Michigan Psychoanalytic Council

Current Program Year (2008 - 2009)

September 21, 2008

Constructing the Self
from the Outside In:

The Moral Lens in Psychoanalysis

Naomi Friereich, LMSW.

11:00 A.M.-1 P.M.

Who defines this elusive notion of “moral character” and how do these definitions affect psychoanalysts and those we treat? Recent reworking of psychoanalytic theory by feminist theorists, gender theorists and developmental theorists, has led to a very different view of morality. Ms. Freireich will use the concept, “the lens of morality”, which is internalized throughout our lives to discuss the subtle effects of conscious and unconscious moral bias in the psychoanalytic space. It is this lens that shapes how we practice psychoanalysis. When the lens of the patient is very different from the lens of the analyst, the analyst can impart their own values in subtle ways. The differences in “the lens of morality” between analyst and patient can lead to an interruption in the therapeutic process. Through theory and case examples, Ms. Freireich will offer different ways in which this lens can be broadened to include other views and diminish its effect on the analyst and the patient, making it more possible to fully understand the patient's perspective.

NAOMI FREIREICH, LCSW is in private practice in Austin, Texas working with adolescents and adults in both individual and group treatment. She received her training in adult psychoanalysis at the National Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in New York. She is a co-founder of the Austin Women's Psychotherapy Project and past president and current board member of Austin Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology

Recommended reading:

Drescher, J. (1999). The Therapist's Authority and the Patient's Sexuality. J. Gay & Lesbian Psychotherapy, 3(2):61-80.

Kiersky, S. (2004). Perilous Crossings: Tale of Gender, Identification, and Exile Desires. In: Lesbians, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis: The Second Wave, (J M. Glassgold & S. Iasenza, Eds.)

Levin, C. (2001). The Siege of the Psychotherapeutic Space. Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis, 9:187-215

Winnicott, D.W. (1965). The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment. 1960 Ego distortions in terms of true and false self (pp.140‑152)

University Club
East Lansing, Michigan

Directions to the University Club

Friday and Saturday, October 17, 18, 2007

DAY LONG CONFERENCE

Joseph Lichtenberg, M.D.

Member Dinner and Paper Discussion with Dr. Lichtenberg

Friday, October 17, 2008

6:30 pm – 9:30 pm

Guidelines from Craft and Spirit: The message contains the message, model scenes and the wearing of attributions.

In this presentation, Dr. Lichtenberg will describe guidelines for the exploratory psychotherapies that are derived from an appreciation of self psychology, empathy, safety, and the self object experience as well as from an attachment/relational perspective.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

8:30 am – 4:00 pm

Morning Paper Presentation

Reflections on the Oedipal Strivings of Four to Six Year Old Children and Different Forms of Sensuality and Sexuality in the Love Life of Adults.

Dr. Lichtenberg will present his understanding of the distinction between sensuality and sexuality by discussing the origins of love in early development. He will address this distinction by specifically applying it to the period of the four to six year old child. He will then turn to adult experiences and take up the themes and different strategies of attachment love, romantic love, lustful love, lust without love, and transference love in adult life.

Afternoon: Clinical Presentation by Reena Liberman, M.S.

Discussion by Joseph Lichtenberg, M.D.

Sheraton Detroit-Novi Hotel
Novi, Michigan

November 16, 2008

"Object?" I Object!

Arthur Brickman, Ph.D,

11 A.M.-1:00 P.M.

It is time for psychoanalytic discourse to retire the term “object.” The term has outlived its usefulness, has become ambiguous, has deleterious connotations, and serves an anachronistic concept of drive theory. In particular, it contributes to the impression that psychoanalysis is unconcerned with the kinds of relational and interpersonal factors that have assumed center stage in much analytic thinking. In terms of attachment theory, object relations, and self psychology, concepts might be clarified if couched in other language.

Arthur Brickman, Ph.D is licensed psychologist, and a diplomate in clinical psychology. He is a fellow of the Academy of Clinical Psychology. Dr. Brickman attended undergraduate and graduate school at Syracuse University, earning a bachelor’s in political science and a master’s in philosophy. He earned his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan, and has been practicing in Ann Arbor for over 25 years. His practice focuses on psychodynamic psychotherapy with adolescents and adults, and comprehensive neuropsychological assessments, focusing on the complex interplay of functional deficit, traumatic brain injury, and personality factors. He also has worked extensively with underserved populations in residential treatment and foster care. Dr. Brickman serves on the Board of MPC

Ann Arbor Women's City Club. 1830 Washtenaw
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Directions to the Women's City Club

January 18, 2009

Multiple Subjectivities:
A Relational Approach to
Dissociative Identity Disorder

Maria L Slowiaczek, Ph.D

11:00 A.M.-1:00 P.M.

In treating a patient with DID, the analyst enters into a world of multiplicity where each alter wants to be approached with an openness to their differing developmental needs and distinct subjectivities. The analyst’s attunement to these multiple subjectivities helps to process traumatic experiences and to develop new capacities for relatedness and self-awareness. Within the context of the analytic relationship, the alter personalities begin to engage in relationships with each other, moving from a position of isolation to cooperative internal communication.

The case presented describes a traumatized child alter who cannot speak learns to use her hand as a puppet to communicate. She begins to process her traumatic experiences, to grow into new ways of relating and to communicate with other alters.

Maria L. Slowiaczek, Ph.D. is in private practice in Ann Arbor where she works with adults in psychoanalysis and adults and couples in psychotherapy. She is a Clinical Supervisor at the University of Michigan Psychological Clinic where she has taught seminars and supervised graduate students for 13 years. Dr. Slowiaczek is also an analyst trained at The National Training Program in Contemporary Psychoanalysis in New York. She was recently elected to the Council of the International Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology

University Club
East Lansing, Michigan

Directions to the University Club

February 15, 2009

11:00 A.M.-1:00 P.M.

Richard Sterba’s Roots
in Psychoanalysis and Social Justice

Elizabeth Ann Danto, Ph.D.

In this presentation, Dr. Elizabeth Ann Danto will present the striking, and too often neglected, history of Freud and other psychoanalysts’ intense social activism and their commitment to treating the poor and working classes. Joining the social democratic and artistic movements that swept across Europe between 1920 and 1938, the psychoanalysts created a transnational network of free outpatient treatment centers.

Drawing on archival and oral histories, Dr. Danto portrays the successes and challenges faced by the Berlin Poliklinik, the Vienna Ambulatorium and Wilhelm Reich’s Sex-Pol. Included is the history of major treatment innovations such as child analysis, short-term therapy, crisis intervention, task-centered treatment, active therapy, and clinical case presentations.

Elizabeth Ann Danto, PhD, is associate professor and chair of Human Behavior in the Social Environment at Hunter College School of Social Work, City University of New York. Her book "Freud's Free Clinics - Psychoanalysis and Social Justice, 1918-1938" (Columbia University Press, 2005) received both the Gradiva Award and the Goethe Prize.

Ann Arbor Women's City Club. 1830 Washtenaw
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Directions to the Women's City Club

March 15, 2009

Despair to Repair:
Therapeutic Impasse Resolved
as Repressed Experiences
in BothTherapist and Patient Were Discovered

Richard K. Hertel, Ph.D.
Discussant: Michael Singer, Ph.D.

11:00 A.M.-1:00 P.M.

In this presentation, Dr. Hertel will discuss the clinical case of Mr. C., an intelligent, persevering, but severely withdrawn and suicidal college student. His history revealed emotional neglect including his Mother’s severe post partum depression following Mr. C.’s and his younger brother’s birth.

Two years of analytic work provided insight into his suicidal behavior and contributed to his achievement of college graduation and later the acquisition of employment. The transference-countertransference matrix that contributed to the therapeutic impasse and its resolution will be discussed as it relates to the concept of the “dead analyst and dead patient”. Winnicott’s “false self” and Andre Green’s “dead mother” concepts will be discussed.

Richard K. Hertel, Ph.D. is on the faculty of the University of Michigan Psychiatry Department and the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. He has taught courses in Analyzability, Depression, Object Relations and Psychological Trauma. In 2005 Dr. Hertel was given the “Teacher of the Year” award through the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. Dr. Hertel has had a long standing interest in the topic of trauma and for the past ten years has chaired the Discussion Group, “Trauma in the Transference” at the American Psychoanalytic Association Bi-Annual meetings. He is in private practice in Ann Arbor and has two ongoing local discussion groups: The Psychotherapy Process and Trauma in the Transference

Dr. Michael Singer holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Washington and a post-doctoral fellowship in child clinical psychology from the Judge Baker Guidance Center and Children’s Hospital of Harvard Medical School.

He is a graduate of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute (MPI) in adult, child and adolescent psychoanalysis. He is also certified as a Sex Therapist by the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists.

Dr. Singer is on the teaching faculty of MPI and is a Supervisor in child and adolescent psychoanalysis. He has taught courses on child and adolescent development and treatment, and on sexual responsiveness and difficulties in adults. He is an adjunct clinical instructor, teaching and supervising residents, in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan Medical School.

Dr. Singer is in full time private practice of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in Ann Arbor with adults, children and adolescents and couples. He also works with parents in parent guidance.

University Club
East Lansing, Michigan

Directions to the University Club

April 19, 2009

Why Would I Want to do That!?

A Case Study of
Transference Resistance

Sonya Freiband, Ph.D

As analysts and therapists, we are knowledgeable about how psychoanalysis is supposed to work through the process of awakening old feelings that are then transferred onto the analyst. It is in this analytic space that the transference can be observed, felt, understood, and interpreted through the relationship of the analytic pair. This paper, however, explores the phenomenon of patients who choose to withdraw from their analysis rather than allow their strong transference feelings to emerge. Dr. Freiband will explore how the nature of the treatment situation fosters a dilemma for patients, where powerful transference longings are encouraged, but ultimately rejected. Patients must be able to bear the intensity of these affects and the experience of the analyst as a rejecting object, while working together to reorganize internal objects and allow for new types of relationships. An extensive case example is used to illustrate how this dilemma became a "non-negotiable" issue in an otherwise successful treatment.

Sonya Freiband, Ph.D. is a psychologist-psychoanalyst in private practice in Ann Arbor, Michigan, working with older adolescents and adults. She received her psychoanalytic training at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council, where she currently serves as chair of the Professional and Community Development committee. Dr. Freiband supervises psychology interns and postdoctoral fellows at the Psychological Clinic of the University of Michigan and at Madonna University. She resides in Ann Arbor with her husband and two children.

Providence Hospital
Fisher Center Auditorium

Directions to Providence Hospital

May 17, 2009

Dissociation and the Virtual World
Ellen Toronto, Ph.D

This paper will examine patients’ intense involvement with virtual reality as a form of dissociation. As with other dissociative disorders individuals may retreat from the real world to a subjective state in which they can attempt to exercise control and aggressively capture the supplies they lack.

While patients’ engagement with the virtual world can be highly disruptive to productive functioning, it can prove difficult to engage in the clinical encounter. It can become sequestered outside of time, intensely private, couched in shame and under-reported. By way of illustration the paper will present three clinical vignettes in which the dissociated material is invited into the therapeutic dyad where it may become integrated into an ongoing biographical narrative.

Ellen Toronto, Ph.D. is a Founding Member and Past President of MPC. She is past-president of Section III, Women, Gender and Psychoanalysis, and Section Representative to the Division 39 Board. She is also co-editor of a book, Psychoanalytic Reflections on a Gender-free Case: Into the Void (Routledge, 2005) Dr. Toronto is in private practice in Ann Arbor

Shame and the Internet
Batya Monder, Ph.D

This paper examines some clinical vignettes of patients who have turned to the Internet in part as a way to explore their own sexual feelings. In this virtual world, and in the privacy of their own homes, they were able to navigate the Web and find sites that fit their particular desires and deficits. Ms. Monder will explore her thinking about this material and share what she has come to understand about four patients of different ages, two men
and two women, and what they, in turn, learned about themselves. She will also give some background on the literature on shame, a much overlooked affect until the 70s and 80s.

Batya Monder, MSW, BCD, is a training and supervising analyst at The New York Freudian Society and a member of IPTAR. She is a Board Member of Section I of Division 39 of the American Psychological Association and for the past five years was Editor of its newsletter, The Round Robin. She is also past president of Section III.

Ann Arbor Women's City Club. 1830 Washtenaw
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Directions to the Women's City Club

June , 2009

June Banquet and 20 Year Anniversary

Ann Arbor Women's City Club. 1830 Washtenaw
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Directions to the Women's City Club

Additional information may be obtained by contacting