North American Clinical Working Parties
Funded by the IPA
March 2nd and 3rd, 2013
Sites: New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute & San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis (CCM)
Co-Sponsored by the Contemporary Freudian Society
$189 ($139 for Initiating Psychoanalysis)
Deadline to register is February 18, 2013
Sorry, no refunds
All members and candidates of IPA are invited to participate in the Clinical Working Parties, “Comparative Clinical Methods”, “Specificity of Psychoanalytic Treatment Today”, “Initiating Psychoanalysis”, and IPA Training Analysts in the “Mind of the Supervisor: End of Training Evaluation”. (Please find descriptions of Working Parties below).
Working party groups explore the psychoanalytic process using detailed session notes with new methods for approach the clinical material, with experienced presenters, and led by trained moderators, and co-moderators from North America and Europe. Participants have said they return to their practices with a better idea of how we work and think as analysts.
Register now for this Clinical Conference!
Please find descriptions of Working Parties below and contact information.
Space is limited.
Group Schedule
Comparative Clinical Methods
Saturday, March 2nd
9:30am – 6:00pm
Sunday, March 3rd
9:00am – 1:30pm
End of Training Evaluation
Saturday, March 2nd
9:00am – 6:00pm
Sunday, March 3rd
9:00am – 1:30pm
Initiating Psychoanalysis
Saturday, March 2nd
10:00am – 4:00pm
Specificity of Psychoanalytic
Treatment Today
Saturday, March 2nd
9:00am – 6:00pm
Sunday, March 3rd
9:00am – 1:30pm
(Coffee and Lunch breaks)
The Working Parties have a unique set of features and goals:
● Diversity of participation: WP groups facilitate communication across psychoanalytic schools and cultures, paving the way towards conceptual integration.
● Pursuing research tasks in peer groups utilizing a semi-structured method creates uniquely psychoanalytic experiences distinct from supervision or didactic learning.
● Moderators are facilitators, not teachers or supervisors. Groups require trained moderators and experienced presenters, but every analyst’s contribution is valued. Prominent analysts participate, but are not the focus.
Most groups will consist of 12 analysts, including one or two moderators, and one presenter of clinical material. Participants will be assigned to a group in the Working Party they choose, and will be contacted by the moderators with information, times, place, and materials for the group.
Steering Committee:
Maxine Anderson (Co-Chair), Abbot Brontein, Margaret Ann Fitzpatrick Hanly (Consultant), William Glover (Consultant), Nancy Kulish, Marianne Robinson, Marie Rudden, Beth Seelig (Consultant), Ronnie Shaw, David Stevens, Bob White (Treasurer), Nancy Wolf (Chair)
The North American Clinical Working Parties are standing clinical research groups, developed in coordination with the Working Parties of the other IPA Regional Organizations, EPF and FEPAL, funded by the IPA.
Group Descriptions
Comparative Clinical Methods
The Working party on Comparative Clinical Methods has been designed to allow analysts, to talk across theoretical, linguistic and cultural boundaries. The Comparative Clinical Method starts with a prime assumption. The presenter in each group is a psychoanalyst who is presenting an analysis. The members of the groups have a work task: to understand how the presenting analyst works. The group attempts to discover both the explicit and implicit analytic theory and method of the presenting analyst. The presenter brings a brief background to the case and analytic sessions that represent their way of working with this patient. Over the two days of meetings the group begins discussion focusing directly on the presenter’s way of working, first by considering the function and purpose of each “intervention” in depth (Step1). During Step 2, members of the group “construct” from their discussion of the clinical hours, a picture of the presenter’s work. The group works on the analyst’s “explanatory model”: “how does this analyst explain the patient’s difficulties”; “what are the analyst’s ideas about how change takes place”; “how does the analyst think about the transference”; and “the dynamic unconscious as it comes into the session”; and “how does the analyst’s way and manner of interventions further the analysis”. In the process of discussion, each participant along with the presenter become clearer about how they and other analysts work in their consulting rooms. Participants must be psychoanalysts. There is also space for two advanced candidates.
For further information contact: For San Francisco – Abbot A. Bronstein, Chair (abbot.bronstein@gmail.com) For New York – Marie Rudden, Co-Chair (mgrudden@gmail.com)
End of Training Evaluation (The Working Party on The Mind of the Supervisor)
In small groups, training analysts focus on understanding the mind of the supervisor as he or she evaluates a psychoanalytic candidate’s progress toward becoming a psychoanalyst. A presenting analyst/supervisor provides clinical examples from his supervisory work with one or two candidates, if possible, from the supervisions of one candidate whom he or she perceives is ready to graduate, and one who is not yet ready. As the supervisory session and the supervisor’s thinking come alive in the group, the participants consider how the presenter thought about the candidate’s readiness to function as a graduate psychoanalyst. The presenter’s criteria for his or her ideas about what good psychoanalytic work is, which may be implicit or “taken for granted”, emerges in the group process. The task of the group members is to construct the presenter’s model of evaluation of the candidate’s progress and to test this construction with the presenter. The group asks such questions as, What is the presenter’s view on the dynamics and psychopathology of the supervised case (conflicts, developmental deficits, trauma etc.)? What is the presenter’s theory of psychic change, which guides his assessment of the candidate? (For example, what sorts of experiences does he think the candidate must help to facilitate in the patient?) How does the presenter/supervisor think about the candidate’s work with the transference and countertransference etc.? How does the presenter think an analyst should listen to the patient’s unconscious? Does the presenter have a theory of technique which guides how he or she thinks the candidate should intervene and interpret? The group will also have the opportunity to consider how an Institute’s training program and culture (explicit and implicit) might influence the supervisor’s work, and will discuss and compare subtle differences in training models to see how they might influence the supervisor’s way of working with candidates. The group process as it examines the supervisor’s mind is one of discovery.
For further information contact: Nancy Kulish, Co-Chair (nkulish@aol.com) or Marianne Robinson, Co-Chair (mrobins@nwlink.com)
Initiating Psychoanalysis
The Working Party on Initiating Psychoanalysis holds Small group clinical workshops to understand how analysts create a specifically psychoanalytic opportunity in preliminary interviews. The EPF Working Party on Initiating Psychoanalysis (WPIP) was set up in 2004 to develop expertise about how to begin psychoanalytic treatment and, in particular, how to convey to an unprepared patient the specific opportunity offered by the experience of psychoanalysis.
The WPIP has launched a study to look at how this is done by experienced colleagues, using small group clinical workshops to explore preliminary interviews psychoanalytically and develop experience-near theories of their dynamics. This involves a case presentation followed first by a free-associating group discussion and then by a more focused and structured examination of the material. Participants find that they learn from the experience at the same time that they contribute to the collective project. This procedure has now been extended to include the study of preliminary interviews that did not lead to psychoanalysis, leading for example to psychotherapy or to no treatment at all. The workshops are not informed of the outcome beforehand and begin by working blind to the results of the interviews, to sharpen their exploration of the material and to see whether or not they can detect differences in the dynamics of preliminary consultations that lead to analysis and those that do not. Registered participants will be sent more detailed preparatory information about methods and procedures before the workshops.
For further information contact:Nancy Wolf, Chair (nancyhwolf@verizon.net)
Specificity of Psychoanalytic Treatment
The Working Party on the Specificity of Psychoanalytic Treatment Today is a research method founded by Evelyne Sechaud, who developed the work of the clinical groups by widening the ideas of Johan Norman, Bjorn Salomonsson and Jean-Luc Donnet. The method is based on an analogical relation between the analytic sessions and their narration. The Working Party has found that owing to the associative thinking of analysts working together, the clinical research group functions as a magnifying echo of the transference-countertransference relation between patient and analyst. The small clinical groups are made up of 12 to 15 analysts from different analytic cultures working for a day and a half on the same clinical material. The presenter relates no more than necessary of the session content (speech, affects, and actions) without giving any indication concerning biography, the history of the analysis or the setting. He/she then remains silent without responding to the questions raised among the group. The fundamental rule of the group is to associate freely to the clinical material. The group thus ‘constructs’ the patient, each participant using his explicit and implicit theoretical references. Through the group work the gap between theory and practice (J.-L. Donnet) thus becomes reality and makes its exploration possible. The presenter then enters the discussion and lends his thoughts and feelings to the group work. This step enables the group to assess après-coup the constructions worked through during the preceding step.
This group will have a candidate group only, if enough candidates register. Candidates can also choose to be in mixed groups.
Ronnie Shaw, Chair, and David Stevens, Co-Chair. For Further information contact: Ronnie Shaw, Co-Chair (rshaw@ashcomm.com)
To register send the following information:
Full Name:
Member ☐ Candidate ☐
Society:
Email Address:
Working Party Preference:
For CCM Please circle one: New York San Francisco
With a check or money order for US $189 ($139 for Initiating Psychoanalysis) payable to the “Contemporary Freudian Society” and mail to:
North American Clinical Working Parties
c/o Connie Stroboulis
11 Bunker Hill Drive
Manalapan, NJ 07726