Center for Psychoanalytic Studies (Houston)

Presenter: J. Christopher Fowler, PhD Description: We are acutely aware of the fear and dread of losing a patient to suicide. Unlike other medical crises, there are no biologic tests to accurately determine the level of suicide risk, nor metrics for determining when a suicidal crisis may occur (Fowler, 2012; Franklin et al., 2017). It […]

Presenter: Efrain Bleiberg, MD Description: This presentation will discuss the acquisition of trust and social learning in normal development and in psychotherapy and success that such acquisition is facilitated by the therapist’s ability to model repair by taking responsibility for one’s inevitable mistakes and misattunements and the impact they have on the patient. Examples of […]

Presenter: Denia Barrett, LCSW Description: This presentation will illustrate analytic work with a patient during late latency and prepuberty, followed by periods of psychotherapy in mid- and late- adolescence/emerging adulthood. Old problems find new solutions as development unfolds; exploring gender is one area that may lead to unpredicted outcomes.

Presenter: Jon G. Allen, PhD Description: After its dominance in American psychotherapy in the first half of the twentieth century, psychoanalysis was marginalized in the healthcare system in the latter part of the century. This marginalization resulted from the confluence of academic scientism and tailoring of psychotherapies to DSM diagnoses in psychiatry.

Presenter: M. Sagman Kayatekin, MD Description: Psychoanalytic discipline is in the process of broadening its theory, practitioners and applications. We welcome contributions from different psychoanalytic approaches and related disciplines in social sciences, humanities and neuro-psychoanalysis. Within this changing psychoanalytic scenery, a clearer articulation of the therapeutic potentialities and limitations of psychoanalytic approach is an important […]

Presenter: Efrain Bleiberg, MD This presentation aims to review a developmental-mentalizing-attachment formulation of narcissistic disorders, emphasizing a response to interpersonal helplessness and threats to one’s bids for attachment that is “solved” with a defensive move towards deactivation of attachment and the predominance of the pretend mode.

Presenter: Jean Goodwin, MD., MPH | Psychoanalysis was both a help and a hindrance to me in the late twentieth century as I was beginning to explore child sexual abuse and its sequelae. It was unhelpful that my medical school mentor(1968) explained that incest occurs one per million population. Also unhelpful when my supervisor in […]

Presenter: Ellen Safier, LCSW | Our intimate partnerships are the places where we are most vulnerable. It is of course these relationships that have the potential to provide the greatest sense of safety and security and comfort that are also the relationships where we can experience the greatest hurt and be most easily wounded.

Presenter: Arnold Richards, MD | This memoir describes the relationship between Richards' personal life and professional life inside and outside of psychoanalysis. The influence of his Russian Jewish father, an early Bolshevik who emigrated to America in the 1920s, contributed to his efforts for fairness and inclusion in psychoanalytic training.

Presenter: Glen O. Gabbard, MD | Psychoanalysis, which at its core is a search for truth, stands in a subversive position vis-a-vis the contemporary therapeutic culture that places a premium on symptomatic "cure." In this communication I am tracing the evolution of Freud's thinking about the relationship between the aims of psychoanalysis and the alleviation […]

Presenter: Sean Fitzpatrick, PhD, LPC | We live in a liminal moment in which mental health stigma is crumbling, in great part because of increasing psychological struggle triggered by the pandemic and recent social unrest.

Presenter: Jon G. Allen, PhD | This presentation will include discussion of the developmental trajectory of relationships informed by attachment theory and research; empirical findings from a study of the connections between therapists’ personal relationships and the quality of their relationships with patients; and recent findings regarding what patients value in psychotherapy.

Presenter: Usha Tummala-Narra, Ph.D. | In this presentation, Dr. Tummala-Narra will explore how personality is shaped by sociocultural context, and how experiences of one’s sociocultural context rely on personality, family dynamics, and trauma.

Presenter: M. Sagman Kayatekin, MD | Psychoanalytic discipline is in the process of broadening its theory, practitioners and applications. We welcome contributions from different psychoanalytic approaches and related disciplines in social sciences, humanities and neuro-psychoanalysis.

Child Analysis

Middle School Latency

Charlie and His Maps: The Developmental Vicissitudes in Achieving a Recognition of External Reality Presenter: Dr. E. Kirsten Dahl

When Machines Seem to Care: Close Encounters with the Techno-Subjunctive - Presenter: Todd Essig

Resolving Rapprochement Challenges: The Process of Metabolizing Love-Fueling Development, Therapeutic Growth, Reparation, and Healing Presenter: William Singletary, MD

Working with the Unspeakable: Shame, Self-hatred, and Relational Repair Presenter: Cynthia Mulder, LCSW-S