About The Author

I would like to introduce myself and share my outlook with my readers. A psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist based in Israel, I conduct psychotherapy inspired by a developmental psychodynamic approach, and work with adults, couples, teenagers and children. I also provide parental guidance, as well as supervision (individual and group) and lectures on various topics. My services are available both in person and online. For example, I recently supervised a group of psychologists based in China.

My belief is that from birth onwards, all our experiences are recorded in our brain and mind as well as in the body. The child concealed in every adult represents the sum total of the memory traces of early life experiences. In each of us there are multiple layers or memory traces of experiences, relationships and narratives from various stages of development. When we allow ourselves to attend to these reverberations from our past—as they manifest themselves in current situations—we are able to touch upon aspects of the hidden child’s enigma that we carry within us. We may then be better able to acknowledge some of the suppressed/unknown memory traces that impact our interpretation of the situation in the present. These memory traces influence our current decision-making and our choices, affect our physical sensations and emotional reactions. In my work, I am often impressed with the extent to which the reverberations of these memory traces influence our perceptions of present experiences and touch upon so many aspects of our lives.

Why are these infinite reverberations repeated (consciously or unconsciously) along our lifespan? Why do they impact our new relationships, the way we relate as parents to our own children or as partners, in couplehood in its various forms? Why do frustrations, deceptions, painful experiences and especially separations, as well as traumatic experiences cover and override the positive as well as our love experiences? Why do these painful reverberations so often bury other reverberations of experiences of love and happiness? How can we maintain a positive balance among all these memory traces of our experiences, and support our capacity to find the occasion to enjoy what we have, despite there being so many distressing circumstances?

I am amazed and even moved, when time and again I witness our need (both conscious and unconscious) to be refueled by our familiar love, whilst being so sensitive and easily hurt upon encountering otherness and that which is new and strange.

A little example should help clarify what I mean. An adult patient repeatedly expresses anger and even hate towards everyone around him, including myself, because I didn’t do what he had expected me to do. Suddenly, he acknowledges a little bare-dole in the room (which he never noticed before although it was there) and he becomes excited. It is the first time I see him so moved. He says, “Wow, I once had a bare like this when I was a child. I wonder where he is now. I am so moved. It’s pity I can’t ask my mother where it is.”

I said, “You just remembered that this lovable bare is inside you, and you are moved to find him.”

My patient responded, “What is even more astonishing is that for the very first time I feel here proximity with you, closeness.”

After a long silence I responded, “You probably allow yourself now to feel familiarity with me because you have discovered that both of us have the familiar lovable “bare” from your childhood. It overrode your intolerance of my otherness.”

“Yes,” he said, “It is so good and relaxing.”

Upon hearing my patient, I also was moved.

Thus, as a psychotherapist I see my duty to help people with whom I work to reconnect with associations of love buried deep within them and thus forgotten, and to strengthen their reverberations of the positive, so they can once again immune the Self with a familiarity of love and happiness, and in the doing, overpower their negative and destructive impulses. In my understanding, the capacity to feel familiarity allows us to better tolerate the otherness of the other (and sometimes, of ourselves), as well as to tolerate our own tendency to destructiveness.. From birth onwards, this capacity results from the fact that one’s healthy narcissism functions as an emotional immune system, one whose aim is to preserve the familiarity of the Self and to resist strangeness.

I have elaborated this novel theory in my book, The Enigma of Childhood – the Profound Impact of the First Years of Life on Adults as Couples and Parents. In this book, I re-conceptualized basic concepts such as Healthy Narcissism, Object Relations, The Art of Couplehood and much more.  I invite you to visit my website:  www.ronniesolan.com/EnigmaOfChildhood

My e-mail: ronnie.solan@gmail.com

Feel free to contact me if you wish to discover with me why your negative childhood experiences override the positive sides of your personality. You may also be in touch if you wish to explore why you are dwelling upon the negative aspects of your life and perhaps not focusing enough on the positive and beneficial ones, necessary for better managing your love relationships. Or if you wish to acknowledge with me the sources of your present suffering, which may color your life with anxiety, stress, destructiveness, or depression.  Or if you wish lectures or supervision, whether online or face to face, don’t hesitate to contact me. And finally, contact me if you wish for us to discover your emotional treasures—also buried deep inside you—so that you may be better able to succeed in your work, in being a parent and spouse, enjoy your life and create and maintain love relationships with your partner.

My Publications

SOLAN (Slutzky) R., (1966)  La personnalité de l’éducateur d’enfant inadapté. Ed. Médecine et Hygiène, Genève.
SOLAN R., (1973) Constipation in childhood, Harefua, Journal of the Israel Medical   Association. 84:  (9) (Hebrew)
—— (1983) Closeness in the psychoanalytic encounter, Bull. Psychoanal. Europe, 20/21: 65-84.
—– (1986)  Refoulement-deni-sublimation,ֹRev. Franc. Psychanal  50: 533-538.
—– (1989)  Objet transitional – symbolization – sublimation. Rev. Franc. Psychonal., 53: 1843-1846.
—– (1989b) Idealization and de-idealization, Sihot  4:17-24 (Hebrew)
—– (1991)  ‘Jointness’ as integration of merging and separateness in object relations and narcissism. Psychoanal. Study of the Child, 46: 337-352.
—– (1994) Trust and leadership, Sihot, 3: 235-242 (Hebrew)
—– (1996) The leader and the led – their mutual needs. In: Psychoanalysis at the Political Border, Madison, CT: Int. Univ. Press, pp. 237-255.
—– (1998) Narcissistic Fragility in the Process of Befriending the Unfamiliar, Amer. J. Psycho-Anal., Vol. 58:(2)163-186.
—– (1998b) The Narcissitic Vulnerability to Change in Object Relation.  In: Psychoan. In Israel (Theoriebildung und therapeutische Praxis), BlatteR Band 9. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Gottingen.
—– (1999) The Interaction Between Self and Other: A Different Perspective on Narcissism. Psychoanal. Study of the Child, 54: 193-215.
—– (2007) The Enigma of Childhood, Modan Publication House, Israel (Hebrew)

____(2015) The Enigma of Childhood – The Profound Impact of the First Years of Life on Adults as Couples and Parents, Karnac Books Ltd, London