Romantic Bonds, Binds and Ruptures with Virginia Goldner at NYFS

New York Freudian Society – NY Division
Scientific Program and Clinical Workshop
Friday, December 10, 2010 
8:30 – 10 pm

Mt. Sinai Medical Center, Hatch Auditorium, Madison Avenue & 100th Street

Admission is free and no reservations are required.
Certification of Attendance forms will be provided.

Romantic Bonds, Binds and Ruptures: Treating Couples on the Brink
Virginia Goldner, PhD, presenter

Research has shown that adult romantic partners are bonded with the same monumentality, and for the same hard-wired reasons, as mothers and babies. As a consequence, romantic loss, injury and deadlock can be understood as instances of what trauma theorists now call “relational ‘small t’ trauma.” These ideas can help make sense of the primitive mental processes and relentless enactments so common in conjoint work, which often cause therapists to experience a kind of secondary trauma that Gabbard, in describing the treatment of patients with borderline personality disorder, calls a “physiological countertransference” — pounding heart, dry mouth, trembling limbs. Dr. Goldner will illustrate how romantic love is an attachment process that can affect partners’ capacity for mentalization, and how the mutual regulation of self and mental states can derail or potentiate relationality. Clinical examples will be used throughout.

Virginia Goldner, PhD, is the Founding Editor of the journal Studies in Gender and Sexuality, an Associate Editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and has been a member of the Board of Directors of the International Association for Relational Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. Dr. Goldner is on the faculty of the NYU Post-Doctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, the Stephen A Mitchell Center for Relational Psychoanalysis, and the Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology at CUNY. She is the co-editor of two books, Gender in Psychoanalytic Space (Other Press, 2002), and Predatory Priests, Silenced Victims (Routledge, 2007). Dr. Goldner has received awards for her distinguished contributions to psychoanalysis by Division 39 of the APA, and to family therapy by the American Family Therapy Academy. She is the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters, and is at work on a collection of her major papers. Dr. Goldner practices in New York City, and teaches and supervises nationally and internationally.

Saturday, December 11, 2010 

9:30 – 11:30 am

A clinical workshop on treating couples with Virginia Goldner, PhD

Fee is $50. Call Connie Stroboulis at 212-752-7883 for location and to register.

Space is limited.
NYFS-NY Scientific Program Committee

Vivian Eskin, Chair; Phyllis Ackman, Ani Buk, Susan Light, Kristina MacGaffin