May-June 2012

Caron Harrang, LICSW, FIPA
Managing Editor
enewseditor@cipsusa.org

CIPS Clinical Conference 

The 2012 CIPS Clinical Conference was held at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey, California, May 4-6, 2012. This year's theme was Sexuality in the Second Century of Psychoanalysis, exploring the differences between pre-genital and Oedipal development on character formation. In that the conference focuses entirely on discussion of participants' clinical material in small heterogeneous work groups made up of candidates, analysts, and training analysts, it is impossible to convey the range of individual experience. Nevertheless, we hope that the following conference summaries from CIPS President Leigh Tobias and LAISPS senior candidate Lisa Holotek give you a sense of the richness and uniqueness of the conference experience.

 

******

 

"The evening social event, this time a cocktail party by the bay, gave the CIPS Board an opportunity to again acknowledge and honor several longtime members who have made significant contributions to our profession and to CIPS. We gave an encore, on their home turf, to James Gooch, Albert Mason, Fredrick Vaquer, and Peter Wolson. All are founding members from the West Coast who had been honored at the previous CIPS conference in Manhattan three years ago. We then honored Hedda Bolgar and James Grotstein for their indefatigable and ongoing contributions to CIPS and to the field of psychoanalysis.

 

"Hedda Bolgar has a lively professional and personal history that you can learn in interesting detail in the 4th CIPS volume, The Second Century of Psychoanalysis, as well as in the recent video about her produced by LAISPS. She came to the United States from Vienna where she was one of the earliest psychoanalytic graduates from the University of Chicago. She was a colleague of Franz Alexander in Chicago before moving to her current home in Los Angeles. Always one to address an unmet need regarding the mental health community, Hedda developed psychological health programs at Cedars Sinai. She went on to be a founding member of the Wright Institute, offering outstanding training for pre- and post-doctoral psychology students in psychoanalytic and psychodynamic treatment, and developed an adult community clinic there, which bears her name. She then became a founding member of LAISPS, where she is a training and supervising psychoanalyst. She has been an influential mentor to countless analysts in Los Angeles, in the United States, and internationally. Hedda has been a tireless champion of underserved populations, recognizing and supporting the treatment needs of those immigrating from oppressive political regimes, at risk children, and veterans via the Soldiers Project and the Ernest Lawrence Trauma Center. A current clinical interest of Hedda's is trauma resulting from forced political migration. A founding member of CIPS, Hedda helped to form the organizational identity of the Independent Institutes in North America, and promoted cooperation by helping to organize previous CIPS Clinical Conferences. She loves cats, is exquisitely fashionable, and to this day generously shares her home and mind with those of us fortunate enough to live in the Los Angeles area. She is still supervising, writing, presenting papers, and inspiring new generations of psychoanalysts. She was honored this year in Washington, DC as one of two most senior members of the United States workforce. At 102 she is still going strong!

 

"James S Grotstein is also a beloved teacher and leader for our community. He is well known for speaking and translating several psychoanalytic "languages"; that is, for keeping a constructive and productive discussion going among many analytic schools of thought. He is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Geffen School of Medicine (UCLA) and a training and supervising analyst at the New Center for Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalytic Center of California. Jim is also a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and a Past North American Vice President of the IPA. He has written 12 books and 287 articles on a variety of psychoanalytic topics. These accomplishments, however, pale next to his warmth, good humor, insight and vibrant mind, which enable him to bring theory "close" to his students and colleagues. Jim is open to new ideas and has developed a few of his own. Two recent examples being his thinking expressed in, Who is the Dreamer who Dreams the Dream?, and, A Beam of Intense Darkness: Wilfred Bions's Legacy to Psychoanalysis. He has left a legacy of supervision and technical understanding, including key phrases that have become familiar idioms among those who know him and have read his work; one has become the title of his latest two volumes: At the Same Time and on Another Level. Jim has been industrious enough, kind enough, and creative enough to provide the psychoanalytic community with enough written material to digest for many lifetimes.

 

"Both honorees gave a gracious thank you to the CIPS community and commended all of us for our efforts. Jim sent me these thoughts the following day, which I will share with you:

 

It was all so wonderful. I am so grateful to the CIPS Board, and to your whole organization, for the honor you bestowed on me and also the way you did it, so graciously. I was very moved.

 

I don't know if I made my point clear, but what I meant to say is that I had a vision of the important resource CIPS has at its disposal and the numbers of (our profession) that suffer from homogeneity. They all speak the same mantra with the same accent. CIPS has the advantage of being heterogeneous within a homogenous group; therefore you can explore different psychoanalytic points of view with each other.

 

But I also envisioned a larger view, one that reaches out to our culture politically and otherwise. It dawned on me that the newfound power of the religious right, of the evangelical movement, is due in no small measure to many charismatic ministers seizing the advantage of the media and converting masses of people because of the reach of television. Could this not be a means for psychoanalysis to propel its mission, along many lines, including infant development, education about the range of psychotherapies available, lectures on projection and rhetoric, etc? Or am I a dreamer? I think maybe I am, but it did occur to me, and I did want to share [this thought]. I think we do owe our accumulated wisdom and collective experiences for the common good of the public. If the "bad guys" can do it, why can't the "good guys"?

 

Thank you more than I could ever say.

 

Warmly,

 

Jim

 

"We are deeply grateful for our founding members and our honorees for contributing so much to us, and are left with their calls to action: we can be a political force as well as an educational one; we can meet need where we find it, we have strength in our collective effort, and we can export our clinical conference. CIPS has plenty to do! Thank you to the Board for your continued efforts on behalf of CIPS members and affiliates, and to all who attended for the commitment to our ongoing development as analysts."

 

Leigh Tobias, PhD, FIPA is the current President of CIPS and an active member of PCC.

 

******

 

Lisa read the following summary at the closing large group discussion on the last day of the conference. She began saying, "This year's CIPS conference lived up to its reputation as a stimulating clinical event where analysts exchange ideas in a small group setting. As the conference got underway, one particular question came up: What is a productive group, and what effect does its leadership have on the group's development?

 

"My particular group was comprised of four men and three women, CIPS members from Seattle, Mexico, and Los Angeles. Our levels of experience ranged from that of candidate to founder of an institute, and encompassed various theoretical orientations, as well-in other words, a diverse mix. Our group facilitator, John Lundgren, courageously led by example. When he asked who in our group would volunteer to first present clinical material, and was met with silence, he himself volunteered to start things off, and allowed for his own vulnerability to show through in the presentation of his case. One by one, we presented our work, and listened to each other from the perspective of what was taking place inside of our minds as we listened to each analytic couple and attempted to understand them. We discussed the varying levels our patients were at in their development, as well as the fact that symbol formation, an awareness of separateness, and the ability to tolerate anger and love were all precursors for the development of healthy sexuality.

 

"Most of the cases presented were at this pre-Oedipal level. We thought about each analytic couple's emotional intercourse, and the different states of mind we encounter in our work; from the uptight and rigid, to the fluid, wherein the couple doesn't feel they have to tear each other up. We were reminded of how hard this work can be and the importance of creating ongoing opportunities to share our work with colleagues.

 

"The differences between intrapsychic conflict and deficit issues were seamlessly amalgamated in the clinical discussion. Both perspectives were acknowledged and appreciated without dissension.

In the end, we realized that although we may each have different theoretical backgrounds, by leaving our theories at the door, and simply presenting our material, our responses to each other were not polarized. Moreover, a collegial bond was created that the discussion of theory couldn't interrupt. Not that we didn't get to some theory-we did. But, we worked our way to it from the bottom up, starting with our experience and what was stimulated in each of us as human beings.

 

 

ABSOLUTE TRUTH AND UNBEARABLE PSYCHIC PAIN

Psychoanalytic Perspectives

on Concrete Experience

 

Pbk 176pp, 

June 2012

ISBN: 9781855757981

 

EDITED BY ALLAN FROSCH

'This timely, thoughtful book delves into the burgeoning psychoanalytic topic of "thinking about thinking". The editor has chosen wisely in inviting a wide range of perspectives that demonstrate the excitement and complexity of integrating this essential and important task into our understanding of the therapeutic process. Reading it will be of invaluable help for the clinician who works with a broad spectrum of patients and is interested in expanding and refining treatment methods and techniques. Sophisticated and enjoyable to read, this book brings its readers to the forefront of our contemporary discourse and is a most stimulating contribution to "thinking about thinking".'

 

Fred Busch, PhD, Training and Supervising Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Institute of New England, and Fellow of the International Psychoanalytical Association (FIPA)

 

'For people who are willing to work with patients who experience their feelings on a concrete (or desymbolised) level and who can be very inaccessible to an analyst's attempts to reach them, this book is a very positive and encouraging statement about what work can be done. With incredibly sensitive and open discourse, each chapter reveals how, using many different aspects of one's self and not being put off by the long time it takes to reach such patients, one can eventually get to the underlying unbearable psychic pain that leads to concrete thinking. Rather than believing that these patients aren't capable of "analytic work", these analysts help their patients over time to transform concrete thinking to higher level abstract and symbolic thought and show how trauma can be eventually worked through. Congratulations to Allan Frosch and his group of excellent contributors for such an encouraging and important book.'

 

Carolyn Ellman, PhD, Training and Supervising Analyst at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR) and the New York Freudian Society

 

 

About the Editor: Allan Frosch, PhD, FIPA, is a training analyst and supervisor at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Research and Training (IPTAR) where he is also on the faculty. He is the author of a number of psychoanalytic articles and is twice past president of IPTAR, former dean of training, and former co-director of the IPTAR Clinical Center. Dr Frosch is also on the faculty at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Education (NYU Medical Center).

 

Contributors: Maxine Anderson, Alan Bass, Joseph A Cancelmo, Paula Ellman, Allan Frosch, Nancy R Goodman, Laurence J Gould, Caron E Harrang, Richard Lasky, and Janice Lieberman

  

 

 

With his concept of "O," Wilfred Bion provided a new psychoanalytic space in which to explore the mind. Annie Reiner's new book, Bion and Being: Passion and the Creative Mind, examines the similarities between this psychoanalytic space and the artist's creative sensibility, as well as mystical and religious states. This most mysterious and revolutionary of Bion's analytic ideas reflects what is essentially a state of being, an experience of mental integrity and union between emotional and rational functions of the mind which is the basis of thinking and creativity. In an effort to provide emotional understanding to Bion's theoretical ideas, Reiner uses examples of artists, poets, writers, theologians, and philosophers, including Rilke, Cummings, Shakespeare, Beckett, and Nietzsche, to illustrate these psychoanalytic concepts. She also presents detailed clinical examples of patient's dreams to explore the obstacles to these states of being, as well as how to work clinically to develop access to these creative states.

 

Click here to read reviews by James Grotstein, Warren Poland, and James Gooch or to order the book >

 

Annie Reiner, FIPA is a member and senior faculty member of The Psychoanalytic Center of California (PCC) in Los Angeles, and a fellow of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA). Her work was profoundly influenced by the ideas of Wilfred Bion, with whom she studied in the 1970s. Her psychoanalytic writings have been published in various journals and anthologies. In addition to her work and writings as a psychoanalyst, Annie Reiner is an accomplished playwright, poet and painter. She is the author of four books of poems, a book of short stories, and four children's books that she also illustrated. She maintains a private practice in Beverly Hills, California.

Here is a complete listing of new and ongoing study groups and facilitator(s):

 

• A Fruitful Harvest: Essays After Bion - Jeffrey Eaton, LMHC, FIPA (NPS) - NEW 

 

• Creating A Psychoanalytic Mind - Fred Busch, PhD, FIPA (IPTAR & PINE) - NEW

 ***

• Bion 1 - Maxine Anderson, MD, FIPA (NPS) and Marianne Robinson, PhD, FIPA (NPS) - Full (no openings at this time) 

 

• Bion 2 - James Gooch, MD, FIPA (PCC) - Limited openings  

 

• Enactment - Nancy Goodman, PhD, FIPA (DMS & CFS) - Full (no openings at this time)

 

 

Institute for Psychoanalytic Training & Research (IPTAR)

• The institute is pleased to announce the graduation on June 3, 2012 of Toba Tokgoz from the Adult Psychoanalytic Training Program, and of Rob M Fierstein, LCSW from the Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy Training Program.

 

Los Angeles Institute & Society for Psychoanalytic Study (LAISPS) 

 

 

Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society (NPS)

• NPS is moving, as of July 2012, from its longtime home in the Capitol Hill neighborhood to a new location in downtown Seattle. Headquarters for the Society and Institute will be at the First and Cedar Building (2701 First Avenue #120; Seattle, WA 98121). A celebration open to the local mental health community is planned for Wednesday, July 11 (7:30-9 pm) immediately following the NPS Annual Membership Meeting (7-7:30 pm). On this occasion, an election of officers will also take place. Judy K Eekhoff, PhD, FIPA will complete her term as Past President. David Jachim, PhD, FIPA is being nominated for the Presidency and Caron Harrang, LICSW, FIPA is being nominated for the position of President Elect. Acting Director of Training Maxine Anderson, MD, FIPA will be nominated for the position she was appointed to by the NPS Board earlier this spring. 

• NPS is continuing to prepare for its annual international Evolving British Object Relations conference rescheduled to September 7-9, 2012. The theme this year is Emotion and Meaning in Object Relationships: Experiences of Oedipal Constellations. How do mother and father's conscious and unconscious emotional union create meaning for the baby? How does unconscious emotion impact the discovery of meaning? Where does meaning originate? Do Oedipal configurations inform us when we are with our patients? This conference will explore these questions of internal relationships in light of our clinical experience. Featured presenters are Richard Rusbridger, FIPA (London), Gisela Klinckwort, FIPA (Munich), Michael Ian Paul, FIPA (Los Angeles), and moderator Robert Oelsner, MD, FIPA (Seattle). The call for papers deadline is July 1, 2012. Click here for conference details and registration. For information not covered on the website, please contact conference committee chair, Judy K Eekhoff at jkeekhoff@comcast.net. 

 

Psychoanalytic Center of California (PCC)