Billie Pivnick

Columbia University, Clinical Psychology, Adjunct

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Psychoanalytic psychologist and writer specializing in treating adoptees and their families, traumatic loss, and creative blocks. Co-chair of Humanities and Psychoanalysis Committee for APA's Society for Psychoanalsis and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. Faculty and Supervisor, William Alanson White Institute, NYC. Co-founder of the Psychoanalytic Community Collaboratory.

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Andrej Dujella

University of Zagreb

Hemin Koyi

Uppsala University

Jana Javornik

University of East London

Graham Martin

University of Leicester

Gwen Robbins Schug

University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Gabriel Gutierrez-Alonso

University of Salamanca

John Sutton

Macquarie University

Eros Carvalho

Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul

Kevin Arbuckle

Swansea University

Jesper Hoffmeyer

University of Copenhagen

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Papers by Billie Pivnick

“Likening” the “other”

What the Living Did

Columbia University Press eBooks, May 28, 2013

Turning to Memorializing 9/11: Reflections of a Psychologist

PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2011

Homing in on Adoption: Dreaming, Drawing, and Telling Stories in Relational Psychotherapy

Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, Jan 2, 2023

Transforming collapse: Applying clinical psychoanalysis to the relational design of the National September 11 Memorial Museum

International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Oct 2, 2017

Symbolic of what we have possessed, lost, and wish to remember, the arts can memorialize cultural... more Symbolic of what we have possessed, lost, and wish to remember, the arts can memorialize cultural experiences too telling for mere speech. Aided by art, design, and storytelling, the many millions of visitors to the National September 11 Memorial Museum are remembering together not just one or more individuals or local communities, but an entire world that no longer exists. This paper details the collaboration between exhibition designer, Tom Hennes of Thinc Design, and myself, a psychoanalytic psychologist, in the relational design of the museum. This process entailed use of parallel and intertwined perspectives on how to help visitors remember, commemorate, honor, educate, witness, and mourn in order to transform unspeakable destruction into a creative reconstruction of continuity and vitality. How a psychoanalytic consultation to a museum design team developed from applying a few theoretical principles to a more generalizable model will be illustrated with narrative accounts of key moments.

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Creative Analysis: Art, Creativity, and Clinical Process. by George Hagman

Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Apr 1, 2017

In the Preface (p. xii), the author describes himself as primarily a self-psychologist who also u... more In the Preface (p. xii), the author describes himself as primarily a self-psychologist who also utilizes other models in exploring the subject of this book, which is analysis as a form of creativity. The book is part of the Psychoanalytic Inquiry Book Series, edited by Joseph Lichtenberg. As a self-psychologist, who often quotes Kohut, Hagman belongs to the relational model in psychoanalysis, as opposed by Greenberg and Mitchell (1983) to the Freudian drive model. In the first chapter Hagman examines psychoanalytic approaches to art, starting from Freud's early papers, then turning to ego psychology, object relations theory and various contributions from self psychology. He then uses the definition of art given by the philosopher Susanne Langer, as the objective expression of a subjective process, charged with feeling (p. 10). The author adds that the subjective and objective elements interact and change each other. Whereas, traditionally, psychoanalysis has looked at the hidden content of a work of art, the real problem, as Langer says, is perfection of form (p. 16). At the beginning of Chapter 2 the author states that ''psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy are forms of art'' (p. 19). Analysis aims at alleviating suffering and allowing the analysand to engage in creative living, but analysis itself is creative. ''The once private experience of the patient becomes externalized within the shared intersubjective field,'' leading to ''a third self-organization, the transference-countertransference relationship'' (p. 23), where the patient's subjectivity is emphasized, as compared to that of the analyst (p. 24). Chapter 3 addresses the brain hemisphere asymmetry. The right hemisphere, which is dominant at birth, and is the relational/emotional brain, is eventually integrated with the left hemisphere, which is the rational/verbal brain. According to Allan Schore, right-hemisphere psychotherapy can undo the damage of a traumatic early childhood (p. 33) and lead to creativity. Hagman, following McGilchrist, also emphasizes the function of the left hemisphere. Chapter 4, on aesthetic interaction, is written in cooperation with Carol Press. Aesthetics is ''the felt quality of our experience of living'' (p. 43). Carol Press discusses authors from the field of Infant Research, such as Lachmann and Stern, and the concept of the cross-modal qualities of early infant-caregiver interactions (time, shape, space), which are shared by all the arts (p. 48). Press applies these concepts in particular to dancing. Hagman discusses empathy, with reference to a case example. Chapters 5 and 6 are complementary: one on the creative analysand, the other on the creative analyst. The final chapter is a synthesis on creative analysis.

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The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir

Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Feb 1, 2023

Textual Healing

Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Jul 1, 2006

GENDER-as-identity was long ago de constructed by postmodernist theorists. Like Simon and Garfunk... more GENDER-as-identity was long ago de constructed by postmodernist theorists. Like Simon and Garfunkel's dangling conversation, identity is now played in syncopated time, and found-with melancholy sighs--on the borders of our lives. Front and center, gender instead has taken the lead. Shorn of unity, conceived discursively, it is likely to be characterized by separate and separated texts: "You read your Emily Dickinson, and I my Robert Frost." Devoid of bodies, the genders may as well be "verses out of rhythm, couplets out of rhyme." But to the question, "Is the theater really dead?" the answer is "No." Gender, we're now told, is the original performance. Until now, the average relational analyst, schooled in the pitfalls of false-self relating, may have found this small comfort. Instead, many have "noteldl our place with bookmarkers that measure what we've lost." With literary criticism and political considerations now imperative to gender study, we have been left to wonder, like the songwriters, "Can analysis be worthwhile?" A relational psychoanalytic approach to gender is not only worthwhile, suggests Adrienne Harris in her bold new book, but is essential for conceptualizing the paradox and multiplicity inherent in selfhood. Gender, she would argue, is actually coconstructed. Harris's approach is thus a reply, of sorts, to psychoanalyst and linguist Bonnie Litowitz's (2002) question about contemporary psychoanalysis, but applied to gender: to what extent do our psychoanalytic notions of gender partake of "sexuality," and to what degree have they been more influenced by what Litowitz calls "textuality"? Harris believes that what we have to understand is in what manner these two phenomena coevolve in an individual and in society, necessitating a more developmental

Billie Ann Pivnick on Allamani Allamani's “Failure and Transformation in the Relationship between Patient and Therapist”

Substance Use & Misuse, Nov 20, 2012

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The Beholder’s Share: an Intersubjective Review of Bromberg’s Shadow of the Tsunami

Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 2013

Critics of psychoanalysis have all but concluded that psychoanalytic practitioners are suffering ... more Critics of psychoanalysis have all but concluded that psychoanalytic practitioners are suffering from reminiscences. Adherents of analytic principles, in contrast, have been revising and reformulating both theory and practice to conform to new understandings of how the mind is situated in both its cultural context and within its neurobiological constraints. The first view has created treatment approaches that attend more to narrative and dialogue; the other has led to efforts to ground theory in contemporary neuroscience. Philip Bromberg's theory and method for treating relational trauma integrate these two innovations while adhering to the importance of the unconscious, relationally conceived. The cover of Bromberg's new book, The Shadow of the Tsunami and the Growth of the Relational Mind, depicts a large black wave, solarized from behind. The play of light and shadow mirrors the tension in the psychoanalysis of patients who have suffered the developmental trauma of nonrecognition. It is an apt image. Ernest Hartmann's (2001) research

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Behind the lines: Toward an aesthetic framework for psychoanalytic psychotherapy

Journal of Clinical Psychology, Jan 11, 2018

This article describes the author's development of an aesthetic approach to psychoanalytic psycho... more This article describes the author's development of an aesthetic approach to psychoanalytic psychotherapy of patients suffering from traumatic levels of grief by describing her experiences as a patient, a therapist, and a consultant to the design firm that partnered with the National September 11 Memorial and Museum. Using Aristotle's On Poetics as an inspiration, this article explores the ways dialogical storytelling creates a therapeutic "action-plot" that transforms reversals of fortune. Attending to patients' first-person phenomenological experience (without attributing cause), therapists help them transform their losses by listening to their stories. Therapists dwell with them in uncertainties while marking time in regularly scheduled meetings; they accompany their patients on a journey while also orienting to their modes of travel. They simultaneously coconstruct tales of the journey, attentive to the poetic dimensions of sight, sound, and space that they encounter. In so doing, therapists serve not just guides and judges, but artists, bringing meanings to the trail.

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The Choreography of object relations: advances in dance-movement therapy, volume one

Arts in Psychotherapy, Jun 1, 1985

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The ‘community turn’: Relational citizenship in the Psychoanalytic Community Collaboratory®

The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Jan 2, 2022

ABSTRACT Drawn from five years of experience in the web-based Psychoanalytic Community Collaborat... more ABSTRACT Drawn from five years of experience in the web-based Psychoanalytic Community Collaboratory, this paper explores implications of the 'community turn' in psychoanalysis for roles, methods, clinical theory, and training. With participants from many parts of the world, the Collaboratory has become a creative generator of projects including documentary films, community memorial initiatives, and mental health interventions in highly stressed communities. The Collaboratory's unique pedagogy offers valuable experiential learning about the complex intersubjective dynamics common to group and community life. Through reflection on the interpersonal dynamics of three critical incidents, we illustrate the interplay of intra-psychic and political aspects of identity--what we have termed 'relational citizenship', an intersubjective self-state in which the individual and the sociopolitical are psychically linked and where the challenges of identifying with and belonging to one or more collectivities are recognized and negotiated.

The interaction of behavioral systems in toddlerhood

Infant Behavior & Development, Apr 1, 1984

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The child in the school, the school in the community, and the community in the child: Linking psychic and social domains in school violence prevention

International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, Aug 7, 2021

Despite efforts to broaden the focus of school safety provision beyond eliminating individual pro... more Despite efforts to broaden the focus of school safety provision beyond eliminating individual problematic students, interventions in school contexts have traditionally focused on helping the troubled child adapt to the school; less often do schools view the child's symptoms as reflecting troubles in the community which in turn impact children. Even the “school climate” approach, which is innovative in viewing the child in light of social influences contributing to identity and affective co‐regulation, may not sufficiently illuminate the interactions among neurobiology, teaching methods, family support/networks, organizational systems, and cultural/political disruptions. In this article, we focus on Cohen and Rappaport’s complementary papers on preventing school violence. Although both papers thoughtfully consider individual and school‐climate factors, a common feature in both is the replication of our cultural tendency to split the psychic domain from the social realm—to favor approaches that emphasize individual psychopathology over ones that view the individual and community as inextricably linked and mutually constitutive (Layton, 2020). Models for assessment often unconsciously favor frameworks for understanding individuals' symptoms as opposed to approaches that view symptoms as expressing the needs and troubles of both the individual and the community. We propose that the dialectical relationship between individual and community is the nexus from which we can understand the impact of family and community distress on individual psychopathology in ways that could culminate in a violent incident. We will explore how, in the context of Cohen's policy proposals and Rappaport's case study, a community psychoanalytic model can mobilize different interventions and resources.

Being Borne: Contextualizing Loss in Adoption

Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Mar 1, 2013

Adoption is a process and an identity, as well as an act. Born of the intent to care, it is not i... more Adoption is a process and an identity, as well as an act. Born of the intent to care, it is not inherently psychopathological. While the birthparents set in motion a process through which the child is born, adoptive parents and maturing adoptees must together find ways to manage being borne by one another. Often distressed and disoriented by the sense that they were “left without a word,” adoptees can enact unexpectedly disruptive feelings that lack words. Because the sense of dislocation in adoption packs the shock of trauma while evoking the chronic sadness of bereavement, an important function of the therapist is to bear witness effectively to the patients’ suffering and successes so that predictable interpersonal ruptures can be repaired. Psychotherapy can not only provide the containing, caring, and exploration that facilitates maturation and growth, but can also scaffold continuity, bridging occasional gaps in self experience that otherwise lead to inhibited curiosity or calamitous enactments of disorienting, unexpected behavior. Our goal is to help adoptees and their families to move from being “lost in translation” to being “found in relation.” Consider the following clinical vignettes:

The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir

Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Feb 1, 2023

Homing in on Adoption: Dreaming, Drawing, and Telling Stories in Relational Psychotherapy

Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, Feb 21, 2023

The ‘community turn’: Relational citizenship in the Psychoanalytic Community Collaboratory®

The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2022

Enacting Remembrance: Turning Toward Memorializing September 11th

Journal of Religion and Health, 2011

The memorial at the site of the former World Trade Center will open on the tenth anniversary of 9... more The memorial at the site of the former World Trade Center will open on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 to help us commemorate, honor, educate, and mourn. Memorializing is an act that involves shared memory and collective grieving-aiming also to restore severed communal bonds and dismantled cultural ideals. As such, it is a form of cultural renewal that can transform traumatized mourners into an ethical community of memory. The active rituals of memorial activity utilize both inscribed and non-inscribed practices to help survivors of mass trauma manage fear, disorganization, and helplessness as well as sorrow. To bear witness to horrific events and the suffering they induced is a moral act. To do so together with people who may have seen the events of 9/11 from other perspectives, while also remembering one&amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;s own vision of what mattered, may mean learning to tolerate multiple conflicting narratives about the events&amp;amp;amp;amp;#39; meanings. It is time to turn our attention from the memorial to memorializing.

“Likening” the “other”

What the Living Did

Columbia University Press eBooks, May 28, 2013

Turning to Memorializing 9/11: Reflections of a Psychologist

PsycEXTRA Dataset, 2011

Homing in on Adoption: Dreaming, Drawing, and Telling Stories in Relational Psychotherapy

Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, Jan 2, 2023

Transforming collapse: Applying clinical psychoanalysis to the relational design of the National September 11 Memorial Museum

International Forum of Psychoanalysis, Oct 2, 2017

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Creative Analysis: Art, Creativity, and Clinical Process. by George Hagman

Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Apr 1, 2017