News
2011 – 2012
The Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Studies announces a series of brief seminars on special topics in relational thought and therapy for mental health professionals taught by distinguished Mitchell Center Faculty.
Where:
The Stevenson School, 24 W. 74th StreetWhen:
Thursday evenings, 7:30 - 9:15Cost:
$150 per SeminarAdvance Registration Required
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Space is limited and attendance at Seminars will be available on first-come first-served basis Please contact info@mitchellrelationalcenter.org to register for seminars.
Adolescence in a Changing Technological Climate
Susan Bodnar, PhdOct. 27, Nov 3, 10
This course looks at the interaction between teens and social media. How do they put the media to work in the service of psychodynamic processes? How does the media change them? How should a clinician interact with social media when treating adolescents? We will be looking at how relational theory can be applied to deepening an understanding of the adolescent relationship to social media. In addition to an overview of adolescents and their relationship to technology, we will delve into the impact of social media on adolescents. What are the effective therapeutic interventions that address these issues.
(This course will require registration by Oct. 14)
Susan Bodnar, PhD, is a psychologist psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. She teaches and supervises at Teachers College/Columbia University and at the Mitchell Relational Center. She is also an associate editor for Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and on the editorial board of Contemporary Psychoanalysis.
Key Concepts in Psychoanalysis: Evolution of the Relational View
Lisa Director, PhdDec. 1, 8, 15
This three-part series looks at select, fundamental concepts in psychoanalytic practice, with an eye towards students' greater understanding of the relational view. In each class, we focus on a core concept - for ex., development, self, the analyst's authority -at the heart of lively debate in our field. Through readings and clinical material, we trace how relational perspectives built on, and departed from, other positions.
Lisa Director, PhD, is Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor, NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis; Faculty, the Mitchell Center for Relational Studies; Faculty, Supervisor, Training Analyst, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center; Assistant Editor, Psychoanalytic Dialogues.
Trans-generational Legacies in the Therapeutic Dyad: When Memories Collide
Sue Grand, PhDJan. 5, 12, 19
Recently, we have become interested in the trans-generational traumatic legacies that our patients carry into our offices. How are their symptoms shaped by generations past? How do their struggles encode the historical, and political, struggles of grand-parents and great-grandparents? To these questions we must now add another: how does the therapist’s trans-generational legacy influence the therapeutic process? In this seminar, we explore the intersection of memories in the dyad, and inquire into their effects. When do they facilitate treatment: When do they provoke a clinical impasse? The seminar combines readings and case discussion.
Sue Grand, PhD, is faculty at the Mitchell Center for Relational Psychoanalysis; faculty and supervisor at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy; faculty, National Institute for the Psychotherapies Trauma Program; faculty, Trauma Program, Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis; Faculty and Visiting Scholar, the Psychoanalytic Institute for Northern California. She is an Associate Editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and Associate Editor of Psychoanalysis Culture and Society. She is the author of The Reproduction of Evil: A Clinical and Cultural Perspective and The Hero in the Mirror: From Fear to Fortitude. Dr. Grand is in private practice in NYC and in Teaneck, New Jersey.
Re-imaging Our Psychoanalytic Selves
Mark Gerald, Ph.DJan 26, Feb 2, 9
Through the use of multiple perspectives, this course is intended to help therapists expand their sense of what it means to be a psychoanalyst in the twenty-first century. The identity of a psychoanalyst is relationally constructed through influences from history, teachers, supervisors, but also from our patients, colleagues and friends. These relationships and their directionality are complex, chaotic and often difficult to discern. We will focus on this challenge with an emphasis on how this presents itself in our work with patients. Readings will come from the psychoanalytic literature and related selections from areas such as design, photography, architecture and interactive technology. Members of the class will have the opportunity to look at and listen to themselves and each other, through self-portraits, audio-recordings and constructions of individual family trees.
Mark Gerald, PhD, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. He is on the faculty of New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy and the Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Psychoanalysis. Mark trained as a photographer at Pratt Institute, the International Center of Photography and the Maine Photography Workshops. He has been photographing portraits of analysts in their offices in the U.S, Europe, Mexico and South American. He has written and presented about the past, present and future of the psychoanalytic office, about the emergence of a distinct psychoanalytic voice mutually constructed with patients, and is currently involved, using interactive technology in the creation of a model to represent the complex influences of our psychoanalytic selves.
The Psychotherapist and the Patient: Protected Space and its Limits
Joyce Slochower, PhDFeb. 16, 23, Mar. 1
There is a tension between the patient’s need for a degree of protected space within the therapeutic setting and the actuality of the therapist-as-person. We can’t beige ourselves out altogether, and from a relational point of entrée, we shouldn’t even try. Or should we? To what degree is it possible for us to “hold ourselves back”? This seminar explores the therapeutic tension inherent in the idea of the holding environment and the value of mutuality.
Joyce Slochower, PhD, is Professor Emeritus, Hunter College & Graduate Center, CUNY; Faculty, NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis; The Steven Mitchell Center, the National Training Program of NIP & the Psychoanalytic Center of Northern California in San Francisco. She is on the Board of IARPP, the Editorial Boards of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Dialogues & Ricerca Psicanlitica. Dr Slochower is the author of over 50 articles on clinical theory & technique as well as two books: Holding and Psychoanalysis: A Relational Perspective and Psychoanalytic Collisions.
Embodied Experience in the Psychoanalytic Interaction
Steven Knoblauch, PhDMarch 15, 22, 29
The course, Embodied Experience in the Psychoanalytic Interaction will focus on the place of embodied experience (both the patient’s and the analyst’s) in an expanded clinical attention for relational practice. The course will review conceptions and recommendations for practice concerning the clinical significance of embodied registrations beginning with Freud, Ferenczi and Reich through contemporary Freudians such as McLauglin, contemporary object relations theorists including Lombardi and Ferrari, and relational theorists including Harris, Reis, Katie Gentile, the Nebbiosi’s and Knoblauch. In particular the ways that attention to the micro-contours of embodied interaction can either open or collapse space for reflection are examined.
Steven H. Knoblauch, PhD, is Faculty, Supervisor/Consultant, New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. Associate Editor, Psychoanalytic Dialogues. Board Member, IARPP. Author, The Musical Edge of Therapeutic Dialogue TAP, (2000), Co-author with Beebe, Rustin and Sorter, Forms of Intersubjectivity in Infant Research and Adult Treatment Other Press (2005)Race, Class, and Psychoanalysis
Cleonie White, PhD, & Janine de Peyer, LCSWApril 26, May 3, 10
Interrogation of the Other within, and the Other without, have vexed the minds of many psychoanalysts as the world begins to appear as closed and small, as it is open and vase. Who is the Other? By what processes does this concept become reality, so that some are readily relegated to otherness, while others are included in privilege? Take the question of race, for example. Is race as much a biological entity as in the color of a person’s skin? Or is it a socially, economically, and politically motivated construct? How are we personally implicated in the construction of otherness? What factors motivate, inform, and give shape to our perceptions? How do we understand the play of psychological concepts such as, “projection”, “dissociation”, “disavowed, “not me” self-states” in determining our relationships to otherness? And what about class? How is class a lens through which we view the Other?
Within the context of a safe enough classroom environment, and with a focus on Relational thinking and practice, this course will guide all participants, including instructors, into personal examination of our concept of race and class and its impact upon our work with our patients. It is our goal to stimulate dialogue through personal accounts, case examples, and relevant readings, so that by the end of this course, participants will better grasp the myriad ways in which we all participate in the practice of “othering” on the basis of real, and perceived difference along lines of race and class.
Cleonie White, PhD, is faculty and supervisor at the William Alanson White Institute, and the Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Studies. Dr. White is Associate Editor at Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and sits on the Editorial Board of Contemporary Psychoanalysis. Her publications include: “Fertile ground at the edge of difference: Self, other, and potential space: Commentary on paper by Gillian Straker”, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 17: 171-187, 2007. A Jamaican-American, Dr. White’s interests are in the areas of trauma and dissociation, and in cultural and socio-political factors that intersect with race and class. Dr. White maintains a private practice in New York City.
Janine de Peyer, LCSW, is faculty and supervisor at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies, and the Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Studies. She is Associate Editor at Psychoanalytic Dialogues. Her publications include: “Private Terrors: Sexualized Aggression and a Psychoanalyst’s Fear of Her Patient”, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 12(4):509-530, 2002. Janine was raised in London, England, and worked as a French/Spanish interpreter prior to training as a psychoanalyst. She is trained in EMDR, and is interested in trauma/dissociation, the location and dislocation of aspects of self, and the uncanny. She is in private practice in New York City.