The Doctor Debate: Still Talking About Titles

The Doctor Debate: Still Talking About Titles

Flora Lazar, PhD LCSW
The American Psychoanalyst
Volume 55, No 2, Spring/Summer 2021

In this article for The American Psychoanalyst, Flora Lazar revisits a sensitive topic in psychoanalytic history — what is the necessary academic preparation for training/practice in psychoanalysis? She traces the history and controversy about degrees in the field and argues, from a self-psychological perspective, that degrees may have more meaning to clients/patients than to clinicians.

Confessions of a Teletherapy Clinician

Confessions of a Teletherapy Clinician

Flora Lazar, PhD LCSW

In their eagerness to return to a semblance of normality after COVID, many psychoanalytic clinicians have treated teletherapy as a crisis improvisation not unlike factory women did in World War II. Flora Lazar offers a candid assessment of the benefits of teletherapy and argues that the benefits of these adaptations may have long-term benefits to psychoanalysis—benefits that may result in some of the most serious challenges to date about the use of the iconic psychoanalytic couch.

Dealing with Identity: Transforming Apologies into Progress

Dealing with Identity: Transforming Apologies into Progress

Flora Lazar, PhD LCSW

Dr. Lazar reflects on the slow pace of change in psychoanalytic thinking and teaching about race and gender. She asks what it will take for psychoanalysis to become more inclusive of people whom it has historically dismissed and pathologized. One possibility, she suggests, lies in the integration of institute training with a university culture of research, critical inquiry and interdisciplinary dialogue.

Learning from Brisbane: The Politics of Identity and the Promise of Empathy

Learning from Brisbane: The Politics of Identity and the Promise of Empathy

Flora Lazar, PhD LCSW
Psychoanalysis, Self and Context
Volume 15, 2020 – Issue 2

Flora Lazar discusses what self psychology can learn from the field of literary criticism about addressing the experience of political and social otherness. Using the debates arising from the 2017 Brisbane Literary Festival, it explores how social, political, and cultural identities might affect our ability to understand the lives of those whose identities we do not share.

Propaganda, Prostitution, and Penal Reform: How Psychoanalysis Lost its Public Voice

Propaganda, Prostitution, and Penal Reform: How Psychoanalysis Lost its Public Voice

Flora Lazar, PhD LCSW
The American Psychoanalyst
Volume 53, No 2, Spring/Summer 2019

Flora Lazar’s article considers the sociocultural frontier of psychoanalysis and its educational mission. It addresses the responsibilities and opportunities of psychoanalysis in the public domain and is informed by innovative archival research. The article offers a critique of the consequences of insularity in the consultation room.