Hello Community:

Greetings from Sedona, Arizona. This is the land of red rocks, spiritual vortexes and currently snow! Happy New Year to you all. A new year usually brings with it an opportunity to look back at the last years accomplishments and to plan for future growth and development. Last year at SFPRG we had numerous interesting and well-attended classes/workshops/events, including our annual March Workshop. Steve Foreman taught a class in Irvine. Marshall Bush and Steve Foreman started a new class on New Directions. Denny Zeitlin taught Couple Therapy. Steve Foreman and Victoria Beckner gave a workshop on Anxiety. Steve Foreman, Peter Schumacher, George Silberschatz and Jessica Broitman all went to Norway this year and gave talks on CMT. Dan Wile and George Silberschatz gave a workshop on Couple Therapy. We also had the weekly case conferences, the Honorary Dinner, the Summer Samba, and the Art Show & Auction. Additionally, we had ongoing research projects and the intern training and clinical work provided by our amazing clinic. These are just some of the highlights of what our group has accomplished last year.

It has been six months since I took over as President. Thus far, I have tried to adjust to the role, attend to the tasks at hand, and get a sense of what the group would like to see going forward. There seems to be several topics that repeatedly arise.
1. Recruiting new members into the group, including, keeping our interns involved after they have completed their training with us.
2. Continuing to introduce the theory to new people in locations outside the Bay Area, which includes adding new research.
3. Increasing our funding streams.

Our committees are busy focusing on the above topics and could use your help. I am working on two fun events that I hope will increase opportunities to network and to raise money for the group and my pet project, improving Building 9. One is that I am planning a Ladies Luncheon and the other is a Fun Run. If you are interested in working with me to help organize either/or both of these events please let me know.

Best Wishes for a healthy and productive year.
Susan Landes

Continuing Education courses on website.

Information and registration for our weekly case conferences is on our website. Spring conferences start this month and next month.

December 18, 2014

Dear Colleagues,
John Snyder reported the Emanuel WIndholtz grant for $7000 officially came through. SFPRG has purchased a server that is being installed tomorrow. The server will hold the data from the SFPRG Clinic including medical records and research data collected.

A new research intern from Smith College, Renee Lindquist, is coming to help with research at SFPRG. We welcome her to SFPRG and appreciate her presence and participation.

We talked about further research ideas. Marshall Bush talked more about setting up a project looking at the impact of doing formal plan formulations in a group supervision setting on patient outcome at the Clinic. One idea would be to randomize clinic patients, some of whom would get formal plan formulations generated and some of whom would not. Not only would this be an excellent clinical learning experience for interns learning to do plan formulations but it would also be a potentially useful research tool to see if such a structured formulation procedure will make a difference in outcome. We reviewed other research and writing projects under consideration. I expressed interest in writing a paper entitled "Is Control Mastery Theory an Evidence-Based Psychotherapy?" Another project mentioned is a study of borderline patients in Susan Landes' DBT clinic, looking at differentiating transference from passive-into-active testing.

During the March Workshops, we are again offering a pizza and beer Monday night forum to talk about research ideas. Participants will be invited to discuss their research and SFPRG students and researchers are invited to present their ideas. Anyone who is interested in talking about research ideas, design, glitches, or dilemmas or to hear about others' projects is welcome to attend. Please let me know if you are interested.

Happy New Year from all of us in the clinic! Hoping it will be a great one!

We are excited to welcome two new Norwegian interns who will be with us until September. They are Olav Hjetland and Erik Moerland. Please stop by the clinic to meet them. We would of course welcome your referrals for our Norwegian friends. Our current interns also have a few slots open.

The application process for the 2015-2016 interns is well under way. It seems to get earlier and earlier every year. If you know of a PhD, MFT or MSW who would like a halftime two-year internship please have them contact us ASAP.

Doing some cleaning in the New Year? Have extra office furniture that needs a loving home? Our therapy rooms are in need of upgrading and we'd love to do so without spending much money. If you have any chairs, lamps, pillows, or anything that is just gently used and in need of a new home - we'll come pick it up and provide you with a letter of donation. Call or email with any questions or donations. You can be in touch with Jessica, Carol or Ginger.

Thanks for your ongoing support of our clinic.

It will be here before we know it. Yes, I am referring to the Annual International Conference on Control Mastery Theory. March 2 - 6, 2015. We will have classes you should not miss!

Please let your colleagues know about our Introduction to CMT class on Saturday, February 28.

Continued from the December newsletter.

The Patient's Work
My fourth topic is how the patient works to overcome his problems.
Since a person is made miserable by his pathogenic beliefs, he as a powerful unconscious wish to change them. He unconsciously works throughout his treatment to change them. He works to change them by testing them in his relations with his therapist. He tests them by means of trial actions.

Suppose, for example, a person is inhibited because he suffers from the pathogenic belief that if he is critical toward a person to whom he is close, or if he stands up for himself, he will hurt him.

This person, in analysis, may test this pathogenic belief by making a trial criticism of the analyst. He hopes that the analyst will not be hurt by it. If the analyst is not hurt, the patient may test him again. If the patient is able to reassure himself that he will not hurt the analyst by being assertive with him, he may take a step toward discomfirming the pathogenic belief that if he is assertive to a person, he will hurt him.

The patient works throughout his analysis to disconfirm his pathogenic beliefs. He works to disconfirm them both by testing them and by using the analyst's interpretations to gain insight into them.

The patient's working to change his pathogenic beliefs, is according to our views, the essential process of therapy.

Here, too, my views are compatible with the views that Freud developed in his late writings but incompatible with those of his early writings. In his early writings Freud assumed that the patient is unable to work unconsciously. Freud assumed that the patient in therapy is motivated primarily to retain his symptoms because they are so gratifying. The patient strongly resists the therapist's attempts to overcome his resistances, if the patient repeats experiences from the past, he does so in order to obtain gratification or he does so because of the repetition compulsion. In my view, if he repeats things from the past, he does so in order to test the therapist. He repeats the past for the sake of mastering his problems rather than for the sake of obtaining gratification.

I'll stop here with this broad overview and Hal and I will invite question.

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!

Amazon.com has a program called AmazonSmile which will give a small donation from your purchase to the nonprofit of your choice. Thank you to those who are participating. We have already received small checks from Amazon! Please bookmark AmazonSmile and designate the San Francisco Psychotherapy Research Group as your charity of choice! Link to AmazonSmile here