Community Events (non-Alliance)

This seminar explores how trauma, rather than simply fracturing the psyche, can open pathways for transformation. Dr. Saketopoulou introduces the concept of traumatophilia—an alternative to repetition compulsion that focuses on what subjects do with their trauma, rather than how to resolve it. In this framework, returning to the site of trauma becomes a space of potential, a complex psychic zone where agency and constraint coexist.

“The Music Before Words: Pre-linguistic Resonance in Psychoanalytic Practice” Presented by Anastasios Gaitanidis, PhD 

Please join us for the third in a series of four Pre-EBOR Scientific Meetings leading up to the Fourteenth International Evolving British Object Relations Conference: Live from Seattle – The Music of Psychoanalysis, taking place October 17–19, 2025 in Seattle, Washington (USA). 

“Live from Seattle: The Music of Psychoanalysis”
 

Please join us in Seattle as we explore the profound interplay between psychoanalysis and music at the 2025 EBOR Conference. This year’s theme is inspired by Adam Blum, Peter Goldberg, and Michael Levin’s book, “Here I’m Alive: The Spirit of Music in Psychoanalysis” (2023, Columbia University Press).

"Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex, Laplanche, and Soul Weaving (but were afraid to ask)"
Presented by Michael Levin, PsyD

Please join us for the first in a series of three Pre-EBOR scientific meetings, where Michael Levin will offer a lucid and inviting introduction to the thought of Jean Laplanche. This presentation also provides an illuminating overview of the part played by Laplanche’s work in the psychoanalytic theory developed in Here I'm Alive: The Spirit of Music in Psychoanalysis, co-authored by Adam Blum, Peter Goldberg, and Michael Levin.

Please join us for an evening of art, poetry, and music by local psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and our families and friends. We are beginning our second year in our new space in Eastlake, and welcome everyone for creativity, food, wine, and community.

In this presentation, Stan Case revisits the timeless myth of Oedipus in which an autocratic force seeks to control social narratives, rewrite history, and stage the future accordingly. He asserts that Freud, by centering his theory on Oedipus as a single intrapsychic actor, excluded an entire cast of characters—who remain outcasts in King Oedipus’s world. These characters, treated as strangers by Oedipus, offered an unrealized vision of care and repair for an oedipal triad blinded by hubris.

In this presentation, Rodrigo Barahona, PsyaD, FIPA, will present on initiating an analytic process, a topic of enduring clinical relevance derived from his deep study of Freud and Bion. Dr. Barahona explores how psychoanalysis begins in the analyst’s mind, drawing on Bion’s theory of container-contained and Freud’s models of transference and resistance to shape his clinical approach. He emphasizes the analyst's role in interpreting the patient’s unconscious communication and framing the material, transforming it into a shared understanding.

In this presentation, Joseph Aguayo explores the transition from the conceptual frameworks established by Freud and Klein, particularly their differing views on the sexual and pathological body, to more contemporary perspectives.

"To teach is to bring our questions to others, to share as teacher and as students in this process of thinking about who we are on the Earth." - Rebecca A. Martusewicz, “Say Me to Me: Desire and Education”*

In this talk, we will discuss the psychodynamics of the paternal object for a subset of patients with muscle dysmorphia. In the formulation that I present, which I believe applies to many patients who struggle with appearance-related concerns that focus on developing a more muscular physique, there is father-child object relation in which the father maintains his own narcissistic equilibrium by keeping his son small, vulnerable, and weak.