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Interview for The Vienna Psychoanalyst

In our interview series “in conversation with“, we will briefly present the authors of the leading articles. We want to give our users the opportunity to read the leading article from a different point of view.

This week we are very glad to welcome Julia Skip-Schrötter from Vienna, Austria:

She completed her studies in Economics in Ukraine and Germany before working in Controlling and Finance for international companies, until she decided to break new ground.
She also successfully finished the Psychotherapy Science programme at the Sigmund Freud Private University (SFU).  During a Gender Study-Group at the SFU, she was exposed to theoretical psychoanalysis for the first time, and later, on a personal level, in self-awareness sessions, seminars on dreams as well as in groups. In summer 2011, she started to specialize in Psychoanalysis (SFU / PSI).

She gained her first clinical experience at the Department of Acupsychiatry of the Otto Wagner Hospital and in a self-help group for people with compulsive hoarding disorder. Since 2014, Julia Skip-Schrötter has been working as a psychoanalyst and psychotherapist in training under supervision, initially in the SFU ambulance and since June 2017 in two private practices: in the heart of Vienna Kochgasse 27/4 and in the middle of the Vienna Woods in the 14th district.

Her research and work focus on deep hermeneutics based on Alfred Lorenzer’s theories, psychoanalysis and art, group dynamics, body experiences and psychoanalytic processes, gender studies and migration.

DWP: What brought you to psychoanalysis?

Julia Skip-Schrötter: Spontaneously, I would like to rephrase this question and ask who inspired me to enter the world of psychoanalysis. Those people were Dr. Anita Dietrich-Neunkirchner, Mag.a Christa Luger, Dr. Elisabeth Vykoukal and Felix de Mendelssohn. I am grateful to these people for providing me with the first impressions and experiences with and in psychoanalysis.

If I ask myself what it was that made these initial contacts with psychoanalysis so interesting, then the experience of foreignness comes to my mind. Psychoanalysis was very foreign to me. That made me curious and inspired me to explore. Psychoanalysis in psychotherapy represents, in my opinion, a migratory experience from the familiar to the unknown.

DWP: If you had the opportunity to talk to Sigmund Freud, what would be the topic? Are there any specific questions?

Julia Skip-Schrötter: I would like to know: How did he live his life? How did he experience the meetings with analysands? How did he deal with the daily challenges of his work; What and who helped him on a personal level – and in what way – to deal with the enormous conflicts in the psychoanalytic circles and externally? Theoretically, I would like to have him as a mirroring partner for dealing with relationship designs – dyad, triad, and beyond – in the inner-psychic experience, and in social reality.

DWP: Fabric or leather couch?

Julia Skip-Schrötter: For me, there is no alternative to the tactile experience of fabric.

DWP: Bruno Bettelheim pointed out the importance of fairy tales in childhood. Will you tell us your favorite fairy tale? And do you see parallels to your own adult life?

Julia Skip-Schrötter: As a child, Georgian fairy tales with their devs fascinated me. Today, I puzzle over the subject and meaning of a Ukrainian fairy tale: “Колобок – a round bread”.

DWP: I dream,…

Julia Skip-Schrötter: Time and again (- :

DWP: What do you find good or particularly good about psychoanalysis and is there anything you do not like about it?

Julia Skip-Schrötter: The experience of movement from the unconscious, when it becomes more conscious or perceived as a performer or director on the stage of life, to be able to experience it all as enriching, supporting, helpful, and even effective – time and again – amazes me, inspires awe and evokes deep gratitude.

The theoretical wealth within the “palace” of psychoanalysis was and is still very important to me: the infinity of exploration is the modus operandi which I am particularly pleased about.

What I miss in psychoanalysis and causes me to work in an integrative manner: the body is understood only as a language, and thus not addressed or understood, in short: there is a taboo of touch. Because “It´s psycho-analysis.”

In psychoanalysis, conflict plays a central role. Given, for example, the psychoanalytical society life and experience or the development of psychoanalysis, especially in Vienna, this emphasis on the conflict often leads to the inability to deal with the conflict, or to mere avoidance. I find that a pity in professional life.

A disappointing and at the same time fascinating field for future exploration is the current inability of psychoanalysis to design, understand, think, live, the type of relationships or relationship-concepts beyond the dyadic.

DWP: What challenges did you have to face during your analytic training?

Julia Skip-Schrötter: Where should I start? There were just too many (-:

DWP: Do you have a favorite Freud – quote?

Julia Skip-Schrötter: Collecting quotes does not appeal to me. Many texts by Freud have moved and inspired me to think. The initial passages from the essay “Thoughts for The Time on War and Death” have not lost any of their relevance today. A beautiful example of trying to psychoanalytically understand a work of art is “Delusion and Dreams in W. Jensen´s “Gradiva””. Almost more beautiful, because it’s closer to me and so much more authentic, is the short text “The Moses of Michelangelo”.

There is a quote that I have personally summarized as “Nothing is as secure as the ability of regression”: “But the primitive stages can always be re-established; the primitive mind is, in the fullest meaning of the word, imperishable” (Thoughts for The Time on War and Death)

DWP:  Are there other psychoanalysts, in addition to Sigmund Freud, who you like to study?

Julia Skip-Schrötter: The argument made by Goldy Parin-Matthèy touched me. She did not write much, but a short interview with her accompanies me and provides food for thought. I have similar feelings regarding Donald Meltzer – His book, “The Apprehension of Beauty,” co-written with Meg Harris Williams, inspires me. Hanna Segal and her texts on art and the work of Wilfred Bion attract and still call to me …

Thank you very much for this conversation, we are already looking forward to your leading article!