Seasoned Clinicians Program

Case Conference 1
Learning to Listen to Find One’s Voice

This case conference will utilize the combined reactions and insights of the attendees to understand the full panoply of conscious and unconscious contributions to the manifest material and the transference/countertransference dimensions of the case presentation. Opportunity will be provided for attendees to consider and share with one another how the discussion of the case can be incorporated into each member’s approach and technique of treating patients.

Jeffrey Sandler, MD
Wednesdays, October 15, 22, 29; November 5, 2025

Jeffrey Sandler, MD is a psychoanalyst and psychiatrist in private practice in Oakland providing treatment to adults and couples. He is a personal and supervising analyst at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC) and a faculty member at SFCP and PINC.

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Case Conference 2
Thinking about Race, Culture, and the Social in Psychoanalytic Work

Early in our careers, we are focused on learning how to do our work very earnestly. The burden and privilege of being a “seasoned clinician,” means that the clinician is more comfortable being herself. But what does this mean? How do we fold other aspects of our identity into helping us develop into the unique clinician that each of us is, while still retaining our psychoanalytic identity? We will think about these questions, of how we are ourselves, but not quite the same selves we are in other parts of our lives. In addition, in this case conference, we will listen with an ear for material related to culture and race and think about how to respond on these registers.

Clara Kwun, LCSW
Wednesdays, November 12, 19; December 3, 10, 2025
(no meeting on November 26, December 17, 24, and 31, 2025)

Clara Kwun, LCSW is a social worker and a psychoanalyst in private practice in San Francisco.  She has taught candidates at SFCP and in Portland, Oregon, PPTP students and CCSW students.   Prior to analytic training, she worked at the Adolescent Day Treatment Center of Children’s Hospital, which provided an important foundation for her analytic studies.  She is also part of the Community Psychoanalysis Consortium.

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Case Conference 3
Psychoanalytic Work with Medications and Psychedelics: Keeping our Minds about Changing our Brains

Psychoanalysts have long struggled to think clearly about the impacts of psychoactive medications on the analytic process. Even experienced clinicians can assume synergisms without recognizing potential antagonisms or vice versa. Analysts are also freshly exploring ways of incorporating psychedelics into the sessions in an effort to deepen and expand the analytic work. This case conference will preferentially invite case presentations of psychoanalytic work that includes or entertains the use of medications and/or psychedelics.

Mark Swoiskin, MD
Wednesdays, January 7, 14, 21, 28, 2026

Mark Swoiskin, MD is a psychoanalyst and psychiatrist whose practice includes psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy/psychoanalysis. He has a private practice in Mill Valley, where he works with adults and couples. As an SFCP faculty member, he previously led seminars and case conferences with candidates, but now supervises in the PPTP. He is also a volunteer Clinical Professor at UCSF, where he supervises residents in outpatient psychotherapy.

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Case Conference 4
The Art of Listening

Listening to our patients and ourselves shapes the foundation of an analytic treatment. Psychoanalytic listening reaches below the level of speech, to an older and deeper language, the language of the unconscious. The intimacy, intensity, and poignancy of unconscious communication, more felt than known, is reached through the portals of transference, countertransference, reverie, and dreams. Using these portals, we’ll listen to openings and barriers to emotional growth and the ways that resisting dogma and certitude can propel us into a realm of meaning and creation where emotional life can live, grow, and transform. Participants will be encouraged to free associate, make links with material, and listen, think about, and relate to their own and each other’s voices.

Jeanne C. Harasemovitch, LCSW
Wednesdays, February 4, 11, 18, 25, 2026

A psychoanalyst in Berkeley, CA., Jeanne C. Harasemovitch, LCSW, is on the faculty of the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, and the Oregon Psychoanalytic Center.  She is a Founding Committee Member of the Berkeley Psychoanalytic Society.  She is also the author of essays, and film and book reviews centering on the exchange between psychoanalysis and the arts and humanities.

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Case Conference 5
Being with the Patient: Perspectives on Emotional Engagement with the Patient in the Realm of Psyche/Soma

This case conference will focus on the nature of the patient’s affective/emotional engagement with themselves as well as the therapist. We will explore the therapist’s affective/emotional experiences and the ways they illuminate the predominant object relationships emerging in the treatment. As affects are primarily physiological phenomena, and in the context of culture come to be symbolized as emotional experiences, this focus is an entrance to the psyche/soma. We will also look at the impact of trauma on the psyche/soma. Our format will be case presentation and discussion, with readings based on relevance to the case material.

Michael Wagner, PhD, MFT
Wednesdays, March 4, 11, 18, 25, 2026

Michael S. Wagner, Ph.D., LMFT is a training analyst and psychoanalyst in private practice. He sees adults in psychoanalysis, and works with adolescents, couples, adults and families in psychotherapy. Prior to his training at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute, he worked at the Adolescent Day Treatment Center of the former Children’s Hospital in San Francisco, which was an essential component of treatment offered in the community mental health setting. He has taught candidates at SFPI and SFCP, as well as clinicians in the various community outreach programs of both institutions.

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Case Conference 6
Psychoanalytic Treatment with Severely Ill and Dying Patients

Psychoanalytic psychotherapy with patients who are severely ill or dying can pose unique challenges to both therapist and patient. Who do we become for our patients? What roles are we asked to play? How do we manage feelings of helplessness, while cultivating a sense of hope – in whatever form that might take? In an open-ended treatment, the goals are expansive in nature: greater self-knowledge, the development of a life richer in possibilities. But with this population, we are working under the spectre of decreasing possibilities and a profound ending. Using case material, readings and end-of-life care concepts, we will explore themes such as the therapist’s and patient’s views of mortality, the vicissitudes of attachment and detachment in the transference/countertransference, and ethical considerations – all as they pertain to our psychoanalytic work with severe illness and dying.

Joanna Wise-Bradman, LCSW and Dorian Newton, PhD
Wednesdays, April 8, 15, 22, 29, 2026

Joanna Wise Bradman, LCSW is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in Albany, CA.  She works with adults and adolescents. She provides clinical supervision and consultation to pre-licensed and licensed clinicians.   She is an SFCP Community Member and co-chair, with Dorian Newton, PhD, of the SFCP Seasoned Clinicians Program.  Joanna taught and supervised at the Women’s Therapy Center for 9 years.  Her background includes community mental health, medical center based psychiatry and corrections.  She recently completed a Palliative and End of Life Care clinical program, with a growing interest in end of life psychotherapeutic work.

Dorian Newton, PhD is a psychologist and psychoanalyst who trained at SFCP. She is co-chair, with Joanna Wise-Bradman, LCSW, of the Seasoned Clinicians Program and is a member of the SFCP Admissions Committee. Previously, she taught at the Wright Institute and CSPP and directed a psychology practicum and internship training program at Mills College Counseling and Psychological Services.

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Case Conference 7
The Place We Speak From

What informs how we work with our patients? What are we drawing upon when we speak? Psychoanalytic ideas on this range from thinking about the frame, our countertransference, to a particular analytic theory about how the mind works, or clinical technique. In addition to discussing case material, we will think about how we work with patients, what explicit or implicit models inform what we say and do with our patients in our sessions, broadly and in certain moments. The reading for each week will illuminate a different perspective on clinical work.

Catherine Mallouh, MD
Wednesdays, May 6, 13, 20; June 3, 2026
(no meeting on May 27)

Catherine Mallouh MD is a faculty member and training analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis and has taught courses on Freud, Bion, and case conferences. In addition to her analytic practice, she specializes in working with pregnant and postpartum women. She also has an interest in the arts and has presented and published papers on film and opera. She has a private practice in San Francisco, where she sees adult patients and provides consultation to clinicians.