Our Events: Susan Johnson Program, PhD: Sexuality and Attachment in Couples Therapy 

Susan Johnson, PhD

On a beautiful, summery Sunday, June 24, CPPNJ members and guests welcomed our Canadian visitor, Dr. Susan Johnson, to Lenfell Hall on the Madison campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University.

Dr. Johnson showed a video of a couple dancing a charged Argentinean tango as a way to illustrate her model of attunement and synchrony-the goals for Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)--with partners who can be present and open to each other through the development of a secure, emotional connection. Dr. Johnson described the tango as an intimate conversation in which each person must keep his or her emotional balance. She quoted Mae West: "Sex is emotion in motion." Dr. Johnson expressed concern that many practitioners have come to view sexuality and adult bonding as separate entities.

Dr. Johnson provided research showing how EFT changes the attachment bond using a 20-session protocol. Improving a couple's experience of sexuality, she emphasized, is not about technique but about safety. In the case of a trauma survivor, the partner needs to provide an environment conducive to healing. Dr. Johnson presented EFT as a Rogerian, process therapy in which partners construct their emotional experience of relatedness.

Program attendees enjoyed lunch outside under a tent in the open air, which seemed to provide space for the expression of the energy generated in the course of the morning discussions. After lunch, Dr. Johnson played a video to illustrate how she works with couples. She outlined her approach including:

            1. De-escalating of conflict

            2. Restructuring interactions

            3. Consolidating new experience

Her method emphasizes resolving sexual problems with the partners acting as a team. She was encouraging, saying that disconnection is normal; so long as there are enough moments of attunement, emotional safety will be experienced.

Seth Warren and Susan Johnson.

Lunch break.

Psychoanalysis in a Globalized Community: "Skype" Video Treatment of Patients in China by CPPNJ Analysts 

By Cristine Grapa, LCSW, LMFT 

On May 6, 2012, we were transported from the Rutgers Campus across worlds of geography, politics, history, and culture to present-day China! The journey held wonders as a story of human interest, of humanitarian and professional outreach and discovery, and of unprecedented technological opportunities and resources to be explored in the context of analytic treatment and training. Our 'traveling machine,' the China American Psychoanalytic Alliance (CAPA), is a non-profit organization incorporated in 2006 to develop and promote mental health services in China by training local mental health professionals as psychodynamic psychotherapists and by providing psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic treatment to its community-in-training.

CAPA's mission emerged in response to grassroots needs noted by Elise Snyder, MD, during a 2001 trip to Beijing where she was invited to present a paper on psychoanalysis. Dr. Snyder found that there was a severe paucity of mental health services within an environment marked by alarming suicide rates and serious mental health problems, increasingly evident in the rapid, changing milieu of contemporary China. At the same time, China's mental health community has an avid interest and desire for organized intensive training, treatment, and psychoanalysis, a need that had not been met. Continued assessment, collaboration, and innovative use of modern technology between 2001 and 2006 resulted in CAPA's inception.

CAPA carries out its mission through a modified psychoanalytic training program fashioned after the tripartite structure of most psychoanalytic institutes combining class work, clinical supervision, and personal therapy. CAPA offers basic and advanced two-year adult psychodynamic psychotherapy programs and a low-fee treatment clinic for its candidates. Currently, there are 160 candidates attending classes in more than ten cities, plus supervision in both of these programs; 53 candidates are involved in three to five sessions a week of psychoanalysis, 54 in once a week psychotherapy, and more are still on the waiting list.

Black Psychoanalysts Speak About Diversity and Culture 

By Marion Houghton, LCSW

"Something is happening here." With these words, Richard Reichbart, PhD, captured the energy and excited anticipation in the room at NYC's Park Avenue Methodist Church on Saturday morning, May12 at an IPTAR program. He opened the program by introducing Michael Moskowitz, PhD, who, in turn, presented the invited panelists. They were C. Jama Adams, PhD; Annie Lee Jones, PhD; Cheryl Thompson, PhD; Kathleen PogueWhite, PhD; and Kirkland Vaughans, PhD.

Michael asked the roundtable members, who were all Black but came from very different places and by different paths:

            "What brought you to psychoanalysis?"

            "What made it possible for you to come here today?"

I realized: "It feels alive here." I had originally decided to attend in support of my colleague and friend, Cheryl Thompson. Now I felt a compelling sense of personal engagement. The audience filled the entire room. I looked around and saw a diversity of color-all shades of black and white humanity. Together, it seemed each of us both claimed our own space and shared a common one.

Each of the roundtable participants spoke in turn, to and with each other, and we all hung on every word. Poignant stories were told-mostly about experiences of feeling as if being "on the outside looking in"---as these Black women and men described entering and struggling through their respective psychoanalytic trainings.

"Folks weren't my people," Kathleen said. "Psychoanalytic institutes were racist," Jama said.

The more I listened, the more I identified with what the participants were saying. How could that be? I'm not Black...my mind searched within itself. Someone mentioned a paper by Mary C. Waters entitled: "Optional Ethnicities: for Whites Only?" So, perhaps there was much more to think and learn about.

Before the program ended, many audience members were sharing their own experiences of rejection and misunderstanding related to ethnicity and cultural origin. One of the panelists referred to psychoanalysis itself as a "traumatized immigrant."

In response to the expressions of alienation and isolation shared by participants about their psychoanalytic journeys, Kirkland Vaughans offered a different perspective. He told his fellow roundtable members and the audience that we all need to take responsibility for "building some space" for ourselves in the Institutes to which we belong.

I heard many stimulating ideas that Saturday morning...

            Institutes need to become more culturally respectful-they need to

            create space for "telling truth."

            We are all strangers. We all have to make a home for each other.

How are we doing with culture and diversity at CPPNJ? It seems to me it would be a discussion worth having. And how can we open up our outreach activities to seek out persons who have not traditionally been included in our Institute?

There may be a "Black Psychoanalysts Speak: Part 2". Anyone interested?  

Member Presentations and Publications 

Martin Silverman, MD  

• Presented a paper titled "Spontaneity and Restraint in Child Psychoanalysis" at the annual meeting of the Association for Child Psychoanalysis in Santa Fe, NM on May 4, 2012. 
• Delivered the annual Freud Lecture, titled "Freud, Oedipus, and the Reality Principle," at the New Jersey Psychoanalytic Society on May 15, 2012. 
• Presented an invited paper, "The Amazing Case of the Boy Who Dropped Out of the World," to the New Jersey Institute for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy on May 18, 2012. 
• Participated, at the invitation of its organizer, Jonathan Lear, in an interdisciplinary conference (psychoanalysis and philosophy) on "The Installation of Good and Bad" at the University of Chicago on May 25-26, 2012.  

All Programs are Co-Sponsored with the New Jersey Society for Clinical Social Workers 

Our E-Newsletter Editorial Staff

Unsolicited articles are welcome.  Something you'd like to write?  Send it to us at cppnj@aol.com.  We're happy to hear from you.   

Thank you for joining us. Look for our next newsletter in September when we introduce our new faculty member, Sue Grand, PhD.