A DAY WITH SANDRA BUECHLER, Ph.D. “Holding a Mirror Up to Nature:” Perspectives on Human Striving

Sandra Buechler, Ph.D. will present a morning and an afternoon session. Morning Session 2 hours: “More Simply Human:” Fundamental Motives According to Erich Fromm and William Shakespeare In his instructions to actors, Hamlet directs them to “…hold as ‘twere the mirror up to Nature to show Virtue her feature, Scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure” (Hamlet, Arden, 2016, Act III, Sc.2, 21-24). I will compare the assumptions about human motives implicit in the plays of William Shakespeare and the psychoanalytic and sociological theories of Erich Fromm. More specifically, I will discuss needs for relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, identity, and a frame of orientation and devotion. My premise is that creating a “dialogue” between these two astute observers of human behavior will yield interesting ideas for our discussion. Afternoon Session 2 hours: “More Simply Clinical:” The Clinician’s Hope and Grief This talk takes as its basic assumption that hope and grief are inevitable in the clinician’s professional life. I will describe some of my own hopes, the losses I have incurred, and their emotional consequences. They run the gamut, from the deaths of patients, through sudden terminations, planned terminations, and losses of hope, meaning, and purpose that, collectively, take their toll. I believe that, however the work ends, the clinician loses the potential “self” she might have become, had this particular treatment continued. Finally, I will suggest some sources of resilience for the mourning clinician.