WEDNESDAY APRIL 3, 2019
WHEN? 8:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.
WHERE? Adams Room, St. Hilda’s Residence, U of T, 44 Devonshire Place, Toronto
Mehr-Afarin Kohan, M.D.
On the State of Speechlessness
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SYNOPSIS
Relational psychoanalysts have been seeing ghosts, belonging to both patients and analysts, that can haunt the analytic dyad, especially if left unprocessed by any of the parties. Drawing on two clinical examples, I explore a state of ‘speechlessness’ that followed comments by patients that alluded to assumptions about my ethnic and religious background. I make a case that in these encounters mis-recognition by the patient led to a confusion of self-states, leading to fragmentation in me and ‘speechlessness’. I further explore how certain ghosts of my past were called into the room in these encounters and how I was possibly haunted by them.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Dr. Mehr-Afarin Kohan, M.D., is a psychiatrist living in Toronto and a candidate at the Toronto Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis (TICP). She spends most of her time doing long-term psychotherapy and psychoanalysis at her private practice. She runs narrative writing groups at the Toronto General Hospital and works with refugees at the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture (CCVT). She is also a part-time published writer. She was the recipient of the 2016 Susanne Chassay Memorial Paper Award from the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC).