2023 - 2024 East Bay Yearlong Program
Jan Chess, PhD, MFT, Chair
Graeme Daniels, LMFT and Elizabeth Stuart, MD, Committee Members
The Metaphorical Stepchildren of Psychoanalysis
In this course, we will explore areas that psychoanalytic literature, practice, and thinking have historically left out, dismissed, or given short shrift. We live in a modern era punctuated by violence perpetrated along the lines of gender, race, class, and nation, fractures within families and between countries, and the threat of climate disaster. Many people struggle in this environment, managing trauma that lives in the body somatically in many guises, substance abuse, alternate sexualities and gendered identities, psychosis, neurodiversity, and eating disorders. They call and come to us for help, and we do not always feel well- equipped to respond. In this course, we will look to psychoanalytic clinicians with expertise in these areas to help us to sit with these clients, using a psychoanalytic lens to deepen our understanding and create more meaning in our work together.
| Dates: | Fridays, October 20, 2023 – June 28, 2024 |
| Time: | 12:30pm – 02:00pm |
| Sessions: | 34 Sessions |
| Location: |
The Dreams Institute* All seminars are scheduled to be held at The Dream Institute, except for the seminars led by Dr. Gary Grossman and Dr. Benjamin Morsa, which will take place online through ZOOM. |
| Program Fee: |
$ 1,430.00 General Readers are not included in the program fee. See Policies tab for details. |
After the detox: a psychoanalytic approach to treating addictions
In the course, “After the detox: a psychoanalytic approach to teaching addictions” we will look at the concept of addiction through a psychoanalytic lens with an eye towards a long-term approach, in the context of a broader treatment field that often places emphasis upon short-term, crisis-oriented interventions despite the prevalence of patients presenting with chronic difficulties with chemical dependencies or process addictions. This course also observes that shorter-term approaches soften short-change understanding of addictive patterns, seeking to stabilize or contain destructive behavior but not fostering deeper knowledge of unconscious impulses or structural intrapsychic change. Through the works of Freud, Klein, Bion, Chasequet-Smirgel, to name a few, plus use of clinical vignettes provided by and invited by the instructor, this course will look at how to use analytic thinking to understand what addiction is and to discuss treatment approaches that support lasting sobriety.
Graeme Daniels, MFT
Fridays, October 20, 27; November 3, 10, 17; December 1, 2023
(no class on November 24, 2023)
Case Conference
In this five-week course, two participants will have the opportunity to present their clinical work to faculty and to their peers over 2-3 sessions. As a group, we will try to experience the hour almost as fi we too have been in the room, listening, associating, and imagining something about the experience. Using our analytic listening, foregrounding our intuition, we will feel our way into the hour. Then as we weave together our associations, we will bring in the analyticcanon as relevant to helpu s make sense of what’shappening and formulate something of the patient’s experience.
Elizabeth Stuart, MD
Fridays, December 8, 15, 22, 2023; January 12, 19, 2024
(no class on December 29, 2023 and January 5, 2024)
When Words Fail and Bodies Speak: Psychoanalytic Treatement of Eating Disorders
This course will examine psychoanalytic conceptualization and treatment of eating disorders. We will explore these complex and confounding syndromes through multiple lenses: as failures of thought, with unthinkable thoughts becoming stuck in the body; as complex compromise formations tied to early relational experiences; as autistic defenses against intolerable anxieties; as dissociative disorders linked to early experiences of trauma and affective dysregulation; and as disorders of desire, clandestine love affairs marked by anticipation, excitement, secrecy, and disappointment, leaving emptiness in their wake. We will attend to the importance of gender, culture, and the role of the therapist’s body ni the treatment situation throughout.
Tom Wooldridge, PsyD
Fridays, January 26; February 2, 9, 16, 23; March 1, 2024
Queerness & Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis, as a discipline, a theory of human development and as a clinical practice, has struggled, in parallel with the culture at large, with how to understand individuals whose sexual desires and gender expressions fall outside of mainstream societal expectations. To identify as queer, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, gender fluid, gender expansive, non-binary, for example, positions that individual in the margins of society and psychoanalytic theory. Here I use the term “queer” as an inclusive designation to refer to individuals whose gendered and sexual identities fall within these margins.
In this 5-week seminar, we will review the historical underpinnings within psychoanalytic theory, along with the socio-cultural factors, that have fostered biased conceptualizations and misrepresentations of queerness. Drawing from the contemporary psychoanalytic literature on gender and sexualities, and contributions from queer theory, we will elaborate a clinical perspective that recognizes individuality in the queerness of the people we work with in psychotherapy.
Gary Grossman, PhD
Fridays, March 8, 15, 22, 29; April 5, 2024
This seminar will be held virtually online via ZOOM
Neurodiversity
“Neurodiversity” is a broad term that denotes that breadth and variation of human neuropsychological and neurodevelopmental profiles (aka “neurotypes”). Neurodivergent generally refers to a person with a neurotype that differs from the normative neurotype (neurotypical). This language is alive, in dialogue, and still working toward a clear definition of who is called “neurodivergent.” But, generally, and for thepurposes of this course, nuerodivergent will denote individuals who meet / may meet criteria for diagnosis of one or more of the neurodevelopmental disorders – e.g. autism, ADHD, and the specific learning disabilities.
Psychoanalytic theory of treatment of neurodivergent patients is relatively sparse, with contributions primarily focusing on autistic patients. This course will review selected theories of autistic patients from seminal psychoanalytic authors (e.g. Klein, Ogden, Tustin, Alvarez). This six-week segment wil critically examine historical theories for potential bias and clinical misattunement to the neurodivergent experience. It will also work to identify tools and trends in theory that can inform our present context.
Throughout the course, students will engage texts from contemporary autism research and from actually autistic individuals. This will allow for a rich dialogue between these bodies of work and identification of points of resonance and collaboration. Critical autism studies and contemporary trends in autism research raise interesting questions about core psychoanalytic concepts including: symbolic communication, play, the sensorium, empathy, and theory of mind.
Benjamin Morsa, PsyD
Fridays, April 12, 19, 26; May 3, 10, 17, 2024
This seminar will be held virtually online via ZOOM
Embodiment: Implications and Meanings in Psychoanalytic Thought
This course surveys the topic of embodiment from various intersubjective and socio-cultural perspectives. We will explore the concept of Donnel Stern’s “embodied mind” and Peter Goldberg’s use of “psycho sensorial experience as a means to enlivenment”. A Buddhist perspective of the “body as a resonating, containing space to understand the unconscious” allows another vantage into the analytic and spiritual (Alfanto,2013). We will consider neurobiology and “bottom up” approaches to embodiment and the meaning of the skin’s surface and tattoos. Finally, we will take up the role of illness for the analyst and it’s impact on the clinician and patient.
Jan Chess, PhD, MFT
Fridays, May 24, 31; June 7, 14, 21, 28, 2024
Readers Fee
Charges for reading material required for the seminars are not included in tuition. Your readers will be prepared by CopyCentral, and costs are based upon copyright laws and charge based on the content of the readers. The SFCP Office will inform you when your readers are available to be purchased from CopyCentral’s website. Please note that CopyCentral may take 2 weeks to print and mail the readers to you, so we recommend you to purchase them as soon as they become available.