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A DAY WITH SANDRA BUECHLER, Ph.D. “Holding a Mirror Up to Nature:” Perspectives on Human Striving

September 27, 2025



IN PERSON and On Line Streaming Available

Victoria University

73 Queen's Park Crescent

Toronto, ON


About the Presenter

Sandra Buechler, Ph.D. is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the William Alanson

White Institute. She is the author of Clinical Values: Emotions that Guide Psychoanalytic

Treatment, (Analytic Press, 2004), Making a Difference in Patients’ Lives, (Routledge, 2008),

which won the Gradiva award, Still Practicing: The Heartaches and Joys of a Clinical Career,

(Routledge, 2012), Understanding and Treating Patients in Clinical Psychoanalysis: Lessons from Literature, (Routledge, 2015) Psychoanalytic Reflections: Training and Practice, (IPBooks,2017) Psychoanalytic Approaches to Problems in Living, (Routledge, 2019), Poetic Dialogues (IPBooks, 2021) and Erich Fromm: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, 2024).


About the Day


Morning Session 2 hours:

“More Simply Human:” Fundamental Motives According to Erich Fromm and

William Shakespeare


In his instructions to actors, Hamlet directs them to “…hold as ‘twere the mirror up to Nature to show Virtue her feature, Scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure” (Hamlet, Arden, 2016, Act III, Sc.2, 21-24). I will compare the assumptions about human motives implicit in the plays of William Shakespeare and the psychoanalytic and sociological theories of Erich Fromm. More specifically, I will discuss needs for relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, identity, and a frame of orientation and

devotion. My premise is that creating a “dialogue” between these two astute observers of human behavior will yield interesting ideas for our discussion.


Afternoon Session 2 hours:

“More Simply Clinical:” The Clinician’s Hope and Grief

This talk takes as its basic assumption that hope and grief are inevitable in the clinician’s professional life. I will describe some of my own hopes, the losses I have incurred, and their emotional consequences. They run the gamut, from the deaths of patients, through sudden terminations, planned terminations, and losses of hope, meaning, and purpose that, collectively, take their toll. I believe that, however the work ends, the clinician loses the potential “self” she might have become, had this particular treatment continued. Finally, I will suggest some sources of resilience for the mourning clinician.


Learning Objectives

After this presentation, participants will be able:


(1) Describe Fromm’s conception of human motivations, including

needs for relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, identity, and a frame of

orientation and devotion.

(2) Discuss Shakespeare’s portrayals of human emotional conflicts and

their consequences.

(3) Explain some of the inevitable hopes and sorrows in the clinician’s

professional life.


This workshop is eligible for 4 Continuing Education hours through the Ontario Psychological Association.


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