by Sullivan Oakley, MA

Note from Luba Palter, Editor-in-Chief: 

NCSPP Board members are taking turns contributing to President’s Remarks for the rest of this year. Sullivan Oakley, MA is the Chair of the Intensive Study Group (ISG) Committee. 

In these times of profound social, political, and environmental upheaval, the need for genuine community has perhaps never been more urgent. As psychoanalytic clinicians and thinkers, we are acutely aware of how isolation, disconnection, and the fracturing of shared meaning have taken a toll on the psyche—individually and collectively. The loneliness epidemic, widespread burnout, and chronic uncertainty ripple through our work and our lives. And yet, amidst this uncertainty, we continue to seek out ways of showing up for one another—of creating spaces where presence, reflection, and mutual care are possible. At NCSPP, we believe building and sustaining community is in itself a form of mental health advocacy. NCSPP hopes to be a space of refuge, dialogue, and containment for the psychoanalytic community in our ever-shifting world. In her 1964 poem, “City Psalm,” Denise Levertov invites readers to find hope and beauty not in absconding from the world or shifting our gaze, but through seeing “not behind but within.” She speaks not of some superficial or dismissive “silver lining” amidst killing and grief, but of catching a deeper glimpse into “another grief, a gleam of dew, an abode of mercy.”

CITY PSALM

The killings continue, each second
pain and misfortune extend themselves
in the genetic chain, injustice is done knowingly, and the air
bears the dust of decayed hopes,
yet breathing those fumes, walking the thronged
pavements among crippled lives, jackhammers
raging, a parking lot painfully agleam
in the May sun, I have seen
not behind but within, within the
dull grief, blown grit, hideous
concrete facades, another grief, a gleam
as of dew, an abode of mercy,
have heard not behind but within noise
a humming that drifted into a quiet smile.
Nothing was changed, all was revealed otherwise;
not that horror was not, not that the killings did not continue,
not that I thought there was to be no more despair,
but that as if transparent all disclosed
an otherness that was blessed, that was bliss.
I saw paradise in the dust of the street.

As psychoanalytically informed practitioners, we know the power of relational holding and the deep need for contexts in which we can speak, be heard, and metabolize experience together. We likely have personal and clinical experiences akin to the “abodes of mercy” of which Levertov writes. I wonder what it means to engage in clinical work, teaching, and writing in times such as these? While I have no wisdom on this score, I am acutely aware of my need for others, my need for you—for this community, candid and loving dialogue, and collaboration.

I hope you are finding spaces of mercy, mutual care, and action in this time, and we hope that NCSPP can offer such spaces in our programming. We would love for you to join us on our Community Mental Health Spring Hike in Mill Valley on Saturday, June 7, 2025, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm, for which you can register here. 

As always, we are grateful for your readership, your work, and your voices.