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Susan Donner, MD, was chosen as the presenter for the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute’s (BPSI) 2020 Beata Rank Lecture on November 21. The annual lecture celebrates the legacy of this prominent child analyst, who was part of Sigmund Freud’s circle in Vienna and later, after her immigration to the United States, a highly respected supervisor and training analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute. She was an honorary Professor of Psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine, a consultant and supervisor at Judge Baker Guidance Center, and with Marian C. Putnam, co-founded and co-directed the James Jackson Putnam Children's Center in 1943. 

 

Dr. Donner’s talk, "A Look at Phantasy in the World of Virtual Reality," explores how young patients interface with cyberspace and examines the risks of addictive use of technology. What are the psychodynamic forces at play that render some children and adults vulnerable to developing such addictive immersions? Dr. Donner analyzes the siren call drawing some children, adolescents, and adults into the grip of a virtual reality from which they are seemingly unable to escape, and elucidates the dynamics of such addictions through the lens of two psychoanalytic concepts: transitional objects and the notion of a claustrum.

 

Richard Frankel, PhD, a Faculty member and supervisor of the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis and the author of the book Human Virtuality and Digital Life: Philosophical and Psychoanalytic Investigations (Routledge, 2021), was the discussant. Lawrence J. Brown, PhD, Supervising Child Analyst and immediate past Co-Chair, Child Analysis Committee, Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, was the moderator.