Five Fridays 2023 – 2024

Our 2023-2024 Five Friday topics and presenters are listed below. ** Please note that for 2023-2024, four of the Five Friday seminars will be in person, at the BCC Service Center in Bethesda, MD. For our zoom webinar on January 12, 2024, zoom links for seminars will be sent to all registrants on the Monday before the seminar. Be sure to register by the Sunday prior (earlier is even better) to receive the Zoom link.

Stuck in the Middle with You

September 29, 2023 from 9:30am-12:30pm at the BCC Service Center
Stephanie Schechter, PsyD and Susan Kattlove, MD
Note: This seminar earns 3 CE’s in ethics.

As clinicians we often struggle to discuss professional ethics. We tend to think about ethics as a set of right and wrong actions as opposed to complex moment-to-moment analytic decisions. Consciously and unconsciously, we often carry shame about clinical situations in which we have fallen short of our expectations for our work. Yet we have all faced situations in which there is no clear path, where every turn carries the risk of an ethical breach. While these are the decisions we’re likely to hide, they are precisely the moments we need to think clearly, thoughtfully, and perhaps seek consultation.

This workshop has been developed to address the aversion to thinking and talking about ethics. We will use lively, experience-near fictional vignettes which depict complex, thorny ethical dilemmas. This workshop will focus on ethical dilemmas endemic to psychotherapy training situations and difficulties managing boundaries given the multiple overlapping roles trainees and their therapists and supervisors play.

Three Learning Objectives:

Participants will be able to identify at least two unconscious pressures which can affect the therapist’s ability to set appropriate physical and emotional boundaries.
Participants will be able to explain competing ethical and clinical values that arise in relationships among trainees, therapists, and supervisors in training settings.
Participants will learn to identify potential conflicts around referral sources.

Presenter Bios:

Stephanie Schechter is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in Cambridge, MA. She is on the faculty at Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute where she teaches Ethics, as well as Erotic Transferences and Countertransferences. She and Dr. Kattlove present frequently at The APsaA National meetings, as well as institutes around the country, on the topic of “Ethical Dilemmas in Psychoanalytic Institutes.” She is a contributing author of the Psychoanalyst Casebook.

Susan Kattlove is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in private practice in Cambridge, MA. She is on the faculty of Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and is the co-chair of the Ethics Education Committee there.

Close Encounters of the 2-D Kind: Transference on the Small Screen

November 3, 2023 from 11:30am – 2:30pm at the BCC Service Center
Macaria Giraldo, PhD

Covid-19 has powerfully influenced the delivery of mental health services. The interruption of in-person appointments and the replacement by virtual meetings has created a movement towards virtual delivery of services in both private and institutional settings. In this workshop, we will examine this trend within the context of social media and its potential impact on the Transference and its derivatives of time, presence, and absence of patient and therapist. The psychoanalytic context for our discussion will be based on Freud’s illuminating discovery of the meaning of his grandson’s game of Fort-Da and on Lacan’s concept of the Gaze as central for the understanding of the object relation in psychoanalysis.

Three Learning Objectives:

Participants will be able to explain Freud’s infant observation of his grandson and the implications in the formation of the object relationship.
Participants will be able to compare Freud’s comments with Lacan’s additional insights into the dynamics of Fort-Da.
Participants will be able to describe the role of the Gaze in the object relationship.
Participants can assess the difference between the role of intentionality in the object relationship and the object cause of desire in the Lacanian Psychoanalysis.

Presenter Bio:
Macario Giraldo, Ph.D: After finishing his Master’s in Applied Linguistics at Georgetown University (1964), Dr. Giraldo obtained his doctorate in clinical psychology at the Catholic University of America (1972). Dr. Giraldo is a founding member of the Lacanian Forum of Washington, D.C. and has been faculty at the Washington School of Psychiatry since the early 70’s.

Dr. Giraldo has lectured extensively presenting papers and conducting groups in many cities of the U.S., Latin America, Europe, and lately in Cairo, Egypt. His book, The Dialogues IN/OF the Group: Lacanian Perspectives on the Psychoanalytic Group (Karnac, 2012) is recognized as a primer in the application of Lacanian psychoanalysis to the psychoanalytic group.

Unpacking Implicit Bias: Behavioral Health’s Responsibility

January 12, 2024 from 9:30am – 12:45pm EST via Zoom
Gisele Ferretto, MSW, LCSW-C
Note: This seminar earns 3 CE’s in implicit bias for DC social workers and psychologists.

This seminar counts toward one-time Implicit bias training requirements in Maryland social workers and psychologists. Maryland board of examiners are currently revising their required CE categories. Our website will be updated when we learn if this seminar can be applied to other CE categories.

This three-hour workshop is focused on the exploration of the common, yet complex ethical issues concerning implicit bias that behavioral health professionals face in their practice. Content will cover the following: the legal definition of implicit bias, identification of implicit bias in behavioral health practice, establishing and maintaining a practice of self-awareness, use of self, and examination of implicit bias for effective outcomes. Current legal references will be provided concerning relevant statutes and the ethical codes of practice for behavioral health professionals.

Learning Objectives:

Examine the meaning of implicit bias and its impact on the delivery of behavioral health services.
Explore the role of ethics when delivering services to diverse clients and working with diverse co-workers.
Examine the Use of Professional Self for addressing and controlling for implicit bias in practice.
Review the Maryland statutes and regulations that govern ethical professional behavior and implicit bias including Health Occupations §19 (Social Workers), §17 (Professional Counselors and Therapists), §18 (Psychologists), Health General § 20-1301, and COMAR 10.42.03, 10.58.03 and 10.36.05.

Fairbairn, the Forgotten Father of Relationality

March 22, 2024 9:30am – 12:30pm at the BCC Service Center
David Celani, PhD

This presentation will focus on the psychoanalytic theory of W.R.D. Fairbairn, which emerged in a series of papers spanning the years 1940-1958. Fairbairn’s psychoanalytic theory, and in particular, his structural model offers the clinician a window into the patient’s history of trauma, dissociation, and patterns of attachment to “bad objects”. It was one of the earliest models of “Relational” psychoanalysis and most of his concepts have been adopted by other models. Fairbairn’s focus was on the dependency and neediness of the child on his/her mother and to his/her sensitivity to empathic failures, which if consciously understood would destroy the needed bond to the parent. The empathic failures are dissociated and four internal structures coalesce, each consisting of a view of the self in relation to the object. The two pairs of unconscious structures do not know about each other, though each pair engages in inner dialogues with its partner. The structural model is extremely useful as a clinical tool as it allows the clinician to identify which split off self is relating to him/her at any given moment. These internal structures, when projected on to external objects are responsible for both transferences and enactments.

Special Clinical Follow-Up: A Consultation Group with Dr. David Celani, PhD
March 22, 2024 1:30 – 3:30pm (members only, limited to 12, additional fee $60).

This session is for members only and limited to 12 registrants. We will further explore the morning’s themes as a follow-up to the morning’s session (attendance at the morning session is required). Registration is on a first-come, first serve basis for members only (non-members are welcome to become members at any time). Dr. Celani is a highly respected scholar on Fairbairn. We anticipate that this afternoon section will fill up. The cost of the afternoon session is $60.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE? THAT IS THE QUESTION (and what a question!): The Existential Sensibility and Psychodynamic Therapy

May 3, 2024 from 9:30am – 12:30pm at the BCC Service Center
Jane Prelinger, MSW & Michael Stadter, PhD

An existential sensibility focuses on fundamental themes of being human, and the joys and suffering inherent in existence. This sensibility is not prescriptive nor is it a pathology model. It is individual for therapist and patient. Important themes include, for example, life, death, joy, vitality, absurdity, serious illness or disability, trauma, isolation, loss, aging, identity, and the search for meaning. The seminar will include contributions from existential philosophy and existential therapists. During this seminar, we will discuss some of these themes, our own clinical work, and invite participants to offer clinical vignettes as well.