The Couple World

WORKS IN PROGRESS SEMINAR: The Couple World

Wednesday, December 6, 2017

8:00 pm

Presenters: Graciela Abelin-Sas Rose, M.D. and Peter Mezan, Ph.D.

In the course of sharing observations from the simultaneous treatment of couples and individual partners Drs. Abelin-Sas Rose and Mezan concluded that two individuals, with their own stories and their own inner worlds, come together to create a third, powerfully meshed unconscious organization.  Enriched by the two dissimilar individualities, this new entity, the couple, will in due time acquire its own distinctive features. They came to refer to this third psychic organization as the Couple World.

Their observation that intimacy involves a continuous dynamic relationship between a Couple World and the partners’ individual worlds undermines the notion that there is a basic polarity to our lives, with autonomy, individuality and distance on one side and attachment, intimacy and closeness on the other, and that as partners in a relationship we are endlessly searching for a happy medium.  To their way of thinking, these binary pairs, typically located at the two ends of a linear continuum are not in fact opposites. Rather, autonomy and intimacy are two different types of experience within an intimate relationship, occurring in two different psychological worlds that one inhabits at the same time.  This presentation will explore which aspect of one partner’s personality contributes and may be reinforced by the other partner’s to interfere with the level of intimacy at different phases of their relationship.

2 CME/CE credits offered.

$15 – General Admission

$10 – Student Admission (non-NYPSI)

Free RSVP for NYPSI members and students

Graciela Abelin-Sas Rose, M.D. is a member of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, the Association for Psychoanalytic Medicine and of CAPS (Center for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis). She served for several years as the Foreign Editor of The Journal of Clinical Psychoanalysis and as a member of the Committee for Foreign Book Reviews for The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. She founded and chaired the New York Psychoanalytic Institute Colloquium with Visiting Authors, opening a dialogue with different schools of thought.  Among her papers: “To Mother or Not to Mother: Abortion and its Challenges”; “The Headless Woman: Scheherazade’s Syndrome”; “Discovering One’s Own Responsibility in a Judgmental System”; “The Internal Interlocutor”; “Malignant Passionate Attachments”; “Coupledom”; “The Perilous Road to Hope.”  She co-edited, with Leticia Glocer Fiorini “Freud’s Femininity” a book edited in 2010 by the IPA under the Contemporary Freud Series.  Dr. Abelin-Sas Rose is in private practice and conducts private seminars and supervisions.

Peter Mezan, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City and Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai Hospital.  Earlier in his career he was Senior Psychologist and Psychotherapy Supervisor at North Central Bronx Hospital, Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Mezan was educated at Harvard College, Harvard Medical School, Christ’s College, Cambridge, and The City University of New York. While at Harvard, he worked with inner city adolescent gangs under the supervision of Erik Erikson.  In London, where he lived for many years, he worked with R.D. Laing and, as a free-lance journalist, introduced Laing to the American public in cover articles in major American magazines and contributions to several books. Dr. Mezan was a lecturer on family systems in Laing’s Philadelphia Association. He was also Supervisor in Renaissance English literature and modern American poetry at Christ’s College, Cambridge, and an editor at Nature, the British science journal.

Since 2005 Dr. Abelin-Sas Rose and Dr. Peter Mezan have worked in close collaboration studying couple relationships. Together they have written numerous papers that have been presented at national and international psychoanalytic conferences on the psychoanalysis of couples.

Educational Objectives: After attending this activity, the participants should be able to:

1) Assess what are the problems of intimacy in the couple; what are the main obstacles to its development and how to address them.

2) Design precise and effective interventions to deal with dynamics that promote interruptions of intimacy in the couple

Psychologists: New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute is approved by the American Psychological Association (APA) to sponsor continuing education programs for psychologists. New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute maintains responsibility for these programs and their content.

Social Workers: New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute SW CPE is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #0317.

Physicians: This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of American Psychoanalytic Association and New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute. The American Psychoanalytic Association is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

The American Psychoanalytic Association designates this Live Activity for a maximum of (2) AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

IMPORTANT DISCLOSURE INFORMATION FOR ALL LEARNERS: None of the planners and presenters of this CME program has any relevant financial relationships to disclose.

Persons with disabilities: The building is wheelchair accessible and has an elevator. Please notify the registrar in advance if you require accommodations.