2012: Settled in Stadthagen with an own psychotherapeutic practice with admission to the care provided under health insurance schemes.
May 2011 - Dez.2014: contributor for Public Relations at the Psychotherapeutic Association of the State of Lower Saxony. Worked previously for several years in three different psychiatric hospitals.
Member of bvvp, IPPNW, the Humanistische Union and Pro Asyl.


I would like to start this series of quotations that shaped my work and myself with "the classic" beginning with Irvin Yalom. I choose him as a modern psychoanalyst, who never got tired of commenting on the basic psychotherapeutic attitude.

"Do not neglect your own therapy" (Yalom, I.D. „Der Panama-Hut – oder Was einen guten Therapeuten ausmacht“ 10 Aufl. btb, München 2002)

As long as we work with patients, our own self-awareness should not stop. There is nothing to add.

In addition, Otto Kernberg´s narcissistic theory has fascinated me for a long time, so I would like to place Kernberg directly here as a second classic. Immediately applicable (not only in therapy setting), cleverly conceived and clearly presented, his lecture should be a standard of psychological, psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic training. In my opinion, it should also be part of the standard curriculum of a grammar school.
For example, I choose the following quotation, in which he refers to narcissistic personalities, and in which the intuitive nature of his descriptions recurs:

Their emotional life is shallow; they feel little empathy for the feelings of others, and have very little joy in life, their self-love relies exclusively on praise and admiration of others or their own grandiose aspirations. They become restless and suffer of boredom as soon as the exterior façade loses its luster and no new sources of self-assurance are momentarily available." (Kernberg, O. „Borderline-Störungen und pathologischer Narzißmus“ suhrkamp, Frankfurt 1978)

I appreciate Kernberg for not treating narcissism exclusively as a clinical problem, but in his work, he put it in a larger, social context.

This leads to a second group of quotations, where psychoanalysis is also more sociologically applied:

"Human consciousness results from (...) the culture-based interaction of many brains and within these brains from the co-operation of many nerve networks. It is thus an interpersonal phenomenon, although it is experienced phenomenally individually." (Boessmann, U. „Bewusstsein“. dpv, Berlin 2013)

This quote may sound somewhat more complex at first, but it is worth reading three times. While reading Boessmann, I have been able to grasp intersubjectivity for the first time and experience it. The implications are immense and still give me thoughts today. Boessmann calls many in his book, for example, "our dependence on the collective", the "responsibility which falls to us here" (p. 16). Because I find these consequences so powerful and elementary, my next quotation comes from this book too:

"that we can not fail, thanks to the egocentrism and hedonism, which are too highly cultivated in our culture, to develop towards a comprehensive collective responsibility ethic" (Boessmann, U. „Bewusstsein“. dpv, Berlin 2013)

Which in turn directly leads me to my most favorite quote:

"In the course of its establishment as a medical-psychological treatment, psychoanalysis has neglected its intellectual, cultural-analytical and political approaches" (Volkan, V.D. „Das Versagen der Diplomatie. Zur Psychoanalyse nationaler, ethnischer und religiöser Konflikte“ Psychosozial-Verlag, Gießen. 3. Aufl. 2003. S. I (Vorwort von Hans-Jürgen Wirth)

Anyone who understands himself as a psychoanalyst, therefore, always has a great deal of work to do – even beyond medical sciences. This intersubjective, collective-oriented understanding serves me as basic personal and psychotherapeutic attitude.