THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR PSYCHOANALYSIS
OF THE KAREN HORNEY PSYCHOANALYTIC CENTER
Established in 1941
329 East 62nd Street New York, NY 10065
(212) 838-8044 aipkh@aol.com
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Our Work Continues
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SCIENTIFIC MEETING
Thursday, April 24, 2014 at 8:00 PM, Jane R. Lewis
BODIES IN DIALOGUE: EMPATHIC CONNECTEDNESS IN THE REALM OF THE UNSPEAKABLE
This presentation joins the ever-expanding conversations in contemporary psychoanalysis about the “something more” than spoken language, that has long been privileged in our profession. Specifically, the notion is explored that infant research’s conceptualization of mind as dialogic in origin — that we are prewired from birth to participate in nonverbal affective communication — is consistent with the position that an embodied, dialogic, empathic connectedness can evolve with severely traumatized, frozen patients whose experience is not just unformulated but unspeakable. This is illustrated with an in-depth account of a difficult therapeutic journey with a highly intelligent man whose social relatedness hid a world of frozen grief and terror of violation. It was only when the therapist could connect with trauma -generated aspects of herself that had remained frozen, could she find an empathic way of being-with and ultimately understanding her patient’s wordless, frozen world. During the year-long, initial phase of this predominantly “silent,” dialogic treatment, the therapist recalls her own childhood fantasies involving an “imaginary camera”; Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag’s philosophical reflections on photography; as well as self psychological and relationally-informed theories to explicate the transformation to an increasingly symbolized, worded dialogue which occurred during this unusual therapeutic journey.
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Jane R. Lewis, LCSW, is a Training and Supervising Analyst and Senior Faculty Member of the American Institute for Psychoanalysis (AIP); as well as Senior Faculty Member of the Training and Research in Self Psychology Foundation (TRISP). Jane is President of the Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis, the second oldest psychoanalytic society in the New York area and runs a weekly Trauma Supervision Group at the Karen Horney Clinic. She has presented numerous papers at the Annual International Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology (IAPSP) conferences; and the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (IARPP) conferences. She was Co-Chairperson of the Bystanders No More Conference: Psychotherapeutic Dialogues for the Politically Silenced Conference at the Academy of Medicine in New York. Jane is the author and co-author of several published papers in the International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology (IJPSP). A version of the paper she is presenting, Bodies in Dialogue: Empathic Connectedness in the Realm of the Unspeakable will be published in a forthcoming issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry. She is in private practice in New York City and specializes in the treatment of trauma.
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KAREN HORNEY CENTER AUDITORIUM
329 East 62nd Street (Bet. 1st & 2nd Avenues)
ALL COLLEAGUES ARE WELCOME
Free Admission
Scientific Meetings Committee:
Giselle Galdi, PhD, Chair;
Riva Tait, PhD, Vice-Chair; Arthur Lynch, PhD & Kenneth Winarick, PhD