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Presentations

Stuart Pizer
Christina Emanuel
Ruth Lijtmaer

 

Presentation Announcements by Stuart Pizer (USA)

•   Presentation to Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society

I gave an all-day workshop on three of my published papers for the Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society on February 7, 2015. I examined the centrality of negotiation at the heart of any clinical process.  I then explored my conception of the analyst’s generous involvement: what it is and what it is not.

•   Object Relational Strands in Relational DNA

I gave a plenary paper, Object Relational Strands in Relational DNA, at the annual conference of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (IARPP) in Toronto, Canada, on June 25, 2015. By sharing an extended narrative of clinical process, I indicated how ideas from object relations theory, among others, infuse my way of working relationally.

•   The Analyst’s Generous Involvement:
Recognition and “The Tension of Tenderness”

I will give a three-hour workshop on August 14, 2015, via Skype, on my paper, The Analyst’s Generous Involvement: Recognition and “The Tension of Tenderness” (Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 24:1-13, 2014), for the Sydney, Australia local chapter of the IARPP. I define the analyst’s generous involvement as inherent to human encounter and a necessary element of therapeutic process. When the analyst’s generous involvement goes missing, it can be read as a sign of disengagement and disconnection. Using as metaphor H.S. Sullivan’s concept of the “tension of tenderness,” I argue that the analyst’s recognition of a need or affect state in the patient evokes an internal tug constituting the analyst’s need to provide for what has been recognized. I elaborate on what the analyst’s generous involvement is, and what it is not, including countertransference pitfalls and corruptions that may masquerade as generosity. I engage a relational conversation with the radical ethical ideas of Emmanuel Levinas. And an extended clinical vignette illustrates the challenges and conflicts entailed in the analyst’s finding an analytically useful form of expressing the tug of generous involvement in the immediate moment.

pizerphoto0715wStuart A. Pizer, PhD, ABPP
152 Brattle Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
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Moments of Meaning: How Ryan and Some Legos Got Me To Think Differently About Autism

Presentation by Christina Emanuel (USA)

Christina Emanuel participated in a clinical storytelling event, Moments of Meaning, in Pasadena, California this past February. A group of colleagues created this event as part of a movement to demystify and destigmatize the psychotherapeutic process by sharing engaging, meaningful clinical tales. Christina was one of six therapists who presented their work. Videos of these presentations were subsequently produced and have generated thousands of views on YouTube. In her presentation, Christina describes her work with an autistic child and his remarkable gifts to her.

Link to Christina’s presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2jvmi4uaaY

Link to the Moments of Meaning website: http://www.momentsofmeaning.org

emanuelphoto1014www4letterChristina Emanuel, MFT, PsyD
16 S. Oakland Ave., Suite 201
Pasadena, CA 91101
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Presentation Announcements by Ruth Lijtmaer (USA).

•  Untold Stories and the Power of Silence in the Intergenerational Transmission of Social Trauma

International Ferenczi Conference May 7-10, 2015. Toronto, Canada.

This paper, by using a multi-generational approach, with two vignettes, explores the effects of the parent’s silence concerning gaps in family biographies on the following generations.

 •  The Analyst’s Self-regulation Challenges with
Severely Regressed Patients

American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry (AAPDP) May 14-16, 2015. Toronto. Canada

With a clinical example and deepening the concepts of non-verbal responses, this paper addresses the analyst’s ability/inability, to detect, recognize and self-regulate countertransferencial alterations in his/her bodily state that are evoked by the patient’s transferential communication.

•  Perpetrators of Human Rights Violations: An Exploration.

International Psychohistorical Association 38th  Annual IPA Convention New York University, New York, June 3-5, 2015

This paper examines the social, ideological, political motivations and child-rearing practices that influences men to act with unimaginable brutality, dehumanizing the chosen enemy, as part of a battle between good and evil, while still leading rather pedestrian lives.

RLijtmaerDSCN5132Ruth M. Lijtmaer, PhD, is a senior supervisor, training analyst, and faculty member at the Center for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis of New Jersey and is in private practice in Ridgewood, NJ. She frequently presents lectures and papers at both national and international levels. She is the author of several scholarly publications and book chapters concerning multicultural and religious issues, trauma, social trauma, transference-countertransference and psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

 

Ruth M. Lijtmaer, PhD
88 West Ridgewood Ave.
Ridgewood, New Jersey 07450
201-445-5552
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Chapters

Stuart Pizer (USA)

The Shock of Recognition: What My Grandfather Taught Me About Psychoanalytic Process.

psychOtherbkcoverwIn: Goodman, D. et al (eds.), Psychology and the Other. Oxford University Press (in press).

I present key transformative moments with my grandfather during childhood and early adulthood to illustrate the fundamental experience of intimate recognition that formed the basis of my psychoanalytic ethos. As a psychoanalyst, I seek to engage in a potentially transformative recognition process that may foster profound and lasting state-shifts and open previously inaccessible realms of intersubjective relatedness, affect regulation, and reflective understanding. This paper extends previous work on therapeutic negotiations in the face of a history of misrecognitions and the relationally nonnegotiable. And I emphasize an essential aspect of the analytic attitude that I term “generous mentalization,” which, in later writings, I redefine as the analyst’s “generous involvement.”

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“Put Down the Duckie!”: Analytic Vigor, Rigor, and Relinquishment.

In: Ben-Shahar, A.R. & Shalit, R. (eds.) Therapeutic Failures. London: Karnac Books (in press)

Using as metaphor the enchanting Sesame Street video segment titled “Put Down the Duckie,” I offer a meditation on various self-comforting assumptions the analyst may well have to “put down” in the face of emergent surprises in clinical process. I tell the story of a patient to whom I lent that video as an enactive interpretation, and the crisis that ensued after I shared with him the draft of a paper in which I explored the therapeutic impact of that active intervention. The patient’s experience of shock at reading my narrative proved irreparable. The therapy ruptured. I could no longer present the story of our work together. So, chastened in my enthusiasm, I turned to a consideration of the unpredictable risks of writing about patients, the comforting rituals with which a therapist may retreat from vulnerability, our belief in our ability to predict future contingencies in the emergent interactive field of any treatment relationship—in short, the necessity of relinquishing our own “duckies.”

pizerphoto0715wStuart A. Pizer, PhD, ABPP
152 Brattle Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Email Stuart Pizer

Articles

MAX CAVITCH – Do You Love Me? The Question of the Queer Child of Psychoanalysis
STUART PIZER – “To be Honest, Raphael, I Don’t [Like You!” Intersubjective Affirmation & Analytic Negotiation
JILL SALBERG – The Texture of Traumatic Attachment: Presence & Ghostly Absence in Transgenerational Transmission
CARYN SHERMAN-MEYER – What’s Fat Got To Do With It? Losses and Gains in the Analytic Relationships

 

Do You Love Me? The Question of the Queer Child of Psychoanalysis

cavitchphoto0715wMax Cavitch (USA)

Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, (21 May 2015) doi:10.1057/pcs.2015.22

Queer children and LGBT youth often continue to find in the psychotherapeutic setting and the clinical literature an ill-prepared and even aversive reception. Suicidality among such children draws especially sharp attention to the need for better alternatives to current treatment modalities—the focus here is chiefly on the relational area, with its emphasis on the coupling norm and attachment theory—and, more broadly, for the further comprehensive development of queer- and LGBT-affirmative psychoanalytic theory and practice. In advocating for at-risk queer children, I also argue that the queer child is a meaningful transferential figure for the improved life chances of psychoanalysis itself and for the enhanced role of psychoanalytic theory and practice in the realm of social transformation.

Here is the link to the article at the journal’s Web site:
http://www.palgrave-journals.com/pcs/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/pcs201522a.html

Max Cavitch, PhD
Associate Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Psychoanalytic Studies
University of Pennsylvania
3340 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6273
Email Max Cavitch
website: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~cavitch/

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“To be Honest, Raphael, I Don’t [Like You]!”
Intersubjective Affirmation and Analytic Negotiation

pizerphoto0715wStuart Pizer (USA)

Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Vol. 12, No 1, p. 22-29, 2015.

In discussing a compelling, intimately candid, thoughtful, and provocative paper by Alan Sirote, I focus on three issues: the centrality of negotiation in clinical process; the clinical impact of affirmation versus mystification when the intersubjective field is saturated with negative affect; and a set of questions that seek to contextualize Sirote’s notion of expanding the frame. I consider as well the larger existential frame within which the therapeutic frame is negotiated and lived within the heartbeats of a human relationship.

Stuart A. Pizer, PhD, ABPP
152 Brattle Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
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The Texture of Traumatic Attachment:
Presence and Ghostly Absence in Transgenerational Transmission

salbergphoto0715wJill Salberg (USA)

The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Vol. LXXXIV, No.1, p.21-46, 2015.

Work on the transgenerational transmission of trauma refers to unspoken stories across generations, but the actual mode of transmission has remained somewhat mysterious. Utilizing examples from her own life, the author illustrates how attachment patterns are a primary mode of transmission of trauma. When trauma revisits a person transgenerationally through dysregulated and disrupted attachment patterns, it is within the child’s empathic attunement and search for a parental bond that the mode of transmission can be found. This will become the texture of traumatic attachment: how it feels to this child to feel connected to the parent.

Link to article: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/j.2167-4086.2015.00002.x/abstract

Jill Salberg, PhD, ABPP
155 West 71st Street
Suite 1D
New York, NY 10023
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What’s Fat Got To Do With It?
Losses and Gains in the Analytic Relationship

shermanmeyerphoto0715wCaryn Sherman-Meyer (USA)

Psychoanalytic Inquiry, Vol. 35, No. 3, p. 271-281, 2015.

How do the shapes of the bodies of analyst and analysand shape the treatment?  This article considers the impact of their subjectivities when they are uncomfortably similar.  It follows what occurs in a treatment in which both analyst and analysand are unable to examine dysregulating feelings related to body size and what their bodies convey regarding feeding, overeating, and being fat.  The clinical work presented is a reconsideration of Bion’s work, with a relational emphasis on projective identification and container/contained.  The article traces the analyst’s growth, starting from a position of sharing the patient’s fat hatred, through her own integration of previously dissociated and disembodied fat hatred, to the consequent emergence of an impasse, including what was learned by both analyst and patient in its working through.  It highlights how the impact of the patient helps the analyst to change, reciprocally enabling the patient’s growth.

Link to article: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07351690.2015.1012461#.VaBNmevhFUQ

Caryn Sherman-Meyer, LCSW
250 W. 57th Street
Suite 501
New York, NY 10019
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Interview with Suzi Naiburg About Her New Book: Structure and Spontaneity in Clinical Prose: A Writer’s Guide for Psychoanalysts and Psychotherapists

Interviewed by Joye Weisel-Barth (USA)

naiburgcover0715wJoye Weisel-Barth: We’re here to talk about your wonderful book Structure and Spontaneity in Clinical Prose: A Writer’s Guide for Psychoanalysts and Psychotherapists (Routledge, 2015). What comes through is your love and appreciation of literature. So let’s start with some background. I’m curious about your history with books and words. Where did all of this come from?

Suzi Naiburg: I’m not really sure. I have fond memories of children’s books that were read to me before I could read, but I remember more about being on the playground in elementary school than anything else. I wasn’t an early reader or even an avid reader in grade school. Then something shifted. I don’t know exactly when. I never gave up my love of sports, but I also began to love books. I had wonderful teachers in high school. My senior-year English teacher, Kay Rasco, was one of the best teachers I ever had.

It’s interesting what teachers can bring to us.

Absolutely.

Do you remember any of the things you learned from Kay?

She ran her class as a seminar: she asked great questions, questions that opened up discussion. We did a lot of writing. It was a wonderful group. But it was how she paid attention to literature that just kept opening it up. I think with a good teacher, that’s what happens.

The idea of things opening and opening when we’re reading stories as children is not always apparent. And a good teacher can illuminate how much is latent in writing.

Exactly, and good readers, like teachers, extend the meaning of those texts as they read. I’d like to tell you about a wonderful bit of advice Joe Pisacane gave me. He was the chef owner of The Periscope in Santa Fe many years ago. When he came out of the kitchen to mingle with his guests, I asked him “What is the best preparation for becoming a chef?”   He said, “eating well.” So the idea of bringing good writing to the attention of writers and reading well—closely and deeply—with an eye to how writing works is, for me, an essential part of teaching writing and part of the fun.

I know a lot of colleagues have had that experience. I know their excitement when they take your course; words open up for them.

Thank you.

So Suzi, how did you decide to write this book?

I had been teaching writing and coaching writers for years and realized I didn’t want to keep teaching the same thing. So I thought if I could write a book and refer writers to it, I would be freer to develop new approaches. I also realized something in retrospect. Having my ideas available in my book opens up space in each workshop. I don’t feel as rushed when I’m teaching.

Your book contains many touchstones for writers: important and concrete ways to think about how “we construct worlds out of language.” For example, you present five different modes of clinical prose, as you describe them: “The paradigmatic mode abstracts ideas from experience to build concepts and theories. The narrative mode organizes experience through time, creating meaningful relationships between causes and effects. Lyric narratives present events unfolding in an uncertain present. The evocative mode works by invitation and suggestion, and the enactive mode creates an experience to be lived as well as thought.” . . . After such a long committed process of writing your book, does it feel like it was worth it?

It does, but I have to tell you I had no idea how much time or what kind of commitment it would take. I couldn’t have known. For example, I began writing about four modes of clinical prose and in the process conceptualized a fifth, the lyric narrative mode. For me writing my book was also a process of exploration and discovery. I’d gather material together that I hadn’t read and wanted to read and put it in files organized by chapters. So I had this treasure trove each time I started a new chapter that allowed me to grow and grow my book rather than just write it. That experience alone was worth it.

Did you learn new things about yourself in the process? Do you think you’ve changed in this process of writing?

Absolutely. As a writer and analyst, I know how important it is to trust the creative and analytic process even when you don’t know where it’s going and let experience grow. Working on my book over a number of years, I lived these lessons in ways I hadn’t before. I also discovered my own creativity as a literary critic, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say I acknowledged my creativity as a critic. I’m not sure that would have happened if I hadn’t given myself the chance to explore writing in such depth and in my own way. When I was studying literature in college, I felt this divide between creative writers and those of us who studied them. I felt they were creative, and I was the toiler explicating their work.

Do I understand that.

Do you?

When I was at Yale in graduate school, I took a creative writing class with Robert Penn Warren. By the time I got to graduate school in English, it was so boring to me. As an undergraduate, it was all new and exciting. Then when I got to Yale, it was like a sweat shop. And I could hardly bear it, and I took this creative writing class, and it was an entire transformation. It was mostly what I did in my program because I loved it so much.

One of the things that probably makes you a good writer is that you have a sense of what good literature is.

It was such an incredibly different experience than reading other people’s literature and looking at their creativity, which after a while was sort of depressing. (We both laugh.)

I don’t think I reached that point, luckily, because I admired so many writers and literary critics and what they did. I was impressed by how the critics could see so much going on in a literary work just as an analyst can appreciate so many levels of meaning in analytic process.

I have to say that was just a phase for me, because when I come across a good writer, I’m thrilled. It makes me so happy.

Yes, it’s delicious. I know what you mean. But for me now, there’s less of a divide between creative writers and creative criticism. One of the things my book taught me was that as a literary critic and a writing teacher, I have my own creativity.

It totally comes through. . . .You present these five different modes of written expression and also the interweaves between them. Do you have a favorite mode?

No, no, I don’t. They all do different things. And they often don’t appear on their own. You may see the evocative and enactive working together, in a lyric narrative, for example. But the aesthetic of each mode has a certain raison d’être and its own way of organizing or employing words to convey experience and create an experience for readers. When you recognize the aesthetic of each mode, you can see it operating on its own and in combinations.

I love the evocative mode.

Me too.

I think that’s my favorite. I guess that says something about who I am. You have a very balanced intelligence—at least, that’s my experience of you, so I understand that what’s fun for you is to identify the modes but also see how the interweaves between them make for good writing.

Exactly. For example, I love the section I call “moving matters” in the chapter on the paradigmatic. The writers I quote write evocatively about ideas. Ideas are the currency, the main agents of action in the paradigmatic mode. But their writing isn’t dry. When you understand the modes, you can see how they operate together. It’s not just this or that, it’s this and that. A writer can infuse one into another as you see in paradigmatic writing that is evocative.

Again the world opens in much more complex and nuanced ways. Here’s a question: Do you think there’s a mode that would particularly benefit our analytic writing? (We both laugh.)

I’d like to see more exciting writing, more creative writing but also good paradigmatic writing. It’s not that I want to take out one mode and replace it with another. I don’t want to sideline the paradigmatic just because it’s the most frequently used mode in our clinical papers. As Henry James said, “Give each writer his [or her] due.” That’s what I’d like to facilitate: to help each writer work in more effective, compelling, and creative ways in the modes they choose to use. So what I think would benefit our field is that people invest more time in becoming better writers. All the modes I name (and others still to be named) contribute to our field. Yes, I think the modes that are less frequently represented in our literature could bring more vitality to it. The lyric narrative is a perfect example, because it’s a narrative that doesn’t structure itself on retrospective knowledge as other narratives do. It situates readers in the present moment as the analysis unfolds with all its uncertainties and confusions. It brings readers into an experience that’s closer to what happens moment to moment. That’s an example of writing that reflects more of what we actually experience, and it creates that kind of authenticity for readers and draws them in the way the analyst writer was drawn in.

You’ve spent many years teaching, writing, and working with many different students. On the basis of your experience, to what extent can writing be taught? To what extent is literary talent inborn?

Writers come to my workshops and change. They get excited and discover that it’s not that they can’t write; it’s that they’ve never been taught to write. I hope that’s also what they discover when they read my book and do the exercises I’ve included. Going back to Joe’s comment, reading well ignites and opens up possibilities for writing well. What’s so rewarding to me is to see writers change in the process of going through a workshop or working with me one on one.

So you’ve witnessed it.

You bet.

Your book is now out in the world. What hopes do you have for its reception and uses?

Oh, I have grand hopes and wonderful fantasies! One of my dreams is that my book will generate new kinds of conversations among writers and between journal editors, peer reviewers, and writers. I’d love to see a greater appreciation of the different modes of clinical prose and see this new vocabulary and conceptual understanding of clinical writing shared so that writers don’t have to make themselves into other kinds of writers but are helped to be the best kind of writer they can be using the forms of expression they choose to use.

This is such a central part of any contribution, isn’t it? I think about naming new ideas and how important it is in our own analytic field. Important writers create their own vocabularies, and if their writing is important, those vocabularies become useful for others. And this is your wish. They’ll learn a new vocabulary, and this will give them new tools for writing.

They are the playground structures that allow for greater spontaneity and variety in approaching writing. And I hope in the process, my book gets people excited about reading and writing. And that more people want to join my writing groups on Skype and locally. And on and on my dreams go, but I don’t want to sound too, I guess, evangelical.

It’s actually lovely to hear someone so excited about what they’ve done and the possibilities for what they’ve done. Please be evangelical.

I’ll let you be evangelical for me, and you have been. Thank you. And it’s been wonderful to get emails from friends all over who have gotten my book or given it to others or want to use it in a writing course for candidates. I’m delighted that my book is beginning to have a life of its own in many places.

What more can we hope for our babies than that they go out in the world and create new possibilities for people? So this is a sort of generative wish.

You bet.

People in our field, the next generation.

Suzi: All this writing about our clinical work feeds us as clinicians and feeds our clinical work. By writing we can make discoveries about our patients, our work, and ourselves.

Joye: I’m sure you’ve had the experience, I have, that when I sit down and write about a patient or clinical process, things come alive in new ways and new ideas emerge that weren’t there before.

Absolutely. What a wonderful interview with a kindred spirit! Thank you very much.

This conversation has been fun and also an honor, Suzi. Your book is a gift to me personally and a contribution to our field—so many new ways of thinking about words and how we fashion them into ideas and experience. Thank you so much back. I also hope our conversation prompts our readers to run out to purchase the book or to buy it with one click.

Link: http://goo.gl/kM4wu7


Enter code IRK71 (before Dec. 31, 2015) for a 20% discount when you order online from Routledge.

 

naiburgphoto0715wSuzi Naiburg, PhD, LICSW, is a graduate and faculty member of the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis in private practice in Belmont, Massachusetts. She is also a writing coach, teacher, and editor who taught expository writing at Harvard and more than sixty clinical writing workshops. You can find her full teaching schedule and excerpts from her book at www.SuziNaiburg.com.

 

 

Suzi Naiburg, PhD, LICSW
149 Pine Street
Belmont, MA 02478-2733
Email Suzi Naiburg
website: http://www.suzinaiburg.com

 

weiselbarthphoto0715wJoye Weisel-Barth is psychoanalyst at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles, as well as a senior instructor, training analyst, and supervisor.  She teaches courses on Freud, Interpersonal Psychoanalysis, Neuroscience, Attachment Theory, and Varieties of Relational Psychoanalysis.  In addition to writing about analytic issues and clinical experience, Weisel-Barth is book review editor for the International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, an associate editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and a council member of the International Association of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology. Her analytic practice is in Encino, California. And she loves dogs.

Joye Weisel-Barth, PhD, PsyD
4826 Andasol Ave.
Encino, CA 91316
Email Joye Weisel-Barth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6th IARPP-Spain Conference

Anuncio por Raimundo Guerra (Spain)

iarppespanawlogow(click here for English)

Nos congratulamos de anunciar que los días 23 y 24 de octubre de 2015 celebraremos las sextas jornadas de la IARPP-España, que tendrán lugar en Valencia (España).

Contaremos como invitados especiales con Susanna Federici (Presidenta de IARPP internacional), Malcolm Slavin y Joan Coderch , así como con conocidos psicoterapeutas españoles (Alejandro Ávila –Presidente de IARPP-España, Raimundo Guerra -Presidente del comité organizador-, Ramón Riera, Rosa Velasco, Silvia Jiménez, Neri Daurella, etc.).

El título de las jornadas es “Psicoanálisis, contextos y evolución: la psicoterapia y sus contextos sociales”. Estarán centradas en como la sociedad y la cultura influyen tanto al terapeuta como en el paciente. Temas como la evolución y la adaptación son muy importantes para entender a nuestros pacientes desde diferentes perspectivas. En la mesa inaugural Malcom Slavin, Raimundo Guerra y Ramón Riera expondrán sus puntos de vista a este respecto.

El emplazamiento de la conferencia es también un lugar muy atractivo para ser visitado. Valencia es una de las ciudades más grandes de España, sus restaurantes ofrecen su típica cocina conocida internacionalmente. La ciudad se caracteriza por su espectacular arquitectura gótica mediterránea con construcciones como su catedral, la “Plaza de la Reina” o la “Plaza de la Virgen”. Valencia también cuenta con modernos y futuristas edificios como la Ciudad de las artes y las ciencias diseñada por el arquitecto, conocido mundialmente, Santiago Calatrava. Además Valencia cuenta con grandes playas bañadas por el mar mediterráneo.

El lugar de celebración de las jornadas está emplazado en un espectacular museo lleno de obras de arte y pinturas. Los participantes podrán disfrutarlas en los descansos y durante los almuerzos.

125 asistentes ya se han matriculado desde España, Italia, Estados Unidos, Portugal y Argentina. Podéis matricularos y obtener más información sobre las jornadas en el siguiente enlace: http://www.psicoterapiarelacional.es/VALENCIA20156aReunion.aspx

Esperamos veros pronto en Valencia.

guerraphoto0715wRaimundo Guerra, PhD
Presidente de la Sociedad Española de Psicoterapia y Psicología para la Integración.
Director de IPSA-Levante
email: ipsalevante@gmail.com
website: http://www.ipsalevante.com

 

6th IARPP-Spain Conference

Announcement by Raimundo Guerra (Spain)

iarppespanawlogowWe would like to announce that on October 23 and 24, 2015, the 6th IARPP-Spain Conference will be held in Valencia, Spain. We will be hosting some special guests including Susanna Federici (IARPP President), Malcolm Slavin, and Joan Coderch, as well as many well-known Spanish psychotherapists (Alejandro Ávila, President of IARPP-Spain; Raimundo Guerra, President of the organizing committee; Ramón Riera; Rosa Velasco; Silvia Jiménez; Neri Daurella; and others).

The title of the conference is Psychoanalysis, Contexts, and Evolution: Psychotherapy and its Social Contexts. It will be focused on how society and culture influence both the patient and the psychotherapist. Topics like evolution and adaptation are very important to understand patients from different perspectives, and Malcom Slavin, Raimundo Guerra, and Ramón Riera will give us their views on these issues.

The site of the conference is also a very attractive place to visit. Valencia is one of the biggest cities in Spain. Its restaurants offer internationally renowned cuisine and the city attracts tourists with its spectacular Mediterranean gothic architecture such as the cathedral, Plaza de la Reina or Plaza de la Virgen. Valencia also boasts modern and futuristic buildings such as the City of Arts and Sciences, designed by the world-famous architect Santiago Calatrava, as well as broad and sandy beaches. The conference venue is an amazing museum full of artworks and paintings, available to visit for all the participants.

125 attendants have already enrolled from Spain, the United States, Italy, Portugal and Argentina. You can sign up for the conference and obtain more information by clicking on the following link: http://www.psicoterapiarelacional.es/VALENCIA20156aReunion.aspx

We hope to see you in Valencia.

 

2015 NIP Conference – Privacy Matters: Secrecy and Disclosure in the Analytic Relationship

Review by Francoise Jaffe (USA)

NIPlogohomewThe National Institute for the Psychotherapies attracted a record number of attendees for its annual conference, entitled Privacy Matters: Secrecy and Disclosure in the Analytic Relationship, held on May 9, 2015, in New York City. The three presenters, Sue Grand, PhD, Lewis Aron, PhD, and Steven Cooper, PhD, focused on different aspects of this timely topic, offering thought provoking and often controversial insights that nevertheless carried a common message: analyst, question thyself.

Sue Grand took the idea of privacy into the realm of sexuality in the analytic relationship, highlighting how exploration of the patient’s sexual desires, which was the foundation of analytic thought, can and has led to analytic “secrets” and transgressions, damaging the very patients it seeks to help. She pointed out that by its very nature, analytic treatment seeks to open desires, and then gets caught in its own game. She advocated for a greater awareness on the part of the analyst for all that is “unsaid” in the treatment, including the analyst’s own desires and their implications for the patient. She also advocated for creating a climate in which these “secrets” can be explored and confronted.

What are the moral, legal, and ethical issues involved in writing about patients? Lew Aron reviewed many aspects of these questions and concluded that there is no consensus or standard for handling them, either among analysts or among lawyers. The trend among the younger generation of relational psychoanalysts has been to include patients in the writing process. However, Aron pointed out the many potential pitfalls of doing so, including having patients who consciously acquiesce to being written about but unconsciously rebel, as well as the lack of training and conversation surrounding the topic. He recommended that therapists question their motivation when choosing to write about a particular patient, and seek a consultation to help them evaluate the appropriateness of their selection.

Steven Cooper questioned the idea of fixed boundaries and proposed instead a notion of boundaries as fluid and continuously redefined by circumstances and interactions. He pointed out that the desire to be known is universal and developmentally crucial, but since most of our mental life is not even conscious to us, how do we decide what can be known? Cooper proposed that the analyst’s task is to get to know the patient in his own mind so that the patient can start to discover his mind through his therapist’s, but there has to be awareness that what can be shared and what needs to remain private is always shifting, a distinction that has to be honored. Cooper demonstrated that, in effect, psychoanalysis is an exercise in safely breaking down boundaries, an art that requires that the analyst be aware of his own movement as well as his movement in relation to his patient’s.

These inspiring and multifaceted talks gave rise to many questions, which were debated in a roundtable format to conclude what had been a very stimulating day.

jaffephoto0715wFrancoise Jaffe, LCSW, PhD is a 2014 graduate of the National Institute of the Psychotherapies (NIP) where she trained in the four year adult program after spending two years in NIP’s Child and Adolescent program.  She also completed a certificate in Parent Infant Psychotherapy from Columbia University. Her short story, Mind Strings, appeared recently in Psychoanalytic Perspectives.  She holds a PhD in Marketing and, in a former life, was a faculty member at the University of Michigan.  In her present life, she is in private practice in Manhattan and Westport, CT.

 

Francoise Jaffe, LCSW, PhD
Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis
200 W 57th St., Suite 506, New York, NY 10019
735 Post Road East, Suite 3, Westport, CT 06880
email Francoise Jaffe

Influencia y Autonomía en Psicoanálisis: Presentación del Libro de Stephen Mitchell en español

Anuncio de Libro de Carlos Rodríguez Sutil (España)

sutilcover0715w(click here for English)

Muy recientemente ha sido publicado en español el libro de Stephen Mitchell, aparecido originalmente en 1997, Influencia y Autonomía en Psicoanálisis (Agora Relacional, 2015), fruto del esfuerzo de un grupo de profesionales de orientación analítica relacional, integrados en GRITA (Grupo de Investigación de la Técnica Analítica: Carlos Rodríguez Sutil, Alejandro Ávila Espada, Rosario Castaño Catalá, Ariel Liberman Isod, Augusto Abello Blanco, Manuel Aburto Baselga, Susana Espinosa Gonzalbo). Agradecemos a Lew Aron el prefacio que ha escrito especialmente para esta edición, donde advierte que los casos clínicos de Mitchell eran tan interesantes porque capturan cualidades que él mismo ha hecho surgir en sus pacientes.

Dice Mitchell que todas las contribuciones que el psicoanálisis ha realizado a la comprensión de los procesos grupales (empezando por el estudio clásico de Freud, de 1921, Psicología de las Masas y Análisis del Yo) dan por supuesto que los grupos suelen desplegar las mismas dinámicas observables en el individuo, si bien de forma más abierta. Si tomamos a la comunidad psicoanalítica como un grupo y revisamos la historia de las ideas psicoanalíticas desde la perspectiva actual, es evidente que una característica central dentro de la corriente principal de pensamiento psicoanalítico durante muchos decenios ha consistido en un proceso amplio de externalización.

El método por el que tradicionalmente se ha evitado tener en cuenta la naturaleza interactiva del proceso analítico ha sido mediante el mito del analista genérico. Según este mito, si el proceso analítico pretende liberar por la interpretación el material previamente reprimido por el paciente, las características personales, la subjetividad e idiosincrasia del analista no importan. Los ideales de neutralidad, abstinencia y anonimato—pilares de la técnica clásica—refuerzan este mito haciendo que al analista le parezca posible no estar realmente presente ni ser visible. La técnica apropiada aseguraba la reproducción del buen trabajo. Hoy en día que se percibe al analista como incluido, en mayor o menor grado, en el proceso, es difícil imaginar una guía. En la medida en cada díada analítica y cada situación es, en cierto sentido, una configuración única, no queremos prescribir ni proscribir las respuestas del analista.

Por tanto, una de nuestras necesidades más acuciantes, comentaba Mitchell, es la de un marco de referencia comprensivo para pensar la interacción analítica, un modelo sintético bipersonal o relacional que abarque tanto las dimensiones intrapsíquicas como interpersonales, acogiendo las contribuciones de todas las tradiciones, eliminando sus limitaciones y restricciones artificiales. Conceptos psicoanalíticos actuales, como la interacción, tienen una larga historia, han sido amplia y diversamente desarrollados en las diferentes tradiciones teóricas. Por otra parte, considerar el proceso analítico en términos interactivos no se traduce directamente en un determinado curso de acción, una particular actitud analítica, un conjunto de instrucciones para el clínico sobre qué es lo que tiene que hacer. Si el analista siente algo intensamente es probable que se considere que dicha experiencia esté dotada de un significado relevante, en relación con los asuntos del paciente, y es probable que se beneficie de una indagación colaborativa sobre su significado.

Link:  http://www.psicoterapiarelacional.es/Publicaciones/InfluenciayAutonomiaenPsicoanalisis.aspx

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Augusto Abello Blanco, Manuel Aburto Baselga, Rosario Castaño Catalá, Carlos Rodríguez Sutil, Ariel Liberman Isod, Alejandro Ávila Espada

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Susana Espinosa Gonzalbo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carlos Rodríguez Sutil
Doctor en Psicología, Psicoterapeuta
Ágora Relacional
Alberto Aguilera, 10 -Escalera Izqda.- 1º
28015-Madrid (España)
Email Carlos Rodríguez Sutil                      Blog: http://crsutil56.blogspot.com.es

 

Influence and Autonomy in Psychoanalysis: Presentation of the Book by Stephen Mitchell in Spanish

Book Announcement by Carlos Rodríguez Sutil (Spain)

sutilcover0715wStephen Mitchell’s book, Influence and Autonomy in Psychoanalysis, originally published in 1997, has been recently translated into Spanish (Agora Relacional, 2015) by a group of relational psychoanalysts, all of them members of GRITA (Research Group of the Analytic Technique: Carlos Rodríguez Sutil, Alejandro Ávila Espada, Rosario Castaño Catalá, Ariel Liberman Isod, Augusto Abello Blanco, Manuel Aburto Baselga, and Susana Espinosa Gonzalbo). We thank Lew Aron for his preface written especially for this edition. As Aron remarks, Mitchell’s clinical cases are so interesting because they capture qualities that he himself has elicited in his patients.

Mitchell said that all contributions that psychoanalysis has made to the understanding of group processes (starting with Freud’s classic study, in 1921, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego) show that groups often deploy the very same dynamics observable in individuals, but in a more open fashion. If we view the history of psychoanalytic ideas from today’s perspective, it is clear that a central feature of psychoanalytic thought for many decades has been the conspicuous process of externalization.

Psychoanalysis traditionally has avoided considering the interactive nature of the analytic process by promoting the myth of the neutral analyst. According to this myth, if the analytic process aims to free the patient by interpreting repressed material, then the analyst’s personal characteristics, her subjectivity and idiosyncrasies, do not matter. The ideals of neutrality, abstinence, and anonymity—pillars of classical technique—reinforce this myth by making the analyst think it is possible not to be present, but rather to be invisible. Historically, proper technique ensured the production of good work. Now, however, that the analyst is perceived as embedded in the analytic process, it is difficult to imagine using abstinence, neutrality, and anonymity as our guides. Insofar as each analytic dyad and every situation is, in a sense, a unique configuration, we do not prescribe nor proscribe analyst responses.

Therefore, one of our most pressing needs, as Mitchell suggested, is to provide a comprehensive reference, a framework for understanding analytic interaction. We need a two-person, relational model, covering both intrapsychic and interpersonal dimensions, welcoming the contributions of all traditions, and eliminating as much as possible artificial limitations and restrictions. Current psychoanalytic concepts such as “interaction” have a long history; they have been widely and variously developed in the different theoretical traditions. Moreover, to consider the analytic process in interactive terms is not to dictate a particular course of action, a particular analytic attitude, or a set of instructions for the clinician on what to do. If the analyst experiences a deep feeling it is likely that it has relevant meaning in relation to the subjectivity of the patient, and it is likely that a collaborative inquiry into that meaning will prove fruitful for the analytic pair.

Link:  http://www.psicoterapiarelacional.es/Publicaciones/InfluenciayAutonomiaenPsicoanalisis.aspx

The Legacy of Sándor Ferenczi: From Ghost to Ancestor

Adrienne Harris (USA) and Steven Kuchuck (USA)

kuchuckharriscoverart0715wThe Legacy of Sándor Ferenczi, first published in 1993 and edited by Lewis Aron and Adrienne Harris, was one of the first books to examine Ferenczi’s invaluable contributions to psychoanalysis and his continuing influence on contemporary clinicians and scholars. Building on that pioneering work, The Legacy of Sándor Ferenczi: From Ghost to Ancestor (Routledge, 2015) brings together leading international Ferenczi scholars to report on previously unavailable data about Ferenczi and his professional descendants.

Harris and Kuchuck explore how newly discovered historical and theoretical material has returned Ferenczi to a place of theoretical legitimacy and prominence. His work continues to influence both psychoanalytic theory and practice. This book covers many major contemporary psychoanalytic topics such as process, metapsychology, character structure, trauma, sexuality, and social and progressive aspects of psychoanalytic work.

Among other historical and scholarly contributions, this book demonstrates the direct link between Ferenczi’s pioneering work and subsequent psychoanalytic innovations. With rich clinical vignettes, newly unearthed historical data, and contemporary theoretical explorations, it will be of great interest and use to clinicians of all theoretical stripes, as well as to scholars and historians.

Link: http://www.amazon.com/The-Legacy-Sandor-Ferenczi-Perspectives/dp/1138820121

 

harrisphoto0715wAdrienne Harris, Ph.D. (co-editor) is a faculty member and supervisor at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and a faculty member and training analyst at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California. She serves on the editorial boards of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, Psychoanalytic Perspectives, and the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Harris is also co-editor of Routledge’s Relational Perspectives Book Series.

 

Adrienne E. Harris, PhD
80 University Place, 5th floor
New York, NY 10003
Email Adrienne Harris

kuchuckphoto0715wSteven Kuchuck, LCSW (co-editor) is a faculty member, supervisor, board member, and co-director of curriculum for the adult training program in psychoanalysis at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies, as well as a faculty member at the Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Studies. Kuchuck is editor-in-chief of Psychoanalytic Perspectives, and an associate editor of Routledge’s Relational Perspectives Book Series.

 

 

 

 

Steven Kuchuck, LCSW
222 West 14th Street, Suite 5M
New York, NY 10011
Email Steven Kuchuck
website: www.stevenkuchuck.com
Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/author/stevenkuchuck

 

 

From the Editors

Dear IARPP Community,

We are pleased to present the Bookshelf edition of the IARPP eNews. The Bookshelf celebrates the creative contributions that IARPP writers, researchers, and thinkers are making to the field of relational psychoanalysis.

In this issue of the Bookshelf we are particularly pleased to honor Peggy Crastnopol for the publication of her book, Micro-trauma: A Psychoanalytic Understanding of Cumulative Psychic Injury; Steve Kuchuck and Adrienne Harris who recently published their edited volume, The Legacy of Sándor Ferenczi: From Ghost to Ancestor; and Carlos Rodríguez Sutil and his group of colleagues in Madrid for their recent Spanish translation of Stephen Mitchell’s seminal book, Influence and Autonomy in Psychoanalysis (Influencia y Autonomía en Psicoanálisis); in addition to numerous other IARPP members who have published books, articles, and chapters, and given presentations throughout the world. We also feature an interview with Suzi Naiburg about her new book, Structure and Spontaneity in Clinical Prose: A Writer’s Guide for Psychoanalysts and Psychotherapists, in which Joye Weisel-Barth engages with the author in a discussion of her approach to teaching clinical writing.

We hope you enjoy this edition of the Bookshelf.  Our next deadline for submissions will be September 30, 2015.
 Please read below for instructions to submit pieces for future editions of the Bookshelf and eNews.

Sincerely,

Christina Emanuel (USA)
and
Maria Tammone (Italy)

 

When submitting articles to the Bookshelf, please include the following:

  1.  The title of your book, article, or presentation
  2.  A brief description of the content, such as an abstract
  3.  A link to a publisher if there is one
  4.  Artwork or a photo of the book cover if applicable
  5. For presentations, please spell out all acronyms and include the location
  6. A photograph of yourself in jpeg format
  7.  Your professional contact information for our readers as you would like it to appear publicly

 

Please send all submissions to
Maria Tammone: irene97@libero.it
 and Christina Emanuel: christinaemanuel@sbcglobal.net

 

emanuelphoto1014www4letterChristina Emanuel, MFT, PsyD
16 S. Oakland Ave., Suite 201
Pasadena, CA 91101
USA
Email Christina Emanuel

 

 

Maria Tammone, MD
Via Montegrappa 46
00048 Nettuno/Roma
Italia
Email Maria Tammone

 

Micro-trauma: A Psychoanalytic Understanding of Cumulative Psychic Injury

Margaret Crastnopol (USA)

crastnopolcover0715wMicro-trauma: A Psychoanalytic Understanding of Cumulative Psychic Injury (Routledge, 2015) explores the “micro-traumatic” or small, subtle psychic hurts that build up to undermine a person’s sense of self-worth, skewing his or her character and compromising his or her relatedness to others. These injuries amount to what has been previously called “cumulative” or “relational trauma.” Until now, psychoanalysis has explained such negative influences in broad strokes, using general concepts such as psychosexual urges, narcissistic needs, and separation-individuation aims, among others. Taking a fresh approach, Margaret Crastnopol identifies certain specific patterns of injurious relating that cause damage in predictable ways; she shows how these destructive processes can be identified, stopped in their tracks, and replaced by healthier ways of functioning.

Seven different types of micro-trauma, all largely hidden in plain sight, are described in detail, and many others are discussed more briefly. Three of these micro-traumas—“psychic airbrushing and excessive niceness,” “uneasy intimacy,” and “connoisseurship gone awry”—have a predominantly positive emotional tone, while the other four—“unkind cutting back,” “unbridled indignation,” “chronic entrenchment,” and “little murders”—have a distinctly negative one. Crastnopol shows how these toxic processes may take place within a dyadic relationship, a family group, or a social clique, thereby causing collateral psychic damage all around.

Using illustrations drawn from psychoanalytic treatment, literary fiction, and everyday life, Micro-trauma: A Psychoanalytic Understanding of Cumulative Psychic Injury outlines how each destructive pattern develops and manifests itself, and how it wreaks its damage. The book shows how an awareness of these patterns can give us the therapeutic leverage needed to reshape them for the good. This publication will be an invaluable resource for psychoanalysts, psychologists, psychiatrists, mental health counselors, social workers, marriage and family therapists, and for trainees and graduate students in these fields and related disciplines.

Link: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415800365/ (use discount code IRK71 for reduced price and free shipping)

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Margaret Crastnopol (“Peggy”), PhD, is a faculty member of the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and a supervisor of psychotherapy at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology. She is also a training and supervising analyst at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles. She writes and teaches nationally and internationally about the analyst’s and patient’s subjectivity; the vicissitudes of love, lust, and attachment drives; and varieties of micro-trauma. She is in private practice for the treatment of individuals and couples in Seattle, Washington.

Margaret Crastnopol, PhD
515  28th Avenue East
Seattle, WA 98112
Email Margaret Crastnopol