“The Paradox of Hate—Complexity Lost and Found” is presented in terms a conceptual framework Dr. Ringstrom calls the “Three P’s” which refer to ideas about prediction, paradox, and play. He will illustrate this framework in his work with “Wendy”, a patient who returned to therapy after 25 years during the first year of COVID. His work focuses on her “phobic” aversion to confrontation, which was situated in a developmental background of rearing by White Christian Supremacist parents, whose intrusions in every part of her life were compounded by a continuous barrage of racial slurs. Surviving this involved her dissociated “inner migration”, a “sequentialization” which he refers to as “Barbie’s World” in childhood and “Wendy’s World” when replicated in adulthood. They penetrated both through treatment moving from prediction into paradox and finally play.
The Paradox of Hate: Complexity Lost and Found
Agenda
- 7:30 pm Welcome & introduction
- 7:35 pm Presentation by Dr. Ringstrom
- 8:30 pm Q&A
Learning Objectives
- Utilize the conceptual framework Dr. Ringstrom calls the "3 Ps" referring to prediction, paradox and play in psychoanalytic psychotherapy
- Compare the use of the conceptual framework involving the “3 Ps” to more traditional psychoanalytic frameworks.
- Apply this framework to understanding dissociation and trauma in clinical work.
Meet the Presenter
Philip Ringstrom, PhD, PsyD
Philip Ringstrom, PhD, PsyD is a Senior Training and Supervising Analyst and Faculty Member at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, in Los Angeles, California. He is a founding member of the Board of Directors of IARPP, the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, and a member of the International Council of Self-Psychologists. He is on the editorial boards of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Psychoanalytic Perspectives, and Psychoanalysis: Self and Context. He has published over 60 articles, chapters, and reviews and has presented at conferences all over the world. His book A Relational Psychoanalytic Approach to Couples Psychotherapy (Routledge 2014) won the Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Scholarship in Psychoanalysis for 2014. He is currently writing a new book titled Psychoanalytic Play: Dramatization, Narration, and Improvisation in Field Theory and Metapsychology.
References
Anderson, T. (2026). The fragmented self, recognition, and the edge of desire: Foundations of the psychoanalysis of unstable objects (1st ed.). Routledge.
Anderson, T. (2026). Gravitational psyche: Further developments of the psychoanalysis of unstable objects (1st ed.). Routledge.
Pollan, M. (2018) How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. Penguin Press.
Ringstrom, P. A. (2007). Scenes that write themselves: Improvisational moments in relational psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 17(1), 69–100.
Ringstrom, P.A. (2022) Psychedelics and psychoanalysis: A conversation long overdue. Psychoanalytic Dialogues. 32(5), 444-451.
Ringstrom, P.A. (2023). Drama and narration: The architecture of psychoanalytic play. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 43(7), 539–550.
Ringstrom, P. A. (in press). Journey of a psychoanalytic psychonaut: Epiphanous moments in the integration of ideas from both psychedelics and psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Inquiry.
Ringstrom, P. A. (in press). Psychoanalytic play: Metapsychology, field theory, and theories of therapeutic action: An autobiographical approach. Psychoanalytic Inquiry.
Disclosures
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