Welcome to New Directions: Writing With a Psychoanalytic Edge

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It seems right that this New Directions: Writing With A Psychoanalytic Edge blog was conceived during the 2012 Summer Writing Retreat. It is the third day of the retreat and I am standing in the kitchen of Deirdre Callanan and Jack Harrison’s Cape Cod home.  I’m talking with Jack about using social media to get out the word about the New Directions writing program, while trying to help wash the dishes from the morning’s writers’ workshop.  Deftly countering my efforts to worm in beside him at the sink, Jack proposes, “What brought people to this retreat?  What keeps people coming back to the writing weekends?  That’s the news that you need to get out about New Directions.”

There is so much to be said about the New Directions Program.  The most basic point is that New Directions is a three-year, post-graduate program that brings together practicing psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, academics and writers who want to develop their professional and/or personal writing skills.  These skills are developed through small group writers’ workshops led by experienced writing faculty and through whole-group presentations and discussions of weekend themes.

This description, while accurate, doesn’t answer Jack’s questions.  What happens at New Directions that draws people in and keeps them coming back?  That’s what I hope to capture here.

Through this blog, I hope to engage you in the powerful writing community that is New Directions. I am writing this for past and current New Directions participants, as a forum to help keep us connected.  I am also writing for those who might be interested in the program and want to understand the experience better.

I plan to add about three or four new posts per year.  I will write some of these and some will be written by guest bloggers who are New Directions participants.  I anticipate four categories for the blog posts:

  •   reporting on the New Directions writing weekends and week-long retreats;
  •  highlighting the writing accomplishments of New Directions participants;
  •  profiling the writing instructors that are working with ND; and
  •   discussing writing with a psychoanalytic edge.   

I’m glad you found this blog.  To follow the blog, email me and I’ll put you on the subscription list. I hope through your comments and suggestions that it will become an extension of the New Directions community, in miniature.  

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