Let’s Talk Psychoanalysis

06/24/2026

💫 On behalf of Let’s Talk Psychoanalysis (LTP), we’re glad to share with you that a recording of Dr. Holmes’ recent live presentation for LTP, is now available. This lecture examines in depth, different forms of shame, illustrates how shame is used to fend off analyzing racialized enactments in psychoanalysis, and shows how advances in clinical practice regarding race are achieved when shame is understood and analyzed.

*Many thanks to all who joined in for this event on the 6th of June. Your comments and questions deepen and brighten every meeting LTP hosts.

**If you were not able to join us for this fascinating and very moving, live Zoom event, the recording is now available ( for LTP non-members) at this link :

https://www.letstalkpsychoanalysis.com/shop/p/considerations-of-shame-in-psychoanalysis

***For those who might be interested in a broader connection to the Let's Talk Psychoanalysis community, membership is also available. Membership includes access to this presentation ( and all others stored on our website).

Explore membership and its benefits here:
www.letstalkpsychoanalysis.com/join

Your colleague,
Aisha

Aisha Abbasi, M.D.
Psychoanalyst
*Seeing patients in person and remotely from Portland, OR.
-Licensed in OR, CA, WA, NY, MI, & FL

*Founder,
Let’s Talk Psychoanalysis (an online learning community)
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In this full Let’s Talk Psychoanalysis seminar, Dr. Dorothy Holmes explores shame as a deeply consequential force in psychoanalytic treatment — one that may appear not only in what is spoken, but in what is avoided, silenced, defended against, or enacted.

06/23/2026

Sometimes the most clinically important moment does not announce itself as important.

Sometimes it looks like a small kindness.
A mundane exchange.
A ridiculous little human detail.
Possibly even tater tots.

That is part of what makes analytic work so difficult to codify. The treatment lives in the frame, yes—but also in the unpredictable human meanings that emerge inside it.

In this clip from Considerations of Shame, Dr. Dorothy Holmes reminds us that clinical depth is not always solemn. Sometimes humanity enters through the side door, wearing a tiny potato costume. 🥔

The full seminar is available through our bio/Linktree.

06/22/2026

Expansion is not dilution.

Psychoanalysis expands when it can hear what it previously could not hear.

That may mean new clinical material. New social realities. New forms of suffering. New analysts asking different questions because their lived histories give them different access points.

In this clip from Considerations of Shame, Dr. Dorothy Holmes speaks to the necessity of expanding psychoanalysis without abandoning its depth.

The full seminar asks what shame teaches us when we stop treating it as secondary, incidental, or merely defensive.

Available through our bio/Linktree.

06/21/2026

✨ “A father is neither an anchor to hold us back, nor a sail to take us there, but a guiding light whose love shows us the way.”

This quote says so much about the heart of true fatherhood.

*Today, LetsTalkPsychoanalysis is honoring the fathers who lead with love, wisdom, and strength.

⭐️ Our Founder, Dr. Aisha Abbasi, recalls her late father, Colonel Ghulam Hussain ( who died when he was only 64), and is grateful for the presence of her husband, for whom she writes:

💫 “Thank you for being the steady light, the unflinching support, and the loving guidance our family cherishes every day.”

📣 Happy Father’s Day to all the men who play a paternal role in the lives of the young people ( or pets ) they love!

06/19/2026

Psychoanalysis loses something when rigor becomes rigidity.

The frame matters. Theory matters. Technique matters.

But when any of these become untouchable, the analyst may stop listening to the patient in the room and start defending an idea of psychoanalysis instead.

In this clip from Considerations of Shame, Dr. Dorothy Holmes asks psychoanalysis to keep redeeming itself from its own rigidities.

That question sits at the center of the full seminar: how shame appears, how it hides, and how clinicians can remain alive to the patient rather than loyal only to inherited forms.

The full seminar is available through our bio/Linktree.

06/18/2026

Disappointment can feel like failure.

In clinical work, it often arrives with shame close behind: the patient feels they have failed the analyst, the analyst feels they have failed the patient, or both begin quietly organizing around not disappointing each other again.

But disappointment is not automatically a bad thing.

Sometimes it marks the place where fantasy meets another mind.

Sometimes it reveals an expectation that could not yet be spoken.

Sometimes it opens the door to grief, anger, longing or recognition.

The clinical question is not how to avoid disappointment.

It is whether the analytic relationship can bear it.

When disappointment can be thought about rather than defended against, it may become one of the places where treatment deepens.

What happens when disappointment is allowed to remain in the room?

06/17/2026

Love does not always protect us from disappointment.

Sometimes it is what makes disappointment bearable enough to examine.

In this clip, Dr. Dorothy Holmes frames her essay on Marianne Goldberger, shame and psychoanalytic innovation as a love story—not sentimental love, but the kind of sustained devotion that can look directly at what a field offers and what it fails to offer.

To love psychoanalysis, in this sense, is not to defend it from critique.

It is to ask whether its concepts and practices are still serving the patient, the analyst and the fuller liberatory promise of the work.

That is a harder love.

And possibly the only one that keeps the field alive.

The full seminar recording is available on our site for $65. Members can watch it free in the LTP video library.

06/16/2026

Psychoanalytic work can become isolating.

Not because analysts and analytically-oriented therapists lack colleagues.

Because the most pressing questions in the field often require a different kind of room.

A room where uncertainty does not have to be performed away.
A room where clinical disagreement can stay thoughtful.
A room where race, money, politics, sexuality, shame, hatred, fantasy, and countertransference can be discussed with seriousness, confidentiality, and care.

At our latest seminar, participants introduced themselves from different places, practices, and points of view.

That matters.

Because Let’s Talk Psychoanalysis is not built around passive consumption. It is built around continued clinical thinking.

For psychoanalysts and analytically-oriented therapists who want more than another lecture link, this is the shape of the work:

showing up,
thinking together,
staying with what is difficult,
and letting the conversation continue.

What kinds of clinical questions need a better room than social media can provide?

06/12/2026

Sometimes the analyst does not identify with the patient.

Sometimes the analyst begins to identify with the very figure the patient has been suffering under.

That is part of what makes complementary identification so clinically dangerous.

A patient describes a mother who experiences them as unintelligent, irritating, or disappointing. Slowly, without noticing it, the analyst may begin to feel the patient that way too.

Not because the analyst “really” thinks this.

Because something from the patient’s internal world has entered the room and recruited the analyst into a familiar role.

The patient is no longer only describing the object.

The object is being enacted.

Countertransference, then, is not simply the analyst’s emotional reaction. It can become part of the clinical field itself.

The question is not whether the analyst has feelings.

The question is whether those feelings can be recognized before they become treatment.

06/11/2026

The analyst is not outside the room.

That may sound obvious. Clinically, it is anything but.

Countertransference begins with the analyst’s own emotional history. It also takes shape in response to what the patient brings, projects, repeats or evokes.

A patient’s anger may stir defensiveness.
A patient’s compliance may invite overprotection.
A patient’s contempt may create the wish to retreat.

The task is not to pretend the analyst has no response.

The task is to think with the response.

When attended to carefully, countertransference can become clinical information. Not a shortcut. Not a confession. Not a performance of authenticity.

A clue.

This short video offers a starting point: what countertransference is, why it matters and how the analyst’s emotional life can become part of the work rather than an obstacle to it.

What changes when the analyst’s response is treated as material?

Keep thinking with us at letstalkpsychoanalysis.com