[Editor’s note: the following is an interview with Bernard Apfelbaum written by Connie Cox and first published in the Berkeley Barb…
Sexual Reality and How We Dismiss It
THE BIOLOGICAL-ROMANTIC MYSTIQUE In the play Harvey, Elwood P. Dowd declares that he struggled with reality all his life and…
Unsolved Mysteries of Sexual Response
One of the unfortunate carryovers from the classical model has been a glibness about symptoms, a rush to judgment, as…
Ego Analysis as a Deeper Form of Cognitive Therapy
What the standard cognitive therapist (CT) does is to be an attorney in this case you are bringing against yourself.…
Patients as Informants About the Human Condition, rather than as Deviants from Idealized Norms
We typically think of patients and ourselves as deviants from vague and idealized mental health norms, although we all are…
If He’s So Turned On, Why Aren’t I?
This witty and highly articulate account is a remarkably thorough presentation of structural psychoanalysis, maybe the best introduction we have.…
On Performance-Anxiety Anxiety
The ego-analytic model is the how-you-handle-it model. The idea is that sex problems (and other problems as well) are caused,…
The Case of Tony Soprano and Dr. Melfi
or, Locating the Missing Ego in Psychodynamic Therapy A terrific example of the prevailing model of psychodynamic therapy is Glen O.…
On the Capacity to Feel Unempathic
(with endnotes on “forgiveness”, the implicit assumption that anger is a poisonous emotion, and the shame-rage spiral) I had lunch with…