March 16, 2010

Dear Colleagues,

Beware March Madness for it is approaching. Enjoy the ides of March, which was yesterday. And farewell to the 23rd International Conference on Control Mastery Theory that occurred the first week of March.

The group that attended this year's International Conference was terrific. There were over twenty first-time participants and over ten returnees. There were many others who attended sporadically throughout the week. We had nine visitors from Norway including six new students. One participant hailed originally from the Ukraine. We had two new students from Florida referred by our friend and colleague, Enrique Casero. One returning participant told me that he learned more about psychotherapy in one week in San Francisco this year than he had in five years in graduate school. Read On

On April 3rd, 9:00 a.m. - 4:15 p.m., we will be offering a day-long discussion of child and family therapy based on Steve Foreman's new book: Breaking the Spell: Understanding Why Kids Do the Very Thing That Drives You Crazy. Dr. Foreman is a very clear and entertaining lecturer who will discuss ways to better interpret and intervene with children's difficult and sometimes troubling behaviors. Please check the website for a more complete outline of the workshop.

The 23rd Annual International Control Mastery Conference was a terrific success. We had 26 people enrolled for the full week, and an additional 8 for specific days. Participants were enthusiastic in their reviews, rating the workshops very highly in reflection of what we believe was a week of superb teaching.

Thanks again to the 35 teachers and supervisors who gave their time and knowledge to make this conference so rich and rewarding. One of the most impressive characteristics of our group is the willingness of our faculty to come together each year to participate in this intensive learning experience. SFPRG could not offer its educational curriculum without your support and expertise, for which we are very grateful. Read On

Hello all and happy spring!! The International Conference was again a success as you have read from Steve and David. The Membership Committee also had a table set up on Wednesday at the lunch break to sign up new members and we are now 3 people stronger.

I would like to again remind members who want to renew that we need your input and renewal ASAP for our Membership Directory. That process has begun and if we don't have your renewal you may not make it into the Directory.

As Chair of this Committee I rely on feedback from the Membership on how they view their relationship with SFPRG. I am listening ... .

Also, if you have thought about becoming a Committee member, I am looking for people interested in increasing membership and in finding ways to make membership more active and relevant to you. Contact me at kathiedunnmft@comcast.net if you have time. We meet the last Friday, 12 noon, each month, at #10 Funston in the Presidio.

I am dedicated to making membership in SFPRG a worthwhile experience for us all.

Best, Kathie

Hello again. I'm writing to encourage you to participate in the Research Committee's project on Plan Formulation by clicking the link below to provide George and John with more data. There has been a lull in the input.

SFPRG has a rich history of empirical support of Control Mastery Theory and this is no time to stop that research. In fact, it is even more important now than ever with our dedication to being on the cutting edge of psychotherapy research.

Please, readers and members, take some time to click the link below and send data to this project. Information is confidential and the process is straightforward and interesting.

I stumbled into Control Mastery quite accidentally about 6 years ago when I moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco after graduate school. On my very last day in Los Angeles, I attended a workshop at the clinic where I had been an intern. The therapist who gave the workshop really impressed me and I went up to him afterwards to see if he happened to know any therapists in San Francisco that I could approach about supervision. He thought for a minute and then said, "Well, I know this one guy". The person he was referring to was Neil Young, a psychologist who has been working in Control Mastery for over 30 years, someone who trained directly with Joe Weiss and Hal Sampson at Mt. Zion. Neil is one of the seasoned old timers working in this orientation.

I contacted Neil when I arrived in San Francisco. Within a week of moving here, I was sitting in his office for our first supervision session. I didn't have a single client yet. Little did I know that the most valuable part of my education was about to begin, and that it would continue for years. I presented a difficult case to Neil from my work in Los Angeles. He seemed to immediately grasp the case down to its subtleties and offered keen insight and new angles from which to conceptualize this woman's dilemmas. His approach struck me as unique. He didn't talk about resistance or defenses in the typical ways, and he seemed to stay right with the client. It was clear that he had something of real importance to offer and that his modality was very effective. Read On

I'd been watching her from afar for a few weeks. She looked lonely. Always sitting by herself, much like I often do. She seemed happy with her friends, but when they left she seemed worse than before, like something she needed had been taken away. She was an odd one, strange habits and behaviors were daily occurrences. Her parents treated her nice enough it seemed, but her reactions were hollow, robotic. I dared not pry into why she acted this way.

She wore no make-up, said that it was stupid. Real women should have natural beauty, it drew me closer to her. Her brothers were protective, too much so. None of the boys would talk to her, they feared her siblings, and rightly so. They were known for taking things too far once started. She was a wreck. A beautiful, self-destructive, kind, hateful, funny, and distant wreck. I'd talked with her many times, though we never got very close. Our reactions to another were automatic, mine as to hide my feelings for her(I was shy), hers for reasons I can't be sure of. We would talk about minuscule things, boring topics forcibly brought up out of a sense of need. I found it very difficult to contain my feelings when we talked. I felt like bursting open, blurting it all out at once, if only to see her reaction. How could someone love me, she would think.

I could see it in her eyes, however, that she was already too far gone. After a time, she became distant around her friends as well, and stopped talking to me entirely. We'd pass each-other, and I would look at her, but not so much as a glance in my direction was given. Then, after a week of her new behavior, she vanished altogether. I asked around, but no one had heard anything. I felt heartbroken. I felt as though a bright light in my life had suddenly gone out, and the ensuing darkness gave me no console. After a few weeks, I'd heard something about her. At first I thought it was a lie, until it was confirmed by her parents in a conversation I'd overheard. Those tears were not faked.

She had committed suicide, the day before. I was crushed. And so now all I have left to do, is write this memoir of the woman I loved, but never really knew. It's the only way to make the pain subside, if only for a short time.

CH is a current psychotherapy client with a Control Mastery therapist.

+Joseph Cristofalo will be teaching Introduction to Control Mastery Theory as part of the NCSPP spring offerings on April 17, 2010 from 9:30-12:30 at an East Bay location TBA. Register for the class at www.ncspp.org.

+Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis--Bay Area OPEN HOUSE

Sunday, April 18, 2010, 2:30 p.m.: 3022 Steiner Street, San Francisco Flyer will follow in March.

Betsy Wootten. ICP Bay Area Program Administrator, 6493 Cooper Street, Felton, CA 95018, 831-335-5526 phone & fax, bwootten@mac.com

All the participants I spoke to were fairly glowing in their reviews of the entire week. Members of the Education Committee have gone over most of the course evaluations and so far they have been universally positive. The committee will review all the evaluations and get back to the seminar teachers to give important feedback how to improve our presentations. The committee members also carefully read the participants' suggestions for further topics and will use that input to plan next year's workshops as well as come up with ideas for future weekend conferences and courses.

We want to thank all of our teachers as well as our participants. One of the reasons that the International Conference is so successful every year is that we have phenomenal teachers who think about the theory and present their own ideas and applications of the theory with passion and creativity.

One of the goals of the Education Committee is not only to provide an excellent opportunity for participants to learn about the theory but to offer our members an opportunity to teach and supervise. We have many teachers who want to teach, and who have taught for many years. The curriculum planning committee tries to involve as many teachers each year as possible as well as offers a varied and continually renewing set of topics. The committee encourages anyone who wants to teach to contact the committee with ideas.

Generally, the committee contacts people who have taught before and invites them to teach again, either the same topic as previously or a new one. Teachers should realize that there is a rotation of topics and teachers to give as many people a chance to teach who want to as well as to offer fresh and diverse topics that will be meaningful to returning participants. If you didn't teach this year and wanted to, please teach next year. Please contact the committee with your desires and your ideas.

I want to remind anyone who treats children, parents, families, or treats clients who have children, parents, or families to come to a day-long conference on April 3, 2010, called Breaking the Spell, Understanding Why Kids Do the Very Thing That Drives Their Parents Crazy. It is a comprehensive course on working with children and their families that looks at how children test parents in much the same way that patients/clients test therapists. It gives a compassionate look at both children and their parents and details some concrete strategies that therapists can offer parents who are caught up in a miserable cycle of blame and despair with their kids.

Also in April, on the 17th of the month, Susan Landes will be breaking ground in Auburn, offering a new half-day conference: How and Why Psychotherapy Works: An Introduction to Control Mastery Theory. For people in the East Bay, Sacramento, Davis, and points east, please take advantage of this terrific opportunity to learn about Control Mastery Theory. The Education Committee has specifically asked Susan to help develop resources for interested participants east of the San Francisco/Berkeley area. We would love to develop a teaching format to reach interested students in the extended Bay Area.

Enjoy the beginning of Spring next week. See you in April.

Steve Foreman

A long term member of our group, Susan Landes, PsyD., is working with the Education Committee to create a planning matrix for future conferences which will merge tasks and timelines. If you have any ideas for ways to improve the conference, please contact me at davidauld@sbcglobal.net.

Susan is also going to be offering a workshop in Auburn, CA on April 17th from 9:00 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. called How and Why Psychotherapy Works: An Introduction to Control Mastery Theory.

We are beginning to organize the Post-Graduate Course in Control Mastery Theory, scheduled to begin this coming September. We anticipate offering a year-long training course divided into two semesters (12-16 weeks in length), modeled after our current Wednesday evening training, New Directions in Control Mastery Theory. The goal of the new course will be to teach the basic tenants of the theory followed by a case conference. Irwin Gootnick, M.D., and John Gibbins, Ph.D., recently presented CMT and Irwin's self-help books (Why You Behave in Ways You Hate; Self Help for Smarties), to the Community Institute for Psychotherapy in Marin County. The discussion was very well received. The Education Committee would like to especially thank Irwin for leading the case conference section of the New Directions series.

I soon got a job at a treatment center for women in Marin and simultaneously started my supervised private practice with Neil. When we began, I only had one client, so I often talked about my cases from the treatment center, which were typically quite difficult and challenging. What struck me most about Neil was his ability to give me so much information about a client based on so little information from me. Initially, I was downright skeptical. Could these detailed hypotheses be accurate? But I quickly discovered that his formulations and insights were absolutely on the mark. Whenever I brought his precise insights or interpretations back into the room, the client would get this look of dawning realization on her face and say, "yes, that's exactly how I feel". It was remarkable. I think this was reflective of both Neil's tremendous skill as a therapist, as well as the undeniable effectiveness Control Mastery. At this point, I started to become serious about learning this orientation that was so beautifully effective it sometimes seemed almost magical to me.

For the next 6 years or so, I learned Control Mastery entirely through my supervision experience. The theoretical concepts were alive in the room with my clients. I could see and hear evidence of clients' plans breaking through their general despair. I felt my own acute discomfort at the passive into active testing. When I passed a client's test, his or her reduction in anxiety was palpable in the room, nearly visceral for me. I would marvel at what sometimes appeared to be exponential improvement on the heels of passing a client's key test.

I kept telling myself that soon I would start to actually study this theory. I had Joe Weiss's book on my shelf at that point, and I had printed out a number of articles. But I was a busy and overwrought intern working full time at an agency as well as part time in my private practice, and I just couldn't take on another endeavor. Week after week, however, I continued supervision with Neil, and I gradually became more comfortable using Control Mastery. Eventually, I realized I was automatically formulating cases in terms of the theory. It was starting to feel less effortful and more second nature to me. I began to instinctively go the right way in session without having to think it through so thoroughly. At one point Neil said, "You're intuitively working in the theory. It's in your bones now".

A couple of weeks ago, I attended the Control Mastery conference for the very first time. Having recently become licensed and with more time on my hands now, I was very excited to finally "formally" learn the theory and fill in the gaps in my understanding. I wanted to get a comprehensive overview of Control Mastery. To my surprise, what I discovered at the conference is that I already know the theory. I know it experientially, having been supervised in it all these years. It has become the natural way that I think and work as a therapist. Only then did it hit me fully that this supervision that I stumbled into though mere happenstance 6 years ago has been an invaluable education for me and that I have been thoroughly trained in an orientation that is remarkably effective. This serendipitous path has entirely shaped me as a therapist.

The conference was such an enriching experience. It reinforced and deepened my understanding of the theory. I learned so much. Also, there was an immediate feeling of camaraderie in the group. It felt so good to be collaborating with other therapists who understand and use Control Mastery. I was eager to come to the Presidio every day and delve deeply into these concepts together as a group.

One of my favorite parts of the week was the Saturday Introduction to Control Mastery workshop. It was the perfect balance of lecture, discussion, and experiential learning. Steve Foreman and Steve Kanofsky are both such wonderfully comfortable speakers. They were able to describe the theory in a very accessible way. Later, you could hear a pin drop while Jan Schreiber did her mock therapy session with a therapist from the audience. Jan had such a soothing manner and presence, and people were captivated by this very rare opportunity to watch a live therapy session. Another of my favorite parts of the week was the daily morning group during which we read aloud transcribed sessions of the case of A.R. This was a fascinating learning experience. What a luxury to be able to discuss and contemplate the fine points and subtleties of these psychoanalytic sessions.

Now that I am licensed, and the dust has settled on my formerly overwrought life, I realize I am free to delve into this theory to my heart's content. Like nearly all therapists, I intend to be a lifelong learner in this work. I love that our work seems to both demand this of us and also provide this for us. I now have the time to read and savor the literature, to contemplate my cases more deeply, and to continue to learn and integrate this theory into my work in a variety of ways. Happily, there is plenty of time now to take Joe's book down from the shelf and finally crack it open. You will certainly see me at the conference again next year--- and, I suspect, every year after that. After all, it's in my bones.

Kasandra Burr, MFT has offices in Mill Valley and downtown San Francisco. Her specialties include addiction treatment, major childhood trauma resolution, chronic illness management, and couples therapy. Her office number is 415-339-1282, or you can email her at kburrmft@gmail.com.