Translating Trauma Into A Language of Love: A Husband and Wife's Story
Presented by: Richard and Linda Raubolt

Recently analysts and therapists have begun to acknowledge what many have long but only privately recognized. Professional training is often traumatizing to trainees by insisting on a uniform and restricted orientation, technique and language. Generations of analysts have perpetuated the myth of a designated, officially ordained and psychoanalytic truth as presented in their respective training institutes. Trainees,in turn, have suffered from authoritarian, dogmatic and cult-like teaching more akin to indoctrination than education. Neglected, however have been the effects of such training on those emotionally closest to candidates: family, lovers and spouses.

This panel will present a deeply personal written dialogue between a husband and wife describing the traumatic effects of training on each of them. Discussion will be guided by an integration of a relational systems perspective and Abraham and Torok's ideas on transgenerational haunting, identification with the aggressor and introjection.

Below are some photos from the International Federation of Psychoanalytic Education conference my wife Linda and I attended and presented at recently. The conference took place in Quéretaro, Mexico in February 2006.

Left to Right: Judy Vida M.D. (President of IFPE), Linda Raubolt,
Richard Raubolt Ph.D (Chair of the Trauma Committee)

Linda and Richard Raubolt

Richard Raubolt, Ph.D and Moderator for presentation "That Deaf, Dumb and Blind Kid" which was a paper written by Kathleen Colebank and Allen Oliver analyzing the rock opera "Tommy" from a Modern Psychoanalytic perspective.