When Psychotherapy Feels Stuck with Mary Jo Peebles, PhD
2023-09-23 12:00 - 16:30 (America/New_York) | PCC CLIMB Center, 1626 SE Water Ave, Portland, OR, United States
Mary Jo Peebles, PhD will present on…
We have all felt stuck as therapists. This may be difficult to admit (and seldom do we tell our patients). But rest assured, the experience is universal. Feeling stuck has been discussed in traditional psychoanalytic settings as being stuck; i.e., a point of non-movement, or “impasse,” whose synonyms include “deadlock, standoff, stalemate, and dead-end,” words implying resistance, opposition, and no-more-life. Systems theory, strategic psychotherapy, and strengths-based approaches, on the other hand, view stuck places as rich in life and interaction. From their lens, feeling stuck is not immobility, it is being vitally engaged at the nub of the very thing that brought our patient to seek us. Through role plays, clinical examples, mistake-sharing, and audience engagement, this workshop will bring alive the life inside feeling stuck. It will develop a way of thinking, from a theoretically synthetic point of view, about elements that make a difference when psychotherapy feels stuck. By the conclusion, psychotherapists may feel encouraged, and perhaps wonder, if feeling stuck is exactly where they want to end up being.

Film and Mind Online: Free Angela and All The Political Prisoners
2023-09-29 23:30 - 2023-09-30 01:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Free Angela and All the Political Prisoners (Shola Lynch, 2013) 1 hr 42 min.
Contemporary psychoanalysis as a field is struggling to make sense of racism and culturally imposed trauma. The final report of the Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in American Psychoanalysis was published this past June. In discussing this 2013 documentary, the NCP Film & Mind series picks up one of its recommendations, urging “Talk with others about the Report’s findings and recommendations, and the implications for the [psychotherapy] communities of which you are a part.”
In their NY Times review, Nicolas Rapold wrote, “Shola Lynch’s documentary about Angela Davis, the activist and beacon of counterculture radicalism, is a snappily edited, archivally wallpapered recollection of fearless behavior in the face of an antsy establishment. But it’s equally significant as a pointed act of retelling.” The film tells the complex story of Angela Davis, presently a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies Departments at the University of California, Santa Cruz, whose social activism led to her name on the FBI’s most-wanted list.

What's Love Got to Do With It? Somatic Treatment Under a Psychodynamic Umbrella
2023-09-30 10:00 - 12:00 | UNC School of Social Work Tate-Turner-Kuralt Bldg Auditorium, 325 Pittsboro St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516, United States
Presented by Presented by Boris Thomas, JD, PhD, with discussant Huey Hawkins, Jr., PhD
Regardless of our approach to treatment, a foundational aspect of the work is the relationship between therapist and client/patient.
For those accustomed to working psychoanalytically or psychodynamically, how do we think about incorporating somatic work with our clients (or somatic work that our colleagues might do with our clients in an adjunctive treatment)?
Dr. Thomas will present and discuss his work using EMDR while holding a psychodynamic frame, managing transference and countertransference, and the attachment challenges that clients might bring to the work.

Reflections on Practicing During the Pandemic: What Can Be Learned? What Now?
2023-09-30 12:00 - 14:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Description: Even for those of us with prior tele-analytic experience, our sudden immersion in practicing tele-analytically during the pandemic caused a seismic shift in our ordinary way of practicing with all the psychic reverberations such a change evokes.
Now that the dust has settled some, we have an opportunity to reflect on what we’ve observed about the essential conditions for effective psychoanalytic work, the role of the external setting and physical presence, the role of the analyst’s internal setting, and what’s necessary for establishing and maintaining a useful analytic relationship.
Bio: Dr. Lena Theodorou Ehrlich is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute and Visiting Faculty at the Denver Institute for Psychoanalysis and the Florida Psychoanalytic Center. Her writing and teaching focus on various aspects of clinical theory and practice, including obstacles to beginning, deepening, and ending an analysis, sustaining an analytic identity and practice, assessing analytic ability and supervisory countertransferences, and technical and conceptual considerations of tele-treatment. Her paper “Tele-Analysis: Slippery Slope or Rich Opportunity?” won the 2019 Prize Award from the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association for excellence in psychoanalytic scholarship and distinguished contributions to the journal. In 2020, Dr. Ehrlich published a book entitled Psychoanalysis from the Inside Out: Developing and Sustaining an Analytic Identity and Practice. Recently, she has been honored with the 2024 Candidates’ Council Master Teacher Award. Lena is a Greek immigrant, a wife, mother, and a grandmother of delightful three-year old twin girls.

The Fascist Turn: Totalitarian Objects & Perpetrator Fragments
2023-09-30 12:00 - 15:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Join us for a clinically rich and socially relevant discussion with renowned psychoanalyst and author, Sue Grand, PhD.
Across the globe, neo-fascism is on the rise and democracy is at risk. This ominous turn calls for psychoanalytic decoding. This presentation argues that we are all carrying totalitarian objects and perpetrator fragments, inherited from our forebears’ psyches and culture. These parts have a dissociated life inside us; they haunt our interiors, and our collectives; and they inscribe forgotten aspects of our collective history. They are enacted in intimate spaces, in gun violence, and in our political scene. To examine this form of trans-generational transmission, we will look at the intimate space of clinical process in the context of our larger socio-historical predicament.

Comparative Clinical Methods: A Training and Clinical Experience
2023-09-30 12:00 - 17:00 | Oregon Psychoanalytic Center, 2250 NW Flanders St, Suite 312, Portland, OR, United States
Presenter: Abbot Bronstein, PhD
The Comparative Clinical Methods Working Party Group started by David Tuckett and a group of European Psychoanalysts and brought to APsA and NapSac IPA institutes by Abbot Bronstein about 17 years ago, is a way to explore and study the implicit and explicit clinical methods psychoanalysts use in doing clinical psychoanalysis. The project has collected over 200 clinical cases in North America, Europe and South America. The groups consist of 15 psychoanalysts listening over 2 days to a colleague present detailed clinical sessions. The group uses a 2 step model to first describe the ways an analyst intervenes and then uses that material to describe the analysts theory of clinical work along a number of variables, from their theory of ‘what is wrong’ (descriptive diagnosis) to ‘what furthers the process” (their theory of therapeutic action). The project also looks at how analysts have conceptualized such analytic concerns like how they use and define ‘transference’, the “here and now”, the ‘analyst as a good or new object”.
This workshop will introduce participants to the research, the concepts and the method of descriptive study using vignettes from established cases.

Linking Field Theory and Systems Psychodynamics to Enhance Leadership: Perspectives on Racism, Discrimination and Othering
2023-10-05 11:00 - 13:30, 2023-10-12 11:00 - 13:30, 2023-10-19 11:00 - 13:30 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Addressing the challenges presented by systemic racism, discrimination, and othering in our psychoanalytic and community-based organizations is a long-term, multi-generational endeavor. As part of that effort, the Council for Leadership and Organizational Studies (CLOS) of the Department of Psychoanalytic Education (DPE), American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA), in collaboration with the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA), is offering an innovative virtual course to the future international leaders of psychoanalysis: current candidates, students, and recent graduates of psychoanalytic and psychoanalytic psychotherapy programs. Enhancing their knowledge and skills in leadership and group dynamics will help them, their psychoanalytic organizations, and other community-based organizations in which they participate to more effectively address the challenges of systemic racism and othering.
This virtual seminar will explore critical concepts in systems psychodynamics and field theory, such as intersubjective processes, group relations, the social unconscious, projective identifications, splitting, and social defenses. Thinking of the individual and the group simultaneously, developing what Bion referred to as binocular vision, we will deepen our understanding of racism and othering in ourselves and in the groups in which we are embedded. In addition, we will consider applications of these concepts organizationally to enhance our individual and collective efforts to become more inclusive, more open in our thinking, and equitable in sharing power. Each session will be evenly divided between theoretical and experiential components. In the group-as-a-whole we will discuss key points in the assigned readings. Then we will break into pre-assigned small self-study groups to observe and reflect on our own group process as it relates to our learning together about racism and othering. Membership in the small groups will remain constant throughout the course. There is no charge for this course. However, we ask registrants to commit to attending all 8 sessions, if possible, in order to foster trust, cohesion, and a deeper level of engagement.
Co-Leaders: James W Barron, PhD and Paula Christian-Kliger, PhD
Guest Faculty: Anton Hart, PhD, Beverly J. Stoute, MD, Mira Erlich-Ginor, M.A., and Shmuel Erlich, Ph.D., ABPP
Candidate Faculty: Himanshu Agrawal, MD
Thursdays 11 AM–1:30 PM ET / 4–6:30 PM GMT
October 5, 12, 19, 26; November 2, 9, 16, 30

Families, Parents and Children: What can Psychodynamic-Psychoanalytic Treatment Offer?
2023-10-05 20:30 - 22:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Presented by Tina Marie Dale, LCSW. This course is intended for clinicians new to the therapeutic field or those with little to no exposure to the psychodynamic approach thus far in their professional careers. We will look at what the psychodynamic approach can offer to clinicians treating families, treating children, and/or working with parents. We will consider concepts such as transference, countertransference, internal objects, sibling relationships, as well as other concepts that inform and support child, family, and parent treatments. Video links and readings provided ahead of class will prepare participants for group discussion. We will also consider diversity among families in treatment. Class time will consist of lectures, case examples, and discussion among participants. Participants are expected to read and view the materials provided ahead of time and to arrive ready for discussion.

Shame, Self-Alienation and the Power of Self-Compassion
2023-10-05 20:30 - 22:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
The concept of self-alienation is inextricably linked to shame. Working with adult children of traumatizing narcissists, and with others who experience narcissistic abuse, Shaw’s way of working with these clients shifted as he began to study and integrate concepts and techniques from some of the contemporary traumatologists. What he has learned has led Shaw to place problems with self-alienation, a condition largely governed by shame, at the center of the therapeutic endeavor. Shaw will give clinical examples of his work with clients struggling with self-alienation that demonstrate his way of integrating trauma theories and a relational psychoanalytic perspective.
Daniel Shaw, LCSW, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City and in Nyack, New York. Originally trained as an actor at Northwestern University and with the renowned teacher Uta Hagen in New York City, Shaw later worked as a missionary for an Indian guru. His eventual recognition of cultic aspects of this organization led him to become an outspoken activist in support of individuals and families traumatically abused in cults. Simultaneous with leaving this group, Shaw began his training in the mental health profession, becoming a faculty member and supervisor at The National Institute for the Psychotherapies in New York. In addition to his numerous published journal articles and book chapters, Shaw’s book, Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation, was published in 2014 for the Relational Perspectives Series by Routledge. The book was a runner-up for the distinguished Gradiva Award. In 2018, the International Cultic Studies Association awarded him the Margaret Thaler Singer Award for advancing the understanding of coercive persuasion and undue influence. Shaw’s second book, Traumatic Narcissism and Recovery: Leaving the Prison of Shame and Fear, was published by Routledge in 2021. Dan speaks on psychoanalytic topics to clinical societies around the world, and also conducts consultation groups for groups of three or four clinicians in person and on Zoom.

Psychoanalysis in Transition: Exploring the Vista from Couch to Collective
2023-10-06 11:00 - 2023-10-09 15:00 | Virtual Event
“As analysts have expanded their involvement outside of the consulting room, institutes around the world have increasingly recognized that learning about leadership, followership, membership, and social dynamics might need to be a fourth pillar in psychoanalytic training (alongside seminars, personal analysis, and supervision).
In this conference, and working together over four days, the staff and participants will create a temporary institution to examine multiple layers of organizational life beyond the conscious/observable to consider the more impactful and powerful dynamics that are out of awareness.”

The Phone as a Subject: Understanding the Effects of smart phones and AI on the Mind
2023-10-07 10:00 - 12:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
With Amy Levy, Psy.D. & Todd Essig, Ph.D.
In her paper, “The Phone as a Subject,” Dr. Levy contests the commonly held assumptions that the smartphone is an object, susceptible to healthy or pathological employment and comparable to other objects used to ameliorate the pain of reality. Instead, she will argue that the phone is a subject we interact with in a bi-directional, intersubjective field.
The author leans upon Jessica Benjamin’s 1995 work on the shift in the language of “object” to “subject” as one that brings recognition of the “other.” When we recognize the smartphone and machine-learning artificial intelligence (AI) as “other,” we can better understand their effects on our minds.
To encourage us in psychoanalysis to begin envisioning and conceptualizing the psychological course that humanity is heading on given this profound new relationship, Dr. Levy will discuss the work of New York Times best-selling author and historian Yuval Noah Harari (2017) and offer a Bionian conceptualization of the phone’s impact on human mentation.

Social Psychoanalysis and an Ethic of Repair
2023-10-07 11:00 - 14:30 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
This program begins with a talk on what a social psychoanalysis might look like in the clinic and draws on some earlier psychoanalysts’ concepts that have connected the social world and the psychic world without reducing one to the other. Exploring identity formation in cultural contexts and within various power hierarchies, Dr. Layton introduces the concept of normative unconscious processes, a concept connecting the psychic and the social that specifically addresses the ways that racism, heterosexism, classism and other social inequalities are unconsciously enacted in the clinic and culture. We will then explore how therapists can resist unconsciously replicating such cultural inequalities.
In the second half of the program, we will expand our focus to the ways cultural inequalities are unconsciously reproduced in the wider circles of contemporary institutional and sociocultural life. Dr. Layton, Dr. Nichols, and Dr. Connolly discuss the psychological case for reparations for slavery and its afterlives. Our conversations here, too, explore how we, as citizens and therapists, both unconsciously replicate and can resist replicating harmful, unequal relations. We will think together about how to address the places in our different subjective and communal worlds where harm has been done–and engage together on how to make repair.

Meet the Author: Andrea Celenza, PhD
2023-10-10 19:30 - 21:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Join Andrea Celenza, PhD, for our next Meet the Author event with Shari Thurer, Sc. D., and the online audience. We will be talking about Andrea’s book, “Transference, Love, Being: Essential Essays from the Field”.

Windows into Psychotherapy
2023-10-11 20:00 - 22:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Presented by Stuart Ozar, MD and Juliana Varela, MSW. For clinicians or mental health students who are curious about what it is that psychodynamic therapists actually do, we offer a “window” into the process and a chance to connect an introduction to theory with actual clinical material. Each class will begin with a brief theoretical description of a core clinical concept, followed by the presentation and discussion of material from a long-term psychotherapy process. We welcome lively discussion, dialogue and debate.

IPI Weekend Conference: Online Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Practice and Training in Times of Social Division, Pandemic and War
2023-10-13 - 2023-10-15 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
This weekend conference addresses teletreatment and teletraining under geopolitical conditions of pandemic, division between factions and countries, international tension with China and Russia, and war in Ukraine. We review APsA empirical studies on teleanalysis uptake, reconceptualize online teaching for challenged psychoanalytic psychotherapy training programs in China and Russia, illustrate technology-mediated support for traumatized Russian/Ukrainian colleagues, and explore the impact of technology on psychoanalytic psychotherapy practice and analytic process.
Presenters: Todd Essig, Ph.D; Harold Kudler, MD; Mino Zanchi, MD; Caroline M. Sehon, MD, FABP; Andi Pilecki Eliza-Christie LPC; Michelle Kwintner PhD, LCSW-R; Yolanda Varela, PhD; Flora Barragan, MA; Jill Savege Scharff MD, FABP; Janine Wanlass, PhD; David Scharff MD, FABP
Friday 9:45am – 6:15 pm US ET
Saturday 9:45am – 6:15pm US ET
Sunday 10:00am – 2:00pm US ET

The Neurobiological Underpinnings of Psychoanalytic Theory and Therapy
2023-10-13 09:00 - 12:15 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Dr. Solms will discuss how the emotional mind works (using Panksepp’s scheme for core human emotions) and how psychoanalysis achieves relief of mental suffering by making emotions conscious.

A Psychoanalytical View on Child & Adolescent Development in a Socio-Cultural Context: Generation Z in Kazakhstan
2023-10-13 12:30 - 14:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
This presentation is aimed to enrich psychoanalytic theory by exploring how societal and historical factors shape generational experiences in different contexts. Each generation grows up in a specific cultural, social, and historical context, which influences their values, beliefs, and psychological challenges. In these regards generation Z in general has been characterized as an environmentally aware “digital natives” who are exposed to a rapidly changing and increasingly interconnected world. Despite these common characteristics, cultural determinants shape Zoomers’ early experiences, socialization patterns, and the formation of their self-identity. Psychoanalytic perspectives in this presentation will explore how context-specific traditional cultural norms and values are internalized and operate within Zoomers’ unconscious processes, and also tries to uncover these unconscious dynamics and explain their interplay with cultural factors.
Presenter: Anna M. Kudiyarova, PhD, Director of the Psychoanalytic Institute for Central Asia

Film and Mind Online: Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
2023-10-13 23:30 - 2023-10-14 01:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Directed by Kelly Freeman Craig, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. (2023) is a film adaptation of the Judy Blume young-adult novel. Social, biological, and (to a much smaller extent) identity issues of puberty’s early edge are presented with charming verisimilitude (and earned a 99% positive rating on RottenTomatoes.com). In our discussion we will have opportunities to discuss the psychodynamic issues explicit in the film…and, importantly, unaddressed psychodynamic issues operating below the surface.
Discussants: Ronnie Kaye, PhD, LMFT and Deborah Lynn, MD

Cultural Competence Conference: Gender Diversity and Reproductive Justice: Connecting the Dots
2023-10-14 09:00 - 12:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Jack Drescher, MD:
The history of psychoanalytic theorizing about homosexuality is more than a century old and has undergone numerous revisions. Early on, psychoanalytic attitudes toward homosexuality could be reasonably characterized as hostile. The presentation begins with Freud’s early views on homosexuality within the cultural context of his times. It then reviews later pathologizing psychoanalytic theories as well as the research of sexologists which ultimately led to the 1973 decision of the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). Today the contributions of openly lesbian and gay analysts have shifted psychoanalytic focus on homosexuality from discussions of “why gay?” to the more clinically relevant question of “how gay?” This presentation shows how the history of psychoanalytic attitudes toward homosexuality illustrates how psychological theories cannot be divorced from the political, cultural, and personal contexts in which they are formulated.
Catherine Mallouh, MD:
Abortion is a complex issue politically, socially, and morally. It is also a legal issue which impacts women’s bodily autonomy. This presentation will explore psychoanalytic perspectives on abortion, particularly in the context of this choice being prohibited. The effect of the social on psychic life and individual subjectivity becomes evident. The choice to continue a pregnancy or not does not just concern the fetus, but also the choice for motherhood and providing maternal care. Continuing a pregnancy in the context of being able to have an abortion frames the choice for motherhood.

Relational Identity & Erotic Orientation: Polyamory and Kink as Identity Constructs
2023-10-14 10:00 - 12:00 | St Louis Psychoanalytic Institute, 7700 Clayton Rd Ste 200, Saint Louis, MO, 63117, United States
Presented by Gary Hirshberg, LCSW. This two session workshop will challenge clinicians to look at our own deeply held beliefs about sex and coupling, specifically what is ‘perversion’ and what is ‘healthy’ coupling. Most of us have come of age and been trained to still consider kink as deviant and as deriving from early childhood trauma or exposure to overt sex. Most of us think of multiple partners, open relationships and group marriages as resulting from overly sexual men. This workshop will challenge all of that and more as we explore the reality that kink is just as valid an expression of healthy sexuality as missionary position between a male and a female and that polyamory is also a deeply embedded aspect of identity for many, just as monogamy is for some. With more of our patients opening up to all aspects of their identity and sexuality we clinicians need to catch up.

Clinical Conference - Emotional Inheritance: A Therapist, Her Patients and the Legacy of Trauma
2023-10-14 11:00 - 13:30 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
This event will focus on ideas from Galit Atlas’ new book “Emotional Inheritance.” It will address silenced experiences that belong not only to us or to our patients, but to their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, and the ways they impact our lives. The clinical tales will focus on emotional material that is passed down from generation to generation. It will discuss intergenerational trauma, the regulation of aggression, the power of attachment and the many faces of our emotional inheritance.
Presented by Galit Atlas, PhD

Wisconsin Psychoanalytic Society Meeting
2023-10-14 12:00 - 14:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Danielle Novack, PhD. “Meeting Again, Meeting Anew: A Child Patient Returns as an Adult”

Connections and Conversation with Ilene Philipson: The Radical Otherness of Masud Khan
2023-10-15 17:00 - 18:30 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
Masud Khan was a brilliant psychoanalyst, Winnicott’s “principal disciple,” collaborator, editor, and analysand. He was chief editor of the International Psychoanalytical Library for 20 years, wrote four books, and served as training analyst for Christopher Bollas and Adam Phillips. Simultaneously, Masud Khan was an alcoholic, antisemitic, alcoholic, who repeatedly engaged in sexual relationships with patients and continuously violated the analytic frame.
It is widely recognized that Winnicott failed Khan in his analysis, allowing him to fall into madness. This talk will argue that Khan’s radical otherness served as a significant reason for this failure. While deeply embedded in elite, Western culture and preferences, he simultaneously maintained a feudal, that is pre-capitalist identity that stood outside of Judeo-Christian norms. An examination of his life will cast light on current debates about otherness in psychoanalysis.

Study Group - Traumatic Experiences of Normal Development: An Attachment-Based and Trauma-Based Listening Perspective
2023-10-16 20:00 - 21:30 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
This study group is based on a book authored by Carl Shubs, PhD, titled Traumatic Experiences of Normal Development: An Intersubjective, Object Relations Listening Perspective on Self, Attachment, Trauma, and Reality (Routledge, 2020). It describes a new conceptualization of trauma, so we can be better prepared to work with it. The book presents a psychoanalytic and attachment-based perspective on trauma entailing a reconstruction of object relations, an integration with relational and intersubjective approaches, and their intersection with a redefinition of trauma, as well as a recognition of how those experiences manifest in the body. It considers traumatic incidents of all kinds and examines how those experiences have roots in normal development and how they are significant factors in the development and persistence of such things as addictions, eating disorders, affairs/infidelities, relational patterns, and character structure. It addresses our understanding of anxiety, depression, crisis, trauma, and the relationships between present and past experiences. It also presents a frame of reference, a listening stance, which helps us to understand more deeply the roots of how individuals uniquely process the events that confront them and how we can be more effective in helping them.
This study group is conducted over 6 Mondays.

Psychedelics and Psychoanalysis: Myths & Possibilities
2023-10-19 23:00 - 2023-10-20 01:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
This is a continuation of NCP’s Manifest Mind Series.
As psychedelic medicine moves toward wide clinical implementation, psychoanalysts are establishing a specialized set of roles and methods separate from other psychotherapists. The value of psychedelic medicine in psychodynamic care has been extensively documented in the past decade, corroborating published clinical experience in the earlier LSD era over 60 years ago. This two-hour presentation, a continuance of our presentation on psychedelic medicine in the spring, will be devoted to explorations of the clinical skills in working therapeutically with psychedelic medicine. This session examines three aspects of particular interest to analysts and presents challenges to be met with future psychoanalytic methodologies that extend our penetration into the misty realities ahead.
Speaker:
Thomas M. Brod, MD, is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine and Senior Faculty at NCP. He is coordinator of the NCP series Manifest Mind, devoted to the study of psychoanalysis and psychedelic medicine.

Against Transantagonism: A Metapsychology for the Flourishing of Trans Children
2023-10-21 10:00 - 12:00 | Virtual (Click on event title to advance to website and registration page)
In this presentation, Dr. Avgi Saketopoulou urges psychoanalysts to let the debate about the validity of trans children take its place in the fossil record of analytic history. Encouraging us to stop squandering our energies sparring with colleagues who see trans existence as cause for alarm, she suggests it is time to move beyond transantagonism to create, instead, the psychoanalytic theories we need and do not yet have to work towards the flourishing of trans and queer children. Let us refuse, once and for all, the philanthropy of being “inclusive”: trans children, Dr. Saketopoulou emphasizes, deserve no less than a psychoanalysis that wants their transness and which does not treat their genders as undesirable or inauthentic. Such a project, she cautions, will require us to endure the twisting and re-making of our metapsychology’s very foundations. It is only then that we may enjoy a psychoanalysis that is responsible and response-able to queer life, and which will not feel threatened by it or work to straighten or cis-iffy our patients.
Through a series of case vignettes, Dr. Saketopoulou will address what stands in the way of a psychoanalysis that works towards the flourishing of trans and queer children, taking on key concepts in child analysis. She will explain why the notion of core gender identity nests a ticking time bomb into the clinical process and why we need to relinquish our attachment to it; how we may reflect on gender not through the rubric of identity but under the aegis of contingency; why thinking about trauma as constitutive of some queer and some trans experience does not have to necessarily capsize into homotransphobia or conversion; how the demand for coherence and continuity overlooks the workings of important heteroclite psychic processes; and how to think developmentally without collapsing into developmentalism. The implications of this presentation extend far beyond the particularities of trans and queer childhoods, and gesture towards renewed foundations for child psychoanalysis overall.

Western Regional Child & Adolescent Psychoanalytic Conference
2023-10-21 12:00 - 2023-10-23 14:00, 2023-10-21 12:30 - 18:00 | Hybrid (In-Person and Virtual)
Weekend Event – October 21 & 22
A Psychoanalytic Retrospective: Thoughts on the Essence of a Happy and Fulfilled Life
Calvin A. Colarusso M.D. Training and Supervising Child Adolescent and Adult Analyst San Diego Psychoanalytic Center.
Dr. Colarusso will describe the effect of more than fifty-five years of exposure to psychoanalytic theory and the practice of adult and child psychoanalysis on the author’s understanding of the human condition and his personal reflections on the requirements for a happy and fulfilled life.
Creativity in the On-Line Analysis of a 5 -Year-Old During the Covid-19 Pandemic.
Tina Marie Dale, LCSW Child Adolescent and Adult Analyst with the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute and Chair of their Child and Adolescent Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Program and Chair of their Child and Adolescent Committee.
Discussant: David M. Abrams, PhD of the Contemporary Freudian Society Institute, New York and the Harlem Family Institute, New York.
Tina Marie Dale will present the case of the analysis of a 5-year-old who had to transition from in-person to virtual meetings due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The child was able to utilize a variety of home electronic devices, according to the preference of play in a particular session. With much imagination, this child creatively continued to actively communicate with the analyst, engaging in lively pretend play, exhibiting elaborate fantasies introducing many imaginary characters that became regular participants in the treatment for a particular phase.

Sunday, October 22
The Developmental Process: The Analysis of a Traumatized Three-Year-Old.
Rex McGeHee, M.D. Training and Supervising Child, Adolescent and Adult Analyst. Denver Institute for Psychoanalysis
Dr. McGeHee will present a case to illustrate how psychoanalytic treatment changes the developmental trajectory of a life. Building on Freud’s ideas of ‘Nachtraglichkeit’ as elaborated by LaPlanche and Modell, we will open the question of does the past change in the course of an analysis.
