Five Fridays 2011-2012

(Seminar Cancelled) The Body Knows All
Friday, October 14, 2011

We deeply regret to inform our membership that the presenter of this seminar, Dr. Mark Lawrence, was tragically murdered by a patient on July 22. The outpouring of grief and deep appreciation for Dr. Lawrence and his work following his death are testament to what a beloved and wise teacher and therapist he was. Dr. Lawrence was going to present to us on a topic we hope we will be able to address in the future, which is how to work with patients with persistent somatic symptoms that do not yield to medical treatment. Dr. Lawrence planned to teach us the process by which early trauma is stored not in narrative memory but in dissociated parts of the self (“ego states”), and how to work with ego states so as to be able to heal early traumas and their somatic manifestations.

Ethics Behind the Couch
Friday, November 18, 2011
9:30am – 12:30pm

How do we integrate ethical reflection and judgment with other aspects
of our clinical work? The aim of this workshop is to explore cutting
edge ways of rethinking a variety of typical as well as especially
challenging ethical dilemmas encountered in both psychotherapy and
psychoanalysis. Clinical cases will be used to identify unacknowledged
moral aspects of specific transference and counter-transference interactions
and the desirability – technically and ethically – of alternative
interventions. Taking a broad approach to ethics, we will look not
only at how principles and codes need to be rethought when applied,
but also how various virtues and values inform our work. Bring your
own difficult dilemmas.
Presenter: Ernest Wallwork, PhD

Educational Objectives:

Participants will be able to identify three typical ethical issues faced by psychoanalytic psychotherapists.
Participants will be able to name three commonly unacknowledged moral aspects of the therapeutic relationship.
Participants will be able to describe the difference between the therapists’ dispositional role responses (virtues) from his/her normative judgments.

Presenter: Dr. Ernest Wallwork is Professor of Ethics at Syracuse University and a psychoanalyst in private practice in Washington, D.C. and Syracuse, New York. His books include Durkheim: Morality and Milieu (Harvard) Critical Issues in Modern Religion (Prentice Hall) and Psychoanalysis and Ethics (Yale). Dr. Wallwork chairs the Patient and Analyst Assistance Committee of the Washington Center for Psychoanalysis. He is the founder and co-chair of the popular “Ethics Behind the Couch” Discussion Group at American Psychoanalytic Association meetings. Recent articles include “Ethics in Psychoanalysis, American Psychiatric Publishing Textbook of Psychoanalysis (2005, 2011); “Ethical Analysis of Research Partnerships with Communities,” Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal (2008), and a review of Andrea Celenza, Sexual Boundary Violations, JAPA (2009). Dr. Wallwork lectures widely and runs popular clinical ethics workshops for psychotherapists.

Ride My See-Saw
Friday, January 27, 2012 please note new date and location
12:30pm – 3:30pm

Paul Russell once wrote, “There is no real treatment process that does not include some piece of therapy for the therapist.” Much of Russell’s work presages core aspects of the Relational Perspective’s focus on co-creation and the therapeutic use of enactments. This program will explore complicated treatment impasses and/or ruptures and the important role both patient and therapist have in co-creating this ride. Dr. Pinney will illustrate these concepts with a case presentation of a long-term, three-times-weekly psychotherapy that presented significant challenges to both the patient and the therapist.
Presenter: William Pinney, PhD

Educational Objectives:

Participants will be able to compare and contrast Paul Russell’s theory of repetition compulsion and enactments with current psychoanalytic perspectives on enactments.
Participants will be able to identify three contributions of Paul Russell to the theory and technique of working with enactments.
Participants will be able to describe three approaches to working with treatment ruptures and impasses.

Presenter: William Pinney, Ph.D. is a Clinical Psychologist in private practice in Washington, DC. He was formerly the Training Director at George Washington University’s Counseling Center. He holds faculty appointments at the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis (ICP&P) Psychotherapy Training Program, the Washington School of Psychiatry (WSP) Supervision Training Program, and Georgetown University’s Counseling and Psychiatric Service.

You’re No Body ‘Til Some Body Loves You
Friday, March 16, 2012
9:30am – 12:30pm

Becoming an embodied self is a life-long task, the foundations of which are grounded first and foremost in our earliest experiences with caregivers and their handling of our bodies and states of mind. However, the work of integrating mind/body – of establishing an enduring sense of identity – entails fresh challenges at each successive developmental stage. Bodily changes and unique bodily experiences, and their meaning to us, as well as shifting developmental tasks, create upheavals with each new life phase. How do we remain fundamentally ourselves while also changing and adapting to new internal and external realities? We will explore these issues from an object relations perspective, holding in mind the mutually affecting body/mind, internal and external realities.
Presenter: Deborah Blessing, LiCSW

Educational Objectives:

Participants will be able to describe the nature of an embodied self.
Participants will be able to discuss the concept of container/contained
as it relates to the development of a bodily self.
Participants will be able to describe three ways in which theories underlying the
Sense of bodily self can inform clinical interventions.

Presenter: Deborah Blessing is a clinical social worker and psychoanalyst. She is a Founding Faculty member of the Infant and Young Child Observation Training Program at the Washington School of Psychiatry where she also sits on the faculty of the Clinical Psychotherapy Training Program. Ms Blessing is also a member of the faculties of the Modern Perspectives on Psychotherapy Program, the Object Relations Couple and Family Psychotherapy Training Program and the New Directions Program at the Washington Center for Psychoanalysis. Ms Blessing spent a year as a Clinical Associate at the Tavistock Centre in London and is a frequent presenter here and abroad on topics related to eating disorders and infant observation. She is in private practice in Washington, DC.

The Geometry of Supervision Groups: Parallel Process and Intersecting Boundaries
Friday, April 27, 2012 please note new date
12:30pm – 3:30pm

The supervision group often traverses the boundary between there-and-then analysis of the case material and a here-and-now parallel process. This intensive workshop will explore how the supervision group can harness the power of the group to clarify therapeutic problems in ways that are both immediate and emotionally salient to the participants. Using a “fishbowl” format, Dr. Wepman will demonstrate this supervisory approach. After the demonstration, there will be an opportunity for all participants to process and discuss the experience.
Presenter: Barry Wepman, PhD

Educational Objectives:

Identify three characteristics of the affectively-based model of a supervision group.
Define parallel process in a supervision group.
Define and describe the treat-teach dilemma in supervision groups.
Identify three important boundaries appropriate to supervision.

Presenter: Barry J. Wepman, Ph.D. is a psychologist in private practice in Washington, DC. At the Washington School of Psychiatry he is Chair of the Supervision Training Program, as well as being on the faculties of the National Group Psychotherapy Institute and the Clinical Program on Psychotherapy Practice. He is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine, and is a supervisor on the faculty of the St. Elizabeth Hospital Psychiatry Residency Program. A Fellow of the American Group Psychotherapy Association, he has given presentations on psychotherapy supervision both locally and nationally.