Dear Colleagues,

It is late in December and we are rapidly approaching the holiday season and the New Year. 'Tis the season when SFPRG is about to break out of its shell and become a greater presence in the community.

First, I would invite you all to go to our website, sfprg.org (click the link below) and check out the link to a podcast of an interview with Alan Rappoport. Alan is a wonderful teacher and passionate proponent of Control Mastery Theory. The interview is on the first page of the SFPRG website called "About SFPRG". Alan was interviewed by David Van Nuys for an online program called "The Wise Counsel". This program interviews many different prominent mental health professionals on topics of "mental health, wellness, and psychotherapy", and posts them.

Recent interviewees included Otto Kernberg and Judith Beck, among many others. The interview was written up in article form by Mark Dombeck and is available through the same link on our website. Mark Dombeck and David Van Nuys are very interested in SFPRG and would like to learn more about us. They are interested in helping us publicize some of our educational and research programs.

Alan's interview is very informative and he was quite well spoken. I'm hoping we are going to have more opportunities to talk about our theory, research, and teaching program through this and other appropriate teaching venues. Read On

Three of the workshops for the upcoming conference are highlighted here:

The Unfinished Child: 20's adult still homebound. Presented by D. Auld, R. Lieb

Why kids do the very thing that drives their parents crazy. Presented by S. Foreman

Pathological Compliance, Identification and Suggestion. Presented by J. Gibbins

For more information from the presenters click "Read On". For a full listing of the Conference go to our website for the brochure.

Read On

The SFPRG Clinic is thriving. The interns are enjoying a highly enriching experience. Many SFPRG members have been involved in supervising and teaching. We are continually interested in accepting new referrals. If you know of anyone who might benefit from our low fee structure or if you are affiliated with any institution, hospital, clinic or agency which may need to refer people for low fee therapy, please add the SFPRG Clinic to your list of available resources. To contact the Clinic, phone (415) 561-6771 or email sfprg@sfprg.org or click the link below. Norman M. Sohn, Ph.D., LCSW

I attended my first board meeting two weeks ago and am only now getting acquainted with the board's "inner workings." As the intern representative, it is my hope that I will be able to represent my cohort's interests and to contribute actively to SFPRG's success and implementation of its goals.

I first heard about Control Mastery theory in a class Carol Drucker, PhD, taught at the California School of Professional Psychology (CSPP). During her one lecture introducing the theory to her students, I immediately knew that I had finally found a theory that felt "true" to me.

I signed up for a one-day introductory class taught at the JCC and have not looked back ever since. As a pre-doc intern, I appreciate the clinic's atmosphere, my co-workers' and fellow interns' insights and sense of humor, and the training and supervision I receive. I could not have asked for a more supportive internship experience.

I'm currently working on my dissertation "Divorce: Gender differences in mourning the end of a marriage" and hope to be done soon! Clinically, my areas of interest include the divorce experience, the mourning experience, life transitions, and infertility.

The Monday Morning Case Consultation Seminar is now on break, and we will resume Monday February 2.

For those of you who have been considering attending this case discussion group, we have space available and now is a good time to join. The discussions focus on specific case material from participants' practices and the therapeutic interactions that are likely to further patient goals.

This is a spirited group, providing a safe space to discuss clinical material and an opportunity to sharpen your clinical skills.

For more information go to http://www.sfprg.org/Courses/courses.html, or contact me, Peter Schumacher, directly at 415-752-8501. Read On

For the second year in a row, SFPRG is offering a free series of parenting lectures to the community, this time in San Rafael. The parenting series is aimed more at parents than professionals and is one of the public services we perform. Originally the brain-child of Marshall Bush, SFPRG put on a yearlong series of talks last year on parenting at the Swedenborgian Church, where our longtime friend and member, Rachel Rivers was pastor until very recently.

This lecture series was such a success that Mary Sparks and Wendy Kirk, with Rachel's help, decided to create their own version of a parenting series of lectures at the Church of the Redeemer in San Rafael. This series runs on the second Wednesday of every month from January through May, 2009. Please see the link on our website for more information.

Speaking of our website, Peter Schumacher is working with his committee to put together a new format that will revolutionize our current website. He is soliciting input from all of the major committee chairs -- Membership, Education, Research, and the Clinic, to make access to information and activities more user-friendly. This is a work very much in progress and we are excited to find out how our new virtual home will look.

I wanted to say congratulations and hello to our newest Board Member, Helga Fasching, who is the first voting representative of the Intern group. In addition to her new duties as director, Helga will be taking over an important new project, revamping SFPRG's brochure. In the same spirit that we are revamping the Website, which will more accurately represent who we are as a group on line, the brochure will more accurately represent who we are to the public.

At seminars, conferences, presentations, the new brochure will be available to prospective members, prospective conference attendees, prospective referral sources to our clinic, and to potential donors who do not yet know what SFPRG has to offer. We have not revamped our brochure for years. We are just beginning to think about how we want to present ourselves as an organization to our community. In a similar vein, Karen Hubble, chair of our fundraising committee, is beginning to pull together an informational letter directed toward potential donors, with the help of Molly Sullivan and the rest of the committee. Again, the task is to clearly articulate who we are and what we do that is different. Our task is to say what special contribution SFPRG makes to our patients and to our fellow therapists compared to other clinical services, other training programs, and other teaching organizations.

We believe we have a unique way of thinking about what goes on in psychotherapy, based on Joe Weiss' theory that patients have an unconscious motivation and plan to get better. Joe theorized that patients test therapists in ways that other people in the field used to think of as not wanting to participate in therapy. Joe saw testing, not as a resistance to therapy, but as the actual way patients engage in therapy. This insight opened a door for therapists to try to figure out what the patient was actually trying to accomplish in therapy and to get on the same side as the patient to allow that to happen.

The research that Polly Fretter, Roxana Norville, and more recently George Silberschatz has done has showed that this ability of the therapist to ally herself with the patient's plan and make "pro-plan" interventions was a predictor of outcome. In the entire body of psychotherapy research, the only other variable that successfully predicted outcome was the patient's contribution to the Therapeutic Alliance. Since Control Mastery Theory is the only theory to talk about a patient's plan and how therapists make "pro-plan" interventions, it suggests that our group had something potentially very important to offer the public, both in terms of the theory of therapy and by directly helping patients.

Those of us who have had the advantage of learning Joe's groundbreaking ideas about how patients test in therapy, about how patients have a "plan" to engage the therapist in a particular way in order to get better - we have a sense of gratitude to Joe for giving us tools that make treating difficult patients so much easier. It is one of the important selling points of the research group that it teaches a model of psychotherapy that seems to work more often with more people. The 22nd Annual International Control Mastery Conference is coming together in its final form and the schedule is on a flyer in pdf form on our website. I encourage any of our newsletter readers who have not attended the International CMT Conference that takes place every March to carve out a week of intensive study with us and our colleagues. For those of you who have participated before, you know how much fun it is and I encourage you to come back. I have heard from our Norwegian friends that a large group of new students is coming along with many of our old friends who are long-term participants. If you want to learn about Control Mastery Theory and perhaps learn a little Norwegian, this could be a very good year.

Of course, no first time participant to the International CMT Conference should miss the Introductory Course given by George Silberschatz and Kathryn Pryor on February 28, the Saturday just prior to the beginning of the International CMT Conference.

I wish you all wonderful holidays and a terrific end of the year. I look forward to speaking with you next year.

Steve Foreman

Unfinished Child or Emerging Adult: The Challenges of the Young Adult Still Living at Home, Presented by Robert Lieb, Ph.D. and David Auld, Ph.D.

This seminar will increase participants understanding of the intrapsychic and family dynamics involved in young adults who are unable to fully emancipate. The course will follow specific cases from a perspective that integrates Control Mastery Theory and Narrative Therapy. Participants will examine how unresolved intergenerational issues, cultural themes and temperament converge toward a developmental impasse for the young adult and how attempted solutions ultimately maintain the "unfinished child's" stuck position. The seminar will help participants discriminate between different types of "unfinished children" and develop treatment plans that are appropriate for different clinical situations. There will be a special emphasis on dealing with the extreme manifestations of this problem, such as threats of suicide, addiction and potential violence. We will discuss how to build a new healthy family narrative around adult to adult relationships.

Why Kids Do The Very Thing That Drives Their Parents Crazy, Presented by Steve Foreman on Friday, March 6, 2009 3-5pm

Children do the very thing that drives their parents crazy in all families almost every day. This normal event represents normal testing of limits and other scientific explorations that children inflict on their families in order to grow up and learn about the world and themselves. In certain families, parents get unduly tortured by their children's provocative behavior and a cycle can become established in which parents feel the child is out to get them and the child feels the parents are damaged and don't love them anymore. This workshop offers a discussion of the importance of children testing parents in the same way that Control Mastery Theory has described how patients test therapists, not for the apparent goal of gratification of aggressive wishes but in order to master past traumas and relieve themselves of pathogenic beliefs.

Compliance, Identification and Suggestion, Presented by John Gibbins

This workshop will address the complex issues arising from our capacity as humans to be highly suggestible, which leads both to our unique ability to quickly incorporate new knowledge and skills through the processes of suggestion and its concomitants, compliance and identification, but also leads to pathological compliance and identification through the same power of suggestion. We will discuss the principles underlying these processes as it pertains to the development of pathological beliefs, and cover specific features of compliance phenomena in psychotherapy, such as compliance anxiety, protection of the beloved object through compliance, how protection of the beloved object through identification is differs from protection through compliance, the patient's real sense of danger based on compliance danger, family role phenomena and compliance, transference and passive-into-active tests based on compliance, and compliance issues in therapist countertransference. Case examples will be used to illustrate these points, and ample time will be available for the discussion of participants' case material.

*****SFPRG and Redeemer Preschool in San Rafael is presenting a free Public Series Benefiting Children of all ages on "Parenting Today." This series is intended to provide useful advice and helpful information about the challenges of being a parent, stepparent, or grandparent. The principles of good parenting are helpful to children of all ages and enhance all intimate relationships. This series will benefit parents, relatives, teachers, health professionals, and all intellectually curious people who love children.

Location: Church of the Redeemer, 123 Knight Drive, San Rafael (cross street is Pt. San Pedro Road)

Dates and Times: Second Wednesday each month: January 2009 - May 2009; 7:00 to 8:00pm

Child Care, Easy Access, Parking, Refreshments Served at 6:45pm

To view the full schedule click the link below to the SFPRG website.

*****Support Group for Neophyte Therapists Facilitated by Lindsey Beaven

Dear friends and colleagues,

I'm looking at the possibility of facilitating a support group for 'neophyte therapists' (students, interns, newly licensed MFTs, possibly other 'healers') starting in the New Year at the site of my private practice internship, the Imagine Center for Creativity & Healing, in San Rafael. I am envisioning it to be a group where members can

a) explore their evolving identity/mission as a therapist through using music, art, imagery & discussion,

b) receive peer support for wherever they are on this road,

c) share experiences about the whole licensing and examination process, and d) learn from doing how the arts and imagery can be incorporated into the work.

I'm also interested in other ideas the group might have for itself. I want to be clear that this will NOT be a supervision group, and we will not discuss client material except in the broadest of terms. I am not a supervisor! I am an intern in private practice who has held several internships, has finished her hours and is in between the two MFT exams.

To start with I'm imagining that the group will have 8-10 members and will run weekly for six weeks and for two hours per meeting. The day on which the group will meet will depend to some extent on the availability of space and the needs of the group members. At the moment I'm seeing this as an evening (6-8pm), weekday group. After six weeks, we'd have a week or two off and, if the idea is viable, start again. I imagine that, at that point, some people would want to stay, some leave, and some join. I would charge about $125 for the 6- week commitment. If this sounds interesting to you, please would you e-mail me at lindseybeaven@earthlink.net and let me know which days/times are best for you, and we'll go from there.

Happy Holidays to all, and let's see what we can get cooking in the New Year! Lindsey P.S. Please feel free to forward this to others you think might be interested.

*****San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis Public Lecture Series 2008-2009: Current Events and Their Discontents: Psychoanalyzing Politics, Culture and History

Hope, Inspiration and Politics: Reflections on the 2008 Election; Rachael Peltz, Ph.D.; Wednesday, 1/21/2009; 7:30pm - 9:00pm

A panel will offer thoughts on the Obama presidential campaign, addressing the relationship between citizens and political leadership, and the rekindled hope in participatory democracy. The panel will be comprised of members of Greendogs, a multidisciplinary group of friends working to enhance democracy, social justice and environmental sustainability through political action, public education and financial support.

Location: SFCP Auditorium, 2340 Jackson St.,; 4th Floor, San Francisco (entrance on Webster St.)

These lectures are free of charge. For future programs, please visit: http://www.sf-cp.org/Comm_Edu/pls.htm