Monthly Meeting

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.

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.

Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP) is a manualized object relations treatment developed by Otto Kernberg and his workgroup to treat a broad spectrum of personality pathology. Originally developed to treat Borderline Personality Disorder, TFP has since been adapted to treat those suffering with various types of narcissistic pathology. In this presentation, Dr. Davis will provide an overview of the TFP treatment model as a whole and its use in working with those with narcissistic pathology in particular. Central to narcissistic pathology is the operation of the grandiose self. He will provide a theoretical overview of the concept of the grandiose self and how it fits within the context of Kernberg’s object relations theory. Dr. Davis will then offer clinical illustrations of the grandiose self as it appears in treatment and offer a few clinical examples of how to intervene from a TFP perspective when indications of narcissistic grandiosity are present.