Steven Cooper, PhD

October 20-22, 2023

Dr. Steven Cooper is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University. He is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and also at the Columbia Center for Psychoanalysis and Research. He is also on the faculty at the New York University Postdoctoral Program for Psychoanalysis. He is Chief Editor Emeritus of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Consulting Editor for Contemporary Psychoanalysis and has served on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and the Journal of the American Psychoanlaytic Association . Steven is the author of four books in psychoanalysis: Objects of Hope (Routledge, 2000); A Disturbance in the Field: Essays on Transference-Countertransference (Routledge, 2010, and The Melancholic Errand of Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2016). His most recent book, "Playing and Becoming in Psychoanalysis" was published earlier in 2023 by Routledge. In the last ten years he has been trying to think about Winnicott's concepts of playing in the context of contemporary psychoanalytic theory related to enactment, intersubejctivity,and performative action.

Seminar Title: Psychoanalysis as Play and the Play of Psychoanalysis

Seminar description: Winnicott’s concept of play grew out of a cluster of ideas associated with the Independent Tradition, the latter of which has important overlap and difference with contemporary developments in contemporary Independent, Bionian, and relational theory. We are still mining Winnicott’s insights regarding the analytic setting as a form of playing. Simply put, this is the purpose of this seminar.

Here, we will explore playing as a process out of which the patient’s experience of being and becoming is born.  In understanding both Winnicott’s theory of play and the contemporary evolution of his theory within the Independent tradition and Relational tradition, a  question I will try to foreground is how we are able to maintain the mystery and magic of play as well as the ambiguity of inside and outside that are inherent to it. In a recently published book, Playing and Becoming, I have tried to bring together my thoughts on these matters. 

I will try to help you think about and find your own version of play in your work, borrowing and discarding from these traditions as fits you. Hopefully, the seminar will stimulate your thinking about new elements of play that you have not considered such as the interdependence and paradox of mourning and playing, as well as questions regarding an ethic of playing. The clinical examples that I will present and that I hope that you will present are often puzzling, paradoxical, and enigmatic in capturing places of play within the intersubjective setting of analytic work. 

Readings for Seminar: 

Benjamin, J. (2016) From enactment to play: Metacommunication, acknowledgement, and the third of paradox. Rivista di Psychoanalisi. 62: 565-593

Cooper, S.H. (2023) Playing and Becoming in Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge

Cooper, S. (2021) Toward an ethic of play. Psychoanal. Q.,90(3): 371-390 and in Playing and Becoming in Psychoanalysis. London/New York: Routledge (2022).

Cooper, S. (2018) Playing in the darkness: Use of the object and use of the subject. J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn. 66: 743-765. 

Cooper, S.H. (2022) The limits of intimacy and the intimacy of limits: Play and its relations to the bad object. J. Amer. Psychoanal.  Assn. 70: 

Ogden, T.H. (2019).Ontological psychoanalysis or what do you want to be when you grown up? Psychoanal Q., 88(4): 661-684.

Parsons, M. (1999) The Logic of Play in Psychoanalysis. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 80(5):871-884.

Parsons, M. (2007). Raiding the Inarticulate: The Internal Analytic Setting and Listening Beyond Countertransference. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 88(6):1441-1456.

Parsons, M. (2006). The Analyst's Countertransference to the Psychoanalytic Process. Int. J. Psycho-Anal. 87(5):1183-1198.

Winnicott, D. W. (1968) Playing: Its theoretical status in the clinical situation. Int.  J. Psycho-Anal. 49:591-598. Also In: Playing and Reality. New York: Basic Books, p. 38-53

Marilyn Charles, PhD, ABPP

January   19-21, 2024

Dr. Charles is a psychologist and psychoanalyst at the Austen Riggs Center, Co-Chair of the Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society (APCS) and Scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Council.  Affiliations include Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis; Universidad de Monterrey; Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis; and Harvard Medical School. A contributing editor of Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society, she is actively engaged in mentoring and promoting socially relevant research. Research interests include creativity, psychosis, resilience, reflective function and the intergenerational transmission of trauma. Marilyn is also an artist, a poet, and a writer.  Books: Patterns; Constructing Realities; Learning from Experience; Working with Trauma; and Psychoanalysis and Literature.  Edited volumes: Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis; Fragments of Trauma and the Social Production of Suffering (with Michael O’Loughlin); Women and Psychosis and Women and The Psychosocial Construction of Madness (with Marie Brown); and The Importance of Play in Early Childhood Education (with Jill Bellinson). Forthcoming from APA Press:  Trauma, Memory, and Identity: A Clinician’s Guide.

Seminar Title:  Somatization And Symbolization

Seminar description: Many patients arrive in treatment with somatic complaints that have not been relieved by medical intervention.  Even though psychoanalysis evolved in relation to feelings not recognized by the mind that were being manifested through the body, attempts to theorize somatic complaints, over time, have become pathologizing in ways that threaten to obscure the underlying issues.  In this seminar, we will trace ways in which the field of psychosomatics has tried to recognize the dual language structure that includes both body and mind as constituents of the embodied meanings that both hide and reveal themselves through the symptom.  Recognizing ways in which deficits in early attachment impede the integration of embodied meanings, we will discuss how psychoanalysis can provide a re-entry into the relational matrix through which identity that has been foreclosed might more freely develop.  Towards that end, we will look at views on primary meaning-making and symbol development, highlighting ways in which the consulting room provides a space in which two minds can meet and work together, each from their own perspective.  The encounter with difference allows the decentration of meanings, affording the possibility of actively making use of another’s perspective in the service of learning, rather than feeling destroyed by that encounter. That confrontation with difference includes recognizing the various psychoanalytic perspectives that, taken together, point to the core issues at stake.  Case illustrations will be offered in which somatic symptoms provided important information that was channeled through the analytic experience as a way of making sense of what otherwise remained unknown.  It is hoped that participants will bring their own challenges into the conversation, so that we can learn from one another’s experiences.

REQUIRED READINGS (TENTATIVE)

OVERVIEWS

Bronstein, C. (2011). On psychosomatics: The search for meaning. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 92:173-195.

Fischbein, J. E. (2011). Psychosomatics: A Current Overview. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 92:197-219.

FERRARI

Carignani, P. (2012). The body in psychoanalysis. British Journal of Psychotherapy, 28(3):288-318.

Carvalho, R. (2012). A brief introduction to the thought of Armando B. Ferrari British Journal of Psychotherapy, 28(4):413-434.

LOMBARDI

Lombardi, R. (2009). Body, affect, thought: Reflections on the work of Matte-Blanco and Ferrari. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 78(1):123-160.

Lombardi, R. (2008). The body in the analytic session: Focusing on the mind-body link. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 89:89-110.

SYMBOLIZATION AND THE PSYCHOANALYTIC FIELD

da Rocha Barros, E. M. (2000). Affect and pictographic image: The constitution of meaning in mental life. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 81:1087-1099.

Hartung, T. & Steinbrecher, M. (2018). From somatic pain to psychic pain: The body in the psychoanalytic field. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 99(1):159-180.

Leikert, S. (2021). Encapsulated body engrams and somatic narration: Integrating body memory into psychoanalytic technique. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 102(4):671-688.

Mancia, M. (2008). The early unrepressed unconscious in relation to Matte-Blanco’s thought. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 17:201-212.

AUXILIARY READINGS

Aisenstein, M. (2006). The indissociable unity of psyche and soma: A view from the Paris Psychosomatic School.  International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 87:667-680.

da Rocha Barros, E. M. & da Rocha Barros, E. L. (2011). Reflections on the clinical implications of symbolism. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 92:879-901.

Karacaoğlan, U. & Lombardi, R. (2018). Microprocesses at the body-mind border in the psychoanalysis of psychotic patients. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 99(6):1305-1326.

Marty, P. (1958). The allergic object relation. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 39:88-103.

Marty, P. (1968). A major process of somatization: The progressive disorganization. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 49:246-249.

FOR THE BRAVE OF HEART

Aulagnier, P. (2001). The Violence of Interpretation: From Pictogram to Statement. East Sussex, UK: Brunner-Routledge

Aulagnier, P. (2015). Birth of a body: Origin of a history. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 96:1371-1401

Alan Levy, PhD

February 9-11, 2024

Alan J. Levy, Ph.D. is the President of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy.  He is a certified psychoanalyst, having trained at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies in New York. Dr. Levy was on staff in the Departments of Psychiatry of Tufts and Columbia Universities. He has held faculty positions at Columbia, the University of Southern California (USC), Loyola University Chicago, and the University of Chicago.  Dr. Levy was elected as a Distinguished Scholar and Fellow of the National Academies of Practice.  He was awarded the Distinguished Career Award from Simmons University, received the Educator’s Award from the National Institute for the Psychotherapies and was the winner of the Edith Sabshin Award for outstanding teaching given by the American Psychoanalytic Association.  Dr. Levy maintains a private practice in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in Northfield, Illinois.

Seminar Title: Polyphonic Complexity in Psychoanalytic Treatment

Seminar Description : This course will trace and outline the development of psychoanalytic multiplicity theory and the centrality of complexity for emotional well-being and vitality. Multiplicity as a concept is an essential element in modern relational and intersubjective psychoanalytic theories. A cornerstone of most current relational and intersubjective approaches, the notion of multiplicity encompasses a dissociative model of the mind that is comprised of multiple self-states that are more or less in tension with each other.

The course will explore the centrality of enhancing complexity in psychoanalytic treatment, by fostering the communication among layered and variegated multiple self-states. The instructor’s notion of the development of polyphonic complexity, i.e., simultaneously focusing interventions on divergent self-states as a means of therapeutic communication will be discussed in depth. Candidates will be encouraged to bring case examples to class so that we may identify and apply multiplicity and develop polyphonic means of communicating with our patients.

Readings

Arnold, K. (2005). Intersubjectivity, multiplicity, and the dynamic unconscious. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 41(3):519-533.

Bromberg, P. M. (1994) “Speak! That I May See You”: Some Reflections on Dissociation, Reality, and Psychoanalytic Listening. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 4:517-547.

Bromberg, PM (1996). Standing in the spaces: The multiplicity of self and the psychotherapeuticrelationship. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 32:509-538.

Bucci, W. (1994) The Multiple Code Theory and the Psychoanalytic Process: A Framework for Research. Annual of Psychoanalysis 22:239-259.

Davies, J. M. (1996) Linking the “Pre-Analytic” with the Postclassical: integration, dissociation, and the multiplicity of unconscious process. Contemporary Psychoanalysis 32:553-576.

Davies, J. (1999) Getting Cold Feet, Defining “Safe-Enough” Borders: Dissociation, Multiplicity, and Integration in the Analyst's Experience. Psychoanalytic Quarterly 68:184-208.

Markman, H. (2020). Accompaniment in Jazz and Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 30:432-447.

Pizer, SA (1992). The negotiation of paradox in the analytic process. Psychoanalytic Dialogues,2:215-240.

Pizer, SA (1996). Negotiating potential space: Illiusion, play, metaphor, and the subjunctive. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 6:689-712.

Elizabeth Corpt, MSW, LICSW

March 22-24, 2024  

Elizabeth Corpt is Past-President, Supervising Analyst, Faculty Member, and Board Member of the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis. She spent 20 years as Teaching Associate and Clinical Supervisor at the Harvard Medical School, Department of Psychiatry at the Cambridge Health Alliance Program for Psychotherapy.  Currently the Co-Chief Editor of the journal Psychoanalysis, Self and Context, she has written, published, and presented on topics such as clinical generosity, the impact of social class on the forming of an analytic identity, and relational ethics. She maintains a private practice in Arlington, MA.

Seminar Title: The Complications of Caring in Psychoanalytic Relationships

Seminar Description: Are we caring for or are we treating our patients?  Do we enter the relationship from a position of therapeutic generosity or reserve?  In this seminar, we will be exploring the contours of relational ethics with the goal of increasing our awareness of how we make use of ourselves within the intimacy of a psychoanalytic relationship.

Readings

Aron, L. (2016). Mutual vulnerability: An ethics of clinical practice. In D.M. Goodman & E.R. Severson (Eds.), The Ethical Turn: Otherness and Subjectivity in Contemporary Psychoanalysis (pp.19-41).  London & New York: Routledge.

Buechler, S. (2010). No pain, no gain? Suffering and the analysis of defense. Contemp. Psychoanal., 46(3):334-354

Corpt, E. (2016) The complications of caring and the ethical turn in psychoanalysis. In D. M. Goodman & E. Severson (Eds.) The ethical turn: Otherness and subjectivity in contemporary psychoanalysis, (pp.109-116). London, Routledge.

Corpt, E. (2017) Maternal ethics and the therapeutic work of protecting open futures.

Psychoanal. Inquiry, 37: 412-418.

Corpt, E.A. (2018) The ethics of listening in psychoanalytic conversations.  Psychoanalysis, Self, and Context, 3: 220-228.

Corpt, E. (2020) Ethical labor: The ground between experience near and experience distant: Discussion of Cushman’s Two world’s or one. Psychoanalysis, Self, and Context, 3: 227-229.

 Kite, J.V. (2008).  Ideas of influence: The impact of the analyst’s character on the analysis.  Psychoanal. Q., 77:1075-1104.

Sheldon George

April 12-14, 2024

Sheldon George is Chair of the department of Literature & Writing at Simmons University in Boston, Massachusetts.  His scholarship centers on application of cultural and literary theory to analyses of American and African American literature and culture.  George is chair of the Executive Committee of the MLA forum Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Literature.  He is an associate editor of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society and has coedited two special issues of that journal: one titled “Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Interventions into Culture and Politics” and the other titled “African Americans and Inequality.”  His book Trauma and Race, published in 2016, is the first to offer an extended Lacanian analysis of African American identity.  George is coeditor, with Jean Wyatt, of Reading Contemporary Black British and African American Women Writers; and his recent publications include the pioneering collection of essays, coedited with Derek Hook, Lacan and Race: Racism, Identity and Psychoanalytic Theory.

Seminar Title: Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Race and Difference

Seminar description:  Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Race and Difference

Though Lacanian theory speaks of difference and the role of the Other in the psyche, Lacanian theorists have only recently begun to imagined this other as raced and gendered.  This seminar will engage Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to explore what it teaches us of the psyche’s relation to race and difference.  The seminar will start with a basic overview of Lacan’s rethinking of psychoanalytic theory through his use of linguistics, reading Lacan’s early works like “The Agency of the Letter” and “The Mirror Stage” alongside of the writing of Structural Linguist Ferdinand de Saussure.  It will then engage works by Lacan and his student, Jacques Alain-Miller, to talk about the role of difference and aggression in psychoanalysis.  Finally, the seminar will focus on the writing of contemporary Lacanian theories who deploy the theory in analyses of difference based on race and sexuality.  Thus moving through Lacan’s theories on language and difference, we will explore how Lacan’s nuanced understanding of the psyche has lent itself to sophisticated elaborations of the psychic motivations that guide our contemporary relations to differences of race, sex and gender.

Reading List: 

Saturday Morning

Saussure, Ferdinand de.  “Nature of the Linguistic Sign” and “[Binary Oppositions]”

Lacan, Jacques.  “The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason Since Freud”

Lacan, Jacques.  Ecrits Ch.1 “The Mirror Stage as Formative”

Saturday Afternoon

Lacan, Jacques.  Ecrits Ch 2. “Agressivity in Psychoanalysis”

Baldwin, James. “Going to Meet the Man”

Sunday

George, Sheldon.  Trauma and Race.  “Introduction: Race Today”

Miller, Jacques, Alain.  “Extimité.”

O’Connor, Flannery. “A Good Man is Hard to Find”

Stephanie Swales.  “Transphobia in the Bathroom: Sexual Difference, Alterity and Jouissance.”

Anton Hart, PhD

May 3-5, 2024

Dr. Hart is Training and Supervising Analyst and Faculty of the William Alanson White Institute. He lectures and consults nationally and internationally. He is a member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Psychoanalytic Psychology and Contemporary Psychoanalysis. He has published articles and book chapters on a variety of subjects including psychoanalytic safety and mutuality, issues of racial, sexual and other diversities, and psychoanalytic pedagogy.  He is a member of the group, Black Psychoanalysts Speak, and, also, Co-produced and was featured in the documentary film of the same name. He teaches at  Mt. Sinai Hospital, the National Institute for the Psychotherapies National Training Program, the Institute for Relational Psychoanalysis of Philadelphia, and the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis. He serves as Co-Chair of the Holmes Commission on Racial Equality. He is in the process of completing a book for Routledge entitled, Beyond Oaths or Codes: Toward a Relational Psychoanalytic Ethics. He is in full-time private practice of psychoanalysis, individual and couple psychotherapy, psychotherapy supervision and consultation, and organizational consultation, in New York.

Seminar title : Psychoanalytic Approaches to Diversity: Turning Toward the Other, Opening Oneself

Seminar description : This course aims to address issues of racial, ethnic and other diversities in the psychoanalytic situation, approaching them from a perspective that stands in contrast to current, popular approaches emphasizing the acquisition of “multicultural competence.” The course will examine the central roles of curiosity and openness, and also their obstacles, in considering how difference between self and other in the treatment process may be engaged and transcended. 

PRELIMINARY READING LIST:

A. Course Introduction: Our Collective Ambivalence About Diversity Issues

Recommended reading: 

Hart, A. H. (2020). Principles for teaching diversity and otherness from a psychoanalytic perspective. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 56(2-3), 404-417.

B. Approaching Issues of Race

Reading: 

Stoute, B. J. & Slevin, M. (2017). Conversations on psychoanalysis and race: Part III Introduction. The American Psychoanalyst, 51(1), 8.

Holmes, D. (2017). The fierce urgency of now: An appeal to organized psychoanalysis to take a strong stand on race. The American Psychoanalyst, 51(1), 1-9.

Stoute, B. J. (2017). Race and racism in psychoanalytic thought: Ghosts in our nursery. The American Psychoanalyst, 51(1), 10-29.

Hart, A. (2017). From multicultural competence to radical openness: A psychoanalytic engagement of otherness. The American Psychoanalyst, 51(1), 12-27.

A. Thinking, Linking and Formulating

Reading:

Bion, W. R. (1959). (1959). Attacks on linking. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 40, 308-315

Recommended:

Stern, D. B. (2013). Relational freedom and therapeutic action. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 61, 227-255. 

B. Curiosity, Inquiry, Hermeneutics

Reading:

Davison, A. (2015). Hermeneutics and the question of transparency. Qualitative and Multi-Method Research: Newsletter of the American Political Science Association's QMMR Section, 13(1), 43-47.

Levenson, E. A. (1988). The pursuit of the particular: On the psychoanalytic inquiry. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 24, 1-16

C. Racism’s Impact

Reading:

Baldwin, J. (1962). Notes from a region in my mind. The New Yorker, November.

Recommended:

Gump, J. (2011). Reality matters: The shadow of trauma on African-American subjectivity. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 27 (1), 42-54.

Hart, A. H. (2019). The discriminatory gesture: A psychoanalytic consideration of posttraumatic reactions to incidents of racial discrimination, Psychoanalytic Social Work, 24 April, 2-20.

D. Psychoanalytic Inquiry into Racism in Shades of Black and White

Reading: 

White, K. P. (2002). Surviving hating and being hated: Some personal thoughts about racism from a psychoanalytic perspective. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 38, 401-422.

Recommended:

Holmes, D. E. (2019). Our country ‘tis of we and them: Psychoanalytic perspectives on our fractured American identity. American Imago, Volume 76, Number 3, (Fall) 359-379.

Suchet, M. (2007). Unraveling Whiteness. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 17:867-886.

A. Turning Toward the Other

Reading:

Matheny, B., Teng, B., & Hart, A. (2021). Radical Openness: An interview with Anton Hart (Part I). Room, 2:21, 14-17.

Recommended: 

Matheny, B., Hart, A., & Teng, B. (2021). Radical Openness: An interview with Anton Hart (Part II). Room, 6:21, 38-43.

B. Other Forms of Otherness Such as Sexual

Reading:

Easton, D. & Hardy, J. W. (2009). The ethical slut: A practical guide to polyamory, open relationships & other adventures. Berkeley: Celestial Arts. (Chapters 2-3)

Recommended:

Bersani, L. & Phillips, A. (2008). Intimacies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [selections]

C. A “Subversive” Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Perspectives

Reading:

Moss, D. (2021). On having whiteness. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic  Association, 69(2), 355-371.

Recommended:

Hymer, S. (2005). Subversive redemption in psychoanalysis. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 65:207-217.

Paul Williams, PhD

   June 21-23, 2024

Dr Paul Williams trained as a Psychoanalyst with The British Psychoanalytical Society where he was a Training and Supervising Analyst. He won the Rosenfeld Essay Prize for the treatment of severe disturbance. He was Joint Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis with Glen Gabbard between 2001 and 2007 and became a Consultant Psychotherapist in the British National Health Service in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where he worked in an out-patient clinic and a Forensic Unit to provide treatment for traumatized patients. He lives and works in private psychoanalytic practice in Northern California. He has published many papers and books on the subject of severe disturbance and psychosis. He recently produced a highly acclaimed experimental trilogy on the literary depiction of severe disturbance from the inside: The Fifth Principle (Routledge, 2010). Scum (Routledge, 2013), The Authority of Tenderness (Routledge 2021). 

Seminar title : Reflections on some clinical consequences of Trauma, Psychosis and Soul Murder

Seminar Description:  This seminar will consider clinical work with severely disturbed individuals through the lens of experiences of Trauma, Psychosis and Soul Murder. Psychoanalysis has, historically, maintained an uneasy relationship with traumatic events, despite a great deal of knowledge about them.  How can we think about phenomena of impingement, the intra-psychic consequences, the contribution of subjective fantasy to severe disturbance, and the interplay of fantasy and reality in a traumatized mind? The focus of the seminar will be on experiences more than attempts to theorize experiences.

Readings:  Pending