The Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis255 Bradley Street, New Haven, CT 06510203-562-2103
2019-2020 Elective Courses
- THE PSYCHOANALYTIC CLINIC
Instructor: Eric Millman, M.D., Director
Time: Monday evening, 7:00-8:30 PM, September through June.
Location: Gardiner Room, 255 Bradley Street
Dates: First Monday of the Month
These meetings offer a candidate an experience of making clinical judgments about the feasibility of offering “control” analyses to the applicants. The discussion amongst the committee’s graduate analysts and candidates about the treatment of choice for an individual and analyzability can add valuable educational tools for building an analytic practice. Sometimes we may hear follow-up about our decisions after an analysis has begun. The conversion of cases from psychotherapy to psychoanalysis is a topic of interest especially when a clinician seeks our opinions with a particular case. We talk about how to raise and nurture awareness of our services in the community and how to approach research. (Enrollment is limited to four candidates.)
- CLINCAL ANDRE GREEN
Instructor: Sybil Houlding, M.S.W.
Time: Monday evening, 6:30-8:00 PM, Monthly September–May
Location: Lustman Room, 255 Bradley Street
Dates: 9 sessions, 4thMonday of the month
This year we will continue our investigation of Andre Green’s writing about borderline organizations. Our primary text will be Andre Green Revisited, Representation and the Work of the Negative, a collection edited by Gail S. Reed and Howard B. Levine. These essays, written by analysts who either knew Green and studied with him, or were scholars of his writing, look at some of Green’s seminal concepts and provide clinical material to illustrate the concepts, something often lacking in Green’s writing. If there is time and interest, we may continue with some French analysts who write about the body and the drives, particularly psychosomatic conditions.
The class will meet on the 4th Monday of the month from September until May from 6:30-8:00. I look forward to seeing you as we continue our journey.
- SUBLIMATION: VIEWS ON ITS ROLE IN MENTAL LIFE (6 session class)
Instructor: Rosemary Balsam, M.D. and Paul Schwaber, PhD
Time: Monday evening, 7:00—8:30 pm
Location: Leavy Room, 255 Bradley Street
Dates: Oct 21, 2019; November 4 & 18; Dec 9, 2019 and Jan 13 & 20, 2020
We would like to delve into the six chapters of Hans Loewald’s little book on Sublimation: Inquiries into Theoretical Psychoanalysis 1988 Yale University Press. We agree with Hans that “Trying to understand this topic…looks like an imperative urge and an impossible task.” (p..82).
We will plan each session to engage one chapter, accompanied possibly by short pieces from Freud referred to in the text; with one paper for comparison, or an excerpt from a previous or current author who seeks to enlighten the topic; finishing with discussion of either a clinical vignette from a class member, or a short work of literature (e.g., a poem).
The readings for comparison to Loewald will include some of the following authors: Kris, Winnicott, Kanzer, Hartmann, Arlow, Segal, Chasseguet-Smirgel, Muller (on Lacan), Sandler, Moss, or Civatrese.
- TOPICS IN KLEINIAN THEORY & TECHNIQUE
Instructor: Kay M. Long, PhD
Time: Tuesday evening, TBA PM, September through May
Location: Lustman Room, 255 Bradley Street
Dates: First Tuesday of the month
In this course we will study topics in Kleinian theory and technique from both a historic and a contemporary perspective. Each class we will cover a key topic in Kleinian thinking with particular attention to its clinical application. Topics will include: the paranoid schizoid and depressive positions, unconscious fantasy, projective identification, the Oedipus complex, envy and gratitude, the life and death instincts, narcissism, learning and thinking, and clinical technique. Some of the authors we will read are Melanie Klein, Joan Riviere, John Steiner, Elizabeth Botts Spillius, Ron Britton, Herbert Rosenfeld, Michael Feldman, Wilfred Bion, Henry Rey, Hanna Segal, Betty Joseph, and Edna O’Shaughnessy. For those new to Kleinian thinking this course will serve as an introduction; for those familiar with Kleinian theory the course will further your understanding of the clinical applications of this theoretical approach.
- PSYCHANALYTIC PROCESS & TECHNIQUE: RACISM, ETHNICITY, AND IMMIGRATION IN PSYCHOANALYTIC WORK
Instructor: Lawrence Levenson, M.D., Lee Brauer, M.D., Susan Bers, Ph.D., Deborah Fried, M.D., and Sidney Phillips, M.D.
Time: Monday evening, 7:00-9:00 PM for 9 sessions, September through May
Location: Gardiner Room, 255 Bradley Street
Dates: 2ndMonday of the month
When Freud abandoned the seduction hypothesis in favor of unconscious fantasy he had his theory. But his theory, for all its generativity in elaborating the role of fantasy in psychic life, forfeited, or at least greatly minimized, the impact of external events. In the clinical setting, attention to external reality generally was viewed as a defensive straying from what was fundamentally psychoanalytic, namely, the investigation of internal fantasy experience especially in its transference manifestations. Object relations theory helped in restoring the status of the external in psychoanalytic developmental theory. And important work on trauma brought back what had been lost when the seduction theory was repudiated: the pathogenic impact of the outside world on the inside world. In recent years, analysts have been studying the trauma that results from the social pathologies of racism, misogyny, and homophobia embedded in culture and society. These social pathologies affect not just our patients but all of us, and must be taken into account in the clinical encounter and in the supervisory setting. A group of us at Western New England has been meeting weekly for over a year to examine these social ills with particular attention to race and racism. We have grappled with why racism exists, what psychological operations are at play, how it manifests in micro-aggressions, unconscious bias, institutional racism, and othering, how it affects psychological development and functioning, how it shapes the clinical dyad, and how it can be explored clinically including in the transference-countertransference. We have been discovering a rich, exciting, and evolving psychoanalytic literature on race and we also have been acquainting ourselves with the powerful writings on race by major African-American intellectuals like Baldwin, Coates, Morrison, and Rankine. We are noticing that our discussions are altering what we hear in the analytic process and how we work. We are offering this elective to extend the conversation on these important matters to candidates and graduate analysts. We will start by studying racism but are open to taking up other social pathologies (e.g. misogyny, homophobia, and classism) if participants wish. The seminar will meet on the second Monday of each month from September through May for discussion of the readings and, we hope, ample sharing of clinical vignettes.
- CHILD ANALYTIC SEMINAR: DEVELOPMENTAL SEQUENCE, ADOLESCENCE
Instructor: Lisa Marcus, PhD
Time: Tuesday mornings, 7:30—8:50
Location: Gardiner Room, 255 Bradley Street
Dates: THREE 12 WEEK SESSIONS, EACH SESSION IS A SEPARATE ELECTIVE
This is the third year of a three-year course which looks closely at the psychoanalytic understanding of development, the intrapsychic and familial factors which can impede development, and clinical approaches to these difficulties in pre-oedipal, latency, and adolescent children. This final year will focus on adolescence. We will look at adolescent development and the psychoanalytic treatment of adolescents through psychoanalytic papers, popular literature and film, clinical vignettes, and ongoing case presentations. The class is open to candidates for any one, or all three, of the trimesters. The three-year sequence will also begin again in the fall of 2020.