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TOUCH MESummer is late, my heart.Words plucked out of the airsome forty years agowhen I was wild with loveand torn almost in twoscatter like leaves this nightof whistling wind and rain.It is my heart that's late,it is my song that's flown.Outdoors all afternoonunder a gunmetal skystaking my garden down,I kneeled to the crickets trillingunderfoot as if aboutto burst from their crusty shells;and like a child againmarveled to hear so clearand brave a music pourfrom such a small machine.What makes the engine go?Desire, desire, desire.The longing for the dancestirs in the buried life.One season only,and it's done.So let the battered old willowthrash against the windowpanesand the house timbers creak.Darling, do you rememberthe man you married? Touch me,remind me who I am.—Stanley Kunitz© 1995 by Stanley Kunitzfrom Passing Through:The Later Poems, New and SelectedW. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
“Desire, desire, desire . . . ” the word itself calls forth its meaning,a complex mix of sound and sense enriched with wishes andlongings, cravings and wants. As a verb “desire” expresses thosedeep seeded emotions as in “I desire you.” As a noun it embodiesthem, the urge and appetite, the thirst and need. There’s alsoa higher order to origins of the word “desire,” from the French “desidere” meaning from the stars in the sense of awaiting what thestars will bring.Desire is a strong feeling, worthy or unworthy, that compelsus to attain or possess something real or imagined. One candesire power, fame and fortune, pleasure, companionship as wellas pain, suffering, and the manifestations of unconscious wishesand fantasies. Google “passion and desire” and over 25,000,000hits come up. Google “love and desire,” and you’re in the millions.Googling “sex and desire” may crash your computer. For surelove, sex, and passion are integral aspects of desire in the waythat streams of a river feed into the ocean. Our streams of consciousnessand other aspects of human nature also have theirebb and flow. What desire springs from, it returns to as we do ourorigins of water and dust.In this international symposium—our lucky thirteenth—weturn our analytic lens on the subject of desire and try to elucidateaspects of it. Freud considered such questions as “What does awoman want?” “Are we polymorphously perverse?” and “What’slove got to do with it?” (with homage to Tina Turner). So we takeup these timeless issues in today’s world—on and off the couch.As we look into the psyches of our patients and ourselves, so weare seen in media and popular culture. So we’ll consider that too.We desire to know.Perhaps the subject is better left for poets. It’s hard to capturea sense of desire better than Stanley Kunitz in his poem:What makes the engine go?Desire, desire, desire.The longing for the dancestirs in the buried life.One season only,and it's done.But still, let’s try. For we also desire to do our best.
Page 1: S YMPOS IUM 2010An International Ps
Page 5 and 6: LOVE, SEX, & PASSIONPASSION:T HE A
Page 7 and 8: KEN CORBETT, PhD, Clinical Assistan
Page 9 and 10: LAWRENCE JOSEPHS, PhD, Professor of
Page 11 and 12: MOUNT SI NAI MEDI CAL CENTER: Stern
Page 13: Conference RegistrarLawrence Schwar

Read more. - the William Alanson White Institute

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