| Program Title: | Visiting Professor Revisited — On Arrogance |
| Date: | Sunday, October 5, 2025 |
| Time: | 10:00am – 12:00pm PT |
| Presenter: | Peter Goldberg, PhD |
| Moderator: | Renu Maria Cappelli, PhD, MFT |
| Location: | Online via Zoom |
| Program Fee: | $50 — General Admission If you are an SFCP Candidate, PPTP Trainee, or a participant in the Extension Yearlong Program: If you are a Candidate or Student from another institution: |
Nicola Abel-Hirsch, our Visiting Professor last May, engaged us in discussion about the work of W.R. Bion. We would like to continue that discussion with a focus on Bion’s 1958 paper “On Arrogance”. Peter Goldberg has written “On Bion’s ‘On Arrogance'”. We will discuss the strikingly original ideas introduced by Bion in his very brief but highly consequential paper, ideas that remain challenging and relevant to our current practice. In identifying a post-catastrophic type of psychotic structure underlying otherwise well-adapted personalities, Bion suggests the clinical importance of repositioning ourselves to receive the patient’s “primitive” modes of communication, and warns that in our unchecked curiosity and insistence on finding meaning we risk becoming the very incarnation of an “obstructive object”, recapitulating the patient’s experience of being disastrously imposed-upon and misunderstood. Along the way, Bion suggests that Oedipus’ downfall stems not from breaking the incest taboo but from the arrogance and hubris of having to know at any cost.
SFCP Candidate Renu Cappelli will interview Peter Goldberg, followed by audience participation. We hope you will join us.