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  • The Politics of Emotion: Social, Political, and Environmental Concerns in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy with Charles Couchman, PhD

    Live via Zoom

    In the face of rising oppression, authoritarianism, and climate breakdown, keeping space for social, political, and environmental concerns in psychodynamic therapy may be more important than ever. With this in mind, we will consider the impact of macro system-level social harms on our clients, the potential benefits of helping them integrate emotional impulses related to these harms, and the place of political action in mental health and psychotherapy. We will also consider suggestions, inspired by critical approaches to psychotherapy, for how we may better help our clients with these concerns… without introducing an agenda or changing what we value about psychodynamic work. Our exploration will be informed by the concepts of intrapsychic conflict, as used in experiential dynamic therapies such as Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP), and emotional hegemony—the ways in which people with power teach us to fear the emotions of political resistance and solidarity (i.e., rage and love) while also steering us towards defense mechanisms that serve their interests. The didactic portion of this presentation will be complemented by recorded video of a case example to illustrate points and stir discussion.

  • Hybrid Clinical Conference – Trauma, Psychosis, and Psychotic Manifestations of Transference with Michael Garrett, MD

    University of Texas Austin 1601 Trinity St., Austin, TX, United States

    Dr. Michael Garrett will challenge the validity of the concept of “schizophrenia” as a genetically determined brain disease and review research suggesting that chronic psychosis is a trauma-related disorder best characterized as a particular phenotypic form of complex PTSD. He will review research showing that childhood trauma increases the risk of psychosis and that fragmented trauma memories are often embedded in the content of psychotic symptoms. Dr. Garrett will trace the developmental origin of psychotic symptoms from implicit behavioral knowing that in infancy provides a template for relationship with caregivers, through pre-verbal fantasy, to conscious and unconscious object-related fantasy, to the emergence of florid psychotic symptoms in adolescence. Dr. Garrett will differentiate non-psychotic, near-psychotic, and psychotic manifestations of transference as seen from an object-related point of view, illustrating each form of transference with a brief clinical vignette and offer clinical suggestions about how to recognize and deal with a psychotic transference.

  • The Creative Life as a Foundation to Psychoanalytic Work with Mia Goldman, LMFT

    Live via Zoom

    The psychoanalytic dyad is a flexible, constantly evolving entity that is nourished by reality, dreams, and a co-created creative space in which both the analysand and the analyst are influenced by their own pasts, their present and instincts that are informed by the spoken and unspoken. Creativity comes in all forms, both conscious and unconscious. How does one harness one's own creativity in the work of unraveling profound or chronic trauma with a stranger? How does one find common ground that can be transformational or healing? How can transference and counter- transference be seen as a foundation for change? These are some of the questions raised in a conversation acknowledging the value of creativity in psychoanalysis.

  • Ethics Conference via Zoom – Dreaming Into Being: Community Psychoanalysis and War with Gaea Logan, LPC-S

    Live via Zoom

    Gordon Lawrence’s Social Dreaming Matrix suggests that our dreams are communal, rather than personal. Arising from the social unconscious and belonging to the community, dreams can offer guidance, healing, and problem solving for a community of dreamers. I had such a dream. It included many symbols, some incomprehensible to me, yet the dream revealed a pathway for communal healing. The dream inspired the co-creation of the International Institute for Trauma Studies (IITS), an online immersive trauma training and certification program for graduate students and clinicians in war time Ukraine. IITS is a scalable contemporary psychoanalytic group approach to communal trauma for the treatment and prevention of war related depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and transgenerational trauma. This is a story of “Dreaming into Being”: ordinary citizens working together to create the extraordinary, an international training center and outpatient clinic for Ukrainian families, children and combatants. The paper also cites scholarly contributors in the current resurgence of community psychoanalysis and thinkers in social and phenomenological psychoanalysis.

  • Moving Toward a Theory of Difference with Alice Maher, MD

    Live via Zoom

    A new model invites participants to reach across divides of difference with curiosity and empathy rather than critiques and labels. The author has been developing multiple pilot projects designed to test this paradigm and develop theories and techniques. She developed emotional literacy curricula for middle and high school students, and she is presently working with students at a community college. She brought together a group of analysts who meet regularly to discuss their religious and political differences on Zoom. The meetings are recorded and posted on YouTube, with the audience representing the third dimension in a model that brings together different but equal individuals. She is also developing an app, a safe space to meet and struggle with differences, using AI as support.