Friday Workshops 2009-2010

When I Fall In Love?
Friday, October 9, 2009
12:30 - 3:30pm

When you fall in love will it be forever or will it be over before it begins? Will barriers to falling or remaining in love complicate your life? Do adult sexual desire and the desire to possess or dominate the beloved overshadow true love? Or is love fundamental to the transformation of self and other and worth narcissistic vulnerability? Are love triangles inevitable? What are the genuine choices for the lover? Framed within contemporary psychotherapy, the presenters will bring case material and discuss psychoanalytic theories of love and the treatment of “love disorders.” Participants are invited to bring their own case vignettes, as well.
Presenters: Stephan Pasternak, MD and Curtis Bristol, MD

Written On the Body
Friday, November 13, 2009
9:30am - 12:30pm

In psychosomatic disturbances our clinical task of healing splits and enlarging capacities to feel, think and tolerate ambivalences is greatly complicated.  Actual bodily processes are affected, physical well being can be at stake, but emotional links are not made.  The physical symptom assumes a life of its own, detached from any mental representation -- its concrete reality often serves to limit accessibility to exploration.  Awareness of emotional upset is not registered in the mind. Psyche and soma are deeply split:  the body has a tale to tell but the patient is not listening—indeed cannot bear knowing that a story exists.   

The aim of this workshop is to talk together about psychosomatic processes—what they are, how we sort out and communicate meaning about them to the patient, and most importantly, how we help our patients name, claim and emotionally grapple with what ails them.  Theoretical material will be offered, but the focus will be clinical.   Please come ready to actively participate and to share your own case material.
Presenter: Deborah Blessing, LiCSW

Just Can't Get Enough
Friday, January 8, 2010
9:30am - 12:30pm

Many of us are hearing more about sexual addictions lately, both in our practices and in popular culture.  But what are sexual addictions, and how do we talk to our patients about them in productive ways?  We will focus on how to assess for a sexual addiction, explore the underlying dynamics of secrecy and shame, and become familiar with treatment options and resources.  We will define the addictive cycle, review examples of specific sexual behaviors, including Internet pornography addiction (the “crack cocaine” of sexual addictions), and explore the secondary functions of these addictive/compulsive sexual behaviors.  The presenter will offer a framework for exploring sex addicts’ inner world, and invite participants to discuss their own case examples.
Presenter: Lisa Drexler, PhD

The Unbearable Inevitability of Enactments
Friday, March 12, 2010
12:30pm - 3:30pm

Speaking to the inherent value enactments provide, Sandor Ferenczi once stated “You must catch your hare before you can cook him.” This seminar will explore why enactments are an inevitable result of being unbearably caught in “the grip of the field” until that field is destabilized by an unanticipated action.  A relational perspective on the phenomena of enactments, and their powerful potential for moving the therapeutic process forward, will be explored using a variety of clinical vignettes and participant case examples.
Presenter: Roger Segalla, PhD

Couples Work: From Ghosts to Ancestors
Friday, April 23, 2010
12:30pm - 3:30pm

Hanna Segal reminds us that our counter-transference reactions can be our wisest guide or our worst enemy in our therapeutic work with others.  Figuring out who’s who and what’s what is hard enough when working with individual patients but when working with couples – it often feels impossible.  Janet Malcolm was wrong when she wrote that psychoanalysis was the impossible profession.  Those of us who work with couples know that being a couple therapist is truly the impossible profession.  Many have expressed the idea that our hidden mission is to cure our parents.  If there’s some truth in this then it might help explain why working with couples is so hard and why it stirs such uncomfortable feelings in us:  the room is filled with so many opportunities for complex and confusing counter-transference reactions.

The focus of this interactive workshop will be on us.  In the spirit of understanding this tough work – I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours.  Please bring clinical vignettes (especially those that are giving you the most trouble), and I will too.  Together we will tease out what might be going on in the three-some of couple work and how we might creatively use our reactions/contributions to help couples learn from the experience, think a new thought, and mourn the past  so as to allow them and us -- “to turn ghosts into ancestors.”
Presenter: Sharon Alperovitz, MSW