PSYCHOANALYTIC GRAND ROUNDS @ STANFORD 2007-2008
Please join us for a series of talks about psychoanalytic ideas in a relaxed setting once each month.
The meetings are free and open to all mental health professionals and interested parties from various disciplines.
The meetings are the LAST Wednesday of each month from 6:15-7:30 pm in the Stanford Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Building, 401 Quarry Road, Room 2209.
CE credits available for $10.00. Only cash and checks will be accepted.
Questions? Call Maureen Smith, M.D. 650-329-8834
9/26/07
Working Psychoanalytically in a Silicon Valley Practice
Hugh Grubb, Psy.D.
How can one introduce a psychoanalytic way of working to the time-pressured, performance-focused, intellectualizing culture of Silicon Valley? This will be a discussion of how we might define some characteristics of this culture as well as a pragmatic consideration of the challenges to opening an "analytic space" while responding to its pressures. A specific clinical situation will be introduced- beginning treatment with a high tech engineer- to illustrate how therapists might conceptualize both the task of initiating this process and their own reactions to the expectations placed upon them.
10/31/07
The Devil Within: Working With the Hidden faces of Masochism and Self-Defeat
Alan Kessler, Ph.D.
Masochism is an enigmatic contradiction. Given that we are hard-wired to desire pleasure and minimize pain, what twist of intrapsychic events leads people to be enticed by pain, suffering and self-defeat? Is someone who craves suffering coming to therapy for help or punishment?
Masochistic wishes are often revealed in the fantasies of patients in in-depth treatment. Not uncommonly, masochism is often enacted in treatment. With stealth and fluidity, a compassionate therapist can be transformed into a partner in a sadomasochistic ritual. In this grand rounds, our first task in our effort to understand and treat such inflicted suffering, will be to distinguish and define masochism more clearly. We will view masochism from the point of view of its role in normal psychic functioning and from where and how it becomes pathological. Then using theoretical material of several authors and ample case material we will look at the dynamics of pain turned into pleasure. Finally, we will look at how intensive therapy can provide a path to more adaptive sources of gratification.
1/30/2008
Child Murder: A psychoanalytic View
Barbara Almond, M.D.
Child murder is a shocking phenomenon, seemingly beyond the pale of human behaviors, yet one that invariably captures the public's horrified interest. It may be understood as an event that may happen when a mother is totally unable to cope with parenting under the conditions of her life at a particular time. Intrapsychic factors play a large precipitating role in these tragedies. The presenter will use these factors to discuss an example from literature- Toni Morrison's Beloved- as well as a contemporary real life event- the story of Andrea Yates, and a clinical example of a particular form of child murder.
2/27/2008
Shame Veiled and Unveiled: The Shame Affect and its Re-emergence in the Clinical Setting
Mali Mann, M.D.
The psychoanalytic theory of shame, and our personal as well as clinical experiences illustrate some important developmental aspects of the shame affect. Often those who undergo repeated shame experiences use substitute affects such as rage or depression to disavow their experience of shame. Anticipatory shame and defensive phenomena can be observed in the clinical setting in the transference/counter-transference experience.
3/26/2008
A Clincial Presentation from the Palo Alto Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program
Ellen Russin, L.C.S.W. (Presenter), Richard Almond, M.D. (Discussant)
4/30/2008
Timelessness, Time and Transference
Jeanne Haresemovitch, L.C.S.W.
Timelessness and time share an uneasy relationship in psychoanalysis. They are often represented as opposites and antithetical in aim – timelessness as defense or pathology and time as measure of psychic integration and achievement. The creative and transformative power of their relationship, its complexity and fertility, remain largely uncharted in psychoanalysis. In my essay I present timelessness and time as vital and inseparable counterparts to one another, mutually defining structures, whose interaction redefine and reshape human experience through a process of creative destruction. I explore the clinical potential that is held within the engagement between timelessness and time and how that potential, at times subtle and enigmatic, is evidenced in the phenomenon of transference, where timelessness and time generate new forms of experience that hold our history while presenting the possibility of transforming its future.
5/28/2008
Not to be Found Wanting: Psychic Retreats in Patients with Eating Disorders
Jana Kahn, Ph.D.
Although renunciation of need and desire is what we see as the hallmark of patients with anorexia and bulimia, when we meet a patient in the grip of a serious eating disorder we discover that they have lost faith in the reliability and transformative potential of relationships and have constructed an omnipotent impenetrable cocoon that that while giving them an illusion of protection keeps them rigidly fixed in their symptoms and closed off to new experiences that promote emotional development. Dr. Jana Kahn will present a paper describing how these patients use bodily sensations and preoccupations to create a self made holding environment and the important clinical implications of finding a way to reach these patients who put up “No Entry” signs and communicate that our help is unwelcome. She will present clinical material from her work with patients with eating disorders demonstrating the opportunity to establish a new kind of interaction: one where giving and receiving might gradually become a source of pleasure rather than of terror.
