Prologue

Tragedy, Desire, & the Life of Exile

Oedipus: “For you reduced me to this misery,
                     You made me an alien."
                                                                 ~Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus

“Who is this that without death
goes through the kingdom of the people of the dead?"
                                                                ~Dante Alighieri, Inferno, 8:4-5
​
          Through the poetic and poignant words of their characters, both Sophocles and Dante speak of the tragic in human experience. Sophocles, whose Oedipus’ story served as the founding myth of psychoanalysis and, Dante, whose epic poem depicts the nature and course of the soul’s inward journey, each write of foundational traumas that radically fracture their characters' relational identities. They plainly point out that trauma brings us face-to-face with catastrophe—the catastrophe of becoming blind, losing our way, and of dying inwardly. Like Oedipus and Dante, our patients often come to us in the midst of catastrophe. Their stories of the cumulative wounds of their lives and the despair that has ensued overwhelm their capacity to remain intact. Their defenses no longer hold and any semblance of a stable identity is shattered. Oedipus became undone through the recognition of the hidden series of events in his life and Dante despaired, perhaps to the point of suicide, at the profundity of his losses. Their calamitous experiences derailed their lives and interrupted the narrative plotlines of their identities. They became exiled—estranged and alienated from themselves and the world. They anguished at the loss of meaning in their lives and in their failure to recover it in ways known to them.
          The exposure to trauma, particularly early life relational trauma where the distorted desire of others amputates the child's possibilities for self-creation, can inscribe onto the child's heart a sense of being eternally broken and vile. The prosthetic identity that results from such beginnings banishes one’s soul into exile. Though embodied, one instead feels entombed. Innocence is stripped away and life is spent wandering in seeming darkness, dissociated and without direction, lumbering along in the shadows portending death.

Ontological Guilt 
          As Sophocles reminds us in his Antogine, we must necessarily fall into impossible illness when faced with our traumatic truths or we will surely die. The experience of relational trauma does, indeed, cause us to become sick.  It creates a fissure in the self. It splits us in two—exiling the innocent, animate part to a subterranean life where hope is subverted and the once protective inner objects become tyrannical persecutors. The wound of relational trauma strikes us at our core and carves onto that core a profound unworthiness—that we are wholly and alone responsible and guilty for the evil that has befallen us. For this imagined debt, we continue to pay a price: we relinquish our freedom and become slaves to the repetition of our pain, hoping, in fantasy, that we might somehow master and transform it. Our guiltiness-of-being forecloses our access to freedom and sets us off wandering sightless, in constant repetition, invariably compelling us towards an inner death. Trauma and the ontological guilt it stokes synergistically lead to a disordering of our desire—we relinquish our deepest need to ‘be,’ and so, we suffer.

Sacred and Profane Space
         Trauma also creates a split in reality that seals off consciousness from the possibility of knowing. It implants us firmly in the material, concrete world and smothers our poetic voice by de-symbolizing our inner experience and eclipsing the sense of aliveness our soul may have known in innocence. Trauma forecloses the transitional space between what Mircea Eliade described as the Profane world—the world filled with chaos—and the Sacred world—that protected mythopoetic space that allows the real to unveil itself. Through the encounter with this unveiling, Eliade notes, we actually bring the world and ourselves into being and give them order. Trauma seals off access to this sacred space and thus strikes us at the level of soul. Without access to this space, we are cut off from the numinous and transcendent and left to the aridity and desolation of our finitude.

De-Symbolizing Narrative Identity
          Without access to such a mythopoetic space our ability to symbolize is amputated and, thus, we become mute. Words are our meaning constituting symbols. They give order to the chaos around us and the chaos inside us. When we are dissociated and therefore disconnected from our inner states we are no longer able to translate felt experience into thought and word. We know of the presence of some inner ‘thing’ but cannot crystalize it, name it, and therefore, tame it.
            This inability to symbolize internal experience renders us incapable of authoring and narrating our unique life story. Trauma muddles memory—the horizon for our inner coherence—and, therefore, distorts our history. What is false and what is true become blurred and, as a result, our psychological skin becomes increasingly porous allowing any felt sense of personhood to seep out and evaporate. Narrated identity becomes unbearable, authentic care of self, impossible, and any horizon of hope for a future self is rendered ever more remote.

Therapy for the Wounded Soul
          Like an individual’s narrative identity, the healing power of psychotherapy lies, to a large extent, precisely in the coherence of its own narrative form. With over 500 documented schools of therapy, some more narratively unified than others, we clinicians must sort through the often-discordant sounds of the many extant epistemological and linguistic communities. Doing so can feel as if we’re stuck in a proverbial clinical tower of Babel. As a result, the sense of what effective therapy actually is is further fragmented and obscured. This, of course, makes it difficult to situate oneself along any foundational arc of treatment that can point to the markers necessary for reaching our hoped for destination. How do we, in fact, encounter the human being behind their destructive behavior and their symptoms and hold them in our healing gaze? How do we meet and contain the pain they may hardly know? How do we allow their wounds to breathe so that we may help them heal from their edges as well as from their depths? How do we do all this without masking our patient’s subjectivity? And, how do we not function as mere purveyors of some technology but offer our patients the kind of therapy their soul may actually be calling for?
           If we accept the premise that the principle work of therapy for these souls consists of aiding the patient in constituting oneself as subject, then we must begin our project by considering the kind of space required for subjectivity to emerge and unfold. How is the creation of that space inseparable from how we are present, how we listen, and the form of relatedness we cultivate? How do we honor the patient’s ontological dignity within that space and open up a clearing for their faint voice to begin to make a sound? How do we then help them re-symbolize sounds to words and words to stories? And, how may that very act of rewriting their stories assuage the suffering caused by their wounds and unshackle them from their chains?

Dante's Divine Comedy:  From Despair to Hope to Subjectivity and Freedom
          Dante’s epic journey through the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso offers us some insight into the above questions. The Commedia, Dante’s personal story of losing his way and eventually finding redemption, poignantly captures the human struggle between despair and hope. The story, read through the lens of clinical therapeutics, offers not only a model of how we clinicians might conceptualize the therapeutic journey but also identifies the particular virtues that might be cultivated by those of us who serve as guides. The Commedia offers a roadmap that can help guide our patients (and we clinicians) from the place of despair we may find ourselves in, to the release from the chthonic forces that seem to hold us captive.
          The three books of Dante's Divine Commedy teach us about fear, shame, guilt, betrayal, on one hand and trust, forgiveness, courage, meaning, hope, responsibility and love, on the other—all human realities animated and lived daily in session between patient and therapist. More than this, however, the three books of the Commedia offer us archetypal parallels to the processes of psychotherapy itself and present the therapeutic action that takes place across its several phases.
          Dante orients our journey from the start. He tells us unequivocally that in order to travel upward to discover the joy found in paradise we must first travel downward (and inward) to the icy pits of hell. The Inferno (Phase I of psychotherapy) details the effects of our traumas: how we came to be broken, how we were victims and how we then victimized ourselves with the choices we made that petrified us in place, and then how those choices sculpted our desires, and led, perhaps, to our despair. The Inferno is also where we begin to establish a relationship with our guide, and through the experience of our regression to dependance, struggle with our ambivalence to commit, in good faith, to the journey itself. 
          This very act of commitment sets in motion the possibility for movement into Purgatorio (or Phase II of psychotherapy). With this commitment the will is freed from its immobility and kindles the very possibility that blind, unconscious repetition of pain, can end. During this phase, traveler and guide grapple with the question of what real healing or change can look like. The answer is not immediately clear and, as traveler and guide wander within the unknown, the uncertainty and ambivalence of the past, still linger.  Suffering continues to be present in this phase but the travelers’ relationship to that suffering is altered as they move from terrace to terrace. Suffering is embraced in a new way as the layers of guilt, responsibility, and forgiveness are considered. And, with one's understanding of love and relationship with truth also reconfigured, the possibility of hope can be reborn.
          Finally, in the Paradiso (or Phase III of psychotherapy), the pilgrim, having left his trusted guide behind, encounters new guides who accompany him ‘home.’ Here the traveler comes to accept the whole of one’s life including one’s unacceptability and is able to be joyful in taking responsibility for that life even in the face of death. Humility and gratitude dissassemble the prodigal forces of ego and free the pilgrim from the natural tendency of running from death and to risk loving with a fuller heart. 


                                                                               *********

          Utilizing psychoanalytic theory and insights from existential philosophy we'll endeavor to construct in this seminar a therapeutic narrative of psychological suffering and its recapitulation and reparation in and through the therapeutic encounter. Participants will be challenged to examine their clinical assumptions, increase their fluency with interactional unconscious processes, critically assess the implications of their technical comportment, and refine their ability to help patients transfigure inchoate and stultifying psychological pain into words and symbols that can help lead them toward greater wholeness.  
          While prior knowledge of psychoanalytic/existential concepts would be helpful for participants in navigating the ideas presented in this seminar, we will aim to move beyond clinical jargon toward creating an accessible and eminently practical shared understanding. Previous familiarity with Dante’s Divine Comedy is not required. It is also not required to have a text during the seminar. Relevant passages that will inform our conversation with be made available on screen to participants.
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​Join us in Gubbio, Italy this July as we travel with Dante through his and our own inner spaces for an experience that will enkindle, elevate, and, perhaps, even transform. You'll be challenged and inspired to reconsider your understanding of the therapeutic journey and deepen your participation in the renewal of your patients’ lives.
Amelio A. D'Onofrio, PhD
​Instructor​

Reading the "Divine Comedy" for the first time:

Some seminar participants might decide to tackle a first reading of the Commedia before encountering Dante together in Gubbio. Undertaking that project may, at first, feel overwhelming. Don't let that deter you--it's supposed to feel that way. Remember, The Divine Comedy is an epic poem--it's a poem and it's epic!. That means that its meaning, as with any poems, unfolds over time through multiple readings and through our immersion not only in the surface meaning of the words but in its sounds, tempo, rhythm, and the feelings it generates in us. T. S. Eliot noted that "poetry communicates before it is understood." So, let the poem speak to you at its pace and at yours. Though its meaning may remain obscure in the moment, the deeply felt sense it leaves the reader can communicate powerfully about the human condition. In order to encounter it authentically, we must suspend our pre-existing understanding of things and travel along with Dante and his guides into all that which is unknown; and, we must be willing to surrender to that unknown until it allows meaning to coalesce with us. Finally, it's important not to be afraid to embrace the impatience, occasional drifting, and the feeling that, like Dante, you too may be lost in a dark wood as you're reading the poem.

The poem teaches that we cannot accomplish the most important things in life alone, we need guides. Most translations include commentaries that offer insights into the text. Feel free to refer to these commentaries when feeling stumped but resist spending all of your time lost in the minutia of the commentaries whereby the text itself is eclipsed. It might be helpful on your first reading to read it for the feel rather than for the precise meaning. Below are some additional tips to help guide your first read through:

- The Commedia consists of 100 cantos: 34 in Inferno, 33 in Purgatorio, and 33 in Paradiso--each canto runs about 150 lines. Think of it not as a book but as a collection of 100 poems. Therefore, the entirety of the poem is actually not that long. My recommendation, however, is not to read it in long sittings. Rather, read one or two cantos at a time and let them settle into you, reflect on them, and let sounds and images inhabit you for a day or two and then continue that process with the following canti. The Comedy demands of us a slow reading--one that makes room for the in-between and the unsaid.

- As you walk with Dante on his journey, put yourself in his shoes. Feel what the poem evokes in you. Put yourself in the shoes of his guides, what feelings surface then. ask yourself: "With whom do I identity?" "How do I connect with the suffering encountered and with the forgiveness experienced?" "How do the losses of my own earthly loves mirror those in the poem?"

- It's important to remember that The Divine Comedy is written in three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The inferno is by far the most widely read part. And, that makes sense. We encounter people being punished in hell for their sins in the most creative and tantalizing ways. The drama holds one's attention. It's important to remember, though, that the Inferno represents only the "fall" and not the possibility for redemption that Dante leads us toward. Don't stop reading after the Inferno, stay on the journey with Dante to the sunlight of Purgatorio and beyond.

- It's important to keep in mind that it's only after the second time you read the Comedy that you'll have a basic understanding of the whole. On the first read, because you don't yet have a perspective of the whole, there's no way of knowing where you are. On the second read you'll have a sense of the ark of the journey and will be able to situate yourself along the way ; and you'll be able to see how the parts fit into the whole.

- Reading Dante with others may make the journey less onerous and overwhelming. Baylor University has sponsored "The World's Largest Dante Reading Group". There website (100daysofdante.com) contains video introductions to every canto as well as a plethora of other resources. Walking with others in "100 Days of Dante" can help us feel less lost as we enter the dark wood.

- Other helpful resources include:
          --Digital Dante (digitaldante.columbia.edu) -- Columbia University
​          --The Princeton Dante Project (dante.princeton.edu)

​- There are many fine translations of the Divine Comedy. I personally prefer those in verse as the poetry adds an additional feeling dimension to the narrative exposition.  Some widely recommended translations include:
     -Robert and Jean Hollander (Anchor Books/Random House) [Verse]  (The translation used in the seminar.)
     -Anthony Esolen (Modern Library) [Verse]
     -John Ciardi (New American Library) [Verse]
     -Robert Durling (Oxford) [Prose]

Opening Conversation and Themes for the Seminar

Monday, July 22, 2024 (Welcome and Opening Session 9:30am - 1:00pm)

Inferno:
Tragedy, Desire, and the Life of Exile

Opening Conversation​
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live."
~Joan Didion

“That which you most need 
will be found where you least want to go.”
~C. G. Jung
​
“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak 
knits up the o’er wrought hearth and bids it break.”
~William Shakespear, Macbeth

“...the patient who comes to therapy, he risks exposure to the lie.”  
~Wilfred Bion

Shepherd: “I am on the brink of dreadful speech.”
Oedipus: “And I of dreadful hearing. Yet I must hear.”
~Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

“The very notion of being makes the 
soul feel pain in its places of deadness.”
~Helen Luke

“Poet who guides me, look to see if I’m worthy enough, 
before you entrust me to this perilous journey.”
~Dante Alighieri, Inferno, II:1o-12
​
“We enter crying at our birth, knowing … that 
creation and the fall are simultaneous.” 
~Harold Bloom

“Through its myths a healthy society gives its members relief from 
neurotic guilt and excessive anxiety."
~Rollo May

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.”
~William Wordsworth

“Desire is the true author of the neurotic process.”
~Walter Davis

“Suffering needs to be seen; only then is it remembered.”
~David Levin

Topics and Themes for Monday's Session

  • Setting the Stage
    • Archetypal Narratives and Therapeutic Action
    • The Double Identity: Pilgrim and Author | Patient and Narrator
    • Desire, Repetition, and the Neurotic Process
    • The Drama of Tragic Recognition
    • The Virgilian Narrative and the Therapist’s Way of Being
    • The Stages of Dante’s Journey
      • Phase I: The Fear and Horror of Self-Discovery
      • Phase II: From Pride to Humility
    • Sacred and Profane Therapeutic Space: Delimiting Order from Chaos

Tuesday, July 23, 2024 (9:30am - 1:00pm)

Inferno:
The Descent into the Depths 
and the Encounter with the Shadow

Opening Conversation
“Without hope, we live in desire."
~Dante Alighieri, Inferno, IV: 42

“Approaching the unconscious 
destitutes the subject yet summon it as well.”
~Colette Soler
​
“For no one desires what he has, 
but what he does not have, which is manifest lack."
~Dante Alighieri, Convivio, III:15.3

“A neurosis is a nostalgia, some passion for what cannot be had.”
~Phillip Rieff

“Then, knowing nothing, I went on.”
~Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus

“Self-consciousness is the return out of otherness.”
~Walter Davis

“Sin is the turning of our eyes in the wrong direction.”
~Simone Weil

“The setting of analysis reproduces the early and earliest mothering techniques. 
It invites regression by reason of its reliability."
~Donald Winnicott

“Secured frames, in which all the fundamental, archetypal, deep unconsciously sought and validated ground rules are in place...offer optimally healing and inherently supportive conditions for a therapeutic experience, but they also evoke entrapping existential death anxieties."
~Robert Langs

“Uncovering the unconscious activates existence.”
~Walter Davis

Topics and Themes for Tuesday's Session

  • Encounter with the Souls in Hell:
    • Self-Consciousness Through the Mirror of the Other
  • Wrongly Ordered Desire and the Foreclosure of Possibility
  • Trauma, Death, and the Origin of Subjectivity
  • Remembering the Forgotten and the Denied
  • Repetition and the Fall of Knowledge
  • The Process of Transformation in the Depths of the Inferno

Tuesday Afternoon: Optional Wine Tasting in Montefalco

Wednesday, July 24, 2024 (9:30am - 1:00pm)

Purgatorio: ​
​Guilt, Therapeutic Forgiveness, and the Incarnation of Hope

Opening Conversation
“…twisted love
Attempts to make the crooked way straight.”
~Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio X:2-3

“The ‘they’ does not permit us the courage for anxiety in the face of death.”
~Martin Heidegger

“Why do we let our guilt consume us so?"
~Dante Alighieri, Inferno, VII.21

“The only thing of which one can be guilty of is of having given ground relative to one's desire.”
~Jacques Lacan

“Psychoanalysis would seem to have as its sole goal the calming of guilt.”
~Jacques Lacan

“Mastered guilt is the origin of our project of subjectivity.”
~Walter Davis

“Healing or saving does not mean the removal of our finitude, 
on the contrary, it means its acceptance.”
~Paul Tillich
​
“In spite of the consciousness of guilt . . . . One could say that the courage to be is the
courage to accept oneself as accepted in spite of being unacceptable."
~Paul Tillich

“Human dignity is possessed by the person who is free and 
because of freedom is responsible for identity."
~Frank Ambrosio

“[The] postmodern variant of forgiveness…is nothing other than interpretation.”
~Julia Kristeva

“There is a listening that works this way: a listening that is responsible for creating what it hears--
a listening, for example, with the power to cause or alleviate the very suffering it hears."
~David Levin

Topics and Themes for Wednesday's Session

  • Our Relationship to Suffering and the Process of Change
  • From the Exile to the Exodus
  • Wandering in the Wilderness: Working Through Unfinished Business
  • Punishment, Repentance, and Release
  • Acceptance in Spite of Unacceptability
  • The (Re)-Appropriation of Responsibility
  • Guilt in the Therapist

Wednesday Afternoon: Optional Visit to Assisi and Dinner

Thursday, July 25, 2024 (9:30 - 1:00pm)

Purgatorio: ​
​Reworking One's Relationship to Suffering

Opening Conversation
“Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.”
~Carl Jung

“The patient may say he suffers but this is only because he 
does not know what suffering is and mistakes feeling pain for suffering it.”
~Wilfred Bion

“The subject that psychoanalysis receives and deals with is the one who suffers. 
And not from just anything, but from a suffering tied to truth.”
~Colette Soler

“Suffering is always a potential birth pang.”
~Walter Davis

“The therapist's role changed from that of a counselor who takes the part of client against the world, 
to a guide who puts before the client the claim of the world.”
~Sarah Corrie

“The capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is a 
very rare and difficult thing; It is almost a miracle; it is a miracle.”
~Simone Weil

“Psychological  maturity is the capacity for conscious suffering...
healing from the instinct of running from death.” 
~Carl Jung

“I have gone free. It is the truth that sustains me.”
~Sophocles, Oedipus Rex

“Does this mean now that I am freer than I was?
I do not know. I shall learn.”
~Samuel Beckett

“What makes us Heroic?—Confronting 
our supreme suffering and our supreme hope.”
~Friedrich Nietzsche

Topics and Themes for Thursday's Session

• Learning to Suffer what must be Suffered
     ⁃ The Sufferance of Self-Knowledge and Psychological Maturity
• Forgiveness and the Restoration of Hope in Psychotherapy
• Disassembling Ego: Pride, Humility, and Gratitude
• Walking Through the Purgatorial Fire
• The Therapeutic Relationship: From Insight to Internalization
• Learning to Live with the Truth of Existence
• The Reappropriation of Being
• Virgil’s Good-Bye: On Termination and Therapeutic Endings

Thursday evening: Closing Dinner In Gubbio

Friday, July 26, 2024 (9:30 - 1:00pm)

Paradiso:
The Restoration of the Soul: 
Transforming Fear into Gratitude and Love

Opening Conversation
“Paradise is always paradise lost.”
~Walter Davis
​
"All human nature vigorously resists grace 
because grace changes us and the change is painful."
~Flannery O'Connor

“To identify with the symptom at the 
end of analysis is thus to change the symptom.”
~Collette Soler

“Psychoanalysis does not cure, it merely reconciles.”
~Phillip Rieff

“It is not that something different is seen, but that one sees differently. 
It is as though the special act of seeing were changed by a new dimension.”
~C.G. Jung
​
“To know the world in which we suffer, love, and die, 
without interposing the comfort of self-deceit, is to live in the gladness of being.”
~Walter Davis

“For Dante’s journey is ours, and we too descent into Hell; we too
struggle up the mountain of consciousness and must pass through fire and water
until we dare to face the responsibilities of joy.”
~Helen Luke

“. . . And yet one word
Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
That word is love."
~Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus

Concluding Thoughts

• Can the soul be restored?​​
•Paradise as an existential-hermeneutic state, not a spacial or temporal location
• Integrating Death: On Seeing Truth in Full Consciousness
• On the Possibility of Transcendence in Psychotherapy 
• Seminar Evaluations and Check Out

*The full itinerary for the week, including: breakfast and lunch schedules and optional activities, can be found on the General Information page.

Sources for Inspiration and Conversation
​
Selected Bibliography*

Dante Bibliography

Alighieri, D. (1970/1990). Inferno. Prose translation by Charles S. Singleton, (Vol. I: Text). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Alighieri, D. (1970/1990). Inferno. Prose translation by Charles S. Singleton, (Vol. II: Commentary). Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.
Alighieri, D. (1973/1991). Purgatorio. Prose translation by Charles S. Singleton (Vol. I: Text). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Alighieri, D. (1973/1991). Purgatorio. Prose translation by Charles S. Singleton (Vol. II: Commentary). Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press.
Alighieri, D. (1975/1991). Paradiso. Prose translation by Charles S. Singleton (Vol. I: Text). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Alighieri, D. (1975/1991). Paradiso. Prose translation by Charles S. Singleton (Vol. II: Commentary). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Alighieri, D. (2002). Inferno. Verse translation and commentary by Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander. New York: Anchor.
Alighieri, D. (2004). Purgatorio. Verse translation and commentary by Jean Hollander and Robert Hollander. New York: Anchor.
Alighieri, D. (2008). Paradiso. Verse translation and commentary by Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander. New York: Anchor.
Alighieri, D. (2008). Vita Nuova. Translated by Mark Musa. New York: Oxford.
Ambrosio, F. (2007). Dante and Derrida: Face to face. New York: SUNY Press.
Ambrosio, F., (Lead Faculty), (August, 2019). The Divine Comedy: Dante's journey to freedom. Online Course: Georgetown University.   Retrieved from https://dante.georgetown.edu.
Barolini, T. (1992). The undivine comedy: Detheologizing Dante. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Barolini, T. (2014). Dante's poets: Textuality and truth in the Comedy. Princeton, NJ: Princiton University Press.
Barolini, T. (Ed.). (August, 2019). Digital Dante: The Divine Comedy with Commento Baroliano. Retrieved   from https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/.
Baur, C. O. (2007). Dante's hermeneutics of salvation: Passages to freedom in the Divine Comedy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Brockman, D. D. (2017). A Psychoanalytic Exploration of Dante's Divine Comedy. New York: Routledge.
​Corrie, S. (1999). Existential motifs in medieval poetry: Insights on therapeutic practice from Dante's Divine Comedy. Journal of Poetry   Therapy, 13, 3-16.
Dreher, R. (2017). How Dante can save your life: The life-changing wisdom of history's greatest poem. New York: Reagan Arts.
Franke, W. (1996). Dante's  interpretive journey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Freccero, J. (1986). Dante: The poetics of conversion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hawxwell, F. (2015). Dante's Divine Comedy and modern depth therapy. Psychodynamic Practice, 21, ​36-52.
Kalsched, D. (2013). Trauma and the soul: A psycho-spiritual approach to human development and its interruption. London: Routledge.
Lewis, R. W. B. (2009). Dante: A life. New York: Penguin.
Luke, H. M. (1989). Dark wood to white rose: Journey and transformation in Dante's Divine Comedy. New York: Parabola.
Mazzarella, A. (2015). Alla ricercha di Beatrice: Dante e Jung. Milano: Edra S.p.A.
Moevs, C. (2005). The metaphysics of Dante's Comedy. London: Oxford.
Santagata, M. (2016). Dante: The story of his life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Sayers, D. L. (1954). Introductory papers on Dante: The poet alive in his writings. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock.
Sayers, D. L. (1957). Further papers of Dante: His heirs and his ancestors. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock.
Sayers, D. L. (1963). The poetry of search and the poetry of statement: On Dante and other writers. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock.
Singleton, C. S. (1958). Journey to Beatrice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Psychotherapy Related Bibliography

  • Ahktar, S. (2007). The 'listening cure': An overview. In S. Ahktar (Ed.) Listening to others: Developmental and clinical aspects of empathy and attunement (pp 1-16). Lahnam: Jason Aronson.Bateman, A., & Fonagy, P. (2004). Psychotherapy for borderline personality disorder: Mentalization–based treatment. London: Oxford University Press.
  • Becker, E. (1972). The Denial of Death. New York: The Free Press.
  • Bion, W. R. (1962/1984). Learning from experience. London: Karnac.
  • Bion, W. R. (1981). Notes on memory and desire. In R. Langs (Ed.), Classics in psychoanalytic technique (pp. 259-260). New York: Jason Aronson. 
  • Bion, W. (1983). Attention and interpretation. Northvale: Aronson.
  • Bion, W. (2005). The Tavistock lectures. London: Karnac.
  • Biswanger, L. (1963). Being-in-the-world. (J. Needleman, trans.). New York: Harper & Row.
  • Bowlby, J. (1982). Attachment (2nd ed.). New York: Basic Books.
  • Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent-child attachment and healthy human development. New York: Basic Books.
  • Bollas, C. (1987). The shadow of the object: Psychoanalysis of the unthought known. New York: Columbia University Press.
  • Boss, M. (1979). Existential foundations for medicine and psychology. New York: Jason Aronson.
  • Boss, M. (1994). Existential foundations of medicine and psychology. Northvale, NJ: Aronson. 
  • Bromberg, P. (1998). Standing in the spaces: Essays on clinical process, trauma, and dissociation. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.
  • Buber, M. (1955). Between man and man. Boston: Beacon Press. 
  • Buber, M (1958). The I and Thou. New York: Macmillan.
  • Buber, M. (1999). Martin Buber on psychology and psychotherapy (J. Agassi, Ed.). Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
  • Carveth, D. (2018). ​The still small voice: Psychoanalytic reflections on guilt and conscience. London: Routledge.
  • Casement, P. (1991). Learning from the patient. London: Routledge. 
  • Casement, P. (2002).  Learning from our mistakes: Beyond dogma in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.  New York: Guilford.
  • Casement, P. (2006). Learning from life: Becoming a psychoanalyst. London: Routledge.
  • Cozolino, L. (2006). The neuroscience of psychotherapy, 2nd. New York: Norton.
  • Dalle Pezze, B. (2006). Heidegger on gelassenheit. Minerva--An internet Journal of Philosophy, 10, 94-122.
  • Davis, W. A. (1989). Inwardness and existence: Subjectivity in/and Hegel, Heidegger, Marx, and Freud. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
  • Davis, W. A. (2001). Deracination: Historicity, Hiroshima, and the tragic imperative. Albany: SUNY Press.
  • Dreyfus, H. L. (1991). Being-in-the-world: A commentary of Heidegger's Being and Time, Div. 1. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
  • Eigen, M. (2018). Faith. London: Routledge.
  • Fink, B. (2017). A clinical introduction to Freud: Techniques for everyday practice. New York: Norton.
  • Fink, B. (2014). Against understanding (Vols 1& 2). London: Routledge.
  • Fink, B. (2007). Fundamentals of psychoanalytic technique. New York: Norton.
  • Fink, B. (1997). A clinical introduction to Lacanian psychoanalysis. New York: Norton.
  • Fonagy, P., Gergely, G., Jurist, E., Target, M. (2002). Affect regulation, mentalization, and the development of the self. New York: Other Press.
  • Freud, S., In Strachey, J., In Freud, A., & In Richards, A. (1966). The Standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. London: Hogarth Press.
  • Friedman, M. (1985). The healing dialogue in psychotherapy. New York: Jason Aaronson.
  • Friedman, M. (1992). Dialogue and the human image: Beyond humanistic psychology. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
  • Fromm, E. (1951). The forgotten language: An introduction to the understanding of dreamsn, fairytales, and myths. New York: Grove Press.
  • Fromm-Reichmann, F. (1960). Principles of intensive psychotherapy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Hall, B. (2016). Psychotherapy's pilgrim-poet: The story within. Colorado Springs, CO: University Professor's Press.
  • Heidegger, M. (1927/1962). Being and time. (J. Macquarrie and E Robinson, trans.). San Francisco: HarperCollins.
  • Heidegger, M. (1959). An introduction to metaphysics. New Haven: Yale.
  • Heidegger, M. (1971). Poetry, language, thought (A. Hofstadter, trans.). New York: Harper Colophon Books.
  • Heidegger, M. (1977). Basic Writings, (David Krell, Ed.). New York: Harper & Row.
  • Heidegger, M. (2001). Zollikon seminars. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
  • Heidegger, M. (2010). Being and truth, (G. Fried and R. Polt, trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  • Hillman, J. (1977). Re-Visioning Psychology. New York: Harper & Row.
  • Jung, C. (1954). The practice of psychotherapy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Jung, C. (1959). The concept of the collective unconscious (pp.42-53), Concerning the archetypes, with special reference to the anima concept (pp. 54-72), & Psychological aspects of the mother archetype (pp. 73-110). The archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, V 9,I of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Kennedy, R. (2014). The psychic home: Psychanalysis, consciousness, and the human soul. London: Routledge.
  • Kierkegaard, S. (1980). The concept of anxiety : a simple psychologically orienting deliberation on the dogmatic issue of hereditary sin. Princeton, N.J. :Princeton University Press.
  • Kierkegaard, S. (1987). Fear and trembling/Repetition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  • Kierkegaard, S. (1849/1989). The Sickness unto death. (A. Hannah, trans.). London: Penguin. 
  • Klein, M. (1952). The Origins of Transference. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 33:433-438
  • Klein, M. (1946). Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms1. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 27:99-110
  • Klein, M. (1937/1975). Love, Guilt and Reparation. In Love, Guilt, and Reparation and other essays, 1921-1945, pp. 306-343. New York: The Free Press.
  • Klein, M. (1975). Envy and Gratitude. In Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946–1963. Int. Psycho-Anal. Lib., 176-235. London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis.
  • Kleinberg-Levin, D. M. (2008). Before the voice of reason: Echoes of responsibility in Merleau-Ponty’s and Levinas’s Ethics. New York: SUNY Press.
  • Kleinberg-Levin, D. M. (2020). Heidegger's phenomenology of perception: An Introduction (Vol. 1). Lanham: Rowen & Littlefield.
  • Kleinberg-Levin, D. M. (2021). Heidegger's Phenomenology of perception: learning to see and hear hermeneutically (Vol. II).  Lanham: Rowen & Littlefield.
  • Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of horror: An essay on abjection. (L. S. Roudiez, trans.). New York: Columbia University Press.
  • Kristeva, J. (1987).  Tales of love. New York: Columbia University Press.
  • Kristeva, J. (1989). Black sun: Depression and melancholia.  New York: Columbia University Press.
  • Kristeva, J. (1995).  New maladies of the soul. (R. Guberman, trans). New York: Columbia University Press.
  • Kristeva, J. (2010). Hatred and forgiveness. New York: Columbia University Press.
  • Lacan, J. (1988). The seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book I: Freud's papers on technique 1953-1954, (J. Forrester, trans.). New York: Norton.
  • Lacan, J. (1988). The seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II: The ego in Freud's theory and in the technique of psychoanalysis 1954-1955. (S. Tomasselli, trans.). New York: Norton.
  • Lacan, J. (1993). The seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book III: Psychoses 1955-1956. (R. Grigg, trans.). New York: Norton.
  • Lacan, J. (1997). The Seminar f Jacques Lacan: Book VII: The ethics of psychoanalysis 1959-1960. (D. Porter, Trans.). New York Norton.
  • Lacan, J. (1998). The seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XI: The four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis. (A. Sheridan, trans.). New York: Norton.
  • Lacan, J. (1999). The seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XX: Encore: On feminine sexuality, the limits of love and knowledge 1972-1973 (B. Fink, trans.).. New York: Norton.
  • Lacan, J. (2006). Ecrits. (B. Fink, trans.). New York: Norton.
  • Lacan, J. (2007). The seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XVII: The other side of psychoanalysis (R. Grigg, trans.). New York: Norton.
  • Lacan, J. (2015). The seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book X: Anxiety. New York: Polity.
  • Lacan, J. (2016). The seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XXIII: The sinthome. (A. R. Price, trans.). Malden, MA: Polity.
  • Langs, R. (1976). The bi-personal field. New York: Jason Aronson.
  • Langs, R. (1978). The listening process. New York: Jason Aronson.
  • Langs, R. (1979). The supervisory experience. New York: Jason Aronson.
  • Langs, R. (1979). The therapeutic environment. New York: Jason Aronson.
  • Langs, R. (1980). Interactions: The realm of transference and countertransference. New York: Jason Aronson.
  • Langs, R. (1981). Resistances and interventions. New York: Jason Aronson.
  • Langs, R. (1982). The psychotherapeutic conspiracy. New York: Jason Aronson.
  • Langs, R. (1988). Decoding your dreams: A revolutionary technique for  understanding your dreams. New York: Balantine.
  • Langs, R. (1993). Empowered psychotherapy: Teaching self-processing.  London: Karnac.
  • Langs, R. (1994). Doing supervision and being supervised. London: Karnac.
  • Langs, R. (1995). Clinical Practice and the architecture of the mind. London: Karnac.
  • Langs, R. (1996). The evolution of the emotion-processing mind. Madison: International Universities Press.
  • Langs, R. (1997). Death anxiety in clinical practice. London: Karnac.
  • Langs, R. (1999). The Evolution of the emotion processing mind: With an introduction to mental Darwinism. New York: International Universities Press.
  • Langs, R. (2004). Fundamentals of adaptive psychotherapy and counselling. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
  • Langs, R. (2006). Love and death in psychotherapy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Lear, J. (2003). Therapeutic action. London: Karnac.
  • Lear, J. (2011). The case for irony. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.
  • Lear, J. (2017). Wisdom won from illness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.
  • Levin, D. (1985). The body's recollection of being: Phenomenological psychology and the deconstruction of nihilism. New York: Routledge.
  • Levin, D. (1988). The opening of vision: Nihilism and the post-modern situation. New York: Routledge.
  • Levin, D. (1989). The listening self: Personal growth, social change, and the closure of metaphysics. London: Routledge.
  • Mahler, M., Pine, F., & Bergman, A. (1975). The psychological birth of the infant: Symbiosis and individuation. New York: Basic Books.
  • May, R., Angel, E., & Ellenberger, H. F. (1958). Existence: A new dimension in psychiatry and psychology. New York: Simon & Schuster. 
  • McGilchrist, I. (2009). The master and his emissary: The divided brain and the making of the western world. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  • McGilchrist, I. (2021). The matter with things (Vols. 1 & 2). London: Perspectiva.
  • Neumann, E. (1954). The origins and history of consciousness. (R. F. C. Hull, trans.). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Neumann, E. (1963). The great mother. (R. Manheim, trans.). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Neumann, E. (1973). The child. Boston: Shambahala Publications.
  • Neumann, E. (1990). Depth psychology and a new ethic. Boston: Shambhala.
  • Oliver, K. (1998). Tracing the signifier behind the scenes of desire: Krestiva’s challenge to Lacan’s analysis. In H. Silverman, ed. Cultural Semiosis: Tracing the signifier, (pp. 83-104). New York: Routledge.
  • Orange, D. (2011). The suffering stranger: Hermeneutics for everyday practice. New York: Routledge.
  • Ricoeur, P. (1967). The symbolism of evil. Boston: Beacon.
  • Ricoeur, P. (1970). Freud and philosophy: An essay on interpretation. (D. Savage, trans.). New Haven: Yale University Press.
  • Ricoeur, P. (1974). The conflict of interpretations: Essays in hermeneutics (D. Ihde, Ed.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
  • Rogers, C. (1980). A way of being. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
  • Seinfeld, J. (1990). The bad object: Handling the negative therapeutic reaction in psychotherapy. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.
  • Seinfeld, J. (1993). Interpreting and holding. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.
  • Seinfeld, J. (1996). Containing Rage, Terror, and Despair. New York: Aronson.
  • Searles, H.F. (1973). Concerning Therapeutic Symbiosis. Annu. Psychoanal., 1:247-262
  • Searles, H. (1965). Collected papers on schizophrenia and related subjects. NY: International Universities Press. 
  • Searles, H. (1979). Countertransference and related subjects. Madison: International Universities Press.
  • Schneiderman, S. (1980). Returning to Freud: Clinical psychoanalysis in the school of Lacan. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  • Schore, A. (2012). The science of the art of psychotherapy. New York: Norton.
  • Silverman, H. J. (Ed.) (1998). Cultural semiosis: Tracing the signifier. New York: Routledge.
  • Soler, C. (2014). Lacan--The unconscious reinvented. London: Karnac.
  • Soler, C. (2016). Lacanian affects. London: Routledge.
  • Solms, M. (2015). The feeling brain: Selected papers on neuropsychoanalysis. London: Karnac.
  • Solms, M., & Turnbull, O.  (2002). The brain and the inner world: An introduction to the neuroscience of subjective experience. New York: Other Press.
  • Sussman, M. (2007). A curious calling: Unconscious motivations for practicing psychotherapy, (2nd ed.). New York: Aronson.
  • Thomson, M. G. (1994). The truth about Freud's technique. New York: NYU Press.
  • Tillich, P. (1952). The courage to be. New Haven: Yale.
  • Tillich, P. (1957). Systematic theology, Vol II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Verhaeghe, P. (2004). On being normal and other disorders: A manual for clinical psychodiagnostics, (S. Jotthandt, trans.).  New York: Other Press.
  • White, C. (2016). Time and death: Heidegger's analysis of finitude. London: Routledge.
  • Wilberg, P. (2004). The therapist as listener: Martin Heidegger and the missing dimension of counseling and psychotherapy Training. Eastbourne, Sussex: New Gnosis Publications.
  • Wilberg, P. (2013). Being and listening: Counselling, psychoanalysis, and the ontology of listening. Whistable, Great Britain: New Yoga Publications.
  • Wilberg, P. (2015). Heidegger, medicine, & 'scientific method'. Eastbourne, Sussex: New Gnosis Publications.
  • Winnicott, D. (1958/1992). Through pediatrics to psycho-analysis: Collected papers. New York: Brunner/Mazel.
  • Winnicott, D.W. (1949). Hate in the Counter-Transference. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 30:69-74
  • Winnicott, D.W. (1958). The Capacity to be Alone1. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 39:416-420
  • Winnicott, D.W. (1960). The Theory of the Parent-Infant Relationship1. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 41:585-595
  • Winnicott, D. W. (1965). Maturational processes and the facilitative environment. New York: International Universities Press.
  • Winnicott, D. (1971/2005). Playing with reality. London: Routledge.
  • Winnicott, D.W. (1974). Fear of Breakdown. Int. Rev. Psycho-Anal., 1:103-107.

​      *This selected bibliography represents some sources of influence for the ideas presented in this seminar.