Richard Chefetz, MD

November 12-14, 2021

Dr. Chefetz is a psychiatrist in private practice in Washington, D.C. He was President of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (2002-3), and is a Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology. He is a faculty member at the Washington School of Psychiatry, the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis, and the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis. . He is a Certified Consultant at the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis and is trained in Level I and II EMDR. Dr. Chefetz was editor of “Dissociative Disorders: An Expanding Window into the Psychobiology of Mind” for the Psychiatric Clinics of North America, March 2006, “Neuroscientific and Therapeutic Advances in Dissociative Disorders,” Psychiatric Annals, August 2005, and “Multimodal Treatment of Complex Dissociative Disorders,” Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 20:2, 2000, as well as numerous journal articles on psychodynamic and psychoanalytic perspectives on trauma and dissociation. In 2015 he published Intensive Psychotherapy for Persistent Dissociative Process: The Fear of Feeling Real, with W.W. Norton, in their Interpersonal Neurobiology series.

Seminar title : Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the Treatment of Complex PTSD and Dissociative Processes

Seminar description : See Below

Dear all, if you are reading this, then you are either a candidate or faculty at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis and getting ready for my visit; perhaps this will be in person, but we just don’t know if that will happen at this point in our journey through the SARS COV-2 pandemic. My intent in writing to you is to invite you to craft what we’ll study together. The core of our studies will be considerably built upon discussion of cases you are encouraged to bring to our seminars. I’m not going to ask that you send me a write-up in advance. That would give me time to study what you’ve written and tip the scales in a way that tilts the playing field of our discussion. Instead, I’ll listen to a 15-20 minute presentation “cold,” just like the rest of the people in the room, and then we’ll talk. I’m comfortable working this way, and I think it’s fair to candidates in an egalitarian manner. If you’d like to modify this, the let me know.

It would be easy to just send you a prepared packet of information/content and tell you what we’ll be doing beyond expanding upon the casework. But, the fact that you are at CCP suggests you are likely more the person who is excited about learning and has some idea of what you need to learn to round out your education. So, I’d like to be responsive to that, a priori.

Your mission, in reply, is to either choose one of the powerpoint or reading options noted above, or to suggest something else of interest. I’ve listed more papers than we could possibly discuss. So, you get to choose and whittle them down to a manageable level. Since you’ve invited me to work with you, I assume you’d like me to emphasize my work, but that might not fit your needs and I’m Okay with that. The names of the papers are in the grid preceding, and the papers are attached to the email I sent to Dr. Levy. I don’t know how you might like to communicate with me, but I’m open to suggestions. Of course, the process I’m suggesting might not be workable, and if so, I expect I’ll hear about it as well as potential remedies to my errant speculations.

I’m looking forward to my time with you and learning together. There is always room for more depth about how to understand human pain. This is especially true in consideration of the varieties in which adaptations to harsh misfortune, abject cruelty, and the adaptive processes themselves create the seemingly shape-shifting presentations of the people who employ us to help them live their lives in a healthier way. Thanks for your consideration.

Warmly, Rich