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END of DECEMBER UPDATE - WITH GRATITUDE
2020-2021 SDPC ANNUAL FUND-RAISING CAMPAIGN

We are half-way through our annual fund-raising campaign ending January 31^st, 2021.

As of December, 31^th, 2020, 18% of the members of the San Diego Psychoanalytic Center donated $6,080.

As a reminder, our goal for the 2020-2021 Annual Fund-Raising Campaign is to achieve 100% participation of donation of $100 minimum among its members

During the Annual Fund-Raising Campaign, for every dollar donated to the Endowment Fund by all of you, the SDPC Board members will match one dollar up to $15,000.

SDPC expresses its profound gratitude to our donors, and we hope that their generosity will inspire you to join us.

Please, take the time to go on the SPDC website and participate to our annual fund-raising campaign.

YOUR SUPPORT MATTERS. Your support will contribute to this work and enhance the opportunity for more people in our community to find therapists who provide this important and effective psychological dimension in their treatment.

We are most grateful for all your efforts to maintain the vitality of SDPC.

Dr. Alan Sugarman has recently published the two following articles. Check them out!

Dr. Alan Sugarman is also featured in Dr. Fred Busch's TAP article:Sugarman, A. (2020) Contributor to K.K. Novick, J. Novick, Barrett, D. &Barrett, T. (eds). Parent Work Casebook. pp.275-278. New York: IP Books.

Sugarman, A. (2021). In F. Busch (ed.). Dear Candidate. Analysts from around the World Offer Personal Reflection on Psychoanalytic Training, Education and the Profession. pp. 66-69. New York: Routledge.

Dr. Sugarman is also featured
in Dr. Fred Busch's TAP article below:

Dear Candidate: Analysts from Around the World Offer Personal Reflections on Psychoanalytic Training, Education and the Profession. Fred Busch

    Candidates have always been our future. They are our legacy. However, there is little in our literature that might help younger clinicians reflect upon what it means to be a psychoanalytic candidate, and its role in the professional life they are about to enter. In the first-of-kind book I attempted to speak to these issues by inviting senior psychoanalysts from around the world to write personal letters to candidates that included memories of their own training, what it was like to become a psychoanalyst, and what they would like most to convey to the candidate of today. The request to write something for this book was met with great enthusiasm, and it shows. In these rich letters one finds insights that can help analysts in training, and those recently entering the profession, reflect upon what it means to be a psychoanalytic candidate, and what it’s like to begin a life as a psychoanalyst. Sharing their own experiences these analysts demonstrate a vital commitment to psychoanalysis and give lively descriptions of how each of them became and remained a psychoanalyst. They talk about the enduring satisfactions of being an analyst, and are candid about the anxieties, ambiguities and the complications they faced in training and entering the profession. Many offer ways to think about dealing with these hurdles. Some suggest it is useful to realize one is always in the process of becoming a psychoanalyst. To do so is to be open to a life-long process of learning and testing one’s ideas.

    Below are edited excerpts from these letters that I think will give the reader an idea of their richness, and also the authors’ joys and disappointments they’ve had in analytic training and the profession. Ways of thinking about training to help candidates deal with what they’re experiencing are offered. The conclusion for almost all the letters is: it was worth it.

Arthur Leonoff (Canada)
As much as I have felt the need at various points to reflect on my analytic training, to revisit its valuable teachings, I have also had to work through experiences of disillusionment.
I also understand better now why analysts work well into their old age and sometimes through it. There is the excitement in being an analyst – the capacity to help people deeply, to inch them towards deeper change, to learn what has been previously unknowable, all the while further refining one’s analytic capacity that continues to grow. It is hard for me to imagine giving this up as long as there are patients willing and eager to work with me and profit from what we as a group of committed clinicians have to offer.

Roosevelt Cassorla (Brazil)
The other day, you told me euphorically that one of the assessors of your clinical report said: “Your text is perfect. I have no questions to ask and nothing to add”. You were proud and I know that you wanted to share your happiness with me. You found it strange that I didn’t seem pleased, and since we have a close relationship you asked me “what was the matter?” I am initiating this dialogue in writing, but I am sure that we will address this in greater depth when we meet.
Your perception was correct. I felt affected and ill at ease and was unable, at that point in time, to put my thoughts into words. I shall explain: a “perfect” work of psychoanalysis, one which doesn’t raise any questions or problems, cannot be good work. Flawless analytical sessions and texts do not exist. I have encountered situations before when I have thought that the presenter has glossed over their own interventions. This gloss conceals, yet it also reveals. The psychoanalytically trained listener doubts the truthfulness of the account.

Cordelia Schmidt-Hellerau (USA, Switzerland)
You’ve made a great choice when you decided to go for psychoanalytic training! To work with the human mind is endlessly fascinating. No two patients are the same, even if they carry the same diagnosis. To trace the particular defense strategies of your patients’ ego when faced with challenge and opportunity, and to experience the emergence of their unconscious fantasies and infantile theories will always reward you with awe and amazement. As much suffering as a patient may put on your couch or chair, to eventually access and resolve together the unconscious core-conflicts and beliefs that are at its root, will enlighten both of you with pleasure. And not to forget: which other profession would allow you to linger on dreams, to look at their intricate layers of meaning, and enjoy the beauty, wit, and even the archaic bluntness of their imagery? Since this complexity is what makes psychoanalysis such an intriguing profession, it is obviously a daunting task to study it.

Claudio Eizirik (Brazil)
A suggestion to you: try to participate in the meetings of your Institute and Society, dare to ask questions and make comments at the seminars, don`t accept anything without raising your doubts, when it`s the case. If you think a concept is strange, unjustifiable or even ridiculous, share your ideas and ask for clarification. One of my colleagues recently told me that when a paper fails to portray extensively Freud´s main concepts, there are always colleagues who consider themselves the guardians of the cathedral, and sometimes react as inquisitors. Do not feel intimidated. Freud was not like that, he was always able to question, change and discuss. The wish to change from one analyst or supervisor to another was something unthinkable, when I was candidate. In fact, I do not remember a single situation of the kind. I do not think it is an easy process, but it is seen as a possible thing today, and a necessary one, when the analytic couple does not work well together.

Otto Kernberg (USA)
Not knowing you, only permits me to answer some of the many questions you may have at this point, and to be cautious about unsolicited advice. To begin: it is well worth to become a psychoanalyst at this time, when psychoanalysis is widely being questioned and criticized - sometimes with good reason (more about that, later). Psychoanalysis, I believe is the most profound and comprehensive theory about the functions, structure, development and pathology of the human mind. It also provides a spectrum of psychoanalytically based psychotherapies, including the classical or standard psychoanalytic treatment, and several derived, empirically validated psychotherapies. And it is a unique potential instrument for research on the mind.

Stefano Bolognini (Italy)
In short, if I compare my early situation as a Candidate with yours, I would say we had probably more grandiose idealizing illusions (such as being somehow “pioneers”, easily recruiting needy patients asking for being rescued via classical treatment, dealing with a univocal, undisputable theory all explaining, etc.) to be progressively reduced and realistically proportioned by experience; while you can have today more consistent and refined analytic instruments, a more advanced professional community and a different awareness of the contemporary psychoanalyst on how the human mentality, uses, interior organization and availability to invest are rapidly changing in the relational attitude of the subject towards the object.
What instead remains substantially unchanged, in my opinion, is that analysts are in fact the only owners of the keys of the door to the unconscious, and the only possible guide for a patient needing deep and stable changes in his/her life.
Isn’t this enough for motivating you to become such a specialist, exactly as it was 40/50 years ago?

Michael Diamond (USA)
What begins in candidacy will hopefully grow into a career-long project to develop your capacity to work with unconscious material and appreciate the life of the psyche. Yet, this will invariably test your ability to tolerate uncertainty, confusion, insecurity, and intense feelings, often in ways that entail considerable vulnerability.   Additionally, particularly through helpful supervisory experiences and your personal analysis, you must reckon with your ability to tolerate disappointment, responsibility, and manage narcissistic investment in your work, often in great inner solitude. Despite the intimacy within analytic space, we are unutterably alone in the deepest and most important aspects of our work. Your solitude as an analyst must become an anchor where you can eventually find your way, often amid turbulent and unfamiliar conditions that candidacy can help you learn to accept and even bear with curiosity. One way of maintaining its vitality is, in my opinion, to encourage ourselves to rethink, to question each and every one of its concepts in light of the epochal changes as well as contributions from other disciplines.

Virginia Ungar (Argentina)
Just one personal point: I started to attend local, regional and international scientific meetings early on and this opened up my mind in a way that only recently, in the position that I now occupy in the IPA, I realise was the start of the journey that brought me to where I am today.
I don’t want to give an idealised picture of my training, however. Again, I say that there was a lot of effort and dedication in those years, and time scraped from wherever possible, especially family life. I had excellent teachers, and some not so. I had wonderful supervisors who were as generous as they were demanding. My colleagues said that I chose the most difficult ones, but from them I learnt during my clinical experience so much about psychoanalysis. Above all, however, and being faithful to Bion, I learnt through experience what it is to be dedicated to a task and to have a passion for psychoanalysis.

Eric Marcus (USA)
Training is not easy. It is time intensive. It is financially difficult. It is emotionally demanding. It is self-confronting. It helps if you want it very badly, if your interest is compelling, if you love patient care, if you need to think deeply about the mind. In training you learn difficult theory, treat challenging patients, are supervised in uncomfortably personal ways, and read an exciting but seemingly endless and dense literature. Because the study is personally so demanding, you meet many puffed up egos, one adaptation to the humbling of grandiosity. Ignore the ego aggrandizement. The field is riven theoretically, as all growing fields tend to be, and you see many heated arguments. Enjoy the show and don’t confuse truth with the theoretical shturm und drang. Do not click on the emotional click bait of pedagogy. Focus on your learning. Learn from all. Integrating theory and developing your clinical working style are lifelong developments.

Alan Sugarman (USA)
It is important that you find an analyst with whom you feel comfortable being brutally honest about the workings of your mind as well as the ways you work with your patients. Unfortunately, this does not always happen in one’s training analysis. If it doesn’t, seek another analysis when you can. For me, my third analysis, when I was already an established analyst, is the one that truly helped me to know and master my deepest conflicts. As expected, my clinical work improved remarkably. For this reason, my parting words will be to remember Freud’s suggestion that we all be reanalyzed periodically. Do not shy away from another analysis if you find that you are getting in your own way at any point in your analytic career.

    While this book is geared toward candidates and those entering the profession, analysts at all levels might be inspired to think, once again, about this impossible but fascinating profession.
Published by Routledge, November2020

Here, There, Everywhere

I had a dream recently. In my dream I am sitting in my bedroom waiting for my next patient. (No, I didn’t see patients in my bedroom until the pandemic started. Well, technically they are not in my bedroom: most of them are in their bedrooms, in their cars, or on their porches. During Zoom sessions we are meeting neither here nor there, but we coexist in the Cyberspace: a space without a specific identifiable location, but with a life of its own.)

All of a sudden my bedroom gets flooded. A tsunami erupts and breaks through my bedroom window. As I look around I realize I am not actually in my current bedroom, but in the bedroom of my adolescence. How is this possible? I haven’t been in that room for over a decade. There is only one explanation for this: I must be dreaming. As I jump on my bed and I look around, I see a big wave wash over my Uruguayan passport, my laptop, my ID’s. The water keeps rising … What should I do? If my passport is lost, I won’t be able to return to New York, to my real room ... but where is my room? Where am I? And When am I? The water keeps rising, I can’t breathe. I think of going to the hospital, but then I decide not to: “a lot of people are dying there, and I may die too.”
I wake up from this dream, gasping for air but relieved. I am back in New York, a city that welcomed me in, but makes me scared of getting out. Neither in, neither out … neither here, nor there … it might be true that the pandemic can mobilize our inner fears, but perhaps also our inner hopes: suspended in this in-betweenness is where I feel at home, and where I help my patients create their own. No matter where one’s therapy office is, a psychoanalytically informed treatment offers the opportunity to stand in the spaces between our multiple selves, and find and re-find ourselves at home, regardless of our geographical location.

María Laguna, MSW, Metropolitan Institute for Training in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (MITPP), New York City
Guest Author, Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis

Washington Case Conference
The next Washington Case Conference will be held on January 8, 2021.

For further information and to register,
Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis | 2120 L St. NW Washington DC 20037 | 202-237-1854

Dear Colleagues —

Below is a link to a YouTube video titled "Initiating Treatment During the Pandemic: A Roundtable Discussion” that was prepared by the Covid-19 Advisory Team of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Please take a look so you can think with us about providing psychoanalytic care in the face of rising need and distressing times. Even with vaccines on the way we still face many, many difficult months where we will need to initiate psychoanalytic care in the midst of a raging pandemic.

Here is the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvWqOXxzzUE

And please feel free to share this however you see fit.

Stay safe,
—Todd

American Psychoanalytic Association Town Hall
Open to the entire Psychoanalytic Community

What’s next? From a raging pandemic towards a new normal
With Todd Essig and David Scharff, Co-Chairs of the COVID-19 Advisory Team

Sunday, January 10, 2021
4:00 PM Pacific / 7:00 PM Eastern
COVID-19 Town Hall #17
1 hour Zoom Meeting

A space for the psychoanalytic community to share experiences and reflections. The pressing issues of the day will determine the focus of discussion at each meeting, with deeper, ongoing work occurring in other venues.

All psychoanalytically oriented therapists, students, candidates and analysts are invited, regardless of institutional affiliation.

We will be using break out groups to facilitate greater engagement.

Please register here:
https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0tceCsqD4sGtMV8QV6N9cL-NQhXE6hpok5

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Please feel free to circulate this invitation!
Sincerely,
William C. Glover, PhD, FIPA, President
Kerry J. Sulkowicz, MD, President-elect
Bonnie Buchele, PhD, Secretary

======================================
APsaA has established this list for information and resources; to subscribe simply send an otherwise blank email to:
COVID-19-join@list.apsa.org

A Unique Opportunity in January 2021
Limited to 20 Psychoanalytically Oriented Clinicians

The Erikson Institute for Education and Research of the Austen Riggs Center announces a new online seminar series: Engaged Psychoanalysis. Each seminar series is limited to 20 psychoanalytically oriented clinicians, will meet via Zoom for three sessions, and be led by scholars with expertise in a variety of academic fields and in psychoanalytic theory.

Seminar #1: Status Anxiety

Dates: January 14, 21, 28, 2021 (Thursdays)
Time: 7:00-8:15 p.m. (Eastern Time)
Fee: $175 for the three-session seminar (includes CE/CME credits)

Instructor: Bernard Reginster, PhD
Guest Instructor: James Gilligan, MD

The idea of status anxiety has received renewed attention in the last few years. From open editorials to large-scale studies in social psychology, it has been invoked as a central factor in explaining the surprising appeal of Donald Trump. By its very nature, status anxiety is infectious: its presence in some individuals or groups tends to provoke it in other individuals or groups. For example, the growing claims for status of certain demographic groups in American culture (women, racial and ethnic minorities, etc.) have been perceived by other groups (primarily white men) as a challenge to their status. In these circumstances, anxiety over one’s social status is therefore likely to become more prevalent.

However, the precise character of status anxiety remains elusive: What, precisely, is the status at stake in status anxiety? How are we to understand some of the typical manifestations of status anxiety, such as shame, resentment, and revengefulness? And when does status anxiety become pathological? The aim of this seminar is to address these questions.

Participants who register are asked to commit to all three sessions in January.

LEARN MORE & REGISTER NOW

Connect with us

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Austen Riggs Center | 25 Main Street, Stockbridge, MA 01262

The 6th Annual James Grotstein Memorial Lecture Series: Revisiting Bion's Classic Papers from his London Period

February 6, 2021, 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM

This meeting will take place online via Zoom. Once you register, you will receive an email with the link and more information.

*** Registration will close at 4:00 PM the day before the event. No registrations are possible after this time.

The New Center for Psychoanalysis and the Regional Bion Symposium proudly present:

The 6th Annual James Grotstein Memorial Lecture Series

As part of its Annual James Grotstein Memorial Lectures, this series honors James Grotstein’s work and the work of generations of other analysts who have followed up Bion’s leads in clinical psychoanalysis. After examining some of these ‘post-Bionian’ developments last year in Italian Field Theory, we return to Wilfred Bion’s analytic homeland in London, having another look at some of his foundational papers written while he was a member of the Melanie Klein group from 1945 to 1968.

For further information and to register please click here:
https://www.n-c-p.org/cgi/page.cgi/_evtcal.html?evt=912

Presenters:

Professor Robert Hinshelwood is Emeritus Professor of Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, and worked in the British National Health Service for 30 years, including a period as Director of the Cassel Hospital. Central among his numerous and prolific publications that span over 35 years is the classic Dictionary of Kleinian Thought, which revised by a team of Kleinian analysts led by Elizabeth Spillius in 2011. He has co-edited a volume with Nino Torres, Bion’s Sources, (Routledge, 2013). And Research on the Couch (2013), and in 2016, Countertransference and Alive Moments. He enjoys traveling and lecturing in all three IPA regions around the world. He is also a specialist in the history of Kleinian and Bionian psychoanalysis.

Joseph Aguayo, PhD, is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of California, a Member of the New Center for Psychoanalysis, and in private practice in West Los Angeles. He is also a Guest Member of the British Psychoanalytical Society in London. Forthcoming publications: Introducing the Clinical Work of W.R. Bion. This book is based on a series of 16 video lectures given to Chinese students of psychoanalysis in Shanghai—and the main focus on the book is a close examination of how Bion went about his work both in the consulting room—and how he theorized his findings in a revision of the Kleinian and Freudian traditions. Recent presentations include participation on two Bion panels at the July, 2019 International Psychoanalytic Congress in London. In February, 2020, he presented a paper on ‘Bion’s approach to group dynamics’ as part of the Oral History Workshop at the Winter Meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association in New York City.

Registration for APsaA's 2021 National Meeting is open!

Join us for three weekends of psychoanalytic content for one registration fee! With so many sessions to choose from, it's highly recommended to view the Preliminary Program before going online to register.

It is important to register for the sessions you want since that is the only way you will receive the Zoom link!

Be sure to explore APsaA's Meeting Website for more information about the 2021 National Meeting. Everything you need to know is there!

Questions?
Carolyn Gatto, Scientific Program and Meetings Director
Chris Broughton, Continuing Education and Meetings Registration Manager

We look forward to seeing you virtually in February!

American Psychoanalytic Association, 309 East 49th Street, New York, NY 10017

Psychoanalysis in the Community - Call For Papers

Special issue of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis guest edited by James Barron and Georg Bruns

Deadline: 1 June

We carry the community in our internal worlds. We all feel a sense of identity and belonging to different groups, and our identifications, conscious or unconscious, affect how the outer world becomes internal. As psychoanalysts working with individuals or with wider groups and organisations, we are challenged to think about how our psychic realities (our communities within) and our external social realities (our communities without) shape each other. Since the boundary between the internal psyche and the external world is porous, and since our clinical work is affected by wider society, can we say that psychoanalysis is hermetically sealed from the outside world? How far is the outside community active and alive within the analytic frame?
In recent times, the twin pandemics of Covid-19 and systemic racism have forced psychoanalysts to take a second look at the complex social field in which we are embedded. The interaction between our inner objects and constellations and the community outside has become ever more manifest. Psychoanalysis can provide important insights into issues like racism, othering, gender identities, and exile. It has been used in community work like mental health centres and prisons. For those psychoanalysts working within community or social organisations, how effective and collaborative is this relationship? What are the obstacles to working psychoanalytically in community-based projects? How far should psychoanalytic technique and setting adapt to external factors? For some members of the community, face-to-face interactions with psychoanalysts can enhance awareness of what psychoanalysis has to offer outside the consulting room, dispelling negative stereotypes and helping to create a social world in which psychoanalysis can flourish.
For this Special Issue of the IJP, we welcome all submissions written within a psychoanalytic conceptual lens on any area of Psychoanalysis in the Community. Papers are not limited to but may include the following areas:

Interactions of external realities with our internal worlds, as in:
· racism and racialization in its various forms
· poverty
· othering
. gender identity and sexual preference
· unconscious transgenerational transmission
· war trauma
· exile and forced displacement

Exploration of community-based organizations in which psychoanalysts have multiple roles, as in:
· hospitals and clinics
· community mental health centers serving marginalized patient populations
· foundations and think tanks in the not-for-profit sector
· police departments, prisons, and courts
· sports teams, arts, media, entertainment, and other organisations in the for-profit sector
· educational institutions at all levels

Development of theoretical concepts and innovative psychoanalytic educational programs, as in:
· elaboration of the complex ways our internal and external worlds constitute each other
· concepts of community, healthy and dysfunctional communities
· innovations of community psychoanalysis training tracks in our psychoanalytic institutes

Please submit here https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ijp and specify Psychoanalysis in the Community special issue in the cover letter. Please see instructions for authors: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ripa20/current

Papers are welcome in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian and Portuguese. For non-English papers, please include an English abstract of 1000 words.

Word limit: 10,000

Life-changing psychoanalytic training / Collegial community: Join SDPC

Psychodynamic Therapy Group for Therapists
Stephanie Nigh MFT #MFC19057
pacificbeachcounseling.com

Join a small group of therapists committed to personal & professional development. Gain confidence in exercising your unique style & strengths as you receive personal support & professional perspective in a mutually beneficial process.

Apply increased awareness & insight to unconscious dynamics
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Stephanie Nigh MFT has offered psychodynamic group therapy for over 35 years in private practice. She specializes in working with high functioning professionals from a developmental, depth perspective. She provides clinical consultation to licensed therapists and psychodynamic consultation to organizations. Stephanie is a graduate of SDPC’s Advanced Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program and is a psychotherapy faculty of the Psychoanalytic Studies Program. Committed to lifelong learning and development, Stephanie draws from both personal and professional experience in facilitating growth and development for therapists. All therapy is currently provided through telehealth.

Call Stephanie at (488-5732 for more information
1112 Chalcedony San Diego CA 92109
Insurance Accepted

Job Announcement

I am looking for a Psychological Assistant to work in my private practice. I would prefer someone who has completed all the pre-doctoral requirements (but if you are the right person I can be flexible). I need someone with excellent writing skills, flexibility, motivated to learn working with children and conducting psychological, neuropsychological and educational evaluations. I am looking for someone interested in developmental/psychodynamic theories. My office is located in La Jolla, and the position is available immediately. The position will provide weekly supervision, training, and good compensation.

If interested, please email CV to: drboscan@gmail.com

Office Space for Rent

La Jolla

Large private office/consultation room available in 3-office suite. Located in La Jolla/UTC, off I-5. Available furnished or unfurnished. Private office has a sink. Spacious waiting room. Separate entrance and exit. Free parking for patients.

Please contact Sylvia Cartwright at 858 255 0084

Office Space for Rent

La Jolla/UTC

Office available in four office suite. Corner Suite has private entrance and exit with quiet separate waiting room. Nice view of trees to the south. Located in the La Jolla Professional Building, west of I-5. Excellent free-way access. Ample free parking. Suite is shared with two psychiatrists.

Office is available part-time and is furnished. Option to sublease or lease.

There is also a smaller office available - unfurnished either part time or full time.

Please Contact Lisa Auslander, Ph.D at 858-455-6615

Psychological Assistant Needed

Shibley Psychology is hiring a psychological assistant or licensed mental health professional to join our culturally diverse team.

We are a private practice in Mission Valley where, in addition to psychotherapy with adults, we specialize in conducting psychological evaluations for individuals in immigration proceedings.

The potential candidate must:
·      Have finished all pre-doctoral internships
·      Have excellent writing skills
·      Be motivated, professional, and well-organized
·      Have flexibility in their schedule
·      Be familiar with psychodynamic theories

Training, supervision, and good compensation will be provided.

If interested, please email CV to: drshibley@shibleypsychology.com

REMINDER: Please send all future announcements/event advertisements to Ms. Michelle Spencer at: sdpc.michelle@gmail.com. They will be included in the next volume of the SDPC semi-monthly newsletter.