Michigan Psychoanalytic Council

Saturday, October 20, 2007

DAY LONG CONFERENCE

Our Appointment in Thebes:
The Analyst’s Fear of Harming
and the Need for Acknowledgement

Jessica Benjamin, Ph.D.

Case Presentation: Peter Wood, LMSW

9:00 A.M.- 4 P.M.

This paper addresses the way in which the psychoanalytic therapist approaches the problem of her or his responses to the patient's dissociative and traumatized parts, which inevitably pull for dissociation or hyperarousal on the part of the therapist as well. Since the field has accepted the notion of projective identification, there has been considerable clinical thinking about how the therapist is affected by the patient. However, there is still controversy about how the therapist uses her or his own reactions and how much of them she or he conveys to the patient. Much of this turns on the question of whether enactments are inevitable and whether they are productive. This paper contends that enactments can be the most productive of therapeutic work as long as we acknowledge them to ourselves, personally and as a community, and find ways to convey our honest understanding to the patient. The point of acknowledging our participation to the patient is not that it is a disclosure, but rather a confirmation of what the patient knows or suspects, which frees up the patient to examine honestly her or his own participation. The underlying issue here is shame and blame, and the need to step out of cycles of projection. The paper argues that this is possible in many instances without placing undue burden on the patient and that, as Ferenczi argued, it avoids the repetition in which the injuring caretaker denies responsibility and the reality of what the child has experienced.

Jessica Benjamin, Ph.D. is internationally recognized as a leading theorist of Intersubjectivity, gender and psychoanalysis. She is a practicing psychoanalyst in New York City and is on the faculty of the New York University Postdoctoral Psychology Program in Psychology and Psychoanalysis. She is a founding board member of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (IARPP) and a co-founder of the Mitchell Center for Relational Studies in New York City. She is currently writing on the subject of Acknowledgement and organizing a series of workshops between Israeli and Palestinian Mental Health Professionals. She is the author of The Bonds of Love, Like Subjects and Love Objects and Shadow of the Other.

Crowne Plaza Hotel
Novi, Michigan

Directions to the Crown Plaza

November 18, 2007

Freud's Little Oedipus:
THE ANOMALY OF LITTLE HANS

Karin Ahbel-Rappe, Ph.D, MSSW

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

Freud’s 1909 case study, “The analysis of a phobia in a five-year-old-boy” is regarded by Freud and also by analytic readers and commentators as a prototype of his conception of the oedipus complex. This essay, however, argues that the representation of the oedipus complex that comes through in Freud’s Hans paper differs from Freud’s essential view; that, unbeknownst to Freud, his effective interpretation of the oedipus in the Hans paper is, in fact, anomalous relative to his other work. Thus the essay tries to make legible a sort of theoretical unconscious of Freud’s paper. This is approached via a literary methodology—a study of Freud’s paper as text. The essay shows that, in contrast to Freud’s typically tragic view of the oedipus complex (in the tradition of ancient Greek tragedy), the Hans’ study evokes a comic vision (in the tradition of Greek New Comedy). Given the deep link between Freud’s oedipus concept and a tragic view of human life, this departure in the Hans paper constitutes a fascinating anomaly.

Karin Ahbel-Rappe is on the teaching faculty of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council. She has an independent practice in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her current research focus is on Freud's language and theories.

January 20, 2008

Transformation from Deadness to Human Relatedness:
A Case Presentation

Karen Baker, LMSW
Jerrold Brandell, Ph.D., discussant

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

Schizoid patients live in states of mind characterized by psychic and emotional deadness. The process of change can be an arduous journey for the patient and the therapist. This paper describes the points of transformation that moved the patient from emotional deadness to emotional relatedness. A clinical case is presented discussing the process of change that resulted from the analysis of schizoid defenses and sadomasochistic defenses. The points of greatest transformational change occurred within the transference/countertransference paradigm.

Karen Baker, LMSW is a Clinical Social Worker/Psychoanalyst in private practice in Ann Arbor where she sees children, adolescents and adults. She is an analyst and on the faculty at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council and is the current VP for Programs. She is a family consultant at the Allen Creek Preschool and also serves as a member of the Board of Directors. Ms Baker is the Board Secretary of the American Association for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work. This paper along with the discussion paper has been accepted for publication in the June/September 2008 issue of Smith College Studies in Clinical Social Work.

Jerrold Brandell, Ph.D. is Professor and MSW Program Coordinator at Wayne State University School of Social Work, where he also chairs the psychodynamic practice track. He is Founding Editor of the journal, Psychoanalytic Social Work, and serves on the Editorial Boards of Israel Annual of Psychoanalytic Theory, Research, and Practice, Clinical Social Work Journal, and the Bulletin of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council. The author or editor of seven previously published books, his newest book, written with Shoshana Ringel, is titled, Attachment and Dynamic Practice.

February 17, 2008

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

Time Out of Mind:
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.

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, a member of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and Editor of The Round Robin, the newsletter for the Section of Psychologist/Psychoanalyst Practitioners of the Division of
Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association. She is in private practice in Manhattan.

Ellen Toronto,Ph.D. is a founding member and past president of MPC. She is past president of the Section of Women,Gender and Psychoanalysis of the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association. She is co-editor of Psychoanalytic Reflections on a Gender-free Case: Into the Void. (Routledge, 2005) She is in private practice in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

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

March 16, 2008

Connections and Disconnections:

Negotiating Visible
and Invisible Differences
Between Patient and Therapist

Julia Davies, Ph.D.

Michael Shulman, Ph.D., Discussant

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

Western society is becoming culturally diverse at a rapid pace. Both patients and therapists are increasingly likely to be from varied cultural backgrounds. Psychoanalytic writers have begun to focus on the impact of race and ethnicity in the consulting room. But what about the psychological impact of less “visible” differences, such as culture, class, religion, and sexual orientation? This paper presents two clinical cases in which cultural and psychological issues become enacted in unexpected ways between patient and therapist, and are then meaningfully negotiated.

Julia E. Davies, Ph.D. is in private practice in Ann Arbor in psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, consultation, and clinical supervision. She is a clinical supervisor at the University of Michigan Psychological Clinic, and has been on the clinical faculty of the Rutgers University Counseling Services. She is an analyst and on the teaching and supervisory faculty of MPC. She has presented papers locally and nationally on topics such as the inhibition of desire, and the origins of unconscious emotional structure.

Michael Shulman, Ph.D. is in the private practice of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and supervision in Ann Arbor. He completed his psychoanalytic education at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. Dr. Shulman holds appointments on the faculties of the University of Michigan, the University of Toledo, and Madonna University, and is a former Consultant to the Practice Directorate of the American Psychological Association. His major interests include the integration of psychoanalytic theories across scholastic lines, and the personal style (an issue not identical with the preferred theoretical framework) of the analyst. Dr. Shulman is the current Program Chair of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Society.

April 20, 2008

Intersubjectivity and the Ego

Merton Shill, Ph.D

Intersubjective and relational critiques of modern Freudian theory evidence significant misunderstandings about ego psychology. Intersubjective and relational processes are ego functions, and comprise the subjective experience of an interpersonal interaction which becomes part of intrapsychic structure. This is the mentalization of interpersonal experience by the ego. There is only a one-person psychology: the mind of each of analyst and patient represents within itself the mind of the other. A “two person psychology” is an intrapsychic creation and is contained separately, albeit simultaneously, within the minds of each of the two people.

Clinical examples illustrate this approach in relation to the drives and objects, the interpersonal, the intrapsychic and internal representation; and the nature of the experience within the clinical dyad.

Merton Shill, Ph.D. is a graduate in adult analysis at the New York Freudian Society and a Training Analyst here at MPC.

Dr. Shill’s publications cover such topics as a psychoanalytic understanding of ADHD; signal anxiety; self-disclosure; managing the patient-physician relationship in primary medical care; film reviews and most recently in Psychoanalytic Psychology (2007)
Intrapsychic intersubjective conflict and defense in modern Freudian theory.

He has also contributed the entries on COUNTERTRANSFERENCE and also TRAUMA which will appear in the forthcoming Psychoanalytic Glossary to be published by the American Psychoanalytic Association.

Dr. Shill has been elected a Collegial member of the Association for Child Psychoanalysis. He is currently an Adjunct Assistant Clinical Professor in Psychiatry at the University of Michigan Medical School and is in psychoanalytic practice with children, adolescents and adults in Ann Arbor and Walled Lake MI

Providence Hospital
Fisher Center Auditorium

May 18, 2008

LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE:

Relational and dynamic aspects
of our behavior in groups

Teresa Bernardez, M.D.
Peter Wood, LMSW

While the field of psychoanalysis pursues a profound understanding of human dynamics, psychoanalytic institutes rarely, if ever, use the knowledge and training available to them to study their own behavior and dynamics and to use group process to explicate and deal with institutional frictions, factions, and grumblings. In line with its investment in non-hierarchical structures, the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council has been developing a group-based, self-study process along Tavistock lines. We want to share the experience with as many members as possible as an introduction to the learning of group dynamics. In the Tavistock style the group facilitators or "consultants" interpret the group process and explicate the barriers that isolate the members from one another.

EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVE: To experience group membership and understand basic dynamics of a given group session

Teresa Bernardez, MD, one of the founding members of MPC, is a Psychoanalyst trained at Menninger's and Tavistock in group dynamics. During her tenure as Professor of Psychiatry at Michigan State University, she was Director of Group Training and Consultant to many institutions around the country and in Europe.

Peter Wood, LMSW is a senior candidate at MPC. He has had extensive training and experience in leading Gestalt groups and couple relationship groups. He has a private practice in East Lansing.

June 7, 2008

June Banquet

East Lansing, Michigan

Additional information may be obtained by contacting

September 17, 2006

The Relationship Between
Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy:
Getting It Right At Last!

Melvin Bornstein, MD.

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

The relationship between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy remains confusing, ambiguous, and problematic for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. Volumes devoted to this topic have not been helpful in promoting an understanding of the similarities and differences of the therapies because the concepts and formulations that have been used are on a level of abstraction that is distant from clinical experience. With an experiential perspective and the clinical theory of psychoanalysis, greater clarity can be achieved in understanding the relationship of the two therapies. In developing my premise, I demonstrate that my approach and technique with all patients whether the therapy is psychotherapy or psychoanalysis is similar, i.e. to reduce the effect of resistances against telling one’s story that will increase the capacity to be in touch with oneself and experience an increase wholeness and solidity of self.

In psychoanalysis and at times in psychotherapy an emotional relationship develops, that becomes the subjective organizing center of the psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. The subjective organizing center promotes the progress of the therapy and envelopes the resistances that retard the progress of the therapy. For the author, the term psychotherapeutic third captures this subjective entity. In psychoanalysis in addition to the development of a psychotherapeutic third a co-construction of an ideal fostered by the analyst also develops.

The ideal is based upon a conviction that by consistently applying the analytic attitude the resistances that analyst and patient are struggling to overcome which are enveloped in the psychotherapeutic third will be reduced enabling the patient and analyst the achievement of greater freedom and autonomy. This conviction of the analyst that becomes the catalyst for the co-constructed ideal generally develops in psychoanalytic training while being immersed in the psychoanalysis of several patients with the support of an institute and the guidance of supervisors.

Melvin Bornstein, M.D. is Training and Supervising Analyst, Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute; Past Chairman of the Education Committee, Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute; Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Wayne State University and University of Michigan; Editor of Psychoanalytic Inquiry

Sunday, October 15, 2006

The Therapist's Patience

David Klein, Ph.D.

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

Patience is one of the many components of the analytic attitude. It is generally regarded as an invaluable attribute for a therapist to possess, yet it is usually treated as if it goes without saying. Regarding its inverse, it is hard to imagine a therapist characterized by impatience as very helpful with most clients. In this paper, the use of patience by the therapist is explored, especially in relation to certain issues of technique. As well, some developmental aspects regarding the acquisition of patience will also be considered. Clinical vignettes will illustrate the concepts.

David Klein, Ph.D. is the President of MPC after serving as MPC Treasurer for 5 years. Dr. Klein is the Editor of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council Bulletin and is currently the instructor for MPC's Continuous Case Conference. He practices psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in Ann Arbor, working with children, adolescents and adults

Providence Hospital: Fisher Center Auditorium
16001 W. 9 Mile Rd.
Southfield, Michigan 48075
248-849-3000

November 19, 2006

Stage Beauty:
A Psychoanalytic Perspective
(movie and paper presentation)

Batya Monder, MSW, BCD and Ellen Toronto, Ph.D

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

The panel will consist of approximately 40 minutes of excerpts from the film Stage Beauty followed by two ten-minute discussion of selected issues.

The film, set in Shakespearean England, focuses on the play Othello played by an all-male cast. Mr. Kynestan who plays Desdemona is declared to be the most beautiful woman on the London stage. His dresser and assistant, Margaret Hughes who longs to be an actress herself, worships the star and watches his every move. The story follows the relationship of the two lovely young actors as they vie for the role of Desdemona and struggle to understand their feelings for each other.

The first discussion will address the trajectory of the young man as he struggles through a range of gender roles to find an authentic identity. The second discussion will focus on the vicissitudes of heterosexual passion as the two actors grapple with competition, jealousy, curiosity, bisexuality and love.

The Michigan League
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Directions to the Michigan League

January 21, 2007

Supervising Therapists Treating the Severely Disturbed Patient

Bertram Karon, Ph.D

To work with the severely disturbed is to be frightened, angry, depressed, bored, discouraged, or confused because the patients are frightened, angry, depressed, bored, discouraged, or confused, although patients also deal with their confusion by clinging to premature closure. False beliefs usually solve an immediate problem but in the long run make a satisfying life impossible.
Rarely are student therapists told that being confused is essential to successful work with severely disturbed patients. Moreover, good therapy with severely disturbed patients almost always involves improvisation. If what we try works, we continue it. If it does not work, we stop and try something else.
Also discussed will be conscious resistance (the most important
difference between working with psychotics and working with neurotics), its sources and handling, phrasing of interpretations, and frequency of sessions.

Bertram Karon, Ph.D Professor, Psychology, Michigan State University. Former President, Division of Psychoanalysis (39) of APA and of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council. Approximately 160 publications including the book (with G.R. VandenBos) Psychotherapy of Schizophrenia: The Treatment of Choice, and the 2001 Fromm-Reichmann Memorial Lecture at the Washington School of Psychiatry, "The Tragedy of Schizophrenia Without Psychotherapy." He has received awards for clinical insights and technique, research, and teaching from Division 39, APA Graduate Students, the American Psychological Foundation, the United States chapter of the International Society for the Psychological Treatment of Schizophrenia and other psychoses, the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, the International Federation for Psychoanalytic Education, the Appalachian Psychoanalytic Society, and the New York Society for Psychoanalytic Training. Dr. Karon is in
private practice in East Lansing.

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

February 18, 2007

The Art of Escape
Transforming Enactments into Play

Jean Wixom, Ph.D.

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

The therapeutic use of play has been underplayed in contemporary discussions of enactments between analysts and adult patients in psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The process by which enactments might turn into play will be the focus of this presentation, with clinical examples drawn from the treatment of a suicidal patient with an entrenched sadomasochistic character
style. A distinction will be made between ‘real’ play that spurs internal change versus ‘pretend’ play that mask coercive enactments. In addition, the presenter will suggest necessary ingredients for the kind of play that can be curative not only for the patient, but also for the therapist, both personally and professionally.

020707-02 The Art of Escape: Transforming Enactments into Play for 2 CE hours

The following works are source material for this presentation:
1. Benjamin, J. (1988), The Bonds of Love. New York: Pantheon.
2. Hoffman, I. Z. (1998), Ritual and Spontaneity in the Psychoanalytic Process. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.
3. Winnicott, D. W. (1971), Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock.

Jean Wixom, Ph.D is a Board Member of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council, and a member of the Council’s Professional and Community Development Committee. She practices psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in Ann Arbor with adults, couples, and adolescents. As well, she provides clinical supervision to local professionals and to therapists in graduate training at the University of Michigan Psychological Clinic.

March 18, 2007

Treatment of Dissociative Identity Disorder:
the case of a woman who witnessed murder in childhood

Elizabeth Waiess, Psy.D.

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

Yearly, thousands of children worldwide witness the brutal rape, dismemberment and killing of their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, other family members and strangers. Psychoanalysis has provided necessary help to many children and adults by bringing psychological meaning to the resulting traumatic symptoms. This paper provides examples of the literature on this topic; discussion of normative child development and the human capacity to kill; discussion of the crucial part the parent-child relationship has in giving meaning to aggression and wishes to kill; and description of clinical technique emerging from the field of infant attachment and neurobiology in treatment of massive psychic trauma.

020107-02 Treatment of Dissociative Identity Disorder
for 2 CE Hours

Note: CE's for social workers are free for MPC members and $10.00 per CE for non-members.

The following works are source material for this presentation:
1. Eth, S. And Pynoos, R. (1985) Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Children. American Psychiatric Press
2. Grossman, D. (1995) On Killing. Back Bay Books
3. Strean H. And Freeman, L. (1993) Our Wish To Kill. Avon Books

Elizabeth Waiess, Psy.D, is a psychoanalyst and psychologist in private practice in East Lansing. She has taught for MPC and is an adjunct faculty member at Lansing Community College in the Department of Social Science. The paper she is presenting is a continuation of the article she had published in Psychoanalytic Review 93(1), titled "Treatment of Dissociative Identity Disorder".

April 15, 2007

When Selfishness isn't Selfish:

Embracing "Self-ful" Desire

Julia Davies, .Ph.D

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

One aspect of the inhibition of desire might be called the “fear
of selfishness.” The author observes that excessive concern about
being, or appearing to be, selfish can, paradoxically, lead to an
unconsciously motivated lack of concern about the impact of one’s desires on others. That which is intrapsychically repudiated as “not me” by the patient may become interpersonally enacted between the patient and therapist, and is then subject to formulation and exploration. Two cases are presented in which excessive worry over selfishness creates the unconsciously motivated self-centered behavior the patient consciously fears. The author suggests that extreme concern over selfishness may be partially engendered by a lack of intersubjective recognition of desires in early life. She also discusses the notable lack of words in English that embrace the positive aspects of self-interest.

020707-01 When Selfishness Isn't Selfish: Embracing "Self ful" Desire for 2 CE Hours

Note: CE's for social workers are free for MPC members and $10.00 per CE for non-members.

The following are source materials for this presentation:

Bromberg, P.M. (1998). Standing in the Spaces: Essays on Clinical Process, Trauma, and Dissociation. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.

Winnicott, D.W. (1969). “The Use of and Object and Relating Through Identifications,” Playing and Reality (1971). London: Tavistock Publications; New York:Basic Books

Winnicott, D.W. (1963). “The Development of the Capacity for Concern,” The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment (1965). New York: International Universities Press.

Julia Davies, Ph.D is in private practice in Ann Arbor in
psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, consultation and clinical supervision. She has served as a Senior Clinical Supervisor of clinical interns and post-graduate students at Rutgers University, and at the University of Michigan Psychological Clinic, where she is now an Adjunct Clinical Supervisor. Dr. Davies has also served as a member of the board of MPC. She has presented papers nationally on topics such as the inhibition of desire, the origins of unconscious emotional structure, and the identification of important non-verbal moments and “affect shifts” in psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

Providence Hospital
Fisher Center Auditorium

April 21, 2007

Remembering, Working Through,
But NOT Repeating:
analysis of a patient severely sexually abused in childhood with emphasis upon techniques for analyzing trauma in the transference

A successful analysis is described of a moderately alexithymic woman severely sexually abused in childhood. Profound affect regression, confusion, shame and guilt posed specific technical problems. Detailed description of the facilitating effect of holding, mentalizing, maintaining boundaries, and encouragement of fantasy preparatory to interpretation is the main focus of the presentation.

Dr. Richard K. Hertel received his BA in Music from Westmont College, MA in Experimental Psychology from The University of Southern California, and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from The University of Michigan. He is a graduate analyst of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute, and certified by the American Psychoanalytic Association.
He is on the faculty of the University of Michigan Psychiatry Department and the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute, and is in private practice in Ann Arbor.
He has taught Institute courses in Analyzability, Depression, Object Relations, and is currently teaching a candidate course in Psychological Trauma for which he was given "Teacher of the Year" award in 2005.
Dr. Hertel has had a primary interest in preconscious and unconscious ego functioning, the impact of trauma upon the ego, and the clinical application of contemporary psychoanalytic trauma theory. With these interests in mind he has for many years been active in Howard Shevrin’s research group, one publication of which was the book, Consciousness and Cognition: Event-related Potential Indicators of the Dynamic Unconscious (1992). In 2003 he published, "Analyzing the Traumatic Impact of Childhood Visual Impairment" (JAPA, 51:914-939) He made a clinical presentation to Dr. Akhtar’s Discussion Group, Disruptions, Dilemnas, and Difficult Decisions: Analytic Theory and Technique at the American Psychoanalytic Association 2004 Winter Meetings. Since 2004 he has chaired a Discussion Group, Trauma in the Transference at the American Psychoanalytic Association Bi-Annual meetings with Vamik Volkan, Ira Brenner, Richard Kluft, and Melvin Lansky as Co-chairs, and in 2005 he chaired an International Psychoanalytic Congress Panel entitled, DID and Trauma. He has two ongoing local discussion groups, one concerning the Psychotherapy Process and one concerning Trauma in the Transference.

Remembering, Repeating, but Not Working Through for 2 CE Hours

Akhtar, S. (2000) “From Schisms through Synthesis to Informed
Oscillation: an Attempt at Integrating Some Diverse Aspects of Psychoanalytic Technique.” Psychoanalytic Quarterly, LXIX: 265-288.

Ferenczi. S. (1949) Confusion of Tongues Between the Adults and the Child. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 30: 225-230.

Fonagy, P., Gergely, G., Jurist, E., Target, M., (2002) Affect
Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self. New York: Other Press.

Salman Akhtar, M.D. is Professor of Psychiatry, Jefferson Medical College, and Supervising and Training Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. He has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. His more than 250 scientific publications include the books, Broken Structures (1992), Quest for Answers (1995), Inner Torment (1999), Immigration and Identity (1999), New Clinical Realms (2003), and Objects of Our Desire (2005). Dr. Akhtar is the recepient of the Margaret Mahler Literature Prize (1996), Best Paper of the Year Award from the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (1995), the Edith Sabshin Award for Teaching (2000) from the American Psychoanalytic Association, the Kun Po Soo Award for Cross-Cultural Psychiatry (2004) and the Irma Bland Award for Teaching (2005) from the American Psychiatric Association (2005), the Robert Liebert Award for Distinguished Contribution to Culture and Psychoanalysis from the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (2003), and the Sigmund Freud Award for Distinguished Contribution to Psychoanalysis from the American Society of Psychoanalytic Physicians (2000). He has delivered numerous prestigous lectures and plenary addresses, the two recent ones being the Plenary Address to the American Association of Psychiatric Residency Training in San Diego, CA in March 2006 and the Freud Anniversary Lecture sponsered by the Austrian Embassy and the Dutch Psychoanalytic Society in Leiden, Netherlands on May 6, 2006. Dr. Akhtar has also published 6 volumes of poetry and is a Scholar-in-Residence at the Inter-Act Theatre Company in Philadelphia.

Providence Hospital
Fisher Center Auditorium

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

May 20, 2007

Transformation in Mid-life
through
Creativity, Imagination, and Memory

Martha J. Atkinson, M.A., M.S.W., L.M.S.W

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

Transformation is a profound process of symbolic death and rebirth, of regression and new consciousness leading to
individuation. Symbolic expression and mediation between opposites was considered by Jung to be "the most significant factor in Psychological progress". Creativity, imagination, and memory are integral components in psychological growth and individuation. These components will be presented via case material as critical to the work of the analysand.

Martha J. Atkinson is a Jungian Analyst and Psychotherapist in private practice in Ann Arbor and Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. She received her MSW from The University of Michigan and is
licensed (LMSW) in Clinical and Macro Social Work. Past experience has been in both inpatient and outpatient settings, including the design and administration of Day Treatment programs in Community Mental Health. Her particular interest now focuses on psychology, spirituality, and transformation in the second half of life. She is also interested in the relevancy of Jung's work in depth psychology and how it applies to and plays out in the collective as we experience it in today's world.

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

June, 2007

June Banquet

East Lansing, Michigan

Additional information may be obtained by contacting (517) 484-5065

September 18, 2005

Separateness and Sharing
in the Hierarchy of Clinical Values

Kerry Kelly Novick, Jack Novick

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

We suggest that analysis has dual goals: restoration of the patient to the path of progressive development and restoration of his or her relationships to their role as life-long resources. The full repertoire of analytic techniques can be enlisted in addressing these two goals. We can vividly illustrate these views in the context of adolescent analysis.

The most powerful argument made against concurrent work with the parents of adolescent patients grows from the version of psychoanalytic developmental theory that defines the development (and treatment) goal for adolescents as separation from parents. It follows from this point of view that any overlap, cross-fertilization, or integration of individual with parent work could breach the increasing distance being established between the young person and his parents. In our view the goal of adolescent development and hence of treatment is not separation, but transformation of the parent-child relationship and integration of the new self-representations. In relation to parents, the goal is to transform the relationship into one that can incorporate the realities of biological and psychological change in both adolescence and middle age.

These innovative ideas not only affect the practice of work with young people and their families, but have important application to analysis and therapy with adults.

Kerry Kelly Novick and Jack Novick are child, adolescent and adult psychoanalysts on the Faculty of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute and the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council. They trained with Anna Freud in London, England, and have been working with children and families for 35 years. They are active in teaching, research, and the community, and joined other colleagues to found a non-profit psychoanalytic school, Allen Creek Preschool, in Ann Arbor.

Both Jack and Kerry Novick have written extensively, with many articles published in major professional journals, on topics of defense, termination, development, verbalization, sadomasochism, therapeutic alliance, and omnipotence. Their first book “Fearful Symmetry: The Development and Treatment of Sadomasochism” appeared in 1996. Another book “Working with Parents Makes Therapy Work” was published in Spring 2005.

Pamela Orosan-Weine, Ph.D., is in private practice in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She is a candidate in psychoanalysis at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council.

Saturday, April 8, 2006

Relational Psychoanalysis:
The Emergence of a Tradition

Lewis Aron, Ph.D.

9:00 A.M.-4 P.M.

LEWIS ARON, Ph.D. is the Director of the New York University, Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. Dr. Aron is currently President of the Division of Psychologist-Psychoanalysts of the New York State Psychological Association (NYSPA). Dr. Aron was formerly President of the Division of Psychoanalysis (39) of the American Psychological Association as well as President of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (IARPP). He is on the Board of Directors of the Group for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in Psychology (GAPPP) and is a founding board member of the Stephen A. Mitchell Center for Relational Psychoanalysis. He holds a Diplomate in Psychoanalysis from the American Board of Professional Psychology and is a Fellow of both the American Psychological Association and of the Academy of Psychoanalysis.

Dr. Aron is the author of A Meeting of Minds: Mutuality in Psychoanalysis (The Analytic Press, 1996). He is the Editor (with Adrienne Harris) of The Legacy of Sandor Ferenczi, (TAP, 1993), the Editor (with Frances Sommer Anderson) of Relational Perspectives on the Body, (TAP, 1998), the Editor (with Stephen Mitchell) of Relational Psychoanalysis: The Emergence of a Tradition, (TAP, 1999) and the Editor (with Adrienne Harris) of Relational Psychoanalysis, II, Innovation and Expansion (TAP, 2005). He was one of the founders, and is an Associate Editor of, Psychoanalytic Dialogues: A Journal of Relational Perspectives and he is the series editor (with Adrienne Harris) of the Relational Perspectives Book Series, published by The Analytic Press. He is a member of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, North American Editorial Board. He is in private practice in New York City and in Port Washington, Long Island, N.Y.

Hotel Baronette
Novi, Michigan

Directions to the Conference Center

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November 20, 2005

“That's Not Analytic”:
Theory Pressure or 'Chaotic Possibilites'
in Analytic Training.

Carol Levin, M.D.
Pamela Orosan-Weine, Ph.D., discussant

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

Exploring the press to conform to a particular analytic theory in her training, often expressed in the pronouncement, "That's not analytic," the author uses a clinical example to illustrate how supervisory pressure risked constricting her work with a training patient and dampening the creation of her authentic analytic voice. she often found herself looking over her shoulder, so to speak, because supervisory stamps of approval were required for progression in training. Using concepts from chaos theory that are being integrated into psychoanalysis, she proposes that ana analytic process takes place in a vast, dynamic intersubjective field that optimally oscillates freely and provides the ground for creative analytic development.

Carol Levin, M.D. is a founding member of MPC who, before the founding of the Council, hosted the fiorst class that Murray Meisels taught in East Lansing. She considers MPC her first analytic home. More than two decades later, she graduated from her analytic training at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute, of which she is also a member. She is a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. She is Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Michigan State University and has a private practice of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, and consultation in Okemos and Bloomfield Township.

January 15, 2006

From G. W. Pabst to Terry Gilliam:
Cinematic Visions of Freud’s ‘Royal Road’

Jerrold Brandell, Ph.D., BCD

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

Of the various psychoanalytic concepts and insights expropriated by the popular culture, dream interpretation has always generated special interest, a broad appeal not lost to screenwriters and movie directors. Using cinematic examples representing different genres and historical epochs, this paper selectively examines the various ways in which patients' dreams have been represented and interpreted in cinematic depictions of psychoanalytic treatment over the past eighty-five years.

Jerrold Brandell, Ph.D., BCD, is a Professor and chairperson of the Graduate Concentration in Interpersonal Practice at Wayne State University School of Social Work. He is the founding editor of the journal, Psychoanalytic Social Work, and author or editor of seven books, the most recent of which are Psychodynamic Social Work (Columbia University Press, 2004) and Celluloid Couches, Cinematic Clients: Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in the Movies (State University of New York Press, 2004). Jerry maintains a small private practice in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy in Ann Arbor, and is also very actively involved in clinical supervision and consultation.

February 19, 2006

Parallel processes, openings and closings in psychoanalytic training

Linda Young, Ph.D., Andrea Corn, Psy.D.,
and Michael Shulman, Ph.D.

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

Panel Overview: This panel presents commentaries on the power of the parallel process as exemplified in personal experiences as well as a theoretical discussion highlighting the authority of the spoken and unspoken words. In this panel, two candidates who are currently in separate analytic institutes will share their perspectives on the supervisory process, especially with regard to the influence and presence of an upward and downward parallel process. In each paper, a particular case will be discussed along with the analysts' reflections as gleaned through self-inquiry. The third paper will offen an innovative and creative discussion of the case material, with an emphasis on the importance of language with regard to spoken and unspoken communications underlying parallel processes.

Paper 1 - by Linda Young

This discussion presents for consideration the power of parallel processes in a particular training case as reported by a supervisee within a training institute. The obscuring and dominating nature of this experience -- one which was experienced as compelling by the supervisee on the same level (albeit with different aspects) as the compelling intensity of his experience of transference to his own analyst -- is explored in detail as a function of parallels with authority which are gathered into, but may become invisible within, highly structured institute training. The conditions which stir the experience of such intense feelings within the supervisory encounter will be explored, as will implicaitons for training structures, conventions, and "rules." Conditions allowing fruitful work to be done, as well as those productive of fruitlessness, in learning from parallel processes in supervision are discussed in conclusion.

Paper 2 - by Andrea Corn

The paper examines the relationship and interplay between therapy and supervision as conducted within a trianing institute. this paper also explores how the therapist who has particular similarities to the patient brings her own defensive style as wll as life problems into the therapeutic and supervisory space. The paper explores how unconscious factors from childhood become reenacted in the therapeutic space and produce emotions that affect patient, therapist, and supervisor. The paper describes in detail and upward as well as downward parallel process acted out by the therapist and patient in the transference-countertransference along with the supervisor's conscious and unconscious role in this process. Last, this paper also discusses ther therapist's reluctance to broach unpleasant feelings with her training supervisor.

Paper 3 - by Michael E. Shulman

The discussion will explore the notion that the art of psychoanalysis involves speaking to that which is unrecognized or left out in ordinary conversation. The discussant will identify key features of the supervisory experience having to do with that which is ostensibly left out, e.g. the patient who is not physically present in the supervisory material, highlighting the centrality of this idea of an ostensibly missing presence in psychoanalytic inquiry. Exploring the ways in which the self is actually articulated in the "other" (the patient's self is articulated by the therapist and brought to supervision; the supervisor's self is elucidated in the "other" of the patient being discussed), the discussant will explore the implications for a psychoanalytic discourse of the self which gets lived out through a dialiogue with and about the "other."

Michael Shulman, Ph.D is in the private practice of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, consultation and supervision in Ann Arbor. He is currently completing his psychoanalytic education at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. Dr. Shulman has served on the faculties of the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Madonna University, the University of Detroit-Mercy, the University of Toledo, and MPI's Extension Division. A Past President of the Southeast Florida Association for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy during his eight years of residence in that warmer clime, he is also a former Consultant to the Practice Directorate of the American Psychological Association. He's published and presented on topics in psychoanalytic metapsychology, psychoanalysis and film, and the impact of managed care on the thinking of the psychotherapist, and will be presenting a paper on the particular pleasures of psychoanalytic work and our history of their non-discussion at MPI on March 11, 2006.

Linda Young, Ph.D graduated magna cum laude from Brown University and received her Ph.D in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan. After that, she obtained a postdoctoral fellowship at the Detroit Psychiatric Institute and went on to hold a faculty position, working and teaching on the Adult and Child Inpatient and Outpatient Services. She hs many years of experience treating individuals who have been involuntarily hospitalized and has wirtten numerous papers on the topic of working psychoanalytically with individuals characterized as "difficult to treat." Dr. Young is a former Vice President of the Michigan Society of Psychoanalytic Psychology. She is also a founding member of the Academy for the Study of the Psychoanalytic Arts and has servied as its Vice President since its inception. She has published several papers and has presented her wiork at local, national, and international conferences. Dr. Young has a psychoanalytic practice in Ann Arbor and Northville, Michigan, which includes providing supervision and onsultation to other professionals. In addition to her psychoanalytic practice, Dr. Young is involved in a professional singing and dancing troupe.

Andrea Corn, Psy.D recieved her Psy.D from Nova Southeastern University in 1994. Subsequently she has completed a two-year post-doctoral program in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy at the Southeast Florida Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis (SEFIPP). Currently, Dr. Corn is an advanced candidate in SEFIPP's Psychoanalysis Training Program. Since 1998, Dr. Corn has been active in the Division of Psychoanalysis (39) where she has served as Section IV, Local Chapter representative, Section IV President, and Section IV Representative to the Division (39) Board. In 2004, Dr. Corn was Co-Chair of the Division of Psychoanalysis (39) Annual Spring Meeting in Miami Beach, Fl. Dr. Corn is in private practice at Child and Family Psychologists in Plantation, Fl., where she specializes in the treatment of children, adolescents, and families. Dr. Corn enjoys presenting and has several publications on diverse topics including anorexia nervosa, masochistic adolescents, and dreams. Another area of interest is in youth and adolescent sports. She is also a contributing writer for the National Alliance of Youth Sports (NAYS) and wites a bi-monthly column entitled, "Family Matters" for South Florida Parenting magazine.

March 26, 2006
(Note:this is a change from the
usual March meeting date)

"Failure to meet the challenges
of Late Adolescence"

Howard Lerner, Ph.D.
Brenda Lovegrove-Lepisto, Psy.D., discussant

Directions to Madonna University

Leave taking, both internal and external, can be thought of as the major challenge of late adolescence, particularly in our culture. The case presentation is based on the rich conceptual and technical framework for understanding and treating sadomasochistic psychopathology formulated by Jack and Kerry Novick. Specifically, the Novick’s “two-system” model of self regulation is applied to the treatment of a disturbed adolescent boy and his family. A narrative process summary of the clinical work is presented offering examples of “open” and “closed” functioning and the role of omnipotent beliefs and fantasies. Important details from the patient’s family history, including adoption, traumatization, and parental externalization, are explored. The clinical utility of the “two system” model, the pivotal role of the therapeutic alliance, and the significance of clinical work with the family through all stages of the treatment process are illustrated.

Howard Lerner, Ph.D. is a child, adolescent, and adult psychoanalyst in private practice in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan and a faculty member of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. He is a Family Consultant at the Allen Creek Preschool. He has written extensively on the Rorschach, the Borderline diagnosis, and clinical work with disturbed adolescence.

Brenda Lovegrove Lepisto, Psy.D, is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in East Lansing. She is an adjunct professor at Michigan State University in the College of Human Medicine and teaches at Hurley Medical Center in the internal medicine residency program. Dr. Lepisto is also an adjunct professor in the MSU Psychology Department where she supervises clinical psychology doctoral students. Currently she is President-Elect at MPC and is developing a child psychoanalysis and child psychoanalytic psychotherapy training track at MPC.

The Michigan League
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Directions to the Michigan League

April 30, 2006

Oral History and

Echoes of Cataclysms Past

Henry Krystal, .D.

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

Oral history is constructed from the structure that arises out of the demands of severe trauma. Posttraumatic Alexithymia, with its prosody, accounts for the way that the most horrible things can be told.

Distortions, wish fulfillment, defenses, and elaborations are similar in all forms of oral history as well as in individual clinical history. Peoples' memories of traumatic events are controlled and modified to prevent them from becoming causes of future retraumatization. Severe trauma compromises and/or eradicates both the capacity to complete mourning and the capacity to create good idealized objects.

In considering the UNIVERSALLY appearing story of the Deluge, or "Flood," for example, we find that a maneuver is made in the minds of the survivors to retain an omnipotent and benevolent God. Those who perished in the calamity are declared sinners so hopeless that they had to be "uprooted." It is, perhaps, no coincidence that "ausgerrotten," i.e. "uprooted" was one of Hitler's favorite words. When idealized objects cannot be restored and/or mourning is not completed, aberrations of life and love enter the picture. In Genesis, the daughters of Lot undertake the "perpetuation of the line" in a perverse way.

Drawing heavily on work with holocaust survivors, this paper will focus on the structure and vicissitudes of oral history whether

found in the Bible, myth, or fairy tales.

Henry Krystal, M.D. is a psychoanalyst, professor emeritus of psychiatry at Michigan State University, and faculty member of both the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council and the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. He is a pioneer and distinguished author in the fields of trauma, post-traumatic sequels, alexithymia, addiction and somatization. His publications include Integration and Self-Healing, Drug Dependence, and Psychic Traumatization. Some of Dr. Krystal’s other interests include researching and writing about applied psychoanalysis, problems of aggression, creativity in relationship to transitional objects and functions, as well as psychoanalytic views of creativity in relationship to neuroscience and chaos theory. In addition, he has published 76 papers in the field so far. Recently, Dr. Krystal, as a pioneer in the field of trauma, was invited to write an autobiographic essay which was published in the book Mapping Trauma And Its Wake.

After the restitution laws in Germany were passed, Dr. Krystal became involved in a research project which included examining many of his fellow Holocaust survivors, follow up with hundreds of reexaminations, and some treatments. This research program was finalized when a historian at U of M Dearborn became involved in a "Testimony" program in which 150-200 survivors, including Dr. Krystal, were interviewed and videotaped. These interviews are available at

https://holocaust.umd.umich.edu/index.html

Dr. Krystal has been sitting in on history in the making and all against the background of his 50 years in the field of psychoanalysis. His work has been guided by the importance of “the recognition that neither as healers nor as patients could we deal with anything else but our own psychic reality.”

Madonna University
Kresge Hall

May 21, 2005

Psychoanalysis as a Spiritual Path
Frank Sollars, Ph.D.
11:00 A.M.-1:00 P.M.

Psychoanalysis as a Spiritual Path examines and attempts to unsettle the apparent contradiction between psychoanalysis as a science and psychoanalysis as a spiritual discipline. Correlations are drawn between Eastern concepts of Maya and duality and the psychoanalytic notion of conflict. Concepts of Nirvana, unitive consciousness and divine communion are correlated with the psychoanalytic concepts of the real self and conflict free ego functioning. Although Freud believed that religion was an illusion with no future many psychoanalysts have felt that analysis, if not a religious experience, is a deeply spiritual one in which people feel liberated from internal conflict and strife and develop greater feelings of joy, pleasure and gratitude in their lives. It is suggested that psychoanalysis can be more directly refocused to overtly claim a position as a spiritual path by emphasizing transformation of duality with the aim of liberating inhibitions to unitive consciousness and conflict free ego functioning.

Frank Sollars, Ph.D, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Birmingham, MI working with adolescents and adults. He is a supervising and training Analyst with the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council and has had a keen interest in bringing MPC’s presence to the Detroit area. He leads a monthly supervisory group in Birmingham and teaches for the Council. Dr. Sollars supervises graduate interns for the University of Detroit-Mercy and Madonna University.

Note: a luncheon for new MPC members will follow the presentation.

September 19, 2004

Gender Unbound

June, 2006
June Banquet

Ann Arbor, Michigan

Additional information may be obtained by contacting (517) 484-5065

(2004 - 2005)

Ellen Toronto, Ph.D.

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

The paper will present case material with all identifying data except gender. The material was chosen because it presents a set of issues that are frequently exhibited by both men and women. Gender-related issues, i.e., doing more than a fair share of the housework while working outside; an inability to express feelings; having more responsibility for the children even though the major breadwinner; strong possibility of sexual abuse; anxiety about penetration and a marked lack of a sense of agency, have been identified. The discussion will focus on two related issues, the first being that by eliminating crucial information about gender we may be able to listen to the data in a new way and recognize those possibly skewed assumptions that we automatically bring to bear when we learn that a person is male or female. The paper will then address the seemingly innate and compelling need that we have to know a person's gender and will offer possible explanations for the etiology of our anxiety about gender..

Ellen Toronto, Ph.D. is a psychoanlayst in private practice in Ann Arbor. She is a Founding Member and Past President of MPC and has also been Past President of the Section on Women and Gender in the Division of Psychoanalysis of APA. She has published in the areas of women and gender with particular interest in the non-verbal communication of mother and child as it becomes manifest in the clinical setting. Dr. Toronto is lead editor of a book entitled Into the Void which has recently been accepted for publication by Brunner-Routledge. The book is a compilation of articles by Section III members with current commentary centered around a gender-free case.

Saturday, October 16, 2004

Reflections on Transference and Countertransference Issues when Patients Return for Analytic Work

Steven Cooper, Ph.D.

9:00 A.M.-4 P.M.

Dr. Cooper will explore a variety of issues related to the patient's return to analysis, particularly with his former analyst. Among the issues that he will explore are the complex tensions between hope and limitation that accompany the patient's return. He suggests that returning patients often seem to reflect a kind of post-oedipal relationship toward their former analyst to the extent that they may see the analyst a bit more clearly through the transferential woods.

Dr. Cooper examines decisions between patient and analyst regarding the constructed attitudes that each hold toward the nature and value of the therapeutic regression. He will also explore a concept he terms "infinite regret." The ubiquitous nature of regret requires the analyst and patient to examine the sorts of conscious and unconscious fantasies that the patient holds in regard to changing and undoing previously held decisions and self-stances which he or she might regret. Dr. Cooper posits that resumed analysis can serve to perpetuate unconscious fantasies or allow for a further grieving and mourning process to help in their resolution.

Steven H. Cooper, Ph.D. is a Training and Supervising analyst, the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute; Supervising Analyst and Faculty, Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis; Clinical Associate Professor of Psychology, Harvard Medical School, Beth Israel Hospital; Corresponding Editor, Contemporary Psychoanalysis; Author: Objects of Hope: Exploring Possibility and Limit in Psychoanalysis; Private Practice, Cambridge, MA.

Doubletree Hotel
Novi, Michigan

Directions to the Doubletree Hotel

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November 14, 20034

“I NO LONGER BELIEVE”:
Did Freud Abandon the Seduction Theory?

Karin Ahbel-Rappe, Ph.D., MSSW

Recent histories of the seduction theory and its abandonment have emphasized the continuity of Freud’s work before and after the seduction theory, claiming that Freud did not give up his concern with the event of seduction but rather came to appreciate that an understanding of phantasy was also critical. This claim will be challenged. It will be shown that Freud left behind his early interest in reconstructing unconscious infantile incest and focused instead on later, conscious seduction, primarily among children; that he at times clearly reduced paternal incest to phantasy; that he turned away from the phenomenology of incest; and that he theoretically nulllified the difference between real and phantasied seduction. It will also be shown that concern with actual seduction need not detract from concern with phantasy and infantile sexuality, but rather leads right to the capacity for phantasyzing, to the core of the Freudian psyche. In this way the intuition of the seduction theory that there is something of particular psychoanalytic significance about incest finds support.

Karin Ahbel-Rappe, PhD,MSSW is in independent practice in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She is a candidate in psychoanalysis at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council. Her current research focus is Freudian theory and language. **Note time change from regular third Sunday of the month.

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

January 16, 2005

“I Became a Human Being:”

Treatment of a Severely Traumatized Child

Brenda Lovegrove Lepisto, Psy.D.

This presentation will focus on the treatment of a child who manifested deficits and conflict resulting from early abuse and neglect. Disruption of attachment and trauma compromised this child’s development, capacity for relatedness, and affect regulation, leaving him prone to aggressive outbursts, magical thinking, tremendous fear and anxiety, a chronic lack of pleasure, alienation from others, and a sadomasochistic line of development. Over the course of two consecutive years and with his return to treatment several years later, this child and I discovered a way to work together in spite of his grave mistrust of others, paranoia, aggression, and sadistic impulses. This case offers the opportunity to examine a child treatment where progress was made despite severe trauma, unstable living environment and serious psychopathology. There will be ample time to discuss the case material.

Brenda Lovegrove Lepisto, Psy.D. is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in East Lansing. She is an adjunct professor at Michigan State University at the College of Human Medicine and teaches at Hurley Medical Center in the internal medicine residency program. Dr. Lepisto is also an adjunct professor in the MSU Psychology Department where she supervises clinical psychology doctoral students. Her publications and research interests include: children and adolescents' perceptions of their experiences, outcome studies using the Rorschach, and the use of empathy in treatment. Currently, she is researching and writing a book on the mutual individuation process that occurs between mothers and their children.

February 20, 2005

Four Modes of Therapeutic Listening

David Klein, Ph.D.

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

Listening to the patient is our central activity in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. The capacity to be an effective listener is the single most significant factor for our work. In this paper I will discuss four different modes of therapeutic listening. The four modes are: Conversational Listening; Listening for Flow; Listening for Encoded Meaning; and Listening Within One’s Self. It has been helpful to me to identify these modes, to study each of them, and to be aware when I am using each in my clinical work. If our patients are to feel “really listened to”, it is important to utilize these multiple modes of listening. No one mode is sufficient in itself. Each of these modes has been discussed to some extent in the literature. However, to my knowledge there has not been a systematic effort to discuss the benefits and limitations inherent in each mode, and to identify the different forms of intervention which tend to emerge from each mode. This paper will attempt to do so. As well, issues involved in flexibly shifting from one mode to another will be discussed. Clinical examples will be used to illustrate the concepts.

David B. Klein, Ph.D., practices psychotherapy and psychoanalyis in Ann Arbor, working with children, adolescents and adults. After serving as MPC Treasurer for 5 years, he is currently President-elect; as well as the Editor of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council Bulletin. Currently he is the instructor for MPC course on Development.

March 20, 2005

Pattern as Inspiration and Mode of Communication

in the works of Vincent Van Gogh

Marilyn Charles, Ph.D.

Van Gogh’s use of colour is so striking that it is easy to overlook the intensity of the pattern that underlies his work. A recent exhibit in Arles, however, interspersed drawings of Van Gogh with quotations from letters to his brother Theo, highlighting the kinetic energy of the patterning in these black and white renderings (see Van Gogh, 2003). Van Gogh seems to be caught in the realm of primary experience, desperately trying to translate it sufficiently that he might communicate some of its splendour. We find him poised between immersion in the experience and the need to distance himself sufficiently from that very experience, that he might capture it and also, ultimately, survive. We also find him poised at the beginning of a new era in the history of art, making it important to appreciate the cultural and historical factors impinging on this artist at the time. Guided in her efforts by an appreciation of nonverbal communication, through which art achieves its power, the author looks at pattern as an element in the work of Van Gogh. Using conceptualizations from modern art, from Schachtel’s (1976) explications of differences between the experience of colour versus form, and from the writings of Van Gogh, himself, we can begin to form ideas as to the constraints that Van Gogh experienced in relation to his art. Looking then, at his use of pattern in his drawings, we can begin to formulate ideas regarding the tensions and constrictions he experienced and the ways in which he attempted to articulate these tensions, emotions, and dilemmas through the use of form.

Marilyn Charles, Ph.D. is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in practice in East Lansing, Michigan, working extensively with artists, writers, and musicians. As an analyst with MPC and Adjunct Professor of Clinical Psychology at Michigan State, she is committed to mentoring the next generation of clinicians, enjoying both teaching and supervision. Marilyn has a particular interest in British Object Relations theories, participating in a yearly seminar in London with noted Kleinian analysts. She has been invited to write a review of the two volume set Building on Bion, as well as a clinical chapter on Klein to be published by next year in Jon Mills’ edited volume: Other Banalities: Exploring the Legacy of Melanie Klein. She plans to teach a seminar titled “Klein, Bion, and Beyond” for MPC during the 2005-2006 course year. Dr. Charles has presented and published widely, and has served as an editor for several journals. She has become known for her work on nonverbal communications and has been invited to teach a seminar on this subject by the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis. Her book Patterns: Building Blocks of Experience (2002: Analytic Press) has been nominated for the Goethe Prize in Psychoanalytic Scholarship. She is also the author of Learning From Experience: A Clinician’s Guide (2004:Analytic Press) and Constructing Realities: Transformations in Myth and Metaphor (2004: Rodopi).

Directions to the St. John's Golf & Conference Center

April 24, 2005

Mourning a Ghost- Finding A Pathway From Despair

Robert Hooberman, Ph.D.

Discussant: Karen Baker, MSW

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

Psychoanalysis is the treatment of choice for those patients who have experienced severely damaging early childhood experiences, as so eloquently described by Shengold as ‘soul murdered’. These people often lead sterile, unsatisfying lives, cut off from emotionality and vitality.

Identification of patients who feel so lost often occurs through the countertransference since they tend to not affectively engage, resulting in the analyst feeling what the patient so often experiences, a desert of emotional sterility. Therapy with the disaffected can be very unsatisfying since the patient makes progress at glacial speed and conveys an atmosphere of deadness that is stultifying. Abhorrence of the ‘nameless dread’ can also push the analyst toward acting out, typically by premature termination. Patients with this lost presentation often drift through life, either experiencing internal desolation or trying to enliven themselves through attachments to exciting part-objects. Helping the patient to achieve a solid sense of connection with objects creates a sense of loss, hastens the movement toward the depressive position and ultimately replaces despair with sadness.

Robert Hooberman, Ph.D. is a psychologist/psychoanalyst practicing in Ann Arbor. He is Past-President of MPC. Currently he is working on a book aimed at an integrative approach to interpretation. He has published two previous books, Character Transformation through the Psychotherapeutic Relationship and Managing the Difficult Patient (with Barbara Hooberman). Dr. Hooberman works with adolescents and adults and has a special interest in working with those who are often characterized as “difficult”.

Karen Baker, MSW is a Clinical Social Worker/Psychoanalyst in private practice in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she sees adolescents, adults and couples. She is a supervisor, faculty member and training analyst at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council where she also serves as Member-at-Large on the Board. She is a Family Consultant at the Allen Creek Pre-school in Ann Arbor. Ms. Baker currently serves as Board Secretary of the National Membership Committee on Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work.

St. John's Golf & Conference Center
Wisdom Room
44045 Five Mile Rd.
Plymouth MI

May 15, 2005

Empathy
Directed by Amie Siegel
Discussants: Teresa Bernardez, M.D. and Marilyn Charles, Ph.D.

Empathy is a feature film that explores the tricky intimacy between psychoanalysts and their patients. Empathy interweaves a fictional narrative, documentary interviews, screen tests and a parodied television documentary of the analyst's favorite piece of furniture - the Eames Chair. A prrovocative mosaic of genres that looks at power, manipulation and the promise of empathy, patient and therapist disclosure, performance and identity, exploitation,and the boundaries between truth and fiction.

A $15 donation is requested to help defray the costs of the presentation.

DISCUSSANTS

Teresa Bernardez, M.D. is a psychiatrist and a training and supervising analyst at MPC. She was Professor of Psychiatry at the College of Human Medicine, Michigan State University from1871 to 1989. Previously she had been a staff psychiatrist at the Menninger Clinic, a training and supervising faculty at The Menninger School of Psychiatry, a Faculty and Clinical Associate of the Tavistock Clinic in London, and a Fellow of the Bunting Institute, Harvard University. She is a film and Jazz lover, considering them the arts "par excellence" of the 20th century. She uses film to explore gender stereotypes and gender variations across cultures and over time.

Marilyn Charles, Ph.D, is a training and supervising analyst with MPC and adjunct faculty of clinical psychology at Michigan State University. She is the author of three books: Patterns, Learning Through Experience, and Constructing Realities. She maintains a private practice in East Lansing. An artist and a poet herself, she works extensively with artists,musicians, and writers, and is particularly interested in how culture is expressed and re-visioned in the arts.

September 22, 2002

Resilience

June, 2004
June Banquet

Ann Arbor, Michigan

Additional information may be obtained by contacting Brenda Lovegrove Lepisto, Psy.D. at or (517) 333-0332

Henry Krystal, M.D.

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

A retrospective study of thirty-five-year follow-ups of survivors of the Holocaust and other genocidal tragedies, this paper asks the question, "What attributes allow individuals to survive and master lethal trauma, and what characteristics favor successful resumption of 'normal' life?" Resilience is built on the conviction of one's security, lovability, and safety. The nature of affects and ways in which they serve as signals in information processing, alerting and preparing one for a response to danger, are involved in the prevention of traumatic surrender and psychogenic death when trauma cannot be avoided. The ways in which one's psychic reality is maintained in the constricted trauma sheds light on the function of signal affects and the nature of registration and recall. Unconscious and repressed memory traces are not preserved intact but are subject to complex modifications. For survivors of the Holocaust, use of disavowal, repudiation, and suspension of mourning was essential. The most severe challenges involved dealing with God, rage, guilt, shame, and the necessity to restore an acceptable schema of world order. Restoring access to benign introjects is one part of regaining one's capacity to love. Love is everyone's life power.

Dr. Krystal is a psychoanalyst, professor emeritus of psychiatry at Michigan State University, and faculty member of both the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute and the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council. He is a distinguished author in the fields of trauma, post-traumatic sequels, alexithymia, addiction, and somaticization. His work has been guided by the importance of "the recognition that neither as healers nor as patients would we deal with anything else but our own psychic reality."

October 20, 2002

Effects of Divorce on Children

Ira Schaer, Ph.D.

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

This paper examines current research on the impact of divorce on children and adolescents from a psychoanalytic perspective. Particular difficulties in object relations development and ego functioning will be explored. Treatment issues and the specific problems these clients manifest in therapy will be discussed.

Ira Schaer, Ph.D. is an instructor for MPC, most recently teaching a course in adolescent development. He served on the staff and faculty of the Children's Service at Detroit Psychiatric Institute for over twenty years. During this time, he was involved in studying the effects of chronic, multiple trauma in inner city children and exploring applications of psychodynamic treatment with this population. He currently has a private practice in Huntington Woods, specializing in the treatment of children and adolescents, and is an adjunct professor at the University of Detroit-Mercy and an instructor at Madonna University. Dr. Schaer is also a member of the Michigan Society of Forensic Psychology and a consultant to the Oakland County Probate Court.

November 17, 2002

The Contribution of Mothering to the Lifelong Individuation Process

Brenda Lepisto, Psy.D.

The unique aspects of the process in mothering that foster individuation in the mother will be explored in this presentation. Women are in the unique position to individuate, separate, and then go through the process with their children beginning most commonly with pregnancy and lasting through the lifespan. Hence, there are points at which the mother-child relationship can be enhanced or go awry due to the constantly evolving nature of the emotional connection between mother and child. An overview of individualtion will be discussed as well as clinical interventions that can be used with mothers who are either patients or have children who are patients.

Dr. Brenda Lovegrove Lepisto is a psychologist-psychoanalyst in private practice in East Lansing. She received her Psy.D. in clinical psychology from Central Michigan University. She completed her internship in The Deveraux Foundation and at Michigan State University, child clinical psychology post doctoral fellowship at Hurley Medical Center in the internal medicine residency program. Dr. Lepisto is also an adjunct professor in the MSU Psychology Department, where she supervises clinical psychology doctoral students. Her publications and research interests include: children and adolescents' perceptions of their experiences, outcome studies using the Rorschach, and the use of empathy in treatment.

January 19, 2003

ABSTRACTION:
The Analyst's Escape from Psychoanalysis

Bertram Karon, Ph.D.

What is most valuable in psychoanalyis is specific and concrete but painful. As Ferenczi pointed out, the two most useful words for a psychoanalyst are "for example." Abstractions can serve as a defense against pain, but frequently at a cost for the patient. Psychoanalysts and patients can talk about abstractions all day without trouble, but the real material is difficult to stay with. Nonetheless, good analysts use abstractions for rough guidance in a sea of confusion, but do not let them get in the way of hearing the patient. Clinical examples will be given.

February 16, 2003

On Mourning

Franklin Sollars, Ph.D.

Working through, the cornerstone of psychoanalytic change, involves the mourning of trauma which resurfaces in the transference. The mourning process requires three distinct tasks for its completion. The first is the resolution of unconscious resistance, the second is an expansion of the self representation through a de-externalization of the bad-object experience and thirdly, is the gradual implementation of affect tolerance and cognitive expansion to enable change. The author draws on an eclectic array of psychoanalytic schools to present his position.

Franklin Sollars, Ph.D., is a psychoanalyst with the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council. He has had a keen interest in bringing MPC’s presence to the Detroit area. He leads a monthly supervisory group in Birmingham and teaches for the Council. Dr. Sollars supervises graduate interns for the University of Detroit-Mercy and Madonna University.

March 16, 2003

The Role of Episodic and Procedural Memory in Transference:
Implications for Unconscious Affect and Consciousness

Howard Shevrin, Ph.D.

Recently efforts have been made to redefine transference as the enactment of procedural memories, a concept drawn from cognitive memory research. A critique of this approach will be addressed both clinically and experimentally with particular emphasis on the place of unconscious affect and the relationship between conscious and unconscious processes in transference experiences.

Dr. Howard Shevrinis a professor of psychology in the departments of Psychiatry and Psychology and faculty member of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. His analytic training was obtained at the Topeka Institute of Psychoanalysis. Dr. Shevrin has devoted a considerable portion of his career to research on unconscious processes. He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association and Neuro-Psychoanalysis. Recent publications have appeared in Consciousness and Cognition, JAPA, and IJP.

April 13, 2003

Transformation from Malevolent to Benevolent Living:
Healing the Traumatic Experience

Elizabeth Waiess, Psy.D.

Using clinical vinettes, this paper explores the component of refuge provided by the psychonalytic relationship and the idea of reconnecting mind and body which have been psychologically disconnected during traumatization. The emergence, use and meaning of hallucinations in working with massively traumatized individuals is discussed as a positive step in the recovery process.

Dr. Waiess is a psychoanalyst and psychologist in full-time private practice in East Lansing. She also teaches part time for Lansing Community College and is an adjunct instructor at Michigan State University. She specializes in the area of massive psychic trauma. She has worked clinically with adults, children and adolescents for 20 years.

Discussants

Sandra Brown Wiersma, M.A. is a psychoanalytic psychologist in private practice. She specializes in the analytic treatment of patients who have experienced severe psychic trauma. Ms. Wiersma has served as an adjenct instructor in psychology for Aquinas College and has taught at University of Detroit as a teaching Scholar in Psychology.
Edward P. Schmitt, Ph.D. is in full time private practice in psychodynamic and psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy in Jenison, Michigan. He is the director of a small, psychodynamically oriented psychology practice which operates outside the managed care environment. He has been involved with MSPP and MPC for nearly two decades, via attending programs, course work, and supervision. Dr. Schmitt's interests include psychoanalytic psychotherapy and clinical and economic issues related to functioning outside the managed care environment.

Airport Hilton
4747 28th Street
Grand Rapids, Michigan

May 18, 2003

Early Maternal Loss:
From Cannibalistic Fantasy Play to Sad Affect

Barbara Streeter, M.S., L.P.C.C.
Hannah Perkins School, Cleveland

The presentation is of the beginning analysis of an adopted child who suffered maternal loss and reported sexual abuse during her first year. This is a child with a severe and early disturbance whose analytic treatment was made possible through two and a half years of preparatory work in the treatment-via-the-parent in conjunction with attendance at the Hannah Perkins School. The paper illustrates the way in which very primitive feelings and urges conveyed in play and interactions with the therapist were addressed and linked to the early experiences. It also show how interpretations of defenses resulted in gradual integration of the personality structure and the capacity to experience sadness in relation to separation from the therapist.

Barbara U. Streeter, M.S., L.P.C.C. qualified as a child and adolescent psychoanalyst through the Cleveland Center for Research in Child Development. She is currently the Director of Therapy for the Hannah Perkins School, Associate Director of the Hannah Perkins Center (HPC) Extension Division and on the Faculty of the HPC. She helped develop the HPC/TRW Early Childhood Intervention Alliance, a national day care consultation project; is co-editor of the Newsletter of the Association for Child Psychoanalysis; is the past president of the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Society; and is currently Secretary of the Board of the newly established Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center. Prior to becoming a psychoanalyst, Ms. Streeter was a teacher in the Hanna Perkins Kindergarten. She has an M.S. in Special Education from Bank Street College in NYC and graduated with honors from Brown University.

February 17, 2002
About Cruising and Being Cruised

Dennis Shelby, Ph.D.

June, 2003
June Banquet

Ann Arbor, Michigan

Additional information may be obtained by contacting Brenda Lovegrove Lepisto, Psy.D. at or (517) 333-0332

September, 16 2001
Evolutionary Biology and Psychoanalysis:
A Symposium

Evolutionary Biology and Psychoanalysis
Murray Meisels, Ph.D.

Evolutionary Thinking: Clinical Relevance?
Anne Eisen, M.D.

Did Repression Evolve Because It Makes
Commitments Possible?
Randolphe Nesse, M.D.

11:00 a.m. - 1 p.m.

Michigan Union
Ann Arbor, Michigan

October 21, 2001
Bilingual Analysis of the Transference
And Its Impact on the Recovery of Memories

Teresa Bernardez, M.D.

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

University Club
East Lansing, Michigan

November 18, 2001
Trauma and Its Attempted Mastery
Strange Interlude

Alvin Curtis Spindler, M.D and
Evangeline Spindler, M.D

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

Michigan League
Ann Arbor, Michigan

January 20, 2002
Clinical Implications of Learning Disorders
for Psychoanalytic Treatment

Joseph Palumbo, Ph.D., M.S.W.

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

University Club
East Lansing, Michigan

R. Dennis Shelby received his MSW from Loyola University of Chicago and his Ph.D. from the Institute for Clinical Social Work. He is the author of two books based on qualitative research and his clinical experience: If A Partner Has AIDS and People With AIDS and Those Who Help Them, and many papers on clinical social work with HIV related problems and psychotherapy with gay men. He is a memeber of the Faculty of the Institute for Clinical Social Work and an advanced Candidate at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. He is the senior Editor of the Hawthorn Press series on Psychosocial Issues in HIV/AIDS and on the editorieal boards of the Journal of Homosexuality and The Journal of Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy. He maintains a psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and consultation practice in Chicago.

This paper explores the phenomenon of cruising for sexual encounters from the perspective of self psychology. Previous papers on the subject have viewed cruising as a homosexual act and offered elaborate libidinal dynamic explanations that offer little details as to the treatment as a whole or outcome. The author offers evidence that cruising is a human act that is quite common in our society. The central theme of the paper is that when cruising is approached in libidinal terms, the emphasis is on sexual acts and not the needs of the self. By approaching cruising from the standpoint that the self is destabilized, and that cruising is an emergency measure employed to prevent further fragmentation, the emphasis shifts to the need to search. In this view the person is "lost" and and needs to be found in the transference. Clinical examples are offered to illustrate how the need to cruise was viewed as a manifestation of distress and the destabilized self was brought into the transference. The result was a deepening of the transference and a more complex and empathic understanding of the self of the patient.

April 21, 2002
Adolescent Case Presentation

March 17, 2002
A Beautiful Mind

Marilyn Charles, Ph.D.

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

The film is an apt medium for exploring the line between fantasy and reality in that it encourages us to leave aside our comfortable moorings in our own reality for an alternative view. The maker of the film A Beautiful Mind make explicit this tension by inviting us into the life and mind of Nobel-prize winning mathematician, John Nash, as he struggles to maintain his sanity while also testing the limits of his mind and imagination. This film encourages us to consider the dilemma of the gifted individual, when excessive tension arises between absorption in one’s medium versus the need for recognition.

Marilyn Charles, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in East Lansing. She is currently serving as Vice-President of Programs for MPC and is an adjunct professor of psychology at Michigan State University. A few of Dr. Charles’s most recent publications include “Bion’s Grid” for Le Mouvement Psychoanalytique, “Monogamy and Its Discontents” for American Journal of Psychoanalysis, “Through the Unknown, Remembered Gate” for Psychoanalytic Review, “The Outsider” for Free Associations, and “Repetition of the Remembered Past” for Psychoanalytic Psychology. Her chapter on women and psychotherapy in film will soon be published in The Celluloid Couch (ed. J.R. Brandell) by SUNY Press, and her book Patterns: Essential Building Blocks of Experience is in press.

University Club
East Lansing, Michigan

Brenda Lovegrove Lepisto, Psy.D.

This adolescent case presentation illustrates the psychoanalytic work that can be accomplished despite mitigating factors of maternal loss, drug abuse, parental dysfunction and acting out. The male adolescent, Jevon, was forced into treatment as an alternative to residential placement. He was able to form a therapeutic alliance, develop insight, and improve relationships with his peers. Specific techniques to engage this adolescent in the process will be highlighted. History of the case and excerpts from process notes will be read to give a flavor of the therapeutic relationship and how it developed over time.

Dr. Brenda Lovegrove Lepisto is a psychologist-psychoanalyst in private practice in East Lansing. She received her Psy.D. in clinical psychology from Central Michigan University. She completed her internship at the Devereux Foundation and at Michigan State University, child clinical psychology post-doctoral fellowship at the Hurley Medical Center and the Donald Whaley Children's Center. She is an adjunct professor at Michigan State University in the College of Human Medicine in the internal medicine residency program. Dr. Lepisto is also an adjunct professor on the MSU Psychology Department where she supervises clinical psychology doctoral students. Her publications and research interests include: children and adolescents' perceptions of their experiences, outcome studies using the Rorschach, and the use of empathy intretment. Currently, she is researching and writing a paper on the mutual individualtion process that occurs between mothers and their children.

Discussant: Robert Hooberman, Ph.D.

Robert Hooberman, Ph.D. is a psychologist-psychoanalyst in private practice in Ann Arbor, specializing in the treatment of adolescents and adults. He is currently the President of MPC. Dr. Hooberman is co-author of Managing the Difficult Patient and the author of the forthcoming book, Characterological Transformations and the Psychotherapeutic Relationship.

Grand Rapids, Michigan

May 19, 2002
What If There Are No Ghosts:
A Dissociative Perspective on The Sixth Sense

Linda Sherby

The Sixth Sense is a movie about a nine year old boy, Cole, who sees ghosts. They are scary ghosts, ghosts who get him into trouble and make him feel like a freak. But the truth is there are no ghosts. The only ghosts that exist are the ones inside our minds. For most of us, these ghosts, the ones inside of us, can be understood as the internalized self and object representations when have taken in, projected, and reinternalized over the course of our lives. We are haunted by many of these specters. The criticize us, taunt us, humiliate us. Many of us have more benign ghosts as well, those that soothe and comfort. For others, because of a confluence of external trauma and internal capacities, these ghosts become dissociated self-states, each with their own structure and autonomy. Cole can be understood in this light, as a severely traumatized child who has responded to his trauma by dissociating into relatively stable, enduring parts. Each of the ghosts in the movie representing a different personality state or alter of the child identified as Cole. Cole is not a freak. He is a child with a dissociative identity disorder.

Linda Sherby, Ph.D. is a psychologist-psychoanalyst in Boca Raton, Florida. She is past president and current secretary of the Southeast Florida Association of Psychoanalytic Psychology, as well as a faculty member and supervising analyst of the Southeast Florida Institute for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. Dr. Sherby practiced in Ann Arbor for eighteen years before moving to Florida and received her certificate in psychoanalysis for the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council.