Dr. Zafirides When Stress Causes Pain: An Interview with Dr. Lew Aron

Hi Everyone,

This week, I interviewed Dr. Lew Aron on The Healthy Mind podcast. Dr. Aron is the Director of the New York University, Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. He has dedicated his life to the study, practice and teaching of psychoanalysis. He is a colleague to many of the psychologists that helped Dr. Sarno develop his theory of TMS.

He did an outstanding job in discussing psychoanalysis and Freud in a way that is very fresh, very contemporary and very accessible. He discusses the mind-body connection, how emotions create physical symptoms and also discusses the partnership between NYU and the PPDA as we get ready for our conference; "When Stress Causes Pain", in New York City this Saturday (10/6/12).

You can listen to the podcast here:

http://www.thehealthymind.com/2012/10/03/when-stress-causes-pain-dr-lew-aron-interview/

This is not your grandfather's psychoanalysis! Prepare to be pleasantly surprised!!

I hope you find the information helpful.

Kindly,
Dr. Zafirides

 

After what Dr. Aron had to say in this podcast about what you might call "Neo-Freudian Revisionism", I am anxious to hear more of what he has to say about the relationship between psychoanalysis and other disciplines such as neuroscience, epigenetics, behaviorism, and biochemistry. I thought one hour just wasn't enough time. Hope Dr. Aron comes back soon and ties everything together. I think the French structural anthropologist, Claude Levy Strauss, says somewhere that new knowledge comes at those cross-over points where productive syntheses occur between different disciplines. Yes, more of Dr Aron!

 

I agree with you MorComm one hour was just not enough. This was one of my favorite episodes, and I found the coversation to be very enlightening. I found the idea of intersubjectivity to be very helpful in explaining psychoanalysis. I feel like there is a common misperception that psychoanalysis is purely an intellectual endeavor, but as Dr. Aron pointed out it very much is about experiences and how we strucutre ourselves in the world around us. It seems like this would be very relevent in terms of TMS. Recovering is more than simply identifying past repressed emotions, and is more about putting knowledge to work. As Dr. Aron said, Change has to be a lived experience.

Dr. Zafirides, I hope the conference went well. I hope you update us on how it went!

 

The thing I liked most about the interview was when Aron said that thinking and reflecting were also experiences. That's true. Every time you think your body is flawed it is once again experienced and more deeply entrenched into the psyche.

The experience or "thinking" must change for healing.

Steve