This program will consist of two complementary lectures, each followed by discussion with attendees.  In the first, “What Goes Around Comes Around:  The Place of Dissociation in the Contemporary Theory and Technique of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy,” Dr. Purcell will review the evolution of the concept of dissociation in psychoanalytic theory and practice.  He will situate it currently within the emerging mass of relevant data from neuroscience, highlighting the relevance to psychotherapy technique.  He will also address what is meant by “technique” in light of a clinical theory that gives dissociation a central position and mention some implications of this perspective for the teaching and learning of psychotherapy.  In his second lecture “Dissociation and Duets:  Perspectives on Technique in Therapies for Developmental Trauma,” Dr. Purcell will underscore a necessary reconceptualization of technique when trauma and dissociation are foundational elements in psychopathology.  He will describe his notion of therapeutic “duets” in the dimensions of both action and prosody. His emphasis will be on clinical approaches to the subjectivities of both therapist and patient when we are working with the unformulated affects encountered in traumatized patients, and he will provide an extended clinical vignette to illustrate his ideas.

Stephen Purcell, MD practices psychoanalysis in San Francisco, where he is a Faculty member and a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis.  He is also a Faculty member and a Personal and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California.  He serves on the Editorial Board of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly.  His publications include book chapters on somatoform and dissociative disorders and original papers on countertransference, perversion, the use of medication in psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic identity, and technique in the treatment of trauma-related psychopathology.  His most recent publication is titled “Psychic Song and Dance:  Dissociation and Duets in the Analysis of Trauma.”