You are here: Home Conferences

SESSION A:  Writing and the Unexpected: An Experiential Workshop
Presenters: Barbara Baer, PhD and Bonnie Zindel, LCSW
Abstract: In this experiential workshop we will focus on accessing one’s deeper and as yet unexplored or unformulated clinical and personal experience. Through four writing assignments, two in the morning and two in the afternoon, participants will have the opportunity to explore their capacity to write -- bringing what is inchoate and just beyond our awareness in peripheral consciousness, into consciousness. Participants will have the opportunity to write from the perspective of different self-states using their creative minds. There will be a particular focus on: 1) the analyst’s self-awareness and growth; 2) the analyst’s understanding of certain analytic moments: 3) writing as a therapeutic connection between analyst and patient within a relational context.

At the conclusion of the morning, and the afternoon sessions participants will have the opportunity to share their workshop experience when writing about their clinical and personal experiences.

SESSION B: Four Contemporary Relational Clinical Perspectives
Presenters: Stuart Pizer, PhD, ABPP; Barbara Pizer, EdD, ABPP; Malcolm O. Slavin, PhD; and Donnel Stern, PhD
Abstracts: Partners in Thought: Unformulated Experience, Dissociation, Enactment, and Witnessing

At the conclusion of this pre conference workshop, the audience will be able to understand the significance of witnessing, both in trauma and in everyday life; and to understand the relationship between dissociation, unformulated experience, and enactment.

Erotic Transference and The Search For Realness and Reciprocity: An In-Depth Clinical Exploration At the conclusion of this pre conference workshop, the audience will be able to understand how “erotic transferences” often express: a) the patient’s perception of the analyst's need for greater aliveness; and b) the patient's need for a greater realness and presence in the treatment relationship; and create a relational perspective on the adaptive value of the universal conflicts between eros and attachment.

"Paradox and Repetition: A Theory for Negotiating the Nonnegotiable" At the conclusion of this pre conference workshop, the audience will be able to understand how despair and hope determine what is negotiable in analytic process; and understand how the paradoxical nature of transference repetitions can be negotiated.

Body Words: Transforming The Unspeakable in Psychoanalytic Work At the conclusion of this pre conference workshop, the audience will be able to understand the meaning and place of Body Words in development, growth, and clinical process; and gain a working understanding of the relationship between Body Words and potential transformations of the repetition compulsion.

SESSION C: Psychodynamic Approach to Adult Onset Trauma
Presenter: Ghislaine Boulanger, PhD
Abstract: When catastrophic events overtake adult lives, they can often scar the psyche in ways that psychodynamic clinicians struggle to understand. The adult survivor of a catastrophe can experience a near fatal disruption of fundamental aspects of self experience. This workshop explores the dynamics of adult onset trauma and reviews the particular resistances that both clinicians and survivors encounter in the treatment of these conditions. In this interactive workshop, participants will be encouraged to describe their professional experiences in working with adult onset trauma.

At the conclusion of this pre conference workshop, the audience will be able to learn to recognize Adult Onset Trauma; understand dynamics of Adult Onset Trauma; acknowledge transferential and countertransferential problems in working with Adult Onset Trauma; and learn necessary adaptations in relational technique when working with Adult Onset Trauma.

SESSION D: Psychoanalysis and Meditation: An Experiential-Clinical Workshop
Presenter: Ron Balamuth, PhD
Abstract: Relational Psychoanalysis has provided a rich matrix for a dialogue between psychoanalysis and contemplative practices such as meditation. The “Relational Turn” (Mitchell) with its emphasis on inter-subjectivity and co-created meaning, has created a perfect context for the contemplative disciplines such as Buddhism, which have always considered principles such as impermanence, dependent co-arising and the human capacity to become more conscious and centered through rigorous and disciplined application of mindfulness.

In this workshop, we will explore various meditation methods belonging to various contemplative traditions. We will apply these methods to the psychoanalytic situation, discussing the various ways that they may inform, enrich and expand the psychoanalytic experience for patient and analyst. No prior meditation experience is required. Participants are encouraged to bring brief case vignettes from their practices that will provide, in addition to the presenter’s clinical material, an opportunity to appreciate the potential for a creative integration of these two traditions.

At the conclusion of this pre conference workshop, the audience will learn basic meditation techniques; and how to integrate meditation-based techniques with their relational-psychoanalytic practice.

2. Various Aspects of Social Theory and Psychoanalysis
Speakers: Doris Brothers, PhD; Marsha Hewitt, PhD; & Catherine Baker-Pitts, PhD, LCSW
Moderator/Interlocutor: Sharon Ziv Beiman, MA