PSYCHOANALYTIC GRAND ROUNDS @ STANFORD 2009-2010
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.
CME/CE credits available for $10.00. Only cash and checks will be accepted.
Questions? Call Maureen Smith Ruffell, M.D. 650-329-8834
Somatoform Disorders: Diagnosis and Treatment
John Barry, M.D.
September 30, 2009
Somatoform disorders are a group of conditions that are common but frequently overlooked. The consequences to patient care can be dramatic. The purpose of this lecture is to review the history of this disorder, common diagnostic features and treatment principles. An example of a common somatoform disorder in neurology is that of non-epileptic seizure. This condition will be used as an example of the principles to be reviewed above.
Gay Male Adolescence: Psychoanalytic Perspectives
Gary Grossman, Ph.D.
October 28, 2009
As the age of coming out has decreased, the presence of openly gay teenagers is no longer unusual at schools and within families, and this is particularly true in the Bay Area. This lecture will present a psychoanalytic framework for understanding the unique developmental experiences for boys who grow up to be gay. The challenges during adolescence will be highlighted including: coming out, relationship with family & peers, identity formation, sexuality and self-esteem. Factors contributing to internalized homophobia and common clinical dilemmas faced by psychotherapists working with gay teens will also be discussed.
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The Role of the Paternal Object in Development and Psychotherapy
Alan Kessler,Ph.D.
November 18, 2009
The father -child attachment is intense and unsettling as it rests on a bedrock of mutually shared conflicting fantasies of power and authority, versus the potentiation of autonomy and yielding with gentle loving concern. Accordingly, the psychological sequelae of how love and hate for the paternal object are resolved are large and make themselves known in the patient’s daily struggles and in the transference. In this grand round the developmental role of the father who stands alone and in partnership with the mother in the object relational world from infancy on will be reviewed and applied to the therapeutic process. A central thesis will then be that patients turn to therapists to provide both paternal functions (along with maternal) as well as a reworking of the internalized father and self.
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Dreaming and Reality: A Comparison of Interpretive Work in Two Cultures - North American Psychoanalysis and an Indigenous Culture in the Amazon Rainforest
January 27, 2010
Charles P. Fisher, M.D. (SFCP) & Beth Kalish-Weiss, Ph.D. (LAISPS)
Deep in the Amazon rainforest, dreaming matters. The lives of an indigenous people, the Achuar, are built around their daily dream analysis process. As a traditional practice, members of each Achuar community awaken daily, hours before sunrise, to participate in a cleansing ritual and to share their dreams. The dreams are interpreted by elders of the clan. Dream interpretations are then used as a basis for making individual and group decisions for the day. Two North American psychoanalysts visited the Achuar in the rainforest, studied dreams with them, and discussed dream interpreting practices. This presentation will communicate some of their experiences and findings from three visits to the Achuar people in the rainforest of southeastern Ecuador. Their most recent visit took place in November-December 2009.
This work has been sponsored in part by grants from the Emanuel Windholz Memorial Fund and the Research Advisory Board of the IPA.
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Sculpted Creativity and Active Self Acceptance: Thoughts About Successful Midlife Transitions
February 24, 2010
Carlo Strenger, Ph.D., Tel Aviv
Because of the increase in life expectancy in the 20th century, a growing number of people are making significant midlife changes. This lecture tries to steer a way between two cultural myths about this life period. The first is that the only sane solution of the midlife crisis is acceptance of growing limitations. The second is the idea that, given drive and a vision, we are capable of boundless change. The alternative middle way proposed is called “Active Self-acceptance.” It is based on Karl Jaspers’s notion that we are all condemned to failure vis-à-vis boundary situations and that there is a Sosein (being thus and no other) that is recalcitrant to change. Active Self Acceptance will be shown to allow the transition towards what Elliot Jacques (the theorist who introduced the notion of midlife crisis) called ‘sculpted creativity’. Jaspers’s and Jacques’ biographies, Rembrandt’s self-portraits and an extended case example show that active self-acceptance is not passive resignation but initiation of a process of self-transformation in which lucid self-knowledge and acceptance are combined into a process that allows full self-development.
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Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte – Their “uncomfortable” discovery of psychoanalysis
March 31, 2010
Richard Almond, M.D.
Freud said, “The poets and philosophers before me discovered the unconscious. What I discovered is the scientific method by which the unconscious may be studied.” (Freud 70 th Birthday lecture.) This talk will demonstrate how certain novelists of the 19 th Century intuited the essential processes of interaction that we now consider lead to personality change. Dr. Almond will illustrate with readings from works of these great writers, comparing them to what clinical practice and research tell us today about therapeutic process.
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Success and the Conflict over Pleasure
April 28, 2010
Sharon Levin, LCSW
Why is it that some people experience success as a kind of failure and others experience failure as a kind of success? Far from being pleasurable, success can be a psychic trauma and a source of anxiety, depression and undoing. Working with patients who "wreck their successes" through affect or undoing can be a challenge for clinicians. We will explore the underlying psychic states of these individuals as well as effective clinical interventions.
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Understanding the origin of aggression in Children: Some Ideas in the Management of Aggressive behavior in the Clinical Setting
May 26, 2010
Mali Mann, M.D.
This seminar aims to explore the psychoanalytic understanding of aggression among children in the clinical setting. Case vignettes will be discussed to demonstrate the psychoanalytic relationship as a consistent and stable container for the range of strong affects experienced there, including aggression.
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