Dear Colleagues,
This is our first newsletter we are putting out without the help of Kathie Dunn, who has been the editor and founder of the newsletter. The newsletter has been an invaluable tool of communication for SFPRG. We have over 600 subscribers, many more than SFPRG has members. Kathie has also served for many years as chair of the Membership Committee, taking over after Kathy DePaola left the Board and her chairmanship of the committee. Kathie has worked diligently to expand membership and to reach members of our community both within and outside of the group, through the newsletter and through many lunches and other social gatherings. I would like to thank her for her great work and wish her well. Next month we hope to have an interview with Kathie in Jack Maslow's feature column.

We are currently editing the newsletter as a joint project of the Board. We welcome letters to the editor(s) from any interested readers. We welcome theoretical articles, book reviews, and comments of all kinds. I am publishing Part One of an article I am writing on Pathological Identifications in a separate column. Further installments will follow. Please feel free to comment or send in your own ideas.

We are excited to host the 26th Annual International Conference on Control Mastery Theory, which is two weeks away. Please also come to George Silberschatz' and John Curtis' Introductory Seminar on CMT, Saturday, March 2. On Monday, March 4, we will welcome all participants at 9 Funston to the beginning of the week-long conference. We will continue with Alan Rappoport's audiotaped therapy as a means to teach theory and therapy process to new attendees. It was very well received last year. Alan was able to join us for one of the sessions, which was a big treat for all who were there.

The Conference continues to evolve in response to suggestions from attendees and faculty. We are offering a whole set of new seminars this year that compare and integrate Control Mastery Theory with other models, including CBT, Attachment, Intersubjectivity, Object Relations, and Schema Therapy. We continue to offer our "core" seminars and are offering completely new workshops on spirituality (Rachel Rivers), Improv and Therapy (Heather Clague), Chronic Illness (Elayne Lansford), and new research (John Snyder). We have made a concerted effort each year to teach the basics -- core seminars and solid clinical courses, but we have branched out to new clinical ideas and new integration with other relevant theories. We make a priority to be fair and inclusive to teachers. We include anyone who wants to teach as well as respect those who have been teaching for many years. The International Conference is an opportunity to meet the needs of those who come to learn but also those of our members who love to teach and develop their ideas. We welcome and utilize feedback from participants and always are trying to improve what we offer.

In addition to seminars, we offer a research Pizza and Beer party on Monday night for attendees who want to talk about research and any local researchers who want to discuss their work. Wednesday night is movie night and this year we will be viewing 49 Up, a longitudinal study of a cohort of English men and women who have been followed since age 7 at intervals of every 7 years. The conference reception/party will be Thursday night at 10 Funston; everyone is welcome to attend. We hope you can come to the conference, learn, teach, or just connect with the attendees and with each other. The International Conference is one of the highlights of the year and one of the big contributions that we make at SFPRG to teaching and learning about how psychotherapy works.

I hope to see you at the Annual Conference. Have a good month.
Steve Foreman

We are three weeks away from The 26th Annual International Conference on Control Mastery Theory. In addition to our series comparing and contrasting CMT with 5 other treatment approaches, there many other interesting workshops to attend. Two workshops this year will be focused on issues related to diversity: one on spirituality and the role of faith and religion in psychotherapy; the other on multicultural issues including gender, race, and sexuality. CMT is a case based approach. The theory assumes pathogenic beliefs are developed out of very personal and individual experiences. Therefore, being mindful of diversity issues such as class, race, religion, gender, and sexuality are an important part of our understanding of plan formulation. ALthough we encourage people to register for the entire week, locals may attend classes on a first come, first serve basis. For more information on the conference and to see what other workshops are being offered, look on the web site. I look forward to seeing you there.

Click here for a pdf of the full schedule

Future daylong conferences are being planned for 2013. On the April 13th we will have a conference on looking at Trauma work through the lens of CMT and exposure therapy titled "The Role of Exposure and Safety in Two Treatments for Trauma: Control Mastery Theory and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy". Other conference topics being considered are Addiction and Mindfulness. Please let us know if you have a topic of interest or wish to teach.

drsusanlandes@earthlink.net

Susan Landes, Education Committee chair, Annual International Conference chair, and our newest SFPRG President-Elect, also has the distinction of having been in on the founding of the SFPRG Clinic, and was the first clinic intern. At the time, Susan was working on her Psy.D. at the Wright Institute where the clinic was first located.

Susan feels fortunate and "blessed" to have received her pre-doc training in Control Mastery, citing the influence of her teachers and supervisors including Joe Weiss, Jessica Broitman, Steve Foreman, and Lynn O'Conner. From her introduction to Control Mastery Theory in 1989 by Dr. Richard Levine, Susan has felt a great affinity for the theory. In those early years she took C.M. classes through U.C. Extension and began attending Joe Weiss's case conferences, which she attended for many years.

She was attracted to the humanistic aspects of the theory and its view of altruism as an important human trait in emotional development. The positive nature of the theory emphasizing the importance of early interpersonal relationships is directly linked with the notion of altruism. As a new clinician Susan found the concept of 'testing' and the patient's desire to have the therapist pass the tests as something that helped to relieve her worries about making therapeutic mistakes. There is always another chance, and our patients will try to coach us in the right direction.

Susan feels grateful to the organization for what she has learned and for the success she has attained in her career. As a clinician she is committed to SFPRG and values the relationships she has formed. Many of the members who were her early mentors such as John Gibbons and Marshall Bush among others are now colleagues. After receiving her Psy.D., Susan opened a practice in Auburn, and for several years her involvement with the organization was limited to some conferences and workshops. One day when she happened to be at the SFPRG office, she ran into Steve Foreman who asked her to serve on the education committee. From that time on she has been a non-stop participant is all aspects of the organization. Read On

The clinic training year is headed into its second half. We have a great group of trainees with lots of enthusiasm for applying their increased learning of CMT.

Meantime, Jessica Broitman and Carol Drucker are sifting through applications and interviewing people interested in training with us next year. We'll hear soon whether we have "matched" in the first round with any of the PhD applications. We are still accepting applications from MFT, MSW and Psych Assistants. We'll continue the process until we fill our cohort next year.

One of the reasons we have such a strong group of trainees is the supervision they receive. We have an excellent group of group members who have volunteered their time to supervise one of our trainees. We could always use more - especially people in San Francisco. It's a great experience to supervise. If you're interested, please get in touch with Jessica or Carol for more information.

We appreciate you keeping the clinic in mind for your referrals.

Former SFPRG intern, John Snyder, PsyD, was recently awarded a small research grant from the Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR). The grant will allow the SFPRG Clinic and Training Center to purchase iPad tablets for the purposes of conducting research on the process of psychotherapy. Patients will utilize these iPads in place of paper and pencil Intake and Session Feedback forms. The iPads will allow not only for a more efficient means of data collection, but will also allow for important patient information to be made immediately available to clinicians.

Snyder has been working with SFPRG member, George Silberschatz, PhD, to collect data on the patient's experience of attunement during therapy sessions for the past two years. Snyder will be presenting his findings later this year in Brisbane Australia. He will also be presenting at this year's SFPRG Annual Conference, where he will be discussing a 2-year case study demonstrating how to utilize the research process to simultaneously inform clinical practice, enhance clinical training, and contribute to the literature on psychotherapy research.

This is Part One of an article called "Pathological Identification." I will include further installments in future newsletter columns.

The purpose of this paper is to address the question of why people faithfully repeat the negative, hurtful, and destructive behaviors that their parents exhibited, even when they may have consciously vowed never to do so. Pathological identification occurs prominently when adults repeat the mistakes and mimic the character flaws of their own parents while attempting to parent their children (1, p. 123). It is the central dynamic in child abuse where parents hurt their children, repeating the behaviors that were visited upon them by their parents in a pattern that can continue generation after generation (1, p. 128). Pathological identifications can affect all relationships negatively including those in marriage, work, and friendships. It is a prevalent and important cause for pathological behaviors and affects. Its importance has been highlighted in the work of Joseph Weiss and the San Francisco Psychotherapy Research Group (2,3).

For the purpose of this discussion, "pathological identification" is defined as "a psychological phenomenon in which a person repeats or reenacts problematic behaviors, feelings, attitudes, relationship patterns and dilemmas that significant others, usually parents, experienced in the past." Why would anyone do that? It children were motivated primarily by profit and self-interest, it would makes perfect sense that they would identify with positive aspects of their parents, learn skills and virtues, and take on the successful parts of their parent's identity in order to bolster their fledgling attempts to be successful or happy. But why would anyone want to adopt their parents' negative attributes such as alcoholism, abusive behavior, failure, defeatist attitudes, powerlessness, depression, or relentless misery? I am going to review several important contributors to the understanding of identification and try to outline a perspective that might explain this phenomenon.

Sigmund Freud
Freud suggested several functions of identification. He noted a small child had as his most "intense and momentous wish" in early childhood to be "like his parents... big like his father and mother" (4, p. 74). Identification with the mother or father allowed the child to enhance his power in relation to others (4,5 p. 218) and was central to developing gender identity (4,6, p. 188, 195). In his theory of the Oedipus Complex, Freud argued that a boy's identification with his father was part of natural ambivalent feelings, wishing to be like his father at the same time he wished to be rid of him (7, p.229). In the resolution to the Oedipus Complex, Freud formulated that identification played a role leading to the formation of the "super-ego... the inheritor of the parental influence.... If the father was hard, violent and cruel, the super-ego takes over those attributes from him...7, p. 231)."

In Mourning and Melancholia (8, p. 159), Freud hypothesized that melancholic patients have ambivalent feelings toward their loved ones. They direct their angry, violent reproaches that they really feel toward their love objects to their own egos. He called this "identification of the ego with the abandoned object."

Freud developed the concept that people sometimes identify with others out of guilt. He reported that Dostoevsky feared death from his seizure disorder as an identification with his father who had suffered a frightful death (7, p.233) . In discussing the Oedipus Complex, Freud assumed Dostoevsky wanted his father dead and then feared for his own death "in identification with his father as a punishment" for his parricidal wishes. This description of identification with the dead out of guilt presaged Niederland's work of "survivor guilt" (9). Niederland described holocaust survivors who took on the appearance of the living dead because they felt guilty and identified with those who had not survived. Niederland differed from Freud in that he suggested his patients felt guilty just because they survived whereas Freud assumed the added dynamic that Dostoevsky felt guilty because he wished his father dead.

References
1. Foreman, S.A., Breaking the Spell, Understanding why Kids Do the Very Thing That Drives You Crazy, SF Press, 2009.

2. Weiss, J. & Sampson, H., The Psychoanalytic Process, Guilford, New York, 1986.

3. Weiss, J. How Psychotherapy Works, Guilford, New York, 1993.

4. Freud, Sigmund, "Family Romances" (1909) in Collected Papers Volume V, Ed. By James Strachey, Basic Books, New York, 1959, pp. 74-78.

5. Freud, S., "Humour" (1928) in Collected Papers Volume V, , Ed. By James Strachey, Basic Books, New York, 1959, pp. 215-221.

6. Freud, S., "Distinction Between the Sexes" (1925) in Collected Papers Volume V, , Ed. By James Strachey, Basic Books, New York, 1959, pp. 186-197.

7. Freud, S., "Dostoevsky and Parricide" (1928) in Collected Papers Volume V, , Ed. By James Strachey, Basic Books, New York, 1959, pp. 229-231.

8. Freud, S., "Mourning and Melancholia" (1917) in Collected Papers Volume IV, , Ed. By James Strachey, Basic Books, New York, 1959, pp. 152-170.

9. Niederland, W.G., "The Survivor syndrome: Further observations and dimensions," Journal of American Psychoanalytic Association, 29:413-26, 1981.

Transformative Relationships: A Control-Mastery Perspective on Optimizing the Therapeutic Relationship

March 2, 2013 George Silberschatz, PhD & John Curtis, PhD

Saturday, March 2, 2013, 9 am - 4:15 pm. 6 CEs $50 $20 for students/interns

JCCSF, California & Presidio Streets, San Francisco

Research and clinical experience have shown that the therapeutic relationship is a stronger predictor of effective psychotherapy than form or brand of treatment. The therapeutic relationship can be strengthened if therapists tailor their approach and their interventions to meet the specific needs of their patients.

In this workshop participants will be introduced to control-mastery theory -- an integrated, empirically supported model that provides a framework for enhancing the therapeutic relationship. The starting point is the role of early relational experiences. Early adverse experiences are internalized and persist, leading to the symptoms and life problems that bring people to treatment. Workshop participants will learn how an attuned therapeutic relationship changes these internalized pathogenic models. Key therapeutic processes, including testing the therapist, emotional safety, development of insight, and corrective relational experience will be explored and illustrated with clinical examples.

Please pass this along to any colleagues or students you might think interested. Information is on our website!