Weekend Conference Schedule
Weekend ConferencesCRITICAL THINKING IN PSYCHOANALYSISOctober 23, 2008 The first conference will be four days in length. It will include an initial one day workshop, held on Thursday, on critical thinking. This workshop is designed to orient the new participants to the work of the Program. We will meet with two analysts who have experience as editors and as members of editorial boards who will bring for our consideration both published papers and manuscripts which have been submitted to their journals (these will be precirculated). These manuscripts will cover a variety of topic areas. With their help, we will focus on the project of developing a critical sensibility about psychoanalytic writing, addressing the questions: what constitutes psychoanalytic evidence,what constitutes clear explanation, and what constitutes coherent theory building? Coordinators: Sharon Alperovitz, M.S.W., David Cooper, Ph.D., Martha Dupecher, Ph.D., M.S.W., and Robert Winer, M.D. GUEST FACULTY: In this faculty listing, as in those on the following pages, space considerations limit us to listing essentially only those aspects of the faculty members’ work that are specifically related to the weekend’s focus.
A SERIOUS LOOK AT PLAYOctober 24-26, 2008 Joining in play is one of the most intimate ways in which individuals can interact. It moves from the mutual gazing between an infant and her mother to the use of humor, irony and teasing in adult play. These playful interactions are mutual and reciprocal; they are co-created by the participants based on a shared history and language. This knowledge of the other allows the play to occur in a space of relative safety. As a result, the play space is an arena in which the participants can be creative and alive, a space in which they can grow. Play is not limited to interactions between parents and children, between friends or partners. According to D. W. Winnicott, “Therapy is done in the overlap of two play areas, that of the patient and that of the therapist.” Play is part of the process of the therapeutic dyad. This weekend we will explore how play spaces are continuously re-created. We will examine how this space is kept alive and why, at other times, it collapses. Finally, we will look at the uses that are made of play and playfulness. Coordinators: Cornelia Lischewski, D.R.S., Psy.D. GUEST FACULTY:
TRAUMAFebruary 6-8, 2009 Trauma: What is it, and what difference does it make in a psychoanalytic inquiry? Definitions of “trauma” have been mired in the fantasy that “the bigger the bang, the bigger the trauma.” In purely subjective terms, the definition of trauma varies considerably from person to person as a function of meanings, beliefs, and alterations in how a mind works during and after traumatic experience. A psychoanalytic inquiry into trauma must consider neuroscientific, intrapsychic, intersubjective, self, and relational perspectives if it is to remain honest to the task of understanding our patients and ourselves. Drawing from a variety of perspectives, this weekend is designed to provide both an overview of trauma in general, and a focus on specific ways in which the theory and technique of psychoanalysis must adapt to assimilate and accommodate new knowledge about the human response to trauma. Coordinator: Richard A. Chefetz, M.D. GUEST FACULTY:
Additional faculty to be announced at a later date. IMAGINING A LIFEApril 17-19, 2009 We know ourselves in this moment and over time. We know ourselves inside and out. We know sensation, memory, action, cognition, emotion. All weave together to create the person we imagine ourselves to be. But how do those whose work requires them to know others as well as they know themselves, how do they imagine a life? How does the analyst move in and out of the soup to see a whole person, a self with all its mysterious consistency and inconsistency? How do actors imagine the characters they play as persons with minds and memories and bodies whose identities, like all identities, are flowing in time? How do novelists know their characters—what inner process of prestidigitation makes this possible? And biographers, prisoner as they are to libraries full of facts, how do they comprehend the inner life of the subject to whom they are bound? During this weekend conference, analysts, actors, novelists, and biographers will consider these questions, searching for the particularity of their own experience, and, perhaps, for the commonalties among those whose work requires them to imagine a life. Coordinator: Michaele Weissman REVENGE AND FORGIVENESSOctober 23-25 2009 Like night and day, revenge and forgiveness reflect starkly contrasting shades of experience and action at moments of intense hurt and suffering. So intrinsically human are these responses that we all know them from the inside out. However, just as each individual wrestles with the tension between these realms of experience, themes of revenge and forgiveness have found expression on a societal level throughout the ages. What is it about these core experiences that make them so palpably and viscerally real for us? What functions does revenge serve for the individual or group? Likewise, what are the developmental requirements for the capacity to forgive? Finally, what role does atonement play in the grievance process? These and other questions will be explored during this weekend workshop with an interdisciplinary faculty, who will examine revenge and forgiveness from psychoanalytic, philosophical, legal, and literary perspectives. Coordinator: James Kleiger, Psy.D., ABPP GUEST FACULTY:
Additional guest faculty will be announced at a later date. HOW THERAPY WORKSFebruary 5-7, 2010 This weekend will study the therapeutic action of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. What actually goes on between therapist and patient? Which parts of the interaction promote change? And what kind of change? In terms of the therapist’s behavior, our tradition has privileged interpretation and the resulting insight, but in recent decades relationship factors have shared the stage. So, what is our current state of knowledge about what works and how? How can this knowledge help to shape our clinical work? We will look at both research and clinical perspectives on these questions. Coordinator: David Cooper, Ph.D. GUEST FACULTY:
Additional guest faculty will be announced at a later date. CHANGING TIMES: BEING A THERAPIST IN THE 21ST CENTURYApril 30 - May 2, 2010 The origin of the oft-quoted phrase, “May you live in interesting times” is obscure. Some claim it was an ancient Chinese curse, others identify it as an old Scottish incantation, and still others claim it was coined by a 1950’s science fiction writer. Wherever the saying came from, it is safe to say that most cultures and civilizations throughout human history have believed that their particular time is interesting and unique. As we enter the 21st century we too are convinced that, for better or worse, our times are interesting, to say the least. How do we as psychotherapists think about the effect of current forces and trends in the world, as they impact ourselves, our patients and our work? What are the culture and time specific aspects of psychological dispositions, psychological maladies and psychological development? Conversely, which properties of our psyches are enduring and relatively independent of the particular times in which we live? At this conference, we will explore these questions as they relate to our role as therapists in a rapidly changing political and sociocultural milieu. The seemingly inexorable march of technological innovation and intrusion into our lives, the growth of fundamentalism, the changing balance of political and economic power, the change in the structure of the family, and advances in modern genetics and medicine are only a few of the factors that impact all of us every day. How do we see reflections of these forces in the problems (and the selves) that patients present to us? In what ways can we and should we attend to these matters as we continue to deepen our understanding of psychoanalytic theory and technique? A multidisciplinary panel of speakers will help us grapple with these difficult questions. Coordinator: Marc Levine, M.D. GUEST FACULTY:
· Additional guest faculty will be announced at a later date. SINGING (AND WRITING) WITH TONGUES OF WOOD: MUSIC AND PSYCHOANALYSISFall 2010 Writings about the arts from a psychoanalytic perspective have appeared since the inception of psychoanalysis itself. Freud’s early writings on the visual and literary arts opened a door to more broadly considering artists and their creative productions. This weekend will explore a panoply of contemporary views on the dynamic interconnections between music and psychoanalysis. These include auditory symbolism and the interpretation of meaning from sound; music as a point of entry to unconscious processes; relationships between cognition and affect; overlaps and disjunctions between physical and psychical listening; and the notion of music as subjective “interiority made into sound.” Considering the non-verbal essence of music also has special relevance for writers, and for psychoanalysts in the clinical encounter. In striving to communicate feelings, sensations, experiences, and other aspects of the human condition, we are all often at a loss for words. Many patients communicate in a wordless language of sounds—a form of music. Psychoanalysts and writers alike face complex challenges in identifying and then rendering into words that which is unsayable or unsaid. A multidisciplinary panel of speakers will address these exquisitely nuanced issues. Coordinator: Alexander Stein, Ph.D. GUEST FACULTY:
Additional guest faculty will be announced at a later date. WHAT CAN NEUROSCIENCE TEACH US ABOUT THE CONDUCT OF THERAPY?February 2011 “At long last, psychoanalysts and neuroscientists are together in the same forum, as they were in some manner in Freud’s own person.” (Antonio Damasio, cited by Mark Solms) In the late 1800’s, psychoanalysis and neuroscience were both emerging disciplines. Freud was beginning his explorations of the psychology of the mind and the neuron had only recently been described. Freud tried to link the two in his “Project for a Scientific Psychology,” but was eventually forced to abandon this venture, turning his attention to what would become the field of psychoanalysis proper. Both disciplines have made remarkable strides over the past century, and in the more recent past contributors from both sides have been interrogating their intersection. Both, after all, share a common pursuit: understanding the workings of the mind. This weekend conference takes up one side of that conversation: what can our current understanding of the structure and operations of the brain teach us about working as psychotherapists and psychoanalysts? A faculty of clinicians and neuroscientists will address this question. The study of neuropsychology has helped us, on the one hand, to appreciate the indelible effects of experience on the brain, particularly notable in the fields of attachment and trauma, and this has shaped our clinical technique. But it is also true that neuroscience has revealed that the brain is a more plastic and adaptive organ than we had realized, capable of rewiring new connections throughout the life-span, and this also has shaped our practice. Our new understandings of attention, the seeking system, the various forms of memory, the successes and failures of retrieval, the operation of motor neurons, and the neurobiology of affect all inform our work. We’ll be seeing how much progress we’ve made in this brokered courtship in 2011. Coordinator: Elizabeth Hersh, M.D. and Karyne Messina, Ph.D GUEST FACULTY:
Additional guest faculty will be announced at a later date. TIME AND MONEY IN THE THERAPEUTIC SETTINGSpring 2011 Time and money are two framing elements of the clinical encounter, and both are taken a bit for granted in our professional dialogues. Money and expertise are the quid pro quo of the therapeutic relationship: we clinicians offer our skilled efforts and our time, and the patient pays us for our services. That’s the fundamental contract. Questions arise. What does it mean to us, and to our patients, when we negotiate a fee arrangement? What does it mean to maintain therapeutic neutrality when our self-interest is at stake? Do we hold onto patients longer than necessary out of a financial motive? How does our ego ideal of helping to allay our patients’ suffering clash with our own fiscal needs? Where does self-interest end and greed (or masochism) begin? After all, the fee is the one place where our interests and our patients’ interests are fundamentally at odds. “Our time is up for today.” This commonplace ending captures both limitation (our time is up) and cyclic continuity (for today). We struggle with our patients, and with ourselves, to bear the pain of time’s arrow, to try to sustain the depressive position, all the while resisting the pull of our omnipotent longings, and of the timeless unconscious. How do we negotiate the paradox that we must keep a close eye on the clock and the calendar, in every sense, while we aim to sink into the unbounded and limitless primary process world of depth analysis? Through clinical examples, as well as theoretical dialogue, we will examine how character traits and attitudes (conscious as well as unconscious) on both sides of the therapeutic dyad come to bear on our dealings with time and money. Coordinator: Sylvia Flescher, M.D. GUEST FACULTY:
Additional guest faculty will be announced at a later date. |
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