We are truly honored that on 5th October 2022, Dr. Atlas joined us to converse with us about her recent bestseller ‘Emotional Inheritance.’
Galit Atlas is an internationally known psychoanalyst recognized for her rethinking of the place of sexuality and desire in contemporary theory and practice. Her new and innovative work on emotional inheritance explores the ways our ancestors’ experiences shape our lives. Atlas practices psychoanalysis and is a clinical supervisor in private practice in Manhattan. As an essayist and author, Atlas has published numerous articles and book chapters that focus primarily on gender and sexuality. She is a clinical assistant professor on the faculty of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis, faculty member of the Institute for Expressive Analysis and faculty of the National Training Programs (NTP) and the Four Year Adult training program. In 2009, she became a recipient of the NADTA Research award, in the category ‘Theoretical Research Award for Thesis/Dissertation’. From 2011–2013, she co-chaired and moderated the on-line Colloquium Series for the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (IARPP). She is on the editorial board of Psychoanalytic Perspectives and served on the board of directors of the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association. Atlas lectures throughout the United States and internationally. In 2016, Atlas’s New York Times publication “A Tale of Two Twins” was the winner of the Gradiva Award.
We wish to thank her from all of our hearts for the warm, lovely and profoundly vitalizing conversation. We are still catching our breath! It was incredibly exciting to meet her in person! We at Shades have been reading her work since the beginning of our respective training and so for us, the fact of speaking to her in the flesh was surreal, till the moment we met her and then it quickly turned into a delightful playdate!
She stepped into our little space with such palpable enthusiasm and joy and lent to us her equally empathic and insightful presence. Many of us in the audience felt moved closer to the reverberations of our own losses we carry as undercurrents felt in daily experiences of vulnerability- moments when our hearts feel the tug of a desire to open while also feeling the tremor of past aches. In our conversation, perhaps what resonated quietly in the background was this sense of coming together in this shared experience of being survivors, carriers of secrets, investigators of the unspeakable, mourners of ancestral losses- perhaps just being human.
We thank her for inviting us into this dramatic dialogue!
Here are the responses we received from some of our participants:
From Urvashi Pawar:
I would say that she possesses something so rare! I feel she embodies what therapy is . In everything she does , talk , write and as she even listened. So much to learn from her … she says very dense things in the simplest ways. I would love to have another such interaction
From Anne Jackson:
I thought it was a ‘magical’ learning experience. There is such an instinctual truth to her work that is really exciting and that was captured in the event and everyone’s honest and often very moving conversation. Thank you for inviting me
From Petra Kozena:
Hello Shalini , it was great. Really great honor, I think that was only the second time to be online with an author that I read a book of and admired. (The other and first time it was a similarly interviewed Yalom). Galit is really engaging and open about how she perceives psychoanalysis and challenges psychodynamic rules (or police – it sometimes feels like you are policed to do therapy exactly as per the rules). I also liked how she in the end reacted to Laura’s question (I think that was the lady’s name) about what is happening in Teheran.
Also you were so well prepared, about her work and with that introduction
And similarly your student who co-hosted the event, she seems very talented
And she sort of answered my question even without asking
such event are so motivating
From Laura Chernaik:
Thank you all for a wonderful event. It was the most welcoming and interesting discussion of psychoanalysis I have attended for years. I found the discussion of aggression and anger very powerful; I’ve used it in sessions this week.
I look forward to the next Shades event
From Shalini Masih:
Galit carries an audacity which is special and rare to find in psychoanalytic thinkers. She brought theory to life as we listened to her speak about emotional inheritance. Her work is a legacy for generations of psychoanalytic thinkers to follow. I especially loved the way she eases the ‘internal psychoanalytic police’ and enables fluidity of thoughts. I would love to hear her again and again.
From Epsita Sandhu:
This was such a nourishing conversation! I’m very grateful to Galit Atlas for meeting us with such warmth and responsiveness! Her voice on the page carries the mark of a tender, intelligent and empathic listener and thinker. I feel immensely excited and inspired as I realize I got a taste of her mind at work in person. She is a clinician who shares her humanity through the language of psychoanalysis, instead of using the latter as a cloak of invulnerability, which can be tempting, one must admit. Galit Atlas opens doorways to ways of thinking that are playful, rebellious and vitalizing in the face of secrets, losses, trauma and even psychoanalytic hegemonies wherever one encounters them. There’s room for even rage and grief to be put to creative use, in service of the erotic. What a gift!
Shades of Becoming 