A conversation with:
Rachel Blass

Rachel Blass is internationally renowned as an author, teacher, and analyst of the contemporary London Kleinian approach. In dozens of her articles written over the past thirty years, Blass has illuminated many issues and concepts in Klein and Freud's theory from the Oedipus complex and the correct way to teach it, meaning and interpretation, unconscious phantasy, narcissism, the death drive, love, creativity, separation, and attachment theory.

Blass believes psychoanalysis can be considered a theory of the pursuit of truth and the power of truth to heal. She follows in the footsteps of Freud and Klein in the belief that psychoanalysis seeks to heal pathological distress caused by man's refusal to know the unconscious truth, that is, mental reality. Blass argues that other approaches in psychoanalysis have not understood the crucial role of truth in treatment, and as a result, the development of psychoanalytic thinking has been impaired. By maintaining such "unfashionable" positions, Blass challenges the Zeitgeists and has drawn opposition from some contemporary writers.

Her first book in Hebrew, Foundations of Psychoanalytic Thinking: Selected Essays on Freud and Klein, is a collection of papers originally published in English and translated into Hebrew. In this book, Blass reads the writings of Freud and Klein with great patience, which requires a combination of focused and empathic reading, textual analysis, intuition, and respect and trust for the text. Like an archaeologist uncovering more and more layers at an ancient site covered with many layers, Blass makes fascinating discoveries within the writings of Freud and Klein. Among the book's topics:  A new reading in Dora's case and "Leonardo da Vinci's childhood memory," the importance of the pursuit of truth in psychoanalytic treatments,, Betty Joseph and the immediacy of unconscious truth, how analysts from different approaches can use Klein's concept of phantasy and the importance of analytical neutrality.

In this event, Aner Govrin and Sharon Ziv-Beiman will discuss with Rachel Blass the basic concepts in Klein and Freud's theory: fantasy, projective identification, psychic truth, interpretation, the goals of clinical therapy, recent developments in Klein's theory (Betty Joseph, Wilfred Bion and others), and the state of psychoanalysis today.