September 26, 2014

Hello Community,

We have had a busy month at SFPRG. September 13th our annual honorary dinner was held at Piatti's in Mill Valley. The ambiance was warm and relaxing. The food was served family style and was very good, especially the mushroom risotto. Forty plus people joined us in celebrating the contributions of Denny Zeitlin and Peter Schumacher to SFPRG. Both Denny and Peter gave touching speeches chronicling their experiences with Joe and Hal and the Group. I would like to thank all of the people who put the dinner together, Helga Fasching who found the restaurant, John Bogardus who donated the wine and Rob for all the organizing and the invitations.

On September 20th we began to change our environment at 9 Funston Ave. I would like to thank all the people who chipped in to help out with our cleaning and organizing day; Laura Fannon, Beth Mitchner, Steve Foreman, Peter Schumacher, John Gibbins, Victoria Mycue, Jodi Engstrom and Rob. We were able to clean and reorganize most of the downstairs and dispose of a lot of unnecessary closet filler! Due to the amount of cleaning to be done, we were only able to get to the downstairs. Rob and I plan to calendar another day to do the upstairs intern offices and his office. During the process we found a lot of interesting papers, audiotapes and videos tapes of Joe and Hal's and many other members talks. Someday we really need to figure out a way to digitally archive and store these important works.

Don't forget to register for the upcoming Dan Wile workshop in November. Please see the announcement below.

Take care,

Susan Landes

Report from Bergen.
I have just returned from a fantastic trip to Norway. Hans Peter Broch and Dag Oulie are fantastic hosts. They truly know how to show a gal a good time.We met many of their esteemed colleagues who are very interested in Control Mastery Theory. Their country is beautiful and we enjoyed seeing it through their eyes. I'm hoping that they will join us at the March workshop! Promised were made!!!!!

One of the trip's highlights was the opportunity to have a reunion with many of our interns from Norway from the past. I had a great hike with with Lene and a really fun Thai dinner with Trond and Jan Martin. It was so delightful to learn of the significant success that all of our students have achieved. They universally expressed great appreciation for the training that they had received here and believe that it contributed significantly to their employability in Norway. >

This program began because of the courage of Jan Martin who came to the March workshop in 2006, loved control mastery theory and realized that in order to really understand and appreciate the theory he would need to have ongoing supervision and training with us. He cleverly sorted out and arranged for his doctoral internship to be permitted to be in the United States through us. Since that time 15 students have joined us to train at the clinic.

At the University I was able to speak with new students who were interested in training with us over the next few years. We had a very good response and have successfully identified our next two students who are Olav and Erik. They will be joining us in January for six months of training. In September Ase and Katherine will arrive. I also met and spoke with several other students who are interested in following them. Many of these and other student are already also involved in communicating with us and I was able to interview several of the future potential applicants. It's clear we will have a successful collaboration with the University of Bergen into the future. We are currently in the process of formalizing this agreement with the University and our program will be offered as a official internship program through them in the next year. Ingrid (our most recent intern) will also be returning to complete her education by having an additional three months training program with us beginning in February. We are very pleased to welcome her back. Elida and Ingrid were instrumental in arranging for my talk as well as the talks by Steve Foreman, Peter Schumacher and Judith May over the summer. This is been quite a year for Cntrol Mastery in Norway.We are thrilled!

Lastly I'm pleased to report that our new interns are settling into what looks to be a great year. I'm very impressed with their clinical skills. We would appreciate your referrals and I promise you won't be sorry. We are open to take adults, children, adolescents, couples and family's. We will be starting some new groups too! We ask only that they not be actively homicidal, suicidal, actively in need of detoxing or decompensating such that our non-medical based clinic can service them. If you have a question about the appropriateness of a referral please call us!

Hello all,
It is with great pleasure that I announce the first SFPRG (former intern) Consultation Group.

At this point, we will be meeting the first Friday of every month from 4 - 6 PM. This month we will be meeting on Friday, October 3, 2014 at the Healing Arts Center on Bush Street at Octavia.

We will discuss the format based upon the needs of the participants. It will basically be a consultation group where we discuss patients with whom we are working.

If you can manage to join us, that would be great!
Here are the logistics:
Name: SFPRG Consultation Group
Date: Friday, October 3, 2014
Time: 4 - 6 PM

Place: The Healing Arts Center
1801 Bush Street (at Octavia)
San Francisco, CA 94109

To find out more information, call/text Patrick at 415-572-1863 or email patrickjnorton@sbcglobal.net.

Amazon.com has a new program called AmazonSmile which will give a small donation from your purchase to the nonprofit of your choice. Please bookmark AmazonSmile and designate the San Francisco Psychotherapy Research Group as your charity of choice! Link to AmazonSmile here

Daniel Wile, PhD & George Silberschatz, PhD

Saturday, November 15, 2014, 9 am - 4:30 pm. 6 hours CE
JCCSF, 3200 California St. (at Presidio Ave), San Francisco

This workshop focuses on similarities and differences between Dan Wile's Collaborative Couple therapy and Control Mastery Couple therapy. The presenters will briefly discuss their respective theories and show how they work clinically through case examples and couple role plays. Dan Wile will highlight the principle of doubling, which is the signature method of his approach and George Silberschatz will illustrate how understanding pathogenic schemas can facilitate more effective communication among partners. Plenty of practical clinical application.

Daniel B. Wile, PhD, is in private practice in Oakland, California. He is a clinical psychologist with thirty-five years experience as a couple therapist. He is a Diplomate in Clinical Psychology of the American Board of Professional Psychology. He has published on psychotherapeutic theory as well as couples therapy, has taught at several graduate programs in the San Francisco Bay Area, gives professional workshops on couples therapy throughout the United States and internationally, and is author of Couples Therapy: A Nontraditional Approach; After the Honeymoon, How Conflict Can Improve Your Relationship; and After the Fight: Using Your Disagreements to Build a Stronger Relationship. www.danwile.com

George Silberschatz, PhD, is a Psychologist and Clinical Professor in Psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine and past president of the international Society for Psychotherapy Research. He has published extensively in professional journals and books and is a sought after presenter at professional meetings and workshops throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. He currently divides his time between a private practice in San Francisco, teaching and supervising psychotherapy, and writing clinical and research papers. His book, Transformative Relationships, has been widely acclaimed for the clarity of its theoretical foundations, the rigor of the research presented and its clinical relevance.

Register for this class here.
Check with your licensure board for rules pertaining to claiming CE hours.
PSYCHOLOGISTS: SFPRG is approved by the American Psychological Association (APA) to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. SFPRG maintains responsibility for these programs and their contents.
SFPRG does not report your attendance to the MCEPAA.
L.C.S.W.s/M.F.C.C.s: SFPRG is a provider approved by the Board of Behavioral Sciences, Provider Number PCE104, for CE credit on an hour-for-hour basis.

Continuing our effort to give a historical context to the development of Control Mastery Theory, we are serializing a talk given by Joe Weiss in 1988. - editor

In my talk tonight I shall attempt a very broad overview of the theory that I've developed and that Hal Sampson, the Mount Zion Psychotherapy Research Group and I have supported by quantitative empirical research. The theory, clinical observations, and the research are presented in out book The Psychoanalytic Process, Guilford, 1986.

I'll briefly take up four fundamental issues: These are motivation, mental functioning, psychopathology, and therapy.

Motivation
My first topic is motivation.
According to my approach a very important motivation -- perhaps the very most basic motivation -- is to adapt to reality. The wish to adapt is inborn. The infant and child works from early infancy and throughout life to understand himself, his interpersonal world, and to adapt to his world. The struggle to understand his reality and to adapt to it is urgent. A person needs to adapt in order to avoid danger and death.

The infant's only good strategy for adaptation is to understand his parents and get along with them. He works from early infancy and throughout childhood to learn about himself and his parents. According to Stern, the infant from very early in life is highly interested in his reality. He makes and tests hypotheses about himself and his parents. He learns how he affects them and how they react to him. He learns their moral ideas -- these are part of his reality. The infant learns about himself and his parents very rapidly. In four days he can recognize his mother's milk from its smell. In three weeks he can recognize her voice. The child by eighteen months has learned all the rules of grammar and can speak fairly well. I would like to emphasize here that thinking, according to Stern, is just as basic as feeling. Man is a thinking animal. To think is highly biological. It is adaptive. It is as fundamental as, say, rage.

It is from the child's very early attempts to understand himself and his parents that he develops certain basic beliefs about the kind of person he is, and the ways others are, and the ways they're likely to treat him, and how his is likely to affect them. These beliefs guide him in his attempts to get along in his world. He behaves in accordance with them. It is in accordance with his beliefs that he is friendly, suspicious, hostile, or ambitious, cautious, trusting, sloppy or neat, determined, and so forth.

While my emphasis on adaptation is compatible with certain ideas that Freud developed in his late writings, particularly Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety and the Outline, they differ a great deal from the views that Freud expressed in his early writings. In his early writings Freud assumed that the infant and young child is narcissistic. His libido is directed to himself and not to the world. His motivated not by the wish to adapt nor by interest in reality but by powerful sexual impulses. (Later Freud assumed he is motivated by sexual and aggressive impulses.) These impulses seek their goals blindly, that is without regard for the infant's actual reality. They gain their force from their closeness to instinct and by their being regulated by the pleasure principle. In Freud's early theory it was only from the frustrations imposed by reality that the infant and child gives up his incessant search for pleasure and tries to understand his world and adapt to it. Moreover, in his unconscious mind he never gives up the search for pleasure. Throughout his life, according to Freud's early theory, he unconsciously is self-centered and seeks the gratification of powerful sexual, aggressive impulses without regard to reality.

to be continued in November's newsletter

We have had another office open up in our building at The Presidio. It's a large downstairs office with lots of windows available now. High ceiling, decorative (nonfunctional) fireplace. Shared large kitchen, waiting room, bathroom. Easy cheap parking. Bus line 2 blocks away. Utilities & janitorial split with other therapists in addition to base rent. Prefer 4 year lease.

May have smaller, less expensive office available as well.

Contact Rob in the SFPRG office: rob@sfprg.org

On December 6th we will hold our annual Art Show Reception and Auction. We are looking for donations for the auction. At last year's auction we had many great bottles of wine which folks had fun bidding on! If you can procure an item for auction, please let the office know. We are hoping for donations of wine, dinner certificates (ask your favorite restaurant if they donate to non-profits), vacation homes, tickets to shows (theater, concerts, sports), and of course, art. Anything you think would be a good auction item for our fundraiser, please donate it!

We would be happy to provide a receipt for tax records.

Note to artists - please think about what art you might like to show in December!

If you live outside of the Bay Area, SFPRG needs your help!

We want to present conferences on CMT outside of the Bay Area. Do you have connections with an organization that could either sponsor us or allow us use of a mailing list? We are APA approved so we can give CE hours anywhere in the U.S. If you know of an organization that would sponsor us, we can provide a lecturer; if you can get us a mailing list and leads on venues, we can do the rest.

Please contact Rob in our office (rob@sfprg.org) if you can help!

Thank you to those that renewed your membership with SFPRG. We count on membership support to keep our sliding scale clinic open and our education programs running.

The profiles of those who have not renewed will be deleted off the website in the coming weeks. Don't let this happen to your profile! renew now on the website!