Dear Colleagues,

March is one of my favorite months at SFPRG because of what we used to call the March Workshops but now we call the 24th Annual International Conference on Control Mastery Theory. I remember the excitement I experienced over 20 years ago when I used to invite myself to join the new attendees' workshop. We pored over transcripts of brief therapies while Joe and Hal asked questions, exploring hypotheses about what might be going on in the therapy. Through their questions and their gradual shaping of the formulation, Joe and Hal laid out principles of how patients respond immediately to therapist interventions, either positively or negatively.

We would speculate about what the patient was trying to achieve, how she might be testing the therapist, and then watch the interaction between patient and therapist, which never ceased to amaze me, how clearly you could follow the dynamics by following the transcripts. I would also invite myself along to lunch and look for opportunities to talk to participants about theory, feeling the excitement of their and my own deepening understanding of Joe's model. Read On

The big story for March is the resounding success of the 24th International Workshop, held March 7-11. For the first time, we found the limits of our office spaces in the Presidio: we had to turn away drop-in visitors to courses that were full of full-week workshop participants, because the Workshop was so well filled. 42 participants came from near and far -- including no less than 27 students and professionals from Norway, the largest Workshop since SFPRG has hosted it in our Presidio location.

The introductory course, taught by George Silberschatz on the Saturday immediately preceeding the Workshop, was even more full: after setting a limit of 50 participants, more seats were found, and 53 eager students and professionals attended the full-day course. Many of the courses during the Workshop were VERY full: only about 12 of the full-week Workshop attendees were previous participants, so the morning course for newcomers was packed, ably led by Steve Foreman and David Auld, as well as others of us who came in for a morning or two to help. Read On

The Membership Committee, Harriette Grooh, Karen Ulring and myself, are discussing how best to serve our members' needs. We are a friendly and hard working committee and welcome new people. If you would like to join us contact me, kathiedunnmft@comcast.net. Also, we want to increase the membership of SFPRG. If you are ready to join now, click the link below. You can also help us by forwarding this newsletter to others on your list.

SFPRG is a unique group of people which formed as a research group under the leadership of Joe Weiss with Hal Sampson. With Joe's passing we have weathered some storms on the future and direction of SFPRG. Read On

Dr. Barbara Sapienza Although recently retired from her psychotherapy practice, Barbara Sapienza continues her active involvement as a member of SFPRG. Initially introduced to Control Mastery theory while in graduate school, Barbara was attracted to the positive nature of the theory, and the fact that rather than emphasizing psychopathology, it was hopeful and optimistic, giving faith to the patient with its focus on unconscious plans. Control Mastery places great value on the collaborative nature of the therapeutic relationship, and the interplay between the patient and therapist.

Coming from an existential/humanistic theoretical background, Barbara found the ideas of control mastery to be highly compatible with her thinking and her approach to life. Read On

Our Spring Fundraising Drive is underway! Our goal is to raise a total of $15,000 by May 31. By now you should have received our email-- please take a minute to review it if you have not done so already. It highlights the significance of Control Mastery theory as well as the importance of our low-fee psychotherapy clinic. I know this organization is important to all of you. Your donation is a way to show your support and ensure that SFPRG can continue to serve the community, train new psychotherapists, and further psychotherapy research. We are hopeful that with your help we can meet our goal. We will track our progress together in this newsletter over the next few months.

In addition, we are planning a Member Art Show Fundraiser to take place in the next few months. We have many talented artists among our membership, and we would like to display their art for the community. This will be a fun and sophisticated event with light refreshments and beautiful art. The artists will get exposure, the attendees will have a wonderful afternoon, and all will be supporting the important work of SFPRG. If you are interested in participating as an artist please email me at kburrmft@gmail.com.

I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to all who have contributed so generously in the past. I know we can depend on your support for these events.

We've had two responses this month in the Testing Dialogue which will be divided into two articles. First we'll start with Steve Ross's response followed by Marshall's comments. In the next article you'll read the response from Lynn O'Connor followed with Marshall's comment.

From Steve Ross:

I'm excited to read the testing dialogue submissions and had a thought to contribute. In regard to tests that are impossible to pass, I agree with George that at the deepest level this is unlikely. But since therapists feel as if these come up, then something is going on. Perhaps such experiences are more "Signals" than tests as we understand "Testing." For example, if I accept the idea that there aren't really tests that are impossible to pass, then my feeling of being faced with one may be a form of counter-transference signaling me that I have some issues that I'd better look at. Or such a feeling might be a "Passive Into Active" Signal from my patient (rather than a "Passive into Active" Test) revealing the patient's desperation, perhaps at being caught in deep double binds which may be hard for the patient to understand and discuss. In this case, it would not be a pass/fail test, but a way of alerting me of my client's pain.

From Marshall Bush:

I question how reliable a guide counter-transference feelings are to understanding the patient's testing. I often feel disturbed in sessions in ways I would not attribute to the patient's testing. Steve's response to George's objections to the notion of tests that are impossible raises some tricky questions. Would a patient unconsciously present a test with the goal of having a therapist fail the test? I don't know. Part of the answer is semantic. Would a patient unconsciously present a test that cannot be passed? I would say yes. A behavior may have the unconscious intent of being adaptive, but the patient may unconsciously misjudge the therapist's ability to understand or pass the test.

Everyone, please share your thinking on these issues.

Marshall Bush

From Lynn O'Connor

I am so glad we are having this discussion of testing. There is one comment that Marshall made that I want to correct --he suggested that I don't think that the way in which patients test is related to their prior experience. This is not the case. Patients' tests DO relate to their prior experience, in childhood and later. But their Axis I psychopathology is most often not related to childhood experiences. Suppose someone has a psychotic disorder, for example schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is not "caused" by childhood experiences, we know that now. But how schizophrenic patients test their therapists may be very connected to how they were treated by parents, other caretakers, and later by peers and then by their treatment providers. While prior experiences may not be related to Axis I mental disorders (or Axis II for that matter, I conceptualize Axis II disorders as milder forms of Axis I disorders), many "traumatic" (difficult, painful) things happen to people afflicted with these disorders, and they test therapists to see if they will be different from people in their past, they look for models that differ, they look for kinder and more helpful treatment. People with illness, any illness for that matter, are traumatized by the illness and what happens to them because of the illness. They come for help, for treatment essentially for the ramifications of their illness, not for the illness per se. I am questioning (quite reasonably so I believe) this ongoing error in conceptions of etiology. I do not question the role we play in helping to overcome the ramifications of illness. People with illnesses are often treated badly and pathogenic beliefs (pathogenic guilt most often) become distressing and inhibiting. As therapists we have a role in countering these pathogenic beliefs. But serious mental disorders are not themselves the result of trauma-related pathogenic beliefs, the etiology lies elsewhere. I hope this is now clear, but if not, I look forward to explaining further.

From Marshall Bush:

I do not agree with Lynn on the etiology of psychopathology. Aside from some of the psychoses, most psychopathology, in my opinion, is caused by childhood trauma, and most patients direct their unconscious testing to mastering their traumatic experiences and relationships. However, Lynn addresses the important issue of how patients choose to test, a relatively neglected area in CM theory. Most plan formulations include conjectures on what pathogenic beliefs the patient will test, but how patients tests is less well understood (with the exception of passive into active testing, where it is assumed that the patient is identifying with a parent's traumatizing behavior). More contributions on the determinants of how (as opposed to what) patients test would be most welcome.

The following announcement was published on the UCSF, Dep't of Psychiatry web page. If you would like to see the full copy, click the link below.

George Silberschatz, PhD was recently elected President of the Society for Psychotherapy Research, an international organization of psychotherapy researchers representing 30 countries. For the past 2 years, he has been president of the North American Chapter and will begin his term as president of the international organization next year. Also, he has been appointed to the editorial board of the journal, Psychotherapy Research.

I am planning to co-teach a series of lectures of the psychology of the artist. We will cover Gauguin, Cezanne, Modigliani, and contemporary art. If you have a special interest in any of these artists or in contemporary art, please contact me (drmbush@pacbell.net).

Title: The psychology of the artist

Description:

The purpose of this course is to examine the psychology of particular artists in order to understand the unique personality factors that contributed to their creativity. We will aim to increase our appreciation of each artist's works and to further our understanding of the creative process in general. The class will meet for 3 hours, 4 times a year. Each class will include slides of the artist's work and guest lecturers (whenever possible). The artists to be covered are Gauguin, Matisse, and Modigliani. One class will be devoted to how to appreciate and understand contemporary art.

For each of the above artists, we will examine (1) the cultural milieu in which the artist worked; (2) the dominant historical events of the period; (3) family history and childhood and adult traumas; (4) formative educational and mentoring experiences; (5) the artist's work habits; (6) the evolution of the artist's mature forms of creative expression; (7) the artist's goals; (8) how best to appreciate the artist's work; (9) what does this artist teach us about the creative process?

Thanks, Marshall Bush drmbush@pacbell.net

"TOUCHED: DISCONFIRMING PATHOGENIC BELIEFS OF THOUGHT REFORM THROUGH THE PROCESS OF ACTING," (2010) Colleen Russell, LMFT, CGP, in "The Last Draw: Cults and Creativity", Special Edition, Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 9, No. 1.

Abstract: Leaving a high-demand group or cult, once one becomes indoctrinated, involves a conscious and unconscious process of disconfirming inaccurate, self-limiting, and self-sabotaging beliefs that have been internalized as a result of thought reform. The author identifies these typical beliefs resulting from thought reform in her work with former members, some of which she also internalized from her involvement in a high-demand group and eventually disconfirmed. From the perspective of an integrative cognitive, relational, psychodynamic theory, the author compares her two-year intensive participation in a renowned acting school with the forced conformity of the high-demand group. She elaborates on how she was "touched" by a character from an Ingmar Bergman short story (1977), and how this identification and other significant life events provided her with "corrective emotional experiences" (Alexander and French, 1946). These reparative experiences gave her the freedom to pursue healthy developmental goals.

For viewing the entire article you can go to Colleen Russell's website. Click the link below.

Note from Colleen: By the way, we are closing on an unexpected 30 day escrow, at the buyer's request, and selling our 1906 home in Mill Valley. My husband and I are moving to Bend, Oregon and I will be establishing a practice there and continuing phone sessions here. At this time, my website and contact information is the same. I hope to return to the SF Bay Area and attend SFPRG events.

The experience was stimulating, with so many people coming to learn and discuss, like a Greek Academy. We had great guests, Franz Kaspar and Reto Volkart from Switzerland, Jeremy Safran from the New School in New York, Hans-Peter Broch from Oslo, psychoanalysts from New Haven and from Buenos Aires, therapists from Italy and the Soviet Union. In those days we didn't even open the conference to local people because the idea was that Bay Area therapists had access to SFPRG all year. We only invited people from Boston and Austin, South Carolina, and Florida.

Over the years, some things have changed and some have stayed the same. I am now teaching the case conference for new participants that Joe and Hal used to teach, along with David Auld, Susan Landes, and John Gibbins, instead of sneaking in uninvited. One of the new participants said she was terrifically impressed with the experience of studying case transcripts, which she had never done before. It was for the same reason that impressed me, that you can see so much detail so clearly by following the transcripts, particularly the interaction between patient and therapist. This year we studied transcripts of the case of a psychoanalysis instead of a brief therapy. You can see the same obvious relationship between pro-plan therapist interventions and the patient's material immediately becoming clearer, bolder, unconscious material becoming conscious, and the patient's life improving as I could see when I first went over transcripts with Joe and Hal over 20 years ago.

One of the interns who had attended many of this year's seminars told me today how excited she was to be around so many people who were thinking about psychotherapy, who came to learn about the theory, talk about it, and challenge it. It was exactly how I felt about the March Conference 20 years ago, and still do.

The people who attended this year's workshop may have come in the largest numbers ever. We had 41 participants this year, 28 new and 13 returnees. We had old friends from Princeton, Los Angeles, Texas, Virginia, Norway, and the Bay Area. New friends came from Florida, Boston, Nashville, Palo Alto, and Norway.

The big story this year was the tremendous number of our new and old participants from Norway. Twenty-seven came from Bergen, Norway. And what a great time they had. Bernt Larsen wore his terrific orange Parisian hat to hear live music at the piano bar at Martunis. Large groups of young people left the Funston Thursday night party to attend the after party in the Mission.

Movie Night with The Station Agent was a great success, thanks to David Auld and Mia Salaverry. Tuesday night offered an opportunity to hear about new research at SFPRG and a thoughtful discussion of the psychology of Global Warming. I appreciated hearing regards from our Norwegian friends who couldn't come this year, Hans-Peter, Kari, Nina, Per-Einar, Helge, and Gaimon. I hope you can all come next year.

The teaching started with a very successful Introductory Course on Control Mastery Theory offered by George Silberschatz the Saturday before the Conference. Then the workshops this year offered a wealth of new seminars. In addition to the basic core seminars -- the Etiology of Psychopathology, Formulating a Plan, How Patient's Test, and principles of Technique, there were ten completely new workshops. Topics included telephone therapy, the role of cultural identity in pathogenic beliefs, diversity of technique among Control Mastery therapists, the therapist's internal dialogue, integrating neurobiology with psychoanalytic theory, exercise and self care for patients, self-care for therapists struggling with challenging patients, CMT and Intersubjectivity, forming an alliance with teens and families, and working with parents in the treatment of children.

Thanks to Susan Landes for organizing the 24th International Conference with tremendous help from David Auld and John Gibbins. Thanks to Eric Taggart for curating the first showing of Joe Weiss' art at both 9 and 10 Funston. Many of the pieces I remember from Joe and Estelle's home but many of the paintings I had never seen before, including the wonderful painting of Joe as a young man in an orange suit by Estelle.

Thanks to Rob Petitpas for his usual heroic administrative effort to put the Conference together and to Rodger for catering the Thursday night reception. Thanks to all the teachers: David Auld, John Gibbins, Jessica Broitman, Paul Ransahoff, Bill Dickman, Harriette Grooh, John Curtis, Norman Sohn, Karen Godfredsen, Jack Maslow, George Silberschatz, Carol Drucker, Elayne Lansford, Jamie Edmund, Marshall Bush, Irwin Gootnick, Patsy Wood, Alan Rappoport, Michael Lowenstein, Ginger Rhodes, Susan Badger, Susan Landes, Claire Arbour, Stan Steinberg, Suzanne Gassner, and Jane Jordan. Thanks to all the supervisors and the volunteers. Thanks particularly to Jodi Reiter who helped at every opportunity.

The yearly International Conference on CMT is one of the jewels of what SFPRG offers. Several guests called the experience "inspirational". One person asked me what it was like for me after all these years. With all of the wonderful things that SFPRG offers to the community of therapists and patients, the conference in March continues to be the highlight of the year for me. I hope all of you come back next year and bring your friends.

See you next month. Steve Foreman

In addition, the parallel morning course for returning participants was smoothly run by Jessica Broitman, Paul Ransahoff, Bill Dickman and Harriet Grooh, and well attended by the more experienced attendees. Our afternoon course, under many instructors, were likewise very full and exciting for the participants.

The luncheon for new attendees, hosted by Kathie Dunn and Harriette Grooh from the Membership Committee, was very successful, and the new attendees learned of the many advantages to membership in SFPRG.

The party for SFPRG members and Workshop participants, held on Thursday night, was filled with happy celebrants, who consumed all the food and libations to be had, with a large group retiring at the end for further celebration! All in all, this was a great workshop, and many thanks go out to our instructors, as well as special thanks to Susan Landes, principal organizer this year, and to our ever dependable and always hard working Executive Director, Rob Petitpas. Our plans for next year include an earlier start to planning and organizing, to deal with whatever size crowd we have in 2012.

We seem to be in a transitional phase from that first and second wave of researchers and clinicians who had intimate contact with Joe and Hal and each other. As I look around I see more people who have arrived through our internship program at the clinic, with that 1st and 2nd wave as their teachers and supervisors. We welcome and appreciate our interns' contributions in helping maintain our continuity and community.

In these economic times, membership dues can be a constraint on our finances. Know that your membership dues are a solid foundation which keeps us moving forward in the research, education and clinical training of Control Mastery theory. Without all of you, we would not be as strong as we are.

We have a solid theory to research, learn and teach. Through membership we keep the congeniality and optimism fostered by Control Mastery theory sustained. In light of these two attitudes the Membership Committee is developing get-togethers, formal and informal, to bring membership together and form closer bonds.

The Annual Conference has a long history and grows in attendance each year. The Membership Committee hosted a Luncheon for New Participants this year on Tuesday of the Conference. We had 27 New Participants, most from Norway, who enjoyed their lunches both inside the meeting room and outside on the steps in the lovely sunshine. We are gratified at the interest shown in learning Control Mastery theory and encourage attendees to join us at SFPRG.

We have several levels of membership as noted on our page on the SFPRG website. The membership committee is exploring if these levels should be added to and/or modified to support what potential and current members need. We have amended those categories, with Board approval, with an extension of the no dues membership policy of SFPRG interns to include membership until those Post-SFPRG-Interns become licensed.

We are also seeking SFPRG members who will buddy up with a newly joined member, introduce these people to others in our community, providing continuity. It is a great opportunity for those buddy volunteers to connect and re-connect with our community. If you are interested in contributing to this effort, let me know. kathiedunnmft@comcast.net

In closing, I extend to all our members and newsletter readers an invitation to become more involved in SFPRG by signing up as a member, joining the Membership Committee or another committee, becoming a buddy to a new member, and/or teaching/supervising. Thank you, Kathie

Barbara credits her attendance at both Steve Foreman's and Hal Sampson's case conferences and the stimulating discussions and case presentations as helping deepen her understanding and commitment to the theory, and she was particularly influenced by Hal's emphasis on "treatment by attitudes".

Barbara"cherishes" her work with Jessica Broitman, and through that relationship became involved in the clinic and training institute when it moved from the Wright Institute to the Presidio. Her enthusiasm is palpable when she speaks of her five years as Director of Training and how their focus was on creating a safe environment in which the interns could thrive and find their individual voices as they develop strong underpinnings in CM theory.

It is clear that from the early clinic days through the present time there has been an emphasis on providing a nurturing environment for both interns and patients. In Barbara's words, it is "important as clinicians to keep ourselves finely tuned". To her this means taking care of one's self as a therapist. That has been reflected in her own clinical work and in what she has conveyed to the interns.

We wish Barbara all the best in her retirement, and at the same time look forward to her continued participation in SFPRG.

If you are interested in being featured in Member's Corner, please email me at maslowj@comcast.net or phone at (415) 454-7698.