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PRESIDENT'S REPORT
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From Susan Landes
Hello Community,
As we head into a new fiscal year, the Board will be meeting at Helga Fasching's home to discuss our financial outlook. The topic of this retreat is Stewardship. Stewardship is part of a three-pronged system of looking at organizations. The other two are Ambassadorship and Governance. Ambassadorship has to do with how we are cultivating relationships, name recognition, agency visibility and marketing. Governance has to do with strategic planning, reviewing programs/policies, assuring commitment to our mission, monitoring fiscal accountability and reviewing organizational performance. Stewardship is mostly about the oversight of our assets, such as assuring a prudent reserve, giving and getting financial support, approving a resource needs assessment and endorsing a resource acquisition plan.
We have been very fortunate to have a prudent reserve. In the last few years, important decisions have been made to insure the continued heath and growth of our clinic. Plans are in the works for leadership changes and more space has been made available to house the clinic expansion. Jessica Broitman, Carol Drucker, and this last year, Ginger Rhodes have made incredible contributions to insure that CMT continues to be passed on to the new generations of clinicians. At the same time George Silberschatz, John Curtis, John Snyder and Steve Foreman continue to move CMT into more research and literary circles.
Organizational growth often comes at a financial cost. We are currently tapping into our prudent reserve with no clear plan of how we will replace the money. One idea is to hire a development director to help us create a needs assessment plan. Then hire a grant writer to implement the plan. If we had some grant money how would we use it? These are some of the issues we will be in conversation about at the retreat on Saturday. Any questions or comments from you - the community - would be most welcome.
Best Wishes,
Susan Landes
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About Hal
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Suzanne Gassner
The gifts Hal Sampson offered to all of us who were privileged to have a long term working relationship with him:
Algernon Black D. Black, a long term Leader at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, wrote a statement in his book, Without Burnt Offerings: Ceremonies of Humanism, in his chapter on Memorial Services. Black's words strike me as beautifully expressing an important part of Hal's legacy. All of what Black said about the possible gifts a working colleague conveys, applies to the essence of my experience of how Hal related to the students, supervisees and colleagues with whom he worked on a regular basis. For this reason I want to quote all that is relevant about working relationships that Black said that in his piece entitled 'The Greatest Gift of All'.
"We must ask in all honesty, 'How does a man live after he dies?' The many different religions represented among us have offered answers to this question. But apart from all the differences of belief, there is one reality which we all share, and on this we can agree.
Sometimes the one we love brings us a gift bought with money, and we are grateful. Sometimes he brings us a gift which he created, the product of his own thought and effort, something he made with his own hands. This we prize even more. But sometimes he comes close ... and shares our joys and sorrows... And the more he is a distinct person, the more he evokes our strength and the powers slumbering within us, the more we know that he is giving us the greatest gift of all: himself.
If he ...works with us...through the years, something happens to us which would not have happened if he had not lived and if we had never known him. For his unique and distinctive personality lives in the way he touches our life. Because of his intelligence and power to think, we, in our own way are more alert and more able to deal with out problems. ... If he has standards and values, we are clearer in our own standards and values. His integrity evokes integrity in us. Because of his sense of humor, his joy of life, his laughter, we are better able to see things in perspective and to laugh and enjoy life. And if he is kind and compassionate, generous and loving, passionate for justice, then we are more aware of these qualities and values in life. He will have helped us grow. He will not make us an imitation of himself. But he evokes our strengths and talents, and helps us grow. He helps us 'get born'.
And the wonderful fact is that when he dies, we don't lose what he gave us, what he brought forth in us. He gave us ourselves. This is the way a person lives after he dies. It's real, not ghostly or mystical or sentimental. It is a truth which we can all accept no matter what theories we may have about an afterlife in another realm of existence. This we say is true: we are better people because he lived. The world is a better place because he lived. He gave us a great gift, his life, his influence, and his presence. We will treasure his image in our conscience and our consciousness. In darkness we will always see more clearly because he lived. In difficulty and danger we will always know the courage he brought forth. And when we remember him, it will be as if he were present, and we will think more clearly and show more integrity, and know more or what it means to love."
In my experience, Hal had every one of these talents and he gave me all of these gifts.
Suzanne Gassner
drsmgassner@gmail.com
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Hal Sampson Reminiscence
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The pain about Harold Sampson's death goes far beyond the ocean over to Europe. We, Josef Brockmann and Isa Sammet from Germany, are very sad about this great loss. Harold Sampson's work together with Joseph Weiss' compelling work has greatly influenced our scientific and clinical activities in the field of dynamic psychotherapy. His work has not only helped us to understand the psychotherapy process, but it has given us major insights into the essentials of "mental functioning".
During the annual March Workshops, we came to know Hal's hospitable person amidst his active San Francisco Psychotherapy Research Group. This was the starting point for many fruitful discussions which helped us to develop our own approach to many essential issues.
We reported about Harold Sampsonīs significant work in many lectures, seminars and publications here in Germany. We shall continue to do so in the future.
We lost a person who lived far away on the other side of the ocean, but he was often very near to us in his creative thoughts. We experienced him as a remarkable, kind person and an excellent psychotherapy researcher with a deep connection to a humanistic tradition.
Prof. Dr. Isa Sammet, Paracelsus Medical Private University Salzburg, Austria
Dr. Josef Brockmann, Private Practice Frankfurt, Germany
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Training Director of the Clinic and Training Center at SFPRG
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Just a reminder that the deadline for applications for the new Training Director at the clinic is approaching. If you are interested in joining the staff of our vibrant clinic, please let us know.
Training Director of the Clinic and Training Center at SFPRG
Job Description Highlights:
The Training Director is responsible for helping to run the clinic and oversee any clinical issues that emerge. Duties include: updating the training manual, creating didactic training schedule for the interns; evaluation of those seminars; teaching and ensuring that the interns fulfill their duties. This position includes supervising between 3-5 students and being on call for the clinic at least one week a month. In conjunction with the clinic staff, the training director helps to interview all intern candidates for the program. She/he reports to the clinical director and works with the director to create the best program possible. Compensation for this 10 hour a week position is a half time office onsite in The Presidio.
Qualifications:
- Licensed/license ready California psychologist.
- Recognized expertise and experience in Control Mastery Theory.
- Leadership and supervision experience consistent with the position.
- Specialized training/experience in child/adolescent treatment.
Application Deadline:
June 15, 2015
Application Materials:
Please submit your Curriculum Vitae along with two references to the TD Search Committee: email to sfprg@sfprg.org or mail to TD Search, 9 Funston Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94129. For additional details, compensation information, and more detailed job description please contact Ginger Rhodes.
Ginger Rhodes, PhD, Chair, TD Search Committee
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Education Committee Report
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The next Annual International Conference in 2016 will have some changes. We are planning on holding the Introduction to Control Mastery Theory overview on the Monday of the week (Feb 29), and the core classes on the Tuesday and Wednesday. The conference will continue on Thursday, Friday and a separate Saturday conference on March 5th.
Stay tuned for more details in subsequent newsletters.
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Membership Drive/Directory
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SFPRG's annual Membership Drive is underway. Please support this organization by renewing your membership. If you are not a member, now is the time to become one!
Although our Member Directory has been online for several years, some of our members prefer to use a hard-copy paper Directory. We will be mailing out a new Member Directory that lists our dues paying members sometime this fall.
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Hal Sampson's Presentation to Associazone Fiorentina Degli Psicoanalisti Neo-Freudiani
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Harold Sampson, Ph.D.
This is the fourth installment of the lecture given by Hal Sampson in April 1997 in Italy. See the previous newsletters for the beginning. Our newsletter Archive is accessible from our website homepage, on the right hand menu below the newsletter sign-up.
Psychopathology
Psychopathology is rooted in pathogenic beliefs about oneself and one's relational world. These beliefs are compelling, grim, and maladaptive. "They warn the person guided by them that if he attempts to pursue certain normal, desirable goals, such as a satisfying career or a happy marriage, he will endanger himself or others. He fears external dangers such as the disruption of an important relationship, or internal dangers such as a painful affect (for example, fear, anxiety, guilt, shame, or remorse)" (Weiss, 1993, pp. 6) A person represses the goals he believes to be dangerous and he inhibits himself from pursing these goals.
A person develops beliefs about himself and his relational world as part of his effort to understand his world and adapt to it. As contemporary research on infant development has show (Stern 1985), infants are from birth keenly interested in their environment and especially their social environment. They are, from infancy onward, theory builders.They form and test hypotheses about what is occurring in their world. Professor Alison Gopnik of the University of California at Berkeley has made this point in an amusing way: "Living among us are very small creatures with large heads and exceptionally powerful brains and exceptional capacities...they are highly interested in our behavior and consistently perform experiments on us to figure out how we work." Bowlby has described how infants and young children develop internal working models of their relational environment and may revise these models in line with subsequent experience. Stern has shown that infants develop, well before they acquire language, hypotheses about interactions and they test these hypotheses in new situations. These findings about infants and young children support our view about the development of beliefs about self and one's relational world from infancy onward.
Certain of these beliefs may be called pathogenic because they impair functioning. Because of such beliefs, a person may develop crippling inhibitions, may torment himself, may act self destructively, may express powerful rage, or bizarre sexuality, and may develop disabling symptoms.
A pathogenic belief often links an inner motive or goal - for example, a normal developmental striving - to a grim, intensely undesirable consequence. For example, it may warn a child that if he makes friends, he will cause his mother, whom he perceives to be needy and possessive, to become miserably depressed and it also predicts that he himself will then suffer remorse. Because of this belief and the dangers it foretells, the child may renounce the pursuit of friendships and maintain an infantile attachment to his mother.
A child constructs pathogenic beliefs by inference from traumatic experiences in relationship to parents and siblings. In making inferences, a child is likely to assume that the way his parents treat him is justified; that is, that it is based on his own behavior, attitudes, motives or personality. For example, a child whose parents are uninvolved with her may infer that she is boring and unimportant and does not deserve the interest and care of others. A child whose parents are neurotically worried about her may assume that their worries are justified by her inadequacies.
I will note a few common pathogenic beliefs just to give you some further idea of what we mean:
- If I am independent, I will burden my tired partents.
- If I am independent, I will hurt my parents because I am depriving them of their role in life.
- If I am happy, I will hurt my parents who are chronically miserable and depressed.
- I am a bad person who should be mistreated and punished.
- I am a weak, frail person who should not exert myself or I will become ill.
- I am an unattractive person and no one will ever like me.
- Nothing can ever work out for me.
- If I am successfull, I will humiliate my sibling who is not doing well in life.
I would like to give a few brief clinical examples to illustrate that the demonic in human life -- the irrational, the maladaptive, the peremptory -- which Freid attributed to the power of unconscious instinctual drives, may arise from pathogenic beliefs about oneself or one's relational world.
The first two examples illustrate that a person's sexual fantasies, symptoms and behavior are regulated by pathogenic beliefs and may be a result of these beliefs.
A woman who had gone much further in life than her uneducated and sexually promiscuous mother began to experience almost uncontrollable and tormenting sexual feelings toward unavailable men. This woman's tormenting sexual feelings were motivated, it turned out, by the unconscious belief that she was harming her mother by being superior to her. She gained control of her sexuality when she was helped by her therapist to realize that she was tormenting herself so as not to feel superior to her mother (Wess, 1993).
In another example, Mr. D, the only child of a divorced mother, unconsciously believed that he would harm women if he allowed himself to be strong and did not remain under a woman's thumb. This belief guided his actual relations with women: he was passive and could be sexual only if the woman dominated him. He masturbated to fantasies of being bound by a woman who then used him sexually. His fantasies, as well as his behavior, were secondary to his belief that it would be dangerous not to remain under a woman's thumb: both his behaviors and his fantasies reassured him that he was controlled by a woman and that he was therefore not harming her.
A different type of case illustrates that the experience and expression of rage may not be based primarily on underlying anger, but may be secondary to an unconscious pathogenic belief.
Mrs. F, who had a husband and child she loved, had occasional violent outbursts of rage toward them. She feared these rages might ruin her marriage and alienate her from her children. Mrs. F's rage was not based on primary impulses of hostility, nor was it based on genuine feelings of resentment toward her husband and children. Mrs. F's mother had had chronic rages toward her husband and children, and these rages had in fact destroyed the mother's marriage and made her relationship to her children difficult. Mrs. F suffered from unconscious survivor guilt; she unconsciously believed that it would be a betrayal of her mother to have a happy marriage and a good relationship with her daughters when her mother had been deprived of this pleasure. In obedience to this belief, she unconsciously identified with her mother and behaved like her toward her husband and children and thereby jeopardized her own happiness. She overcame this problem by becoming aware of the unconscious belief on which it was based. As this change was taking place, Mrs. F would feel intense rage, then pause, recognize its basis, and a moment later feel calm, friendly, and loving toward the object of the rage. The intense anger she had been experiencing had disappeared not because of repression, but because she was changing her pathogenic belief.
Finally, a person may act self-destructively in compliance with a belief about a parent's wishes or needs.
Ms. N had made a serious suicide attempt earlier in life because she unconsciously believed that her parents did not wish her to live. Ina subsequent intensive psychotherapy, she made repeated requests to terminate. Her therapist finally told her that he believed she should continue. He said she was expressing a wish to stop out of beliefs that she was a burden to him and that he did not want to continue with her. Shortly thereafter, Ms. N spontaneously became aware of painful memories that had led to the childhood conviction that her parents found her a burden and wished she would go away and die.
In another example, a patient told me a chilling incident from her eighth year. Her parents were once again fighting, with loud recriminations and threats. She and her sister, two years older, were awakened by the noise and watched the fight from the upstairs banister. Her sister said to her that if either sister became sick or died the parents would not fight anymore; the would get together and love each other again. Two days later her sister was found dead, hanging in the closet of her room.
To be continued in next month's newsletter.
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Save the Dates!
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Please put these dates in your calendar!
The Summer Samba at the Broitman-Basri home on Sunday, August 16th. This is our annual get-together to socialize with food and drink, and enjoy the the East Bay sunshine.
Our Annual Honorary Dinner will be on September 19th where we will be honoring our recent Past President, Steven Foreman. Steve has been a stalwart member, teacher, supervisor and board member for many years.
On November 7th George Silberschatz will be teaching a day-long conference "Using patient feedback to improve psychotherapy effectiveness"
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Bring a CMT conference to your area
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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!
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Do You Use Amazon.com?
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Support SFPRG!
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
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