The Metropolitan Institute for Training in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy,
The Metropolitan Center for Mental Health and
The Metropolitan Society of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists
Invite you to a Scientific Meeting, Friday, October 25, 2013 – 8:00 P.M.
Attachment and Separation-Individuation:
Two Ways of Looking at the Mother-Infant Relationship
Presenter: Anni Bergman, Ph.D.
Dr. Bergman will describe the early development of two sisters who were observed at The Masters Children Center in New York, examining their development through the lens of two different yet related ways of understanding the essential mother/baby relationship — Attachment Theory and Separation Individuation Theory.
Attachment Theory is based on the work of John Bowlby and his followers, which started from a wish to understand what happens when children are separated from their mothers. Separation-Individuation theory is based on the work of Margaret Mahler and the research she designed to study the psychological birth of the human infant, which means how a baby develops a sense of separateness in the presence of the mother.
Anni Bergman, Ph.D. was born in Vienna and emigrated to California in 1939, graduating from UCLA with a degree in music and early education. In 1959, Dr. Bergman moved to New York and began to work with Margaret Mahler in observational studies of mothers with normal babies and toddlers and on a project with autistic and psychotic children. They proposed a model in which the therapist sees child and mother together, which had a profound impact on Dr. Bergman’s lifelong work. She received her Ph.D. from City University, where she became a Faculty member and was involved in the creation of a center in which very disturbed children from Harlem were treated using concepts articulated in The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant, co-authored with Mahler and Fred Pine, and numerous other publications. Dr. Bergman published her own papers in Ours, Yours, Mine. As part of her work with Dr. Mahler, she began work with an autistic girl whose life she followed into adulthood. Dr. Bergman is a Supervisor in MITPP’s Child and Adolescent Program, Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at NYU, Training and Supervising Analyst at The NY Freudian Society, and a Fellow at IPTAR. She is Founder and Co-director of a program affiliated with The NY Freudian Society and IPTAR in which established psychoanalysts study infant observation and the treatment of mothers and babies. For the last nine years Dr. Bergman has been affiliated with Dr. Beatrice Beebe in the study of children who lost their fathers in the 9/11 disaster. Her work is included in a recently published book, Mothers, Infants and Young Children of September 11, 2001: A Primary Prevention Project. She continues her work with autistic and psychotic children as a supervisor and consultant. She lives in a brownstone in Chelsea that has been a home not only to her and her family, but to many others from around the world.
No registration or fee required. Refreshments served following the presentation.
Meeting Will Be Held At:
The Karen Horney Psychoanalytic Institute and Center
329 East 62nd Street (1st & 2nd Avenues)
1st Floor Auditorium, New York, NY 10021
Program Committee: Alexandra Cattaruzza, MS, LP, Co-Chair * Rosemarie Verderame, LMSW, Co-Chair * Joyce A. Lerner, LCSW
* Thomas McCoy, M. Div., LCSW * Barbara Reichenthal, LCSW, BCD * Ivy Vale, BFA
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