Marilyn Charles, PhD

Zoom

   September 13; October 4, November 15, December 6, 2026
January 10, February 7, March 14, April 4, May 2, 2027

Peter Shabad, PhD

Trauma, Self-Shaming and Mourning

   October 17-18, 2026

1132 S. Wabash Ave., Suite 502, Chicago

& ZOOM

Seminar Title: Trauma, Self-Shaming and Mourning

Seminar Description: In this course we will explore how self-shaming emerges in the aftermath of traumatic and chronically disillusioning experiences.  Self-shaming can have profound inhibiting effects on the entire course of one’s life.  We will devote special attention to how human beings transform their traumatic experiences outside of their control into shameful failures, in which they “blame the victim” in themselves for being a victim. Becoming the victim of one’s own self-punitive shame also leads to character passivity and interrelated dynamics of self-pity, envy, and eventually to resentment and a sense of entitlement to feeling owed by life. We will also examine how psychological symptoms are a non-verbal attempt to communicate and memorialize one’s traumatic experiences by soliciting witness to one’s lonely suffering.  In the clinical section of the course, we will critically explore how diagnostic categories objectify the people we see in therapy.  We will emphasize the importance of examining one’s countertransference, with special attention devoted to one’s omnipotent wish to fix the patient.  in this regard, I will highlight the importance of understanding where one’s individual boundaries end and the patient’s begin, which form a respect for the patient’s freedom of self-determination.  In this regard, we will also highlight important clinical tensions between developmental determinism and freedom of will, and corresponding countertransference tensions of love versus respect in the analyst’s attitude toward the patient.  Finally, I will also highlight the importance of viewing clinical work as an ongoing, continually renewable process, which enables us to help facilitate the patient’s self-healing by learning how to replace self-shaming with an ethic of curiosity, inquiry, and ultimately self-accepting understanding.  This radical self-acceptance of one’s inner life is a key element in the generative process of mourning.. In addition to analytic readings, we will also read Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground and Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych.  

Peter Shabad, PhD is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Northwestern University Medical School. He is on the Teaching and Supervising Faculty of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis and he is on the Faculty of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. He is also Supervising and Training Analyst at the Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. He is an Associate Editor on the Editorial Board of Psychoanalytic Dialogues. Dr. Shabad is co-editor of The Problem of Loss and Mourning: Psychoanalytic Perspectives (IUP, 1989) and is the author of Despair and the Return of Hope: Echoes of Mourning in Psychotherapy (Aronson, 2001). He is the author of numerous papers and book chapters on diverse topics such as the psychological implications of death, loss and mourning, giving and receiving, shame, parental envy, resentment, and regret.  Dr. Shabad’s new book Passion, Shame, and The Freedom To Become: Seizing The Vital Moment In Psychoanalysis (2024) was recently published by Routledge.

Readings:

Dostoevsky, F. (1864).  Notes from the underground.  In The Best Short Stories of  Dostoevsky,  (D. Magarshack, Trans).  New York: Modern Library.

Freud, S. (1917).  Mourning and melancholia.  Standard Edition: 243-258.

Rank, O. (1936). Ideological versus dynamic therapy.  In Will Therapy, Knopf: 1936.

Shabad, P. (2001).  Despair and the Return of Hope: Echoes of Mourning in 

Psychotherapy.  Northvale, N.J: Jason Aronson.  

Shabad, P. (2010).  The suffering of passion.  Metamorphoses and the embrace of the 

 stranger.  Psychoanalytic Dialogues 20: 710-729.  

Shabad, P. (2020). The forward edge of resistance: Toward the dignity of human agency. 

Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 30 (1): 51-63.

Shabad, P.  (2022) Owing and Being Owed: Shame and Responsibility Toward The

Other, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 32:4, 389-404. 

Tolstoy, L.  (1886). The death of Ivan Ilych.  New York: Signet.  1960.

Winnicott, D.W. (1949).  Mind and its relation to the psyche-soma.  In Through 

Paediatrics to Psychoanalysis.  New York:  Basic Books. 1975.

Suzanne Rosenfeld, MD

In-Person Only

   November 15, December 13, 2026
January 17, February 21, April 11, May 16,  June 20, 2027

Time: 9am-1pm

Joyce Slochower, PhD

Winnicott and the Relational Holding Model

   November 21-22, 2026

1132 S. Wabash Ave., Suite 502, Chicago

& ZOOM

Seminar Description: In this seminar we will review Winnicott’s contributions as they first altered our understanding of clinical work and ultimately informed the relational turn.  I then offer an expanded understanding of what holding can look like in the consulting room.  Arguing both for and against the clinical power of holding, I unpack her own understanding of its varied clinical impact in different kinds of therapeutic “knots.”  If we have time, I hope to also address the underbelly of our analytic ideal and what I’ve called relational excess.

Joyce Slochower Ph.D. is Professor Emerita of Psychology at CUNY; Faculty, NYU Postdoctoral Program, Steven Mitchell Center, National Training Program, & PINC in San Francisco.  Second Editions of her books, Holding and Psychoanalysis: A Relational Perspective and Psychoanalytic Collisions were released in 2014.  Her latest book, Psychoanalysis and the Unspoken, was released by Routledge in 2025. She is co-Editor, with Lew Aron and Sue Grand, of “De-idealizing Relational Theory: A Critique From Within” and “Decentering Relational Theory: A Comparative Critique” (2018, Routledge) both of which received the Gradiva award in 2019. She is in private practice in New York City where she sees individuals and couples and runs supervision and study groups. 

Readings:

1. Aron, L., Grand, S., & Slochower, J. (2018a). De-idealizing relational theory: A critique from within. Routledge. 
2. Slochower, J. (2014b). Holding and psychoanalysis: A relational  perspective (2nd ed.). Routledge. (Original work published 1996) 
3. Slochower, J. (2014c). Psychoanalytic collisions (2nd ed.). Routledge. (Original work published in 2006) 
4. Winnicott, D. W. W. (1965). The maturational processes and the facilitating environment. Hogarth Press. 
5. Balint, M. (1968). The basic fault. Tavistock. 

There is far more relevant reading than we can cover in a weeklong seminar; I’m including a list of recommended readings for those who are interested.  The Winnicott readings are background, but if you haven’t read them already, please try to familiarize yourselves with these three: 

Winnicott 

     The aims of psychoanalytical treatment (Maturational Processes, 166-170)

     Dependence in infant care, in childcare, and in the psychoanalytic setting                            (Maturational processes, 249-260)

     The use of an object and relating through identifications (Playing and Reality 8694)

A relational perspective on clinical work

Slochower, J. (2014) Holding and Psychoanalysis.  London: Routledge. Chapters 3,5,6 

Slochower, J. (2014) Psychoanalytic Collisions. London: Routledge.  Chapters 4, 9, 10

Slochower, J. (2021) A few regrets.  Psychoanalytic. Dialogues, 31(2): 166-180.

       

Recommended readings

Winnicott, D.W. 

     The observation of infants in a set situation (Through Pediatrics, 52-69)

     Hate in the Countertransference (Through Pediatrics, 194-203)

     1989 Psychoanalytic Explorations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press:

     The motherinfant experience of mutuality (pp. 251260)

     Fear of breakdown (8795)

Winnicott, D.W. (1965) The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment. 

          Ego distortions in terms of true and false self (Maturational Processes, 140-152)

             A personal view of the Kleinian contribution (pp.171178)

             The development of the capacity for concern (pp. 7382)

Winnicott, D.W. (1975) Through Pediatrics to Psychoanalysis.

           The antisocial tendency (pp.306315) 

Winnicott, D.W.  (1975) Through Pediatrics to Psychoanalysis.

Transitional objects & transitional phenomena (pp.229-242)

Slochower, J. (2006) Chapter 3:  Creating inner space: the psychoanalytic writer.  In Psychoanalytic Collisions, Hillsdale, N.J. pp. 43-64. 

Winnicott, D.W. (1989) Psychoanalytic Explorations.

       Fear of breakdown (pp. 8795)

       Interpretation in psychoanalysis (pp. 207212)

Bollas, C. (1987) The Shadow of the Object.

        Ordinary regression to dependence. (pp. 256274).

Slochower, J. (1996). Holding and the fate of the analyst’s subjectivity.  Psychoanal. Dial., 6:323-353.

Slochower, J. (2013). Psychoanalytic mommies and psychoanalytic babies: a long view. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 49:606-628.

Jill Gentile, PhD

See Individual Titles Below

   December 12-13, 2026

ZOOM

***Please note starting time: 10am***

Jill Gentile, PhD, is a psychoanalyst, clinical psychologist, writer, and faculty member at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. She is an Associate Editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, and Studies in Gender and Sexuality.

She is the author, with Michael Macrone, of Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire and more than fifty scholarly essays exploring agency, desire, democracy, free speech, and the feminine. Her work has received the Gradiva Award, the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association Prize, and the Maurice Burke Paper Prize. She also served as an advisor to the acclaimed film The Tale.

Gentile has trained in ketamine-assisted therapy and psychedelic integration, and her broader studies encompass master plant dietas in the Peruvian Amazon and shamanic and spiritual approaches to healing. Alongside her analytic practice in New York City, she hosts study groups exploring how psychoanalysis might evolve in dialogue with emerging forms of consciousness, spirituality, and collective awakening.

Weekend Seminar

This seminar explores the evolution of personal, political, and ultimately spiritual agency—and the possibilities for expanded forms of consciousness. We begin with the aspirational promises of psychoanalysis and democracy, considering their shared commitments to freedom of expression: free association in the analytic setting and freedom of speech in the democratic sphere. From there, we take up the paradoxical role of hate and hate speech—not only as forces of psychic and political degradation and breakdown, but as entangled with desire, freedom, and the struggle toward more egalitarian forms of relation.

We then turn to feminine law and the exiled yet determinative feminine signifier, asking what becomes possible when psychoanalysis moves beyond an exclusive reliance on paternal laws of prohibition and lack. Finally, we consider recent eruptions of the previously “unthinkable”—pandemic, climate crisis, democratic and symbolic breakdown—as global psychoanalytic processes. Without minimizing their devastating and unequal tolls, might breakdown also expose the limits of inherited symbolic forms and become a portal to psychic, democratic, and spiritual transformation? Throughout, we will ask what the obscured but decisive action of the feminine might contribute to more relational, nondual, and heart-centered forms of collective life.

**A note on the reading: There is a substantial amount of reading assigned, so please begin well in advance of the seminar and do as much as you reasonably can, recognizing that some skimming may be necessary. As you read, please highlight passages or quotations that especially engage, provoke, puzzle, or challenge you, and note questions or associations you would like to bring into our discussion. I hope we can use the readings less as material to be “covered” than as a shared field for thinking together. Please come prepared, for each section of the seminar, to bring in at least one passage, question, or idea that you would especially like us to take up as a group.

Jill Gentile, PhD, is a psychoanalyst, clinical psychologist, writer, and faculty member at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. She is an Associate Editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, and Studies in Gender and Sexuality.

She is the author, with Michael Macrone, of Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire and more than fifty scholarly essays exploring agency, desire, democracy, free speech, and the feminine. Her work has received the Gradiva Award, the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association Prize, and the Maurice Burke Paper Prize. She also served as an advisor to the acclaimed film The Tale.

Gentile has trained in ketamine-assisted therapy and psychedelic integration, and her broader studies encompass master plant dietas in the Peruvian Amazon and shamanic and spiritual approaches to healing. Alongside her analytic practice in New York City, she hosts study groups exploring how psychoanalysis might evolve in dialogue with emerging forms of consciousness, spirituality, and collective awakening.

Saturday morning: Speaking Freely: Psychoanalysis, Democracy, and the Fundamental Rule

Readings: 

Gentile, J. (2016). Democracy: Relevant to psychoanalysis. American Psychoanalyst, 50.

Gentile, J. (2016). What is special about speech? Psychoanalytic Psychology, 33, 73–88.

Gentile, J. (2001). Close but No Cigar: The perversion of agency and the absence of thirdness. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 37, 623-654.

Gentile, J. (2026) Hate Speech as the Action of Inequality: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Democracy and Social Power, Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 46:6, 617-632, DOI:10.1080/07351690.2025.2489330

Saturday Afternoon: The Feminine Signifier

Readings: 

Gentile, J. (2017, November 13). Trump, Freud, and the puzzle of femininity. Philosophical Salon. Retrieved from https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/trump-freud-and-the-puzzle-of-femininity/

Gentile, J. (2022). The missing signifier and a malfunctioning paternal law: On the feminine third as vital portal to sexual difference and emancipatory democracy. In A. Govrin & T. Caispi (Eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Psychoanalysis and Philosophy. London/ New York: Routledge, pp. 495-507.

Gentile, J. (2023). On psychoanalysis’s invention of patriarchy and the democratic significance of anatomical difference. In J. Petrucelli, S. Schoen, & N. Snider (Eds.), Patriarchy and its discontents (pp. 110–131). Routledge.

Gentile, J. (2017) Tugging at the Umbilical Cord: Birtherism, Nativism,

and the Plotline of Trump's Delivery, Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 53:4, 489-504, DOI: 10.1080/00107530.2017.1373543

Sunday morning: The Evolution of Spiritual Agency: Psychoanalysis, Psychedelics, and the Future of Consciousness

Readings:

Gentile, J. (2020). Time may change us: The strange temporalities, novel paradoxes, and democratic imaginaries of a pandemic. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 68:4, 649-669.  

Gentile, J.  (2026) Threshold of the Zero: Breakdown, Cosmic Intersubjectivity, and The Sacred Space Between (∆), Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 23:2, 203-215, DOI: 10.1080/1551806X.2026.2643116

*Gentile, J. with Macrone, M. (2016) Coda: homeland security and the secure home base. Chapter 18. In Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire. New York/ London: Karnac. Pp. 228-245. (*optional reading)

Nancy Burke, PhD

The Opening Phase of Psychoanalysis

   December 19-20, 2026

1132 S. Wabash Ave., Suite 502, Chicago

& ZOOM

Nancy Burke, PhD, ABPP, is a board member, core faculty member and past-president of CCP.  She is the co-chair of Expanded Mental Health Services of Chicago, NFP, Vice-President of the International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis-US, a co-convener of the 606 Project, on the board of the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology and Associate Clinical Professor, Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University.

Seminar Title:The Opening Phase of Psychoanalysis

Seminar Description: This case-based seminar will honor the tensions that it poses in its very being:  Definitions of psychoanalysis tend to be vague and unsatisfying, the debates about how to distinguish psychoanalysis from psychoanalytic psychotherapy are often tedious, and in fact, there are as many ways to engage in the practice of psychoanalysis as there are psychoanalysts.  Yet we mean something by the word “psychoanalysis” even if, in discussing it, we find ourselves circumscribing an emptiness capable of holding multitudes.  Ditto for “opening;” it’s striking that this course has traditionally, at CCP at least, not been called “The Beginning Phase,” but rather refers to a phase of “opening.”  What we mean by that word, “opening,” will likewise be considered as it applies to both the course participants and their patients.  Most of all, we will aim to support both analyst and analysand in their efforts to start out on the not-wrong foot, will think together about how best to encourage the development of an “analytic attitude” in both parties, will attend to fears and concerns that could arise in the process of opening an analysis, and will address some of the seemingly concrete issues around the practice of intensive psychoanalytic treatment.

Readings

Bassen, C. (1989)  Transference-countertransference enactment in the recommendation to convert psychotherapy to psychoanalysis.  International Review of Psychoanalysis, 16: 79—92.

Bollas, C. (2013).  Catch Them Before They Fall:  The Psychoanalysis of Breakdown.  NY: Routledge.

Cauwe, J. & Vanheule, S. (2018).  On beginning the treatment:  Lacanian perspectives.  Psychoanalytic Quarterly 87:695-727.

Ehrich, L. T (2013).  Analysis begins in the analyst’s mind:  Conceptual and technical considerations on recommending analysis.  JAPA, 61(6): 1077-1107.

Elkins, J. (2024) On “beginning” in analysis.  The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 93:567-591.

Freud, S. (1913).  On beginning the treatment. 12: 121-144.

Glover, W. C. (2000).  Where do analysands come from?  A candidate’s experience in recommending analysis.  Journal of Clinical Psychoanalysis, 9:21—37

Ogden, T. H. (1992).  Comments on transference and counter-transference in the initial analytic meeting.  Psychoanalytic Inquiry 12:225-247

Stern, D. (2024) Beginning the treatment on a personal note:  Creating emotional connection.  The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 93:647-674.

Wigoder, Meir. (2009)  “In the Beginning is My End:” The initial analytic meeting from the patient’s perspective.  Psychoanalytic Review 96:145-172.

Patricia Gherovici, PhD

HATE, IDENTITY, THE OTHER

More Powerful than Hate: Freud, Lacan, Fanon, and Bad Bunny.

   January 30-31, 2027

 ZOOM

This seminar examines the role hatred plays in the constitution of the subject: in the choice of a subjective and sexed position, and in the ways the discursive framework of our era brings its manifestations to light, manifestations that now erupt ever more openly and virulently.

Drawing on psychoanalytic theory and in dialogue with other disciplines and practices, the lecture traces the main lines along which hatred can be thought. Each of these lines opens onto new questions. Hatred concerns not only the effects of our most general condition as speaking beings, but also the particular discursive character of the present moment. Despite its lo urgency, it remains a topic on which relatively little sustained psychoanalytic work has been done.

This seminar considers what community psychoanalysis can bring to these questions. Since Freud’s 1918 call for free clinics accessible to all, a strand of psychoanalytic practice has worked beyond the private consulting room, with people marked by poverty, migration, racism and institutional neglect. In these settings, hatred is not only a concept but a lived reality: it appears in the exclusion patients suffer, in the ways they are made into objects of suspicion or contempt, and sometimes in the institutions meant to care for them. Community psychoanalysis offers a space where those pushed to the margins can speak as subjects rather than be treated as problems to be managed. It also asks clinicians to examine their own position, and how practices of care can reproduce the segregation they seek to address.

On Saturday January 30, participants will explore the subject of hate as a developmentally self-protective response to the other, intrinsic to, but also a potentially self-destructive aspect of Identity. The class will also examine how the seductiveness of racism, fascism, and the resulting violence (interpersonal or structural) can be viewed and addressed through a psychoanalytic lens.

On Sunday January 31, they will participate in an open discussion based on their own experience and readings, and prompting a deeper set of questions:

How is fascist rhetoric, to paraphrase Adorno, psychoanalysis in reverse?

How does community psychoanalysis address the subject of hate and its active presence in our culture?

What do we do with our own hate? If hate is unavoidable, can we negotiate with our own hate?

Required Reading

Freud, S. (1957). Instincts and their vicissitudes. In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 14, pp. 109–140). Hogarth Press; Institute of Psycho-Analysis. (Original work published 1915)

Freud, S. (1930). Civilization and its discontents

Fanon, Frantz. Toward the African Revolution: Political Essays. Translated by Chevalier, Haakon, Grove Press, 1988, Chapter 1 ("The 'North African Syndrome'").

Gherovici, Patricia. "Hate Up to My Couch: Psychoanalysis, Community, Poverty and the Role of Hatred." Psychoanalysis and History 24, no. 3 (December 2022): 269–90. https://doi.org/10.3366/pah.2022.0434.

Lacan, J. (2006). The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience (1949). In B. Fink (Trans.), Écrits: The first complete edition in English (pp. 75–81). W. W. Norton & Company.

Lacan, J. (2006). Aggressiveness in psychoanalysis. In B. Fink (Trans.), Écrits: The first complete edition in English (pp. 82–101). W. W. Norton & Company.

White, K. P. (2002). Surviving Hating and Being Hated: Some Personal Thoughts about Racism from a Psychoanalytic Perspective. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 38(3), 401–422.

Winnicott, D.W. (1949). Hate in the Counter-Transference. Int. J. Psycho-Anal, 30:69-74. 

Suggested Reading

Bass, A. (2021). “Murderous Racism as Normal Psychosis: The Case of Dylann Roof”. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 69(2), 291-313.

Euripides. Medea. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/35451/35451-h/35451-h.htm

Ghent, Emmanuel. “Masochism, Submission, Surrender – Masochism as a Perversion of Surrender” (1990). Contemporary Psychoanalysis, (26):108-136.

Weiland, C. (2015). Chapter 7 "The Homogenized Group" and Chapter 8 "Masculinity and the Fascist State of Mind". The Fascist State of Mind and the Manufacturing of Masculinity. (pp 109-140). 

Marilyn Charles, PhD

The Forgotten Feminine

   February 13-14, 2027

1132 S. Wabash Ave., Suite 502, Chicago

& ZOOM

Marilyn 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 the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis, Universidad de Monterrey, Harvard Medical School, and the Association for Psychosocial Studies. Marilyn is also a poet, whose work has been collected under the title Orphans of the Real: Reflections on Love and Loss (Mission Point Press), and an artist, with work featured at the George Mason University Gallery and in DellaPiettra’s Perspectives in Creativity, V. II. Marilyn is committed to mentoring future generations of psychoanalytic scholars, clinicians, and researchers.  Her research interests include creativity, metacognition, the intergenerational transmission of trauma, and the impact of devaluation on women and other marginalized groups. She has published more than 150 articles and book chapters and six books, including Patterns: Building Blocks of Experience; Working with Trauma: Lessons from Bion and Lacan; Psychoanalysis and Literature: The Stories We Live; and, most recently, Echoes of Trauma: Meaning and Identity in Psychoanalysis. She has also published five edited volumes, including: Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis; Fragments of Trauma and the Social Production of Suffering (with Michael O’Loughlin); and Women and Psychosis and Women and the Psychosocial Construction of Madness (with Marie Brown).  (214).

Seminar Title: The Forgotten Feminine.

Seminar description:  In this era in which we are invited to become even further lost from our embodied experience, we will investigate some forgotten or undervalued threads in psychoanalysis as they exist in women’s writings.  As AI comes forward to meet us in our madness, as though mind could replace body, psychoanalysis teaches us that growth occurs when mind meets body, when embodied experience can be translated into words that can be shared with others, received, exchanged, and developed.

Participants are expected to attend all seminars in full, and to participate actively.  In line with the topic, this is meant to be an interactive process through which we can all learn together.  Each participant brings their own lens to the conversation, which adds to and enriches the learning of all.  Towards that end, please come to each session with at least one question or talking point from each of the assigned readings, so that we can fine-tune our understanding together.  

Reading: 

Seminar 1 (Saturday morning): 

What Does a Woman Want?  

We will begin our journey with Karen Horney, who was there at the very beginning of psychoanalysis, when Freud was asking the question: “What does a woman want?”  Remarkably, there was a woman sitting at the table who could have answered that question, or at least helped to develop ideas around it.  But Karen Horney needed to come to the United States to more fully develop her response to that question, resulting in her seminal paper:

Horney, K. (1926). The flight from womanhood: The masculinity-complex in women, as viewed by men and women. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 7:324-339.

We will then read a more recent paper I published on the subject:

Charles, M. (2011). What does a woman want? Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, 16(4):337-353.

Narcissism

We will then turn to another early analyst, Joan Riviere, who looks at the relationship between the negative therapeutic reaction and narcissism.  

Riviere, J. (1936). A contribution to the negative therapeutic reaction. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 17:304-320.

Seminar 2 (Saturday afternoon):  Symbolization and the Underpinnings of Embodied Meanings

For another look at this level of under-development, we have a paper from Joyce McDougall:

McDougall, J. (1978). Primitive communication and the use of countertransference: Reflections on early psychic trauma and its transference. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 14:173-209.

We will then look at the symbolization process itself, through parts of a paper from Marian Milner

Milner, M. (1952). Aspects of symbolism in comprehension of the not-self. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 33:181-184; 193-194.

And a more recent paper on the subject:

Charles, M. (2024). Somatization and symbolization. American Journal of Psychoanalysis. 84:57-78. doi: 10.1057/s11231-024-09441-1.

We will then dive deeper into aspects of embodied experience that underlie meaning-making, looking at Julia Kristeva’s idea of the chora, the rhythmic structures underlying meaning.

Kristeva, J. (1986). Revolution in poetic language. In: T. Moi (Ed.). The Kristeva Reader, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 89-117.

Seminar 3 (Sunday morning):

Continuation of Underpinnings of Embodied Meanings

We will shift from Kristeva’s idea regarding the rhythmic underpinnings of embodied meanings to look at Piera Aulagnier’s depiction of the primal layer of experience, which she links to the affective charge of the infant’s first encounters with other beings.

Aulagnier, P. (2001). Birth of a body, origin of a history. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 96:1371-1401.

 A Clinical Voice

Finally, we will turn to Nina Coltart, who is a fine exemplar of a humanistic perspective:

Coltart, N. (1992). Slouching toward Bethlehem . . . Or thinking the unthinkable in psychoanalysis. In: Slouching Towards Bethlehem . . . New York & London: The Guilford Press (pp. 1-14).

Coltart, N. (1991). The silent patient. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 1(4):439-453.

Coltart, N. (1996). The baby and the bathwater. In: The Baby and the Bathwater. Madison, CT: International Universities Press (pp. 155-166).

For those interested in supplemental readings, I recommend Aulagnier’s descriptions of the primal process in her book The Violence of Interpretation. 

Peter Reiner, PhD, LMFT

Psychoanalytic Essentials for Couple Therapists: An Extended Study of Theory, Formulation, and Technique

   March 6-7, 2027

1132 S. Wabash Ave., Suite 502, Chicago

& ZOOM

Peter Reiner, PhD, LMFT is faculty and former Vice-President of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP); faculty at The Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University; and faculty, and training and supervising analyst at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute (CPI).  He is adjunct clinical consultant in the Institute for Clinical Social Work’s (ICSW) Integrative Psychoanalytic Couple Therapy Program.

Peter was staff and clinical training coordinator at the Family Institute of Chicago, and Secretary of the Chicago Association for Psychoanalytic Psychology.  He is an award-winning teacher who has led more than 60 graduate and post-graduate classes or seminars in systemically-oriented couple and family psychotherapy, psychodynamically-oriented psychotherapy, and psychoanalytic technique.  

Dr. Reiner has written at length about the training and supervision of psychodynamically-oriented couple and family therapists, including “Training psychodynamic family therapists,” (in Lebow, Chambers, & Breunlin [Eds.] Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy, 2017) and “Systemic psychodynamic supervision,” (in Todd & Storm [Eds.], The Complete Systemic Supervisor:  Context, Philosophy, and Pragmatics [2nd ed.], 2014).  He is the author of “Psychoanalytic Essentials for Couples Therapists” (in Lebow, Chambers, & Breunlin [Eds.] Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy, revised edition; in press).

Peter is a psychoanalyst, clinical psychologist, and marriage and family therapist who provides consultation to mental health professionals and maintains a private practice in Chicago and by telehealth of psychoanalysis, and psychotherapy with individuals, couples, and families.

Psychoanalytic Essentials for Couple Therapists:  An Extended Study of Theory, Formulation, and Technique

Seminar Title: Psychoanalytic Essentials for Couple Therapists:  An Extended Study of Theory, Formulation, and Technique

Seminar Description:

This clinically based course examines the integration of systemic couple therapy with psychoanalytic theory and technique. Participants will review central systemic concepts and interventions while exploring contributions from classical psychoanalysis, object relations theory, self psychology, and other psychodynamic traditions. These perspectives will be applied to couple therapy across a continuum of treatment, from brief, present-focused work to long-term, in-depth, historically-oriented treatment.

Videotaped consultation interviews will serve as a primary source of clinical material, illustrating pivotal moments in treatment, key interventional choice points, and the technical and theoretical considerations informing them. Selected classic psychodynamic papers and book chapters will provide additional conceptual frameworks for understanding the material. The course is designed to refine participants’ capacities for clinical formulation, expand their therapeutic repertoire, and support the coherent integration of systemic and psychodynamic approaches.

Recommended Readings

Please note:  This reading list will be substantially reduced and revised closer to the course date.

Nielsen, A. (2016).  A roadmap for couple therapy:  Integrating systemic, psychodynamic, and behavioral approaches.  NY:  Routledge.  (Note:  A newly revised version of this book may be available by the time this course is offered.)  

Catherall, D. (1992).  Working with projective identification in couples.  Family Process, 31, 355-367.  

Fairbairn, W.R.D. (1963).  Synopsis of an object-relations theory of personality.  International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 44, 224-225.  

Lansky, M.  (1986).  Marital therapy for narcissistic disorders.  In N. Jacobson & A. Gurman (Eds.), Clinical handbook of marital therapy (pp. 557-574).  NY:  Guilford.

Leone, C. (2021). The application of contemporary self psychology to couple psychotherapy.  Couple and Family Psychoanalysis, 11(2), pp. 170 - 186. https://doi.org/10.33212/cfp.v11n2.2021.170

Leone, C. (2008).  Couple therapy from the perspective of self psychology and intersubjectivity theory.  Psychoanalytic Psychology, 25(1), 79-98.

MacIntosh, H.  (2018).  From application to approach:  A systematic review of 50 years of psychoanalytic couple therapy.  Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 38(5), 331-358.

McCann, D. (Ed.).  (2022).  Same-sex couples and other identities:  Psychanalytic perspectives.  London:  Routledge.

Middelberg, C. (2001).  Projective identification in common couple dances.  Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 27(3), 341-352. 

Mitchell, V. (2016).  Couples therapy with same-sex and gender-variant (LGBT) couples:  Sociocultural problems and intrapsychic and relational consequences.  In E. Lawrence & K. Sullivan (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of relationship science and couple interventions, (pp. 241-259).  Oxford University Press.

Morgan, M. & Friend, J. (Eds.). (2027).  Love, its meaning and exploration in couple therapy.  London:  Routledge.

Nielsen, A. (2023). Asking for things and listening to criticism: Two fundamental challenges in intimate relationships and targets for couple therapy. Psychoanalysis, Self and Context, 18(2), 262–280. https://doi.org/10.1080/24720038.2023.2183209

Nielsen, A. (2019).  Projective identification in couples.  Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 67(4), 593-624. 

Novakovic, A. & Reid, M. (Eds.). (2018).  Couple stories:  Application of psychoanalytic ideas in thinking about couple interaction.  London:  Routledge. 

 Pickering, J. (2022). Through a glass darkly:  Bion, unknowing, and the couple. Couple and Family Psychoanalysis, 12, 130-148.

Pinsof, W., Breunlin, D., Chambers, A., Solomon, A., & Russell, W.  (2015).  Integrative problem-centered metaframeworks approach.  In A. Gurman, J. Lebow, & D. Snyder, (Eds.), Clinical handbook of couple therapy (5^th ed.).  NY:  Guilford.  

Pinsof, W.  Therapist operations.  (1988, Unpublished, pdf). 

Reiner, P. (2014). Systemic psychodynamic supervision. In T. Todd & C. Storm (Eds.), The complete systemic supervisor:  Context, philosophy, and pragmatics, 2^nd ed., (pp. 166-185). Chichester: Wiley.  (Suggested reading:  pp. 166-170.) 

Reiner, P. (2017).  Training psychodynamic family therapists.  In J. Lebow, A. Chambers, & D. Breunlin (Eds.), Encyclopedia of couple and family therapy, (DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-15877-8_665-1).  Springer International Publishing AG.

Ringstrom, P. (2018).  Relational psychoanalytic perspective on couples psychotherapy.  Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 38(5), 399-408.  

Scarf, M.  (1986a).  Intimate partners:  Patterns in love and marriage (Part 1).  Atlantic Monthly, Nov., 45-51, 91-93.  

Scarf, M.  (1986b).  Intimate partners:  Patterns in love and marriage (Part 2).  Atlantic Monthly, Dec., 66-76.

Scharff, D. (1996).  The major trends in object relations theory and practice.  In D. Scharff (Selected and integrated) Object relations theory and practice:  An introduction (pp. 1-23).  Northvale, NJ:  J. Aronson.  

Scharff, D., & de Varela, Y.  (2006).  A clinical introduction to couple therapy.  In J. Scharff & D. Scharff (Eds.), New paradigms for treating relationships, (pp. 43-50).  Lanham, MD:  J. Aronson.

Sevier, M., Brew, L., & Yi, J. (2016). Cultural considerations in evidence-based couples therapy.  In E. Lawrence & K. Sullivan (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of relationship science and couple interventions, (pp. 225-240).  Oxford University Press.

Scheinkman, M., & Fishbane, M.  (2004).  The vulnerability cycle:  Working with impasses in couple therapy.  Family Process, 43, 279-299.

Trop, J.  (1996). An intersubjective perspective of countertransference in couples therapy.  In M. Soloman & J. Siegel, Eds., Countertransference in couples therapy, (pp. 99-109).  NY:  Norton. 

Wachtel, E. F. (2017).  The heart of couple therapy:  Knowing what to do and how to do it.  NY:  Guilford.

Wile, D., (w/ Kaufmann, D.).  (2021). Solving the moment: A collaborative couple therapy manual.  Dorothy Kaufman (pub.)

Gabriel Tupinamba

Title TBD

   March 27-28, 2027

 ZOOM

Details coming soon.

Sheldon George, PhD

Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Race and Difference

   April 17-18, 2027

1132 S. Wabash Ave., Suite 502, Chicago

& ZOOM

Sheldon George is Chair and Professor of Africana Studies at University of Massachusetts Boston.  George’s scholarship focuses on race and racism through a study of culture, literature, and theory.  His book Trauma and Race, published in 2016, was the first to offer an extended Lacanian analysis of African American identity. George is coeditor of Reading Contemporary Black British and African American Women Writers (2020).  His publications include the pioneering collection of essays Lacan and Race: Racism, Identity and Psychoanalytic Theory (2021). His most recent book, published in 2024, is the collection Experimental Subjectivities in Global Black Women’s Writing: Race and Narrative Innovation. George is an Associate Editor of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society who has coedited two special issues of that journal and two special issues of Studies in Gender and Sexuality.  He is a former Chair of the Executive Committee of the Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Literature forum of the MLA, and he holds the title of Extraordinary Professor of English at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.  

Seminar Title: Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Race and Difference

Seminar Description: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 early works by Lacan 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.  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.

Readings:  

Saturday Morning

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

Lacan, Jacques.  “The Instance 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”

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

Sunday

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

Baldwin, James. “Going to Meet the Man”

Miller, Jacques, Alain.  “Extimité.”

George, Sheldon.  “The Sublimation of Race: From the Courtly Lady to the Derelict White Body.

Sandra Buechler, PhD

What Would Erich Do?: Applying Fromm’s Approach to Treatment

   May 1-2, 2027

1132 S. Wabash Ave., Suite 502, Chicago

& ZOOM

Sandra Buechler, Ph.D. Training and Supervising Analyst at the William Alanson White Institute; author of Clinical Values: Emotions that Guide Psychoanalytic Treatment, (Analytic Press, 2004),  Making a Difference in Patients’ Lives, (Routledge, 2008), Still Practicing: The Heartaches and Joys of a Clinical Career, (Routledge, 2012), Understanding and Treating Patients in Clinical Psychoanalysis: Lessons from Literature, (Routledge, 2015)  Psychoanalytic Reflections: Training and Practice, (IPBooks, 2017) Psychoanalytic Approaches to Problems in Living, (Routledge, 2019), Poetic Dialogues (IPBooks, 2021) Erich Fromm: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, 2025), and Languages of the Heart: Personal Essays on Poetry and Clinical Practice (Routledge, in preparation).

Seminar Title: What Would Erich Do?: Applying Fromm’s Approach to Treatment

Seminar Description: In this seminar I will use clinical material to illustrate the application of Fromm’s writing to treatment. Although Erich Fromm wrote little about therapeutic technique, his legacy includes concepts that can guide and inspire clinicians. I will suggest some applications of Fromm’s ideas to the therapist’s focus when deciding what form of treatment would be viable, initiating and conducting the work, and terminating the therapeutic process. Fromm’s theoretical concepts, such as biophilia, existential needs, self-realization, authoritarian, marketing, and ego orientation, and center-to-center relating can guide the clinical encounter. I will invite participants to share clinical material so we can explore it from a Frommian perspective.

Reading List:

Buechler, S, (2004).Clinical Values: Emotions that Guide Psychoanalytic Treatment.The Analytic Press. 

Buechler, S. (2024).Erich Fromm: A Contemporary Introduction. Routledge.

Buechler, S. (2024). Discussion ofErich Fromm: A Contemporary Introduction.

Lecture at the William Alanson White Institute, September 17, 2024.

Margery Kalb, PsyD

Ghosts in the Consulting Room: Building on Loewald

   May 22-23, 2027

 1132 S. Wabash, Suite 502, Chicago / ZOOM

&

May 28, 2027 by Zoom Only

Ghosts are internalizations gone awry. They arise unbidden, haunting patient and analyst alike, in the form of repetitive, painful (re)enactments. In this way, ghosts of the past take possession of the present, resisting being “laid to rest as ancestors” (Loewald, 1960). 

In this seminar, we will explore underinternalized ghostly phenomena that manifest as the compulsion to repeat, attachment to pain, underrepresented states, and dissociated self-states. Using Loewald as touchstone, we will consider the developmental-theoretical origins of these absent presences, as well as their emergence in the therapeutic relationship. On the clinical level, transforming “ghosts” into “ancestors” is more difficult than was made explicit in Loewald’s (1960) theoretical framework. Ghosts live a shadow life in the unconscious and preconscious, taking up residence within and between analyst and patient — surprising and unsettling both members of the dyad; inviting disturbing and uncanny (re)enactments; threatening impasse. 

Integration of these ghosts requires welcoming, or at least tolerating, their deeply unnerving presence — containing and witnessing at intrapsychic, interpersonal, and “interpsychic” (Loewald, 1979) levels — and living through the profound and painful mourning process required to develop fuller integration and internalization. We will trace the nonlinear pathways of “creative repetition” and “new discovery” that can help facilitate “laying ghosts to [relative] rest as ancestors” — endowing a legacy of access to infantile wellsprings of creativity and vitality that underlies a capacity to thrive more fully. 

Ten Learning Objectives:

1. Participants will have gained knowledge of psychoanalytic theories on psychic ghostly phenomena.
2. Participants will be able to define the clinical and theoretical meaning and utility of the term ghosts.
3. Participants will be able to recognize and discuss ways that psychic ghosts manifest in the clinical setting.
4. Participants will be aware of ways to intervene clinically when ghosts are prominent in the consulting room. 
5. Participants will be able to explain how ghostly phenomena emerge in the sociocultural sphere. 
6. Participants will gain an enhanced understanding and facility in the use of transference-countertransference.  
7. Participants will be able to define and build on internalization from Loewald's perspective. 
8. Participants will be able to identify ghostly phenomena in interactions. 
9. Participants will be able to explain interpsychic interaction. 
10. Participants will be able to make clinical use of interpsychic interactions. 

Readings:

Required Readings - attached to this email: 

Loewald, H.W. (1960). On the Therapeutic Action of Psycho-Analysis. In Papers on Psychoanalysis. Hagerstown, MD: University Publishing Group (2000), 221-256.

**Read section IV, pp. 244-255. The earlier sections of the paper are optional reading.**

Kalb, M. (2015). Ghosts in the Consulting Room: Reluctant Ancestors. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 51(1):74-106. 

Optional Recommended Readings: 

Balsam, R.H., Brett, E.A., and Levenson, L. (2024). The Legacy and Promise of Hans Loewald. London: Routledge. 

Balsam, R.H., Brett, E.A., and Levenson, L. (2024). The Emerging Tradition of Hans Loewald. London: Routledge.

Bolognini, S. (2011). The Intrapsychic and the Interpsychic. In: Secret Passages: The Theory and Technique of Interpsychic Relations. Great Britain: Routledge. (Chapter 4, pp. 57-80).

Freud, S. (1914). Remembering, Repeating, and Working-Through (Further Recommendations on the Technique of Psychoanalysis III). SE, XII, 145-156.

Freud, S. (1929). Letter from Sigmund Freud to Ludwig Binswanger, 4/11/1929. In: The Letters of Sigmund Freud, Ed. E.L. Freud. NY: Basic Books, 1960 (p.386). 

Harris, A., Kalb, M., Klebanoff, S. (2016). Ghosts in the consulting room: Echoes of trauma in psychoanalysis.London, UK: Routledge.

Harris, A., Kalb, M., Klebanoff, S. (2016). Demons in the consulting room: Echoes of genocide, slavery and extreme trauma in psychoanalytic practice. London, UK: Routledge.

Holmes, D. E. (2021). "I do not have a racist bone in my body": Psychoanalytic perspectives on what is lost and not mourned in our culture's persistent racism. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 69(2): 237-25. 

Loewald, H. (1979). Reflections on the Psychoanalytic Process and its Therapeutic Potential. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 34: 155-167.  (pp. 155-160).

Loewald, H. (1979). The Waning of the Oedipus Complex. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 27: 751-775. 

Kirkland Vaughans, PhD

Working Across Racial, Ethnic, and Social Class boundaries

   June 5-6, 2027

1132 S. Wabash Ave., Suite 502, Chicago

& ZOOM

Seminar Title: Working Across  Racial, Ethnic, and Social Class boundaries.

Seminar Description: This seminar is collegial and interactional in format which will  challenge participants to responsibly develop and maintain a “Thinking Space”  which facilitates exploration beyond the “ good and the Bad:”or in short, good  people versus bad people.  Such an environment is more trusting, creative, and becomes a useful tool for self and  other learning processes. Participants are expected to offer clinical vignettes of  their work with the expectation of receiving reflective feedback, as well as   commentaries of being just as stuck.  

Saturday Morning: 

Examine personal racial, Ethnic, Social, and Sexual Identifications, as well as  those of our professional and institutional identifications.

Saturday Afternoon:

The “Quite” cultural, personal, and institutional roots of countertransference. 

Materials include films, articles, and clinical vignettes.

 Sunday Morning.

 Check in thirty minutes.

The Therapeutic Alliance:

1. Mutual Injuries
2. Is it because I am White?
3. What about my Color?
4. D.Bearing Witness  

Readings  

Cushman, D,.(2025) Who gets to be a child? Clinical and cultural reflections on racism, White infantilization, and Kyle Rittenhouse .Psychoanalytic Dialogues. 35(4), 478-499.

Davids, M,F. (2020) Psychoanalysis and black lives. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 101(5), 1039-1047.

Schwebach, E. (2023) Racism, activity, and passivity in the analytic dyad: A Favonian mediation. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 70(4), 619-639.

Vaughans, K.C. (2021) Black boys in the eye of the storm. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 7(1), 47-58.

Vaughans, K.C. & Harris, L. (2016) The police, Black and Hispanic boys: A dangerous inability to mentalize. Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 15(3), 171-178.