On Freedoms

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CRITICA MAGAZINE

Editorial Notes

On Freedom and Connection

Carolina Bacchi

Our Spring 2025 issue theme invites reflecting “On Freedom.” In this issue, our contributors grappled with the subtleties around what it means to be free or not. Our submissions, like always, took up this issue through varied lenses, exploring inner, collective, social, and political freedom.

Editorial Notes

Freedom is part of us

Luca Di Donna

In the last few years we faced the fear of dying due to the Covid virus. We lived in a state of uncertainty. We changed our clinical practice from the office to Zoom. Everything changed very fast. For instance, most of the clinicians who were in my building moved away.

Presidents Remarks

On Freedom

Elise Geltman, LCSW

While writing the paper Who is Free to Free Associate: Psychoanalysis and Social Ethics (2025), I became interested in exploring freedom and its related ethical dimensions–not as a possession or endpoint but as a kind of ongoing, relational endeavor.

Poetry

Inside this garden

Terrance McLarnan

Art

Creativity: Boundaries & Freedoms

Dawn Shifreen-Pomerantz

PINC Corner

Memorial for Susan Sands

Elise Geltman, LCSW

Dear PINC Members,I am writing to share the sad news that Susan Sands passed just a couple of weeks ago.

Art

Here after all

Mike Callaghan

PINC Corner

Emanuel Windholz: My Father & One of the Founding Fathers of Psychoanalysis in San Francisco

Michael Windholz, Ph.D.

This is the story of a 33-year-old Jewish psychoanalyst who had to flee his homeland, leaving behind his family, friends, and patients.

PINC Corner

Michael Windholz Remembrance

Stephen Seligman, DMH

I first met Michael when we had offices on the same corridor at Langley Porter. I think it was 1979, and I introduced myself since he seemed like one of the good, cool guys, and he was gracious whenever I bummed cigarettes from him.

PINC Corner

Michael Windholz Remembrance

Maureen A. Murphy, Ph.D., Victor Bonfilio, Ph.D.

Michael Windholz, a founding member of PINC, died on December 10th in the company of his family, including our colleague, his wife Sandra Salatich, and his daughters Lily and Eleanor.

PINC Corner

Personal Freedom Amidst Societal Limits: the Role of Creativity

Sharon Neuwald, BSW, DrPH

In a wonderful seminar with Tamara Fischmann entitled, “How Dreams May Be an Indicator of Psychotherapeutic Change and Memory Reconsolidation”, hosted by Maggie Zellner, Dr. Fischmann described how effective therapeutic interventions are illustrated in dreams.

Art

Freedom, defiantly

Terrance McLarnan

Essay

We Are Still Here: Music, Memory, and the Sound of Colonial Defiance in Bad Bunny’s DtMF

Adam J. Rodríguez, Psy.D.

In the Caribbean lies an island once known as Borikén. A rich port, it became the target of European invaders whose relentless greed and violence brought about genocide, disease, and destruction.

Poetry

Dear El Salvador

Rae Perlman, Psy.D.

Art

Outside

Richard Schnap

Poetry

A gift

Ilyse Simon, RDN, CDN

Art

I am not a ghost

Sandra Bacchi

I’m Not a Ghost is a conceptual photographic series created in collaboration with the nonbinary artist and glassmaker

Poetry

Poem Inspired by Joy Harjo’s “Remember”

Nico Peck, MFA

Essay

Free Enclave

Jeanine Stewart, LCSW

Art

Price

Richard Schnap

Art

Harahʼs Star

Ruby Rose Lyons

Poetry

Ohio

Susan Dix Lyons, M.A.

Art

Sabine Women Stop the War, after Rubens

Paul Ransohoff

Essay

The Phone on the Wall

Scott Lines, Ph.D.

The phone rings downstairs. You’re roused from a dreamless sleep with a splitting headache. The phone is ringing. I

Poetry

Learning to See a Waterfall

Mary McMillan, LMFT

Art

The Scarlet “I”

Makhetsi Tessien, LMFT

Essay

Far Beyond the Family: We are children of a thousand men

Luciana Pires

“He continued on the unfathomable that children are” (Hugo Mãe p. 33)

Poetry

Cold Spell

Richard Schnap

Art

Acephale

Stephen Mosblech

Poetry

Driving West

Dr. Amanda Bean, Psy.D.

Art

Love

Richard Schnap

Poetry

A Meditation on the Future

John Woods

Art

Malignant Mirror

John Woods

Essay

Beyond the wall

Richard Schnap

Art

Silent Cinema

Terrance McLarnan

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Critica is an inclusive and transdisciplinary publishing platform that focuses on offering a reflective and aesthetic space to consider social and cultural issues through a psychoanalytic and creative lens. It is also a forum for ideas at the intersection of psychoanalysis, creativity, philosophy, and the social sciences.

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