SAN FRANCISCO EXTENSION DIVISION
Meryl Botkin, Ph.D., Chair
John DiMartini, Ph.D., Laurie Goldsmith, Ph.D., Marilynne Kanter, Ph.D., Michael Levin, Psy.D., Catherine Mallouh, M.D., Cathy Witzling, Ph.D., Committee Members
SAN FRANCISCO YEARLONG PROGRAM 2009-2010
* Class I
* Class II
SAN FRANCISCO YEARLONG PROGRAM (II)
SEPTEMBER 2009 - MAY 2010
NEITHER DEAD NOR ALIVE: PSYCHOANALYTIC APPROACHES TO HEALING PERVERSE RELATIONSHIPS
This yearlong program surveys a powerful shift in conceptualizing perversion during the first 100 years of psychoanalysis. Freud initially defined “the perverse” as a turning away from the sexual aim of reproduction, but he also believed that most people develop non-reproductive strategies for sexual pleasure. The seminar series follows the conversation among British, continental European, and North and South American analysts, who, in response to Freud’s ideas, speak of “eroticization” as a strategy of engaging infantile aspects of sexuality to ward off fears of annihilation, abandonment, and collapse into overwhelming depression. It concludes with a course on working with perverse elements of the transference-countertransference. The case conferences focus on the challenge of keeping the whole of a patient’s experience in mind, especially when that experience is alternately consonant and dissonant with our inner theoretical frames and subtly draws us into perverse engagements. The entire program considers the diverse social, cultural, and political influences interfacing with current psychoanalytic practice.
San Francisco Yearlong Seminar Series:
THE LANGUAGE OF PERVERSION, THE PERVERSION OF LANGUAGE
Language is one medium for forging the connection between analyst and patient. Words can also be used by either person in ways other than to communicate —for example, to enchant, confuse, demean, distance or excite. Language can be the form through which the analyst-patient dyad either welcomes or loses the chance to generate new meaning. The instructor will draw on both poetry and clinical material to trace how the use of language in concrete and non-expressive modes offers clues to a perverse engagement with reality. We will also consider the analyst’s efforts to stay alive in a perverse relationship by learning to speak in a way that preserves and encourages growth.
Forrest Hamer, Ph.D., Member, SFCP
Fridays: September 18, 25, 2009
PERVERSION AND INFANTILE TRAUMA
In these two seminars, we will explore the relationship among infantile traumatic experience, failed early object relations, and the development of destructive omnipotence and later sado-masochistic and perverse structures. We will explore these themes through discussing relevant contemporary literature and the film, The Piano Teacher.
Joyce Lindenbaum, L.C.S.W., Member and Faculty, SFCP
Fridays: October, 2, 9, 2009
TILL DEATH DO US PART: THE EVOLUTION OF KLEINIAN VIEWS OF PERVERSION
Melanie Klein wrote almost nothing on adult perversions. But, her early theorizing on the primitive defense mechanisms provides a foundation for contemporary Kleinians to conceptualize adult perversions and addictions as ways of struggling to develop object relations when an excess of destruction dominates the personality. In this class, we will discuss Klein’s contribution to contemporary thinking on perversion and focus our attention on character perversion and the perverse transference, in conjunction with the ideas of Donald Meltzer, Herbert Rosenfeld, Betty Joseph, and John Steiner.
Katherine MacVicar, M.D., Training and Supervising Analyst, SFCP
Fridays: October 16, 23, 30, November 6, 2009
FOLLOWERS OF FREUD IN FRANCE AND AN AMERICAN TWIST
Joyce McDougall, Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, and Thomas Ogden explore the scene of working with perverse aspects of patients’ personalities: the reinvented primal scene, eroticization, distortions of perception, psychological deadness, efforts to construct a self, and disavowal of sexual and generational difference. We will study how the perverse subject of analysis created in the transference/countertransference occurs in all treatments, and how we can listen to and speak to this phenomenon with our patients.
Sue von Baeyer, Ph.D., Member and Faculty, SFCP
Fridays: November 13, 20, December 4, 11, 2009
FREUD'S EMERGING CONCEPT OF PERVERSION AND THE EVOLUTION OF FREUDIAN PERSPECTIVES IN NORTH AMERICA
This seminar traces Freud’s emerging conceptualization of perversion and the further development of the concept among psychoanalysts in North America. We will read selections from Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), “A Child is Being Beaten” (1919), “Fetishism” (1927), and “The Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defense” (1938). We will consider how these concepts are thought of today and compare them with developments of the North American ego psychological and contemporary Freudian Schools.
Michael Wagner, Ph.D., Member and Faculty, SFCP
Fridays: January 22, 29, February 5, 12, 19, 2010
THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF D.W. WINNICOTT AND MASUD KAHN
Winnicott and Khan tie perversion to failures in healthy processes of psychic formation, such as mirroring, playing, and emerging transitional phenomena. If mirroring fails, the baby cannot establish a paradoxical relation between inner and outer worlds. Feeling nothing inside, it continually seeks external gratification instead. Excessive stimulation or deficiency of care leads a child to eroticize the surfaces of its body and its orifices as a substitute for maternal care, causing pleasure through surface sensation to overtake other developmental processes. We will use contemporary Kleinian and Laplanchian perspectives to offer sites of comparison.
Laurie Goldsmith, Ph.D., Member and Faculty, SFCP
Fridays: February 26, March 5, 12, 19, 26, 2010
SEMINAR ON TECHNIQUE: TRANSFERENCE AND COUNTER-TRANSFERENCE IN THE ANALYTIC TREATMENT OF PERVERSION
Sometimes an analyst may find himself especially pleased and excited with a patient, yet be unable to see that his pleasure is the countertransference equivalent of the patient’s sexualizing the transference relationship. The analyst’s inability to see his own perverse engagement helps the patient live comfortably with a limited range of object relations but never change. This clinical seminar will focus on such difficult clinical impasses and on how greater attention to the crucial role of the transference and counter-transference helps the analyst to realign his stance toward the patient. The instructor will use material from his own and the seminar participants’ clinical practices to further discussion of clinical technique.
James Dimon, M.D., Training & Supervising Analyst, SFCP
Fridays: April 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, 2010
FILM SCREENING AND REVIEW
We will view assigned films together for the Fall Term Review and outside of class for the Spring Term Review. For both reviews, we will look carefully at sections of the films that illustrate perverse relationships in an immediate and potentially disturbing way. We will review and develop the psychoanalytic concepts presented thus far in the course to elaborate the discussion and further our understanding of the impact of these films. There will be no new reading for these weeks.
Meryl Botkin, Ph.D., John DiMartini, Ph.D., Catherine Mallouh, Ph.D., Members, SFCP
Fall Term Review: January 8, 15, 2010; Spring Term Review: May 7, 14, 2010
* A small number of participants with academic or artistic backgrounds may apply to audit the seminar series with permission of the Co-Chairs of the SFCP Extension Division. The Chairs will consider these applications case-by-case and offer the option to audit as space allows. In addition, anyone offered this auditing option must meet with the Chairs to discuss confidentiality rules for handling clinical material and sign an agreement to uphold confidentiality.
SAN FRANCISCO YEARLONG CONTINUOUS CASE CONFERENCES:
Stanley Steinberg , M.D., Training & Supervising Analyst, SFCP
September 18, 25, October 2, 9, 16, 23, 2009
Holly Gordon, D.M.H., Member and Faculty, SFCP
October 30, November 6, 13, 20, December 4, 11, 2009
Patricia Marra, M.F.T., Member, SFCP
January 22, 29, February 5, 12, 19, 26, 2010
Milton Schaefer, Ph.D., Member and Faculty, SFCP
March 5, 12, 19, 26, April 2, 9, 2010
Dena Sorbo, L.C.S.W., Member and Faculty, SFCP
Marilynne Kanter, Ph.D., Member and Faculty, SFCP
April 16, 23, 30, May 7, 14, 21, 2010
Class meetings: Fridays from, 12:30 p.m.—3:30 p.m. Didactic Seminar: 12:30 p.m.—2:00 p.m., followed by Continuous Case Conference: 2:15 p.m.—3:30 p.m.
All class meetings will be held at SFCP, 2340 Jackson St., 4 th Floor (entrance on Webster St.), San Francisco, CA;
32sessions;86.5 CE credits; $1800; cost of readers is not included in tuition. For complete fees and refund information, see Fees and Payment Policy . Enrollment: min 8, max.16.
This Yearlong Program includes two tracks—a seminar series and a case conference—each with five sections, and an intersession consisting of two film screenings and reviews. The case conference and seminar series are designed as a single program to be taken jointly. This program is designed at an intermediate level and it is recommended that participants be post-graduate clinicians. If you have any questions about your level of preparation, please contact one of the Extension Program Co-Chairs: Milton Schaefer, Ph.D., at 415/776-3400 or Patricia Marra, M.F.T., at 415/668-0767.
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