March 2016 / Psychoanalytic Events

Welcome to our monthly roundup of all the goings on in the psychoanalytic field ― courses, conferences, seminars, workshops, exhibitions and book launches!

For daily news and updates visit our Facebook page dedicated to Psychoanalytic Events.

Let us know about your upcoming event by emailing freud.quotes [at] gmail [dot] com so you may be included in future roundup. 

1 March / The Freud Museum London
A Consumer's Guide to Therapy

1 March / NYC
Jacques Lacan Workshop by Josefina Ayerza — Seminar X, Anxiety

1 - 15 March / Tavistock Centre, London
Seminars on Psychoanalysis, Children's Literature and Film

• Mary Norton's The Borrowers, and Myazaki's Arietty (1 March)
• J.K. Rowling's Harry Pottter, Novel and Film (8 March)
• Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy, novel and film (15 March)

2 March / New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute
The Dyer’s Hand: Some Aspects of the Psychoanalyst’s Actions

2 March / Austin Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology
Empathy and the Embodied Therapist

2 March / The Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California
On the Transsexual's Need to Be Seen

3 March / University of Arts London
Sexuality Today: Bruno de Halleux

3 March / New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute 
Film Screening and Discussion of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona

4 March / Tavistock Centre, London
Historical Abuse: When adults abuse the children in their care

4 - 5 March / Washington, DC
The Courage to Fight Violence Against Women

4 - 5 March / The Freud Museum London
Dreams and Creativity: Psychoanalytic Perspectives

5 March / Serbia, Belegrade
Psychoanalysis and Art: Listening and Looking Outwards and Inwards

5 March / UCL, London
Siblings in Psychoanalysis

5 March / NCVO, London
The Fragile Self: working with narcissistic vulnerability, grandiosity, shame, and alienation

5 March - The Bowlby Centre, London
Psychotherapy Training Open Day

5 March / The Freud Museum London
Unravel These Knots: Exhibition tour with artist Emma Talbot

5 March / Toronto Psychoanalytic Society & Institute
When the Past Never Happens: The Post Traumatic Defense of Temporal Shifting

5 March / Philadelphia Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology
Breaking the Cycles that Trap Us: Affect, Attachment, Integration, Intervention

5 March / New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute
Integrating the “Global Workspace” with the “Conscious Id”: Developing a Neuropsychoanalytic Metapsychology with Implications for the Therapy Process

8 March / New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute
The Hidden Psychotic Core

9 March / New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute
Pursuing Perfection: The Narcissistic Over-investment in Our Children

9 March / The Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California
Immigration in Psychoanalysis: Locating Ourselves

11 March / London
Keeping Connected: Freud's Second Lecture on Psychoanalysis

11 March / The Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California 
Dreaming For My Sister: Elena the Film Screening and Discussion of the Film Elena (2014)

12 March / The Freud Museum London
Spring Psychoanalytic Poetry Festival 2016: Word & Image

12 March / Tavistock Centre, London
Unravelling Psychopathy: Psychodynamic perspectives on working with personality disorders

13 March / The Freud Museum London
Sigmund's Shorts: Splitting Hairs - Second Sunday Screenings

13 March / The Freud Museum London
Painting your Reality: Poetry workshop with Pascale Petit

13 March - AGIP Film Club, London
Psychoanaliterate Cinema presents - The Man Who Fell to Earth: A special tribute to the life and work of David Bowie

14 March / Samo Tomšič at Goldsmiths, London
Politics Between Narcissism and Negativity

15 March / Tavistock Centre, London
Psychodynamic understanding of psychotic disorders

16 March / British Psychotherapy Foundation, London
Making Sense of Kleinian Theory in Practice

16 March / Colchester, England 
Game of Thrones: A Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies perspective

17 March / University of Arts London
Unlimited Enjoyments: Alexandre Stevens

18 - 20 March / Berlin, Germany
¿Authority? - 29th Annual Conference of the European Psychoanalytical Federation

18 - 20 / New York City
MUST DO IT!  New Forms of Demand in Subjective Experience

18 March / The Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships, London
Psychosexual Workshop - Compulsive Sexual Behaviour and the Couple Relationship

19 March / A Wessex Event
The unfinished film of Bion's Memoir of the Future

19 March / British Psychotherapy Foundation, London
Introduction to Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice: A weekend course

19 March / Tavistock Centre, London
Interpretation or Intersubjective Communication?

20 March / Mitchell Library, Glasgow 
Aye Write! William Davies discusses The Happiness Industry

20 March / The Freud Museum London
CONFERENCE: Psychosis and Psychoanalysis

20 March / Philadelphia Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology 
Psychoanalytic Practice in the Real World

21 March / University of Toronto
The Freud Café: The Psychoanalysis of Hockey

24 March / New York City, NY
Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Legacy of the Third Reich

30 March / Toronto Psychoanalytic Society & Institute
Barbara Taylor – The Last Asylum: A Memoir of Madness in our Times

31 March / The Graduate Center, CUNY - New York
THE (IN)SANE SOCIETY: Remembering Erich Fromm and the Frankfurt School

16 Oct 2015 – 12 June 2016 / Vienna
„So this is the strong Sex.“ Women in Psychoanalysis: Special exhibition at the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna

Forthcoming

 Xth Congress of the WAP - 25 – 28 April 2016 – Brazil 

The Speaking Body: On the unconscious in the 21st century

Let us know about your upcoming event by emailing freud.quotes [at] gmail [dot] com so you may be included in future roundup.

Immigration in Psychoanalysis: Locating Ourselves - 9 March, 2016 - San Francisco

In his presentation Francisco Gonzalez looks at the sense of possibility and creative edge that lies in immigration. He examines the generative force of migration for the individual, in psychoanalysis, and in the encounter between foreigner and native. He understands the idea of the foreigner as an existential register beyond a difference in nationality. Gonzalez considers how immigration aids us in elaborating abstract notions of transitional space by complementing it with the idea of material place. Julia Beltsiou explores her analytic work with a patient from the West Indies, examining how issues of longing, ambiguous belonging, and outsiderness play out between her patient and herself, complicating notions of both immigration and psychoanalysis. Moving away from home may be the only way to give contours to an opaque sense that something is not quite right, an attempt to become intelligible to ourselves and others. The process of settling in a strange land has at its center meeting ourselves: making ourselves at home in the foreign, and at home in our foreignness.

See also book: Immigration in Psychoanalysis: Locating Ourselves

When
March 9th, 2016 7:30 PM

Location
PINC Conference Room
530 Bush Street, Suite 700
San Francisco, CA 94108
United States

More info here.

The Logics of Madness: On Infantile and Delusional Transference

Buy The Logics of Madness here. - Free delivery worldwide

In this book, Salomon Resnik describes his psychoanalytic work with psychotic patients and the logic that underlies their often-delusional constructions. He explores how the concept of psychosis has evolved over time and shows how the delusional world, with its proto-symbolic equations, may amount to a philosophy of life. Clinical examples taken from his own clinical work, both in individual psychoanalysis and in group therapy with schizophrenic patients, illustrate his theses.

In his exploration of the psychotic ego and multi-dimensionality, he shows how his work is a continuation of the ideas initially put forward by psychoanalysts such as D. W. Winnicott, Melanie Klein and Hanna Segal, as well as how much it owes to his own analysis with Herbert Rosenfeld and supervision with Wilfred Bion. For Resnik, working with psychotic patients amounts to an “archaeology of the present”. He discusses in detail such concepts as narcissistic depression, the atmosphere of the psychoanalytic encounter, the role and impact of dreams in psychosis, and the dimensionality of the psychotic universe. His development of the idea of maternal (holding function) and paternal reverie, with its organizing and structuring function, is ground-breaking, and his comments on Fairbairn's description of the early splitting of the ego throw a new light on hysterical phenomena in the psychoses.

Treating People with Psychosis in Institutions: A Psychoanalytic Perspective

Buy Treating People with Psychosis in Institutions here. - Free delivery worldwide

This book brings together the histories of a number of psychoanalytically-informed hospitals, and provides a synthesis of the theoretical underpinnings in the institutional practice of each. Of particular interest is how psychoanalysts and psychoanalytically-trained staff working in institutions apply their theoretical understanding, and in what ways the psychoanalytic technique has been modified or adapted to the treatment of individual patients with psychosis and to the workings of an institution in general.

Here the institution is the subject of the case study. Institutions that are theoretically orientated to psychoanalysis were chosen and examined, taking into account their various approaches to the treatment. A number of institutional models that are informed by psychoanalysis offer a guide to the treatment and present a version of institutional practice that is different from the prevailing models in psychiatry. This has implications for health services in the current climate of mental health reform.

Psychoanalysis has its greatest efficacy in long-term treatments and has shown its suitability for patients diagnosed with psychosis when the method is adapted to the uniqueness of each person and is conducted by an experienced clinician. The treatment of psychosis cannot usually be conceived without considering some form of institutional care, although this does depend on the level of the individual’s psychopathology. This is because the majority of people with a psychotic illness, especially those with schizophrenia, will be exposed to inpatient, community or outpatient treatment, in one form or other, during the course of their lives.

Racist States of Mind: Understanding the Perversion of Curiosity and Concern

Buy Racist States of Mind here. - Free delivery worldwide

Racism is a treacherous phenomenon with many faces that allow it a remarkable capacity to co-exist with support for ethnic and cultural diversity. In both its subtle and virulent forms, racist states of mind reveal a bewildering mix of anxieties, feelings and fantasies about the real complexities of life and living that a recognition of difference and diversity can potentially bring forth. These are often expressed in a nostalgic gaze that is infused with a toxic interplay of grievance, murderous rage, and vengeful feelings and fantasies that have resulted from a real or imagined narcissistic injury to the self, group, or nation.

In a racist state of mind grief and mourning for such losses are replaced by manic omnipotent states which aim to triumph over feelings of powerlessness through an inflated sense of self that claims superiority over others who are made to become the bearers of inadequacy or inferiority. The compensatory excitements of hatred, cruelty, and violence can lead to a collapse of a triangular mental space that damages the capacity for curiosity and concern for others. The tragic consequences of this psychic assault is a rupture at the very core of identity and the self which aims to thwart the desires and emotional freedom of others.

In this book the author explores the quality of thinking in racist states of mind and suggests that the fantasy dramas of the primal scene provide an essential framework in which racial and racist fantasies exist as deep structures of thought and feeling. These are intrinsic to psychic life and functioning, universally present in contemporary culture as well as the consulting room where they constitute the passions of the transference. The author explores the predicaments and challenges of engaging with these states of mind in the consulting room, group, organisational, and societal life.

Buy Racist States of Mind here. - Free delivery worldwide

What are Perversions?: Sexuality, Ethics, Psychoanalysis

Buy What are Perversions? here. - Free delivery worldwide

This book explores what we mean when we use the term “perversion.” Are we dealing with a sexological classification, a mental disturbance, an ethical deviation, a hedonistic style, or an historical-cultural artifact?

The book retraces some of the fundamental stages in the field of psychoanalytic thought—from Freud to Masud Khan, Stoller, and Lacan—and proposes an original approach: that “paraphilias” today are taken as an ethical failure of the sexual relationship with the other. The perversions signal a specific relationship with the other, who is treated not simply as a sexual object, but someone whose subjectivity is ably exploited precisely in order to get a perverse pleasure.

Acts, if considered perverse, are understood as a metaphorical re-edition of a trauma, above all sexual, in which the subject (as a child) suffered the bitter experience of exclusion or jealousy. The book articulates an heterodox hypothesis by drawing on clinical cases, from both the author’s own analytic practice and those of others; but it also draws on cinema, historical episodes, social psychology experiments (for example, Stanley Milgram’s experiment), stories and novels, and philosophical works. The final appendix delves more deeply into Freud’s theory of masochism.

Buy What are Perversions? here. - Free delivery worldwide

See also

Our Dark Side: A History of Perversion by Élisabeth Roudinesco

¿Authority? - Argument of the EPF Conference 2016 in Berlin

18.-20.03.2016 in Berlin, Germany

¿Authority? - 29th Annual Conference of the European Psychoanalytical Federation

Thanks to the invitation of the two German psychoanalytic societies and their Presidents, Gebhard Allert and Ingo Focke, here we are once again in Berlin where the 13th EPF Congress on “Love, Hate, and Violence” was already held in 1993.

A recurrent complaint of our time is that there is a lack of authority! This generalised deficiency is seen as affecting both the behaviour of young people and the functioning of political and economic life. This complaint, which circulates every day in all circles, predicts that everything will unravel, that social ties and social life will be dissolved.

It is none the less an equivocal complaint: on the one hand there is an appeal to authority; but, on the other, its excesses, its omnipresence, its perverse exercise and the submission that follows are denounced.

Where, then, is the middle ground, the balance between “necessary” authority and the excesses that need to be checked? But daily experience shows, does it not, that the very manifestation of authority reveals its deficiency? For it is when it becomes manifest that authority proves that it is no longer functioning. Should it then remain, as it were, in the shadows, functioning “by itself”, without having to be expressed?

To underline the difficulties of the theme and its challenging character, we have opted for a punctuation mark from the Spanish language, the inverted question mark before the word: ¿Authority?

From authority to authoritarianism – but also including the anti-authoritarian movements of May 1968 – from “unquestioned” racial authority to the rise of the xenophobic discourses in Europe, numerous paths of exploration present themselves. In our argument we will only mention a few of them, while bearing in mind that authority is neither authoritarianism nor power, nor charisma. The path is narrow.

We will not only be exploring the motive forces, effects and paths of authority; in particular, we will be examining the place of authority in analytic practice as well as the authority of what analysts say in our societies. Which authority? That of the analyst, that of psychoanalysis and that of the institutions created for training analysts. In short, we could say quite simply the authority of the transference.

The question of authority in psychoanalysis traces a large arc from the credulity of the love that founds authority to the fear of losing this love which underpins the superego.

The credulity of love is inseparable from the experience of hypnotism. For psychoanalysis, authority is that of the parental figures or of their possible substitutes. The figure of the hypnotist is the first model of such authority (he concentrates on himself all the libidinal forces) – a figure that acquires greater complexity for Freud through the mythical construction of the rebellion of the horde against the father’s authority, a rebellion with considerable consequences: ambivalent feelings and the persistent effect of guilt.

The situation is very different when this authority is internalized. Nothing escapes the superego; it is an omniscient and severe authority, and even dangerous.

For Freud, authority can be coercive and violent. This lies in his conception of the human community. A community is held together by two things: “the compelling force of violence and the emotional ties (identifications is the technical name) between its members” (1933, p. 108).

Authority is not just an external matter. To put it differently, it is just as much external as internal, a relationship just as much as a social phenomenon. It is closely linked to the loss of love and affective ties.

Always a thorny issue here is the fundamental element of suggestion in the transference, its wild and barely rational aspect. Is it basically a question of love? If we agree on the fact that suggestion is an important aspect of the effect and authority of the transference, why don’t we use suggestion directly, for instance, via hypnosis? Is not every analyst confronted in each treatment with the place that he gives to his authority and to suggestion and its consequences both for him and for the patient?

Should the analyst forego making use of the authority with which he is invested? Every analyst knows, at least intuitively, that he must be careful not to disavow it or diminish it, for it is one of the mainsprings of the treatment.

And what happens at the end of the treatment and in its aftermath? Furthermore, what can be said about the functioning of analytic institutions?

*

Sociology and political philosophy play a full part in this debate. For these disciplines, too, the question of the right balance between authority and authoritarianism is raised. The modern philosophical tradition criticizes all forms of instrumentation of the individual, all forms of domination, whatever they may be (racial, sexual, etc.). This being the case, is it conceivable, for example, to reduce the domination by rules within a society? Can authority be institutionalised?

Authority is only justified, it is said, if it seeks the good of those who submit to it voluntarily. This can give rise to a distinction, in political philosophy, between a “good” and a “bad” authority. But psychoanalysis shows us, does it not, that there is no possible point of balance? The undecidable issue of whether authority is good or bad belongs to another field: that of ethics, or of morality.

Authority is neither the exercise of force (“Where force is employed, authority itself has failed,” Hanna Arendt (1954) writes in “What is authority?”), nor that of persuasion, nor of argumentation.

Does an obedience exist constructed by psychic structuring itself? May we assume a constant aspect of subjectivity that psychoanalysis can study? A psyche outside time?

In her text (see above), Hanna Arendt considers that every act of foundation is based on a triptych of tradition, religion, and authority: the component of authority only functions in relation to the two others, with, as a reference point, the question of foundation. However convincing or debatable her hypothesis may be, it is striking to note that Freud’s work refers to elements that are in a way homologous: the question of a first act, of a basically transgressive and criminal foundational act (a question that is absent in H. Arendt), the place of tradition, the study of religion as an essential human production for social and individual life. The parallel is striking.

Is it possible to think that the question of authority is first and foremost one of foundation?

*

This year we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the EPF. Once again we are faced with the question of the meaning of foundation, of an act which could not foresee from the outset its possibilities or its errors, but an act to which we owe a possibility that exists for us and which we want to “increase” (first sense of the word “augere” in Latin from which the word authority is derived).

Celebrating in Berlin the foundation of the EPF with the question of authority at stake cannot fail to evoke what has perhaps been the darkest period of European history. It remains, none the less, that Berlin was, with Vienna and Budapest, one of the three capitals in which psychoanalysis thrived in the 1920’s. Berlin is also the city of another fondational act, that of the Berlin Institute which gave rise to the classical tripartite training for psychoanalysts. For Max Eitingon, its founder, training was inseparable from the possibility of making psychoanalytic treatment accessible to those who could not pay for it, thereby linking training to a certain form of clinical practice. This was another reason for the foundation of the Psychoanalytic Polyclinic in the Potsdamer Strasse, less than one kilometre from where our Conference is being held.

That was the era of the pioneers! It is to be hoped that our colleagues from the East, in their drive to found psychoanalysis in their country – or to revive it – will rediscover the spirit of foundation.

For Freudian psychoanalysis, authority and tradition are founded on crime and betrayal. This should suffice to temper any form of triumphalism or any temptation to honour our predecessors blissfully. The great advantage is that the act of foundation is reduced to the level of a human gesture. No divine or deifiable figures, no divine protection for the future. It will be an authority without heroes, finally, a truly secular authority!

*

The organisation of the Berlin Congress marks the end of the mandate of the EPF Executive presided over by Serge Frisch. New authorities will take up their functions. The four themes selected are not classical questions of psychoanalysis. Rather, the choices have concerned themes that put psychoanalysis to work within the reality of our time.

Although organised in the form of a “pre-congress” (all day Wednesday and Thursday) and of a “congress” (from Friday morning to Sunday midday), the two parts are inseparable from one another: the work in small groups focused on clinical practice during the first days and the lectures and panels during the following days complement and echo each other.


We would like to express our thanks to the Scientific Committee chaired by Franziska Ylander, Vice-President of the EPF and the person responsible for the annual congress: Delaram Habibi-Kohlen, Klaus Grabska, Milagros Cid Sanz, Benedetta Guerrini Degl’Innocenti, Martin Mahler, Joan Schachter and Heribert Blass. And also to the Local Committee which has welcomed us so warmly: Cornelia Wagner, Robert Span and Sanja Hodzic, Eva Reichelt, Rita Marx and Alice Faerber.



Serge Frisch

Franziska Ylander

Leopoldo Bleger



References

Arendt H (1954). What is Authority? In: Between Past and Future, pp. 91-141. New York: Penguin Classics, 2006

Freud S (1933). Why War? SE 22: 195-215.

___________________________________________________________

Links to further information about the congress and to the registration form can be found on the homepage of this website.

Siblings in Psychoanalysis - March 2016, London

Start: Mar 05, 2016 09:00 AM
End: Mar 05, 2016 05:00 PM

Location: Anatomy G29 J Z Young Lecture Theatre, Anatomy Building, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT

Freud’s Oedipus complex focuses on the centrality of the parental objects in the child’s psychic development. In The Interpretation of Dreams he wrote “It is the fate of all of us, perhaps, to direct our first sexual impulse towards our mother and our first hatred and our first murderous wish against our father”. It seems that because of this emphasis on a vertical diachronic axis of generations not enough attention has been paid to the effect of sibling relationships in the development of the psychic structure. Juliet Mitchell in her work urged analysts to pay more attention to the place of siblings in the subject’s psychic economy and their impact on the psychic structure. The trauma of a sibling’s birth leads the child to question its very existence and to the murderous desire to eliminate the usurper. But the baby being an alter ego also loved by the mother, the challenge is to overcome the violence and accept its sibling as like itself but not identical to itself. This leaves room for more than one person to be the mother’s child and introduces the concept of seriality. In the first part of this conference, Juliet Mitchell in conversation with Rosemary Davies will have an opportunity to revisit her theoretical developments on siblings and expand on the clinical and social implications of her work.

Juliet Mitchell coined the phrase the ‘Law of the Mother’ for the prohibitions against sibling murder and sibling incest. In a direct reference to Lacan’s ‘Law of the Father’ this concept represents a theoretical challenge. If the Law is seen has a generalisation of the symbolic acceptance of the prohibition of incest, arrived at through a metaphoric process in which the name of the father replaces the object of the mother’s desire, is the Law of the Mother a different type of Law ? Lionel Bailly will argue that the process by which sibling murder and incest is prohibited is similar but different to that of the Law of the Father and does not lead to the establishment of a Law but of a Covenant arrived at through a metonymic process which symbolically disguise the real threat: the loss of maternal love. The importance of an understanding of the lateral axis in psychoanalysis is not only theoretical but also practical. The analytic treatment needs to take into account this dimension and this conference will provide an opportunity to examine and discuss clinical cases in which the siblings play a central role.

The introduction of a lateral paradigm also reframes the classical neuroses. In his ‘Notes upon a case of obsessional neurosis’ (‘the Rat Man’) Freud does not highlight lateral relations. Robbie Duschinsky, following an extensive analysis of Freud’s papers on the Rat Man and of scholarly work on this famous case will argue that the significance of Lorenz’s siblings to his neurosis is evident in Freud’s case notes.

Juliet Mitchell is currently working on two books - The first on 'The sibling/separation trauma, the Law of the Mother and the horizontal axis'. The second, on siblings and lateral relations in the plays of Shakespeare.

More info here.

The unfinished film of Bion's Memoir of the Future - A Wessex Event - 19 March 2016

In the winter of 1982-3 a film was partly made in India based on Bion’s autobiographical writings, focusing in particular on A Memoir of the Future. The original intention of the film was as a teaching aid, sponsored by the Roland Harris Educational Trust (now the Harris Meltzer Trust) and a number of private sponsors in the UK, USA and India. For a variety of reasons the film was never completed but Meg Harris Williams (scriptwriter) will be showing the existing sequences, pausing between them to read unfilmed parts of the script, and to comment on their context in relation to Bion’s autobiographical writings and ideas.

The director of the film was Kumar Shahani, a wellknown Indian artfilm maker, and the cast of actors included (from England) Nigel Hawthorne, Angela Pleasence, Neil Cunningham and Peter Firth. The film sequences have never been shown in England, though they have been seen recently in New York, California, and Delhi, where they were shot.

Reading University, Seminar Room 1, The Cedars, Whiteknights Campus, RG6 6UR

More info here.

See also

The Becoming Room: Filming Bion's A Memoir of the Future

An Introduction to W.R. Bion's A Memoir of the Future: Volume Two: Facts of Matter or a Matter of Fact?

Introduction to Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice: A weekend course - 19 March 2016, London

Five weekends consisting of 30 seminars, including Theoretical and Clinical, Work Group Discussion and Experiential Groups. The course will provide you with an opportunity to develop further your understanding of key psychoanalytic concepts (Freud, Klein, Object Relations, Attachment Theory and recent developments in Neuroscience) and how these are applied in clinical practice.

Who the course is for

All who have an interest in psychoanalytic thinking and how it is applied in clinical work, as well as in understanding the underlying and unconscious dynamics in the work place. It is suitable for anyone considering further psychoanalytic training. It will be of particular interest to all those working in the field of mental health as well as people working in a range of other disciplines and professions. The course has been designed to make it viable for people living outside London (or outside of the UK) to attend.

Course Times

Saturdays 10.00am – 4.45pm and Sundays 9.30am – 4.30pm
19th & 20th March, 16th & 17th April, 21st & 22nd May, 18th & 19th June, 2nd & 3rd July 2016.

Venue: 37 Mapesbury Road, London, NW2 4HJ

More info here.

Making Sense of Kleinian Theory in Practice - 16 March 2016, London

This lecture forms part of the CTS course lecture series, organised by the British Psychoanalytic Association, and is open to external applicants only.

Time: 8:30 - 10.00 pm

Cost: £35

Speaker: Julia Sandelson

Melanie Klein is regarded as Freud's theoretical heir. Her particular emphasis on the importance of 'unconscious phantasy' and 'internal objects' led to a new understanding of the process of personality formation. Crucially, for patients in psychoanalysis, it then follows that apparently entrenched and fixed difficulties can be identified and worked through, making possible psychic and personality change.

Julia Sandelson uses clinical vignettes to delineate and illustrate the way in which Kleinian theoretical concepts can be understood in the consulting room.

Venue: British Psychotherapy Foundation 37 Mapesbury Road, London NW2 4HJ

More info here.

Keeping Connected: Freud's Second Lecture on Psychoanalysis - 11 March 2016, London

Freud's Second Lecture on Psychoanalysis investigates the possible relationship between dreams and mystical (or occult) phenomena, such as telepathy or the power to tell the future. Freud approaches this question scientifically, refusing to take commonplace judgments against occultism as established fact. Though he is skeptical of many claims of occult activity, he admits that science can not definitively disprove those claims. Eventually, he says that his clinical experience suggests that thought-transference is a real event, and that psychoanalysis has brought this possibility to light in a more plausible manner than mystical explanations do.

More info here.

Interpretation or Intersubjective Communication? - 19 March 2016, London

What makes a good intervention?

With Dr Aaron Balick, Patrick Casement and Professor Brett Kahr

Saturday 19 March 2016

The psychoanalytic technique of interpreting the unconscious, as a way of bringing previously unformulated and significant expectations about self and other into consciousness, raises many questions about technique: When should an interpretation be made? What is its goal? Will it have the intended therapeutic result? These remain important questions but any discussion about the classical technique of interpretation needs to be set alongside more recent understandings of the importance of empathy, atunement and the role of the therapist's subjectivity when making an intervention. Our speakers are invited to consider answers to these questions from the perspective of their own clinical experience.

Tavistock Centre
120 Belsize Lane
London
NW3 5BA

More info here.

Professor Brett Kahr

The ten best interpretations in the history of psychoanalysis: extracting the most mutative ingredients
For many mental health practitioners the “interpretation” constitutes one of the most crucial features of the psychotherapeutic process. And yet few colleagues can agree on such fundamental “architectural” aspects such as to how one builds an interpretation in terms of timing, length, depth, focus, and accuracy, let alone in terms of stylistic components such as frankness, diplomacy, phrasing, and vocal tone. In order to consider some of these technical issues and debates about classical interpretation in an increasingly “relational” field, Brett Kahr shall examine ten of the most impressive and inspiring interpretations rendered by our foremothers and forefathers from 1907 onwards. Drawing upon his experience as both a clinician and a historian, he shall explore which ingredients of these “top ten” interpretations might prove to be of most value to twenty-first-century mental health professionals.


Dr Aaron Balick

Whose interpretation of what? A relational perspective
It is plainly evident that therapists operate differently to each other in accordance with their character styles. These styles reflect the therapist’s own emotional, psychological, and attachment strengths and weaknesses. This subjective state in which they enter a therapeutic dyad is then further influenced by the character style and personality of their patient - alongside their presenting (conscious) and underlying (unconscious) troubles. While all therapists will draw upon their preferred body of theory and intervene accordingly (or not), we are left asking the question of what makes an “appropriate” intervention in the context of so many subjective variables. While Relational Theory gives some guidance on this question, we are still left asking the question of how one’s subjectivity may enhance or impair a therapist’s chosen interventions. Dr Balick will address this question by way of his own character style, drawing on theory and clinical experience.


Patrick Casement

What is it that most brings about change?
Interpretation, as in Freud, has traditionally been thought of as bringing the unconscious to consciousness. But is it only that? And what does a patient make of the analyst’s contributions? What of the other interventions available to a therapist? What is it that most brings about change? Interpreting from the history? Interpreting what is dynamically present? Engaging with the assumed monster in patient’s mind? Being understood? Patrick Casement will explore this with examples.

Unravelling Psychopathy: Psychodynamic perspectives on working with personality disorders - 12 March 2016, London

With Dr Colin Campbell, Dr Ronald Doctor, Anna Motz, Dr Celia Taylor, Dr Estela Welldon and Dr Jessica Yakeley

Saturday 12 March 2016

Following our previous conference on the psychodynamics of murderousness, and again in association with the International Association for Forensic Psychotherapy, this day offers five talks by eminent forensic mental health professionals on the topic of personality disorders. The presenters will address the nature of personality disorder – sometimes known as psychopathy or as sociopathy or antisocial personality – in an effort to understand the causes and the possible treatments. The lectures will address some compelling questions: What causes personality disorders? How might we become more adept at detecting such patients, many of whom hide behind a façade of charm and deception? How best should we treat these people, and are they amenable to psychotherapeutic processes? Can liars be psychoanalysed? Are men more psychopathic than women? Join us for cutting-edge psychodynamic thinking about personality disorders and their treatment.

Tavistock Centre
120 Belsize Lane
London
NW3 5BA

More info here.

Dr Ronald Doctor

How much smoke do you need for a smoking gun? The psychodynamics of Personality Disorder
With the help of clinical material, this presentation will explore the counter transference in relation to the personality disorder. It is possible to classify the responses aroused by such patients under three headings: collusion, disbelief and condemnation. In treatment of the personality disorder, and in particular the psychopath, projective identification stirs our own sadism and this leads to two-fold response: either disbelief or condemnation. The psychopath despises the person who holds onto an illusion that he is good. Unconsciously he knows that it is a rejection of an important part of him, and will always give a strong clue about the hidden side of his character. If we accept what we see in the psychopath then we have to accept our own sadism. It may be more comfortable to believe that he and I are good.

Dr Jessica Yakeley

Antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy: a mentalization-based framework
Individuals diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) or psychopathy continue to be viewed by many as untreatable. However, psychopathy and ASPD are not synonymous and there is convincing evidence that a subgroup of individuals with medium to low psychopathy scores have suffered early trauma and attachment difficulties which have contributed to their personality pathology as adults. Mentalization-based therapy is based on attachment theory and offers a credible treatment for people with ASPD. Jessica Yakeley will present findings from an ongoing project developing and researching new MBT community services for ASPD nationally, which has been commissioned by the Ministry of Justice and Department of Health as part of the Personality Disorder Offender Pathway Strategy.

Dr Colin Campbell

Addressing psychopathy as a treatment obstacle in the management of personality disordered offenders
Recent evaluations of interventions for psychopathy have challenged the historical notion that individuals who meet criteria for psychopathy are untreatable. However, it continues to be used as the basis on which individuals are excluded from services, either explicitly, where it may be an exclusion criterion, or by less conscious processes. This paper will review recent initiatives to address psychopathy as a treatment obstacle in the management of personality disordered offenders in a range of secure settings. It will also explore the meaning and function of psychopathy as a factor limiting access to treatment, using illustrative clinical material.

Ms Anna Motz with discussant Dr Estela Welldon

The Many Faces of Eve
In this talk Anna Motz will describe the unique manifestations of female perversion and violence, with illustrative clinical material.She will draw on Welldon’s (1988) model of female personality and consider in particular whether the concept of psychopathy has any relevance to women, or if it is a misappropriation of a construction related to men. She will also describe societal responses to crimes perpetrated by women, and how details of the potential for female violence and perversion only serves to perpetuate unhelpful stereotypes and vilify those women. Finally, she will outline therapeutic approaches for working with violent and sadistic women.

Dr Celia Taylor

Psychopathic personalities and the impact on the clinician
Working with people with antisocial or psychopathic personality disturbance can have a profound impact on clinicians. Many of the offences committed by these individuals are of a highly sadistic kind and therefore traumatic to hear about and process, leading to angry and punitive responses. On the other side of the coin, some staff identify strongly with the victim within the offender, since childhood histories of appalling abuse and disrupted attachments are common. Team splitting and conflict frequently ensue, thus undermining the best efforts at treatment. This talk will consider the dynamics impacting on teams’ ability to function together in this work, and what measures can be taken to mitigate these effects.

The Fragile Self: working with narcissistic vulnerability, grandiosity, shame, and alienation - 5 March 2016, London

A 1-day seminar led by Dr Phil Mollon - London

Saturday 5 March 2016

Themes of identity disturbance, fluctuating moods, low self-esteem, shame, and grandiosity (both hidden and overt) are common and pervasive features of psychotherapeutic discourse. These are what our clients speak of. They all reflect disruptions in the person's narcissistic equilibrium. This presentation by Phil Mollon will explore the deep structures of these states and their developmental origins, questioning the nature of 'self', and the illusory identities that often structure our experience. The malign narcissism that can sometimes reside within the psychotherapeutic endeavour itself will also be outlined. By understanding the structure of narcissism, and how it imprisons the person in its illusions, we are in a better position to help (rather than further injure) the client who presents with these problems.

NCVO
8 All Saints Street
London
N1 9RL

More info here.

The Hidden Psychotic Core - March 8, 2016 - NYC

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

8:00 PM

"The Hidden Psychotic Core" with Francis Baudry, MD

Discussant: Otto Kernberg, MD

In this paper presentation, Dr. Baudry will describe a clinical entity in which a primitive core is hidden behind what looks like a neurotic organization. In order to reach this core usual analytic attempts to search for meaning fail as the pathology of a traumatic nature occurs mostly during the pre-verbal period. Sensitivity to severe agonies, fear of disintegration and of falling apart, communication through action, and a greater reliance on counter-transference and on the repetition of traumatic scenarios in the analytic room need to be identified and managed. Three clinical vignettes will illustrate the challenging therapeutic task.

More info here.

Pursuing Perfection: The Narcissistic Over-investment in Our Children - March 9, 2016 - NYC

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

8:00 PM

"Pursuing Perfection: The Narcissistic Over-investment in Our Children"

with David Sawyer, MD

It is normal upon the birth of one's child to feel that this child is special - a wonder, incomparable, a miracle, in effect, perfect. It is also normal for this feeling to recede over time and to be replaced by the understanding that one's child is subject to human limitations, like all children. But the overvaluation of one's own child persists, either in greater or lesser degree. It serves parents' need for self-esteem, among other things. We can see it manifested in a certain cultural emphasis on raising our children to be perfect. We will address the questions of what drives this phenomenon, what are its effects, and what we should do about it.

More info here.

Integrating the “Global Workspace” with the “Conscious Id”: Developing a Neuropsychoanalytic Metapsychology with Implications for the Therapy Process

Saturday, March 5, 2016

10:00 AM

"Integrating the “Global Workspace” with the “Conscious Id”: Developing a Neuropsychoanalytic Metapsychology with Implications for the Therapy Process"

with Maggie Zellner, Ph.D.

In this educational lecture, we will explore the ways in which the “global workspace” theory of Stanislas Dehaene and colleagues might be integrated with recent proposals by Solms and Panksepp on the “conscious id” and the “unconscious ego.” These proposals have great potential for creating an integrated metapsychology – by looking at the brain networks which mediate consciousness and unconscious processes, self and other, perception and simulation, memory and prediction, we can build ever more solid bridges between the major organizational principles of brain function and our fundamental concepts in psychoanalysis.

We will speculate about ways in which internalized object relations can fit into the “conscious id/unconscious ego” framework, and extend the dialogue about the role of defense and resistance in everyday life and psychotherapy. We can also extend our discussion about how moments of awareness, within the interpersonal relationship in the psychotherapy process, can facilitate change.

New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute
247 East 82nd Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenues)
The Marianne & Nicholas Young Auditorium

More info here.
 

Film Screening and Discussion of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona - March 3, 2016 - NYC

Thursday, March 3, 2016

7:30 PM

Film Screening and Discussion of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona

Post-film discussant: Anna Balas, MD

By the mid-sixties, Ingmar Bergman (THE SEVENTH SEAL) had already conjured many of the cinema's most unforgettable images. But with the radical Persona, this supreme artist attained new levels of visual poetry. In the first of a series of legendary performances for Bergman, Liv Ullmann (SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE) plays an actress who has inexplicably gone mute; an equally mesmerizing Bibi Andersson (WILD STRAWBERRIES) is the garrulous young nurse caring for her in a remote island cottage. While isolated together there, the women perform a mysterious spiritual and emotional transference that would prove to be one of cinema's most influential ideas. Acted with astonishing nuance and shot in stark shadows and soft light by the great Sven Nykvist (CRIES AND WHISPERS), PERSONA is a penetrating, dreamlike work of profound psychological depth.

New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute
247 East 82nd Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenues)
The Marianne & Nicholas Young Auditorium

More info here.

The Dyer’s Hand: Some Aspects of the Psychoanalyst’s Actions - March 2, 2016 - NYC

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

8:00 PM

"The Dyer’s Hand: Some Aspects of the Psychoanalyst’s Actions"

with Anton Kris, M.D.

The title, taken from Shakespeare’s description of his own acting, “my nature is subdued to what it works in, like the dyer’s hand,” opens a discussion of how and how much we put our minds and ourselves at our patients’ disposal, as participants rather than as external interpreters. Using a clinical illustration to introduce the discourse, the paper considers the aims and consequences of the analyst’s non-interpretive actions as well as interpretations. Competing technical approaches require the analyst’s judgment to be guided by truthfulness, commitment to the patient’s welfare, regard for countertransference, and ethical considerations. How far to go with action cannot be a settled question, but the essential requirement of limitations in the analytic relationship and the danger of boundary violations must be kept in mind.

More info here.
 

Breaking the Cycles that Trap Us: Affect, Attachment, Integration, Intervention - 5 March 2016 - Philadelphia

PSPP 2016 Annual Spring Program

Breaking the Cycles that Trap Us: Affect, Attachment, Integration, Intervention

Paul Wachtel, Ph.D.

Saturday, March 5th 2016

In this workshop Dr. Wachtel will highlight the ways in which the problems we work with as clinicians are organized as self-perpetuating vicious circles, making it crucial to take into account how other people in the patient’s life are drawn in as “accomplices” in the problematic life pattern. Breaking the vicious circles in which our patients are trapped requires an approach that is at once deep and active, probing and humane, promoting of insight but not getting stuck in the head. Through using a format that encourages active exchange with and participation by the attendees as well as including extensive clinical examples and an illustrative video of a session, this workshop will highlight how a comprehensive relational perspective opens pathways for integrating the strengths of the psychoanalytic point of view with those of other orientations that have become influential across the spectrum of therapeutic practice in recent decades.

Paul L. Wachtel, Ph.D. is Distinguished Professor of psychology in the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership at City College and in the doctoral program in clinical psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center. He was a cofounder of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration (SEPI) and is a past president of that organization. Among his most recent books are Relational Theory and the Practice of Psychotherapy (2008), Inside the Session: What Really Happens in Psychotherapy (2011) the second edition of Therapeutic Communication: Knowing What to Say When (2011), and Cyclical Psychodynamics and the Contextual Self: The Inner World, the Intimate World, and the World of Culture and Society (2014). He is a Fellow of Divisions 12, 29, and 39 of the American Psychological Association.

Location:

Arch Street Meeting House
320 Arch Street (corner of 4th and Arch)
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Monthly Meeting Room

More info here.

Psychoanalytic Practice in the Real World - 20 Mar 2016 - Philadelphia

2016 PSPP Brunch Series

Psychoanalytic Practice in the Real World

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Kelly Bassett, M.Ed., Dan Livney, Psy.D., and Courtney L. Slater, Ph.D

This panel seeks to explore some of the challenges of practicing psychodynamic/psychoanalytic work in a society and time when deep and nuanced talk therapy is viewed as not evidenced-based or as an outmoded or ineffective style of psychotherapy. The panelists will address both strengths of psychodynamic work as well as real-life challenges encountered by practitioners. Additionally, the panel will describe how these clinicians speak to and explain to patients and to referring providers what it is that we do, why we do it, and how it is reparative and curative.

Sometimes patients come to us expecting a quick fix, a focus on behavior at the expense of emotions, a privileging of symptoms over root cause, and a way to quickly and easily quantify change—expectations perhaps set up by their referring providers, the health insurance companies, and our larger fast-paced and instant gratification culture. The reality that psychodynamic work is evidence-based, and effective, is often lost in the mix. Whether one works in private practice or is responsible for notes that strike a non-psychodynamic tone in a clinic or agency setting, we have to be aware of both societal expectations as well as the strengths and evidence-based rationalizations for our style of work; including the ways in which it differs—and doesn't—from other kinds of psychotherapies.

More info here.

Emily Kuriloff, Psy.D. presents Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Legacy of the Third Reich - March 24th, 2016 - NYC

Emily Kuriloff, Psy.D. presents Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Legacy of the Third Reich. Donna M. Orange, Ph.D., Psy.D. Discussant.

During the 1930s and 1940s, European psychoanalysts held fast to their professional identities despite a profoundly destabilizing reality. From Budapest to Paris, the Nazis disrupted the work of this group and threatened their very lives; that a good part of the community endured in exile is itself remarkable. And yet, in the end, the twentieth century belonged as much to Hitler as it did to Freud.

This presentation will address the question: What effect do the personal histories of traumatized theorists and clinicians have upon their work, and thus the direction of the psychoanalytic traditions that recent generations have inherited?

In researching her book, Kuriloff was prompted to lean heavily on personal interviews conducted with analysts who lived during the period, or who have studied the Holocaust. In her presentation, the author will read excerpts from her book, Contemporary Psychoanalysis and the Legacy of the Third Reich—particularly those pertaining to Heinz Kohut and his psychoanalyst/ historian son, Tom Kohut. These dialogues revealed more to her about the impact of the catastrophe upon psychoanalytic theory and praxis than did material found in print. The presence of the living person also allowed Kuriloff to inquire about implication, and to check her intuition against those of another who was, and perhaps still is, closer to the events and their terrible personal ramifications than the author will ever be.

March 24th, 2016

LOCATION:
NIP Conference Room
250 West 57th Street, Ste 501, NYC

More info here.

Psychodynamic understanding of psychotic disorders - 15 March 2016 - Tavistock Centre, London

Working with challenging clinical cases: psychoanalytic understanding applied to working in psychiatric and forensic settings

16 February 2016 and 15 March 2016

Psychodynamic understanding of psychotic disorders: This introductory course will offer a model for understanding, thinking about and working with psychotic disorders. The course will focus on the relationship between the psychotic patient and his/her internal and external reality. It will also examine the way the patient’s inner world can facilitate good management, prevent relapse and engage the patient in health promotion.

The broad emphasis of the course will be practice based and will make extensive use of psychodynamic understanding of the patient and his/her relation with others immediately involved in his/her care.

The day will be divided into two sessions, each consisting of a lecture followed by a clinical presentation/discussion. You will be encouraged to participate fully and make links with your own experience and practice.

Aims:
to provide a model for thinking about and understanding psychotic disorders
to develop the skills for a psychodynamically informed assessment of the patients’ difficulties in a way that complements other mental health assessment tools
to provide practical guidance to the management of patients with psychotic disorders in the context of their ongoing psychiatric care

Date:
Tuesday, 15 March, 2016 - 10:00

Venue:
Tavistock Centre, London NW3 5BA

More info here.

Historical Abuse: When adults abuse the children in their care - 4 March, 2016 - Tavistock Centre, London

Historical Abuse: When adults abuse the children in their care - what one retrospective study has taught us

The 10th Annual Trauma Seminar

‘We will describe our experience of working psychotherapeutically with 40 adults who as children were abused by the same three men. These men all held significant positions of power in the orphanage where these vulnerable children were sent. As a result of the psychotherapy service that arose out of the police investigation and ensuing criminal proceedings, we gained some insight into the conditions that foster a culture that licences those in power to behave with sexual impunity. How do some in power come to be so corrupted in the face of vulnerable children and how do institutions become complicit in reinforcing abusive practices? Our research study and clinical experience goes some way to offering some understanding.’

Convenor
Linda Young, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Psychoanalyst and Head of the Adolescent Trauma Service, The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation

Trust Chair
Jo Stubley, Consultant Psychiatrist in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalyst, Head of the Adult Trauma Service, The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust

Speakers
Francesca Hume, Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalyst, Head of Adult Psychology, Organising Tutor for M1 Adult Psychotherapy Training, The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust
Birgit Kleeberg, Consultant Adult Psychotherapist and Psychoanalyst, Trauma Unit and Fitzjohn's Unit, Adult and Forensic Services Department, The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust

Date:
Friday, 4 March, 2016 - 13:45

Venue:
Tavistock Centre, London NW3 5BA

More info here.

Compulsive Sexual Behaviour and the Couple Relationship - 18 March 2016, London

People struggling with sexually compulsive behaviour, whether online or with various partners, frequently feel overwhelmed and controlled by their impulses, and the impact on couple relationships can be devastating. In this course we will review current thinking on addictive sexual patterns, the underlying causes, and the treatment approaches used to address sexual compulsivity.

Course content

• Defining and assessing sexual compulsivity
• Classifying addictive patterns
• Impacts on the mind
• Therapy approaches and treatment options
• Impact on the partner
• Addressing sexual needs and couple issues

Biography
Janice Hiller is Senior Academic Tutor in Psychosexual Studies at TCCR and a Consultant Clinical Psychologist, who trained at the Institute of Psychiatry. Prior to joining TCCR she worked with adult mental health in the NHS and was also head of a psychosexual and relationship therapy service in North East London for many years. She specialised in sexology from early in her career and has published on a range of topics.

Date:
Friday, 18 March, 2016 - 10:00

Venue:
The Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships

More info here.