Community Events (non-Alliance)

Presenter: Shierry Nicholsen PhD

“Extreme Historical Situations and the Psyche: On the Work of Robert Jay Lifton”

In our current political landscape, we are witnessing a deep longing for an omnipotent father.  This longing is also a prominent feature of many religions, including Christianity. In this workshop, Doug Hansen, MSW, invites us to think about the developmental role that such a father-figure plays for human beings, and how the loss of such a figure can evoke a grieving process that facilitates personal and spiritual growth. Such a loss also contributes to narcissistic injury and a dystopic cynicism of “doer/done to” relationships.

The Seattle Psychoanalytic Society & Institute is holding an open house Saturday, October 28, 2017, from 10:00am to noon at 4020 East Madison Street, Suite 230.  Please come to hear more about the analytic training program and to meet faculty and clinical associates. Faculty representatives from the adult and child & adolescent psychotherapy programs will also be available to answer any questions you may have about these programs.

This lecture will address the presence and function of damaged internal objects, ghosts of various forms and kinds, that find their way into analytic work. Drawing from the work of Henri Rey and the work on intergenerational transmission of trauma (Faimberg, Apprey, Grand and Salberg and others) I will discuss the often secret and also often unconscious project in analysis where the patient arrives not to change themselves but to repair someone else. Extended clinical examples are also presented.

This four hour workshop will discuss Christopher Bollas’ book Catch Them Before They Fall: The Psychoanalysis of Breakdown (Routledge, 2009).  All conference participants are asked to have read this book prior to attending.

Too often, psychoanalysis misses the opportunity to attend to the task of penetrating the surface of otherness. This presentation will examine both the resistances to, and the necessity for, psychoanalytic engagement—and prioritization—of issues of otherness, difference and diversity. Anxieties associated with authentic, curious, exploratory dialogue about difference and diversity are identified.

During the course of the last 40 years, mainstream North American psychoanalysis, and particularly BPSI, have gone from being a place of one dominant theory, to being a place of multiple theories.  It seems the task of anyone learning analysis, at whatever stage, to choose a theory, to be able to self-identify with a theoretical tradition, and to relate that theory to one’s practice.

How do we integrate ethical reflection with the interpretations and decisions we make about money in our clinical work?  The aim of this workshop is to expand the scope of our ways of thinking ethically about challenging moral dilemmas involving financial transactions encountered in both therapy and psychoanalysis. Clinical cases will be used to identify unacknowledged moral aspects of specific transference and counter-transference interactions and the desirability - technically and ethically - of alternative interventions.