Charles Brenner: 1913-2008

lilcharlesbrennermd_1982_4x5.jpg Click Here for: Audio Interview of Charles Brenner by Frank Parcells.  

Click Here for: Charles Brenner Interviewed by Edward Nersessian.

Click Here to Read: Review of Psychoanalysis: Mind and Meaning by Charles Brenner reviewed by Arnold Richards  

Click Here to Read: Obituary of Charles Brenner in the New York Times. 

Charles Brenner:
A little more than a month ago, on April 8 2008, I had the privilege of introducing my friend Charles Brenner at a Scientific Meeting of the New York Psychoanalytic Society. Yesterday I learned that he died. As we all do, I feel a great loss both personally and to psychoanalysis. Here is what I said about Charlie last month:

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Psychological assistance for earthquake survivors

Dear Colleagues

I have been coordinating some efforts to provide psychological assistance to people in Sichuan Province . I am the President of CAPA (the China American Psychoanalytic Alliance) and we have many contacts in China.

THINGS IN PROCESS
1. Many groups, hospitals, university departments and individuals in China have written to us asking for advice, training (some wanted volunteers to come to China) from Americans who are knowledgeable about psychological aspects of disasters. We have already arranged for one American volunteer to go to Chengdu and work with a group there.

2. We are arranging for rewriting, translation, and publishing in China of “My Earthquake Story” (a children’s’ workbook with well documented successful results in preventing and ameliorating later effects of natural disasters). Gil Kliman the director of The Children’s Psychological Health Center made it available. We are in touch with three interested Chinese publishers.

3. We will be working with at least two US foundations, maybe more, several branches of the Chinese Red Cross, a major counseling company in China, a major medical supply company in China etc etc etc.

WE NEED VOLUNTEERS
Please email me if you can consult with individuals or groups about working with people affected by disasters using email, phone, Skype
Or if you are available to go to China.
Or if you have other knowledge or skills we and they can use.

Give me information about who you are, your experience with disaster work and what you are willing to do.

Many thanks

Elise Snyder

“The Conformist”: An Unconscious Scene Hidden in the Imagery

liltheconformist.jpg

Over the past 3 months, I have published film essays with a particular focus on the Primal Scene. I began with the recent film, The Lives of Others (February), using Arlow’s paper, “The Revenge Motive in the Primal Scene” as my primary text. In the following months, in commentaries on LA Confidental (March) and the two films, The Crying Game and Mona Lisa (April), I have continued to focus on a sense of exclusion and a wish for revenge as an important dynamic in understanding the primal scene as it is represented in those films. This examination of Bertolucci’s The Conformist continues those themes. In doing so, I have ignored other important themes in this complex work in order to focus on a peculiar aspect of the film as I see it.

The Conformist was the first film that I ever “analyzed”, and doing that got me interested in thinking and writing about unconscious fantasy in film. I would like to point the reader to two extraordinary (to me) features of this film: 1. An unprecedented concentration of primal scene imagery; and, 2. A configuration of imagery that allows us to “reconstruct” a very specific, detailed primal scene fantasy. I have written about this in a much more condensed version in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis (1997: vol. 78:1031-1033). This expanded version was published in Double Feature: Discovering our Hidden Fantasies in Film (Herbert H. Stein, M.D.; 2002, Ereads).

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The Erotic Transference: Multiple Perspectives: The William Alanson White Institute

THE EROTIC TRANSFERENCE:
MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES
THE WILLIAM ALANSON WHITE INSTITUTE
20 WEST 74TH STREET
NEW YORK, NY 10023
SATURDAY, MAY 17TH
10:00 AM to 3:00 PM

This workshop will explore from a variety of perspectives both the
theoretical as well as clinical data on the complexity of the erotic
transference/ countertransference matrix. To ensure a diversity of
perspectives both gay and heterosexual, female and male analysts will
participate in the workshop and present clinical vignettes for discussion.
Some of the issues that will be examined are: How central is the erotic
transference to our work? Are there technical approaches that may
unwittingly inflame or suppress erotic material? How does one’s model of
therapeutic action affect the emergence of sexual feelings? Does the
erotic transference mask other conflicts and desires? How significant is
the analyst’s gender?

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Stock-Still Behavior: A Potential Developmental Marker for the Representation of Self and Other in Toddlers: Meeting at NYPS&I

THE NEW YORK PSYCHOANALYTIC SOCIETY & INSTITUTE
247 East 82nd St., between 2nd & 3rd

Tuesday, June 10, 2008, 8:15 p.m.

Peter Fonagy, Ph.D. will discuss a paper by Susan Sherkow, M.D. and Lissa Weinstein, Ph.D. on Stock-Still Behavior: A Potential Developmental Marker for the Representation of Self and Other in Toddlers.

Join us for light refreshments from 7:30 to 8 p.m.

For information about our training programs please visit us at: www.psychoanalysis.org

The Identity of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalysts by Arnold Richards and Arthur Lynch

Click Here to Read: The Identity of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalysts by Arnold Richards and Arthur Lynch.  The paper was presented at the American Institute for Psychoanalysis – Scientific Meeting on May 2, 2008.  A longer version  was published in Psychoanalytic Psychology April 2008.

Click here to View: Powerpoint for The Identity of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalysts by Arnold Richards and Arthur Lynch