Administrative Director

Brill Memorial Lecture: The False Procrustean Myth of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute

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  •  May 14, 2019
     8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

The 60th Brill Memorial Lecture: The False Procrustean Myth of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

8:00 – 10:00 pm

Presenter and Honoree: Michael Porder, M.D.

Additional Participants: Sander Abend, M.D., Theodore Jacobs, M.D., Albert Sax, M.D., Martin Willick, M.D.

In this presentation, Dr. Porder will describe the dramatic changes in NYPSI’s psychoanalytic curriculum over the past 50 years. He will give credit to the numerous members who have contributed to the scientific growth of the Institutes’s theoretical and technical practices.  Four senior analysts – Sander Abend, Theodore Jacobs, Albert Sax, and Martin Willick – will speak to how these changes have impacted their clinical work.

A Reception will follow the lecture. 

No CME/CE credits offered.

Michael Porder, M.D.  is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute. He was an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Albert Einstein College of Medicine from 1965-1990; Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine from 1990-2000; and Lecturer in Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons from 1965 -1990. He has published extensively on borderline conditions, and co-edited (with Sander M. Abend and Martin S. Willick) Borderline Patients: Psychoanalytic Perspectives. He was a member of the editorial board of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly and was the Brill Lecturer in 1996.  He has been a member of CAPS since 1983.

Sander Abend, M.D.  is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute. He served as the editor of the Psychoanalytic Quarterly from 1985-1991 and currently serves as an associate editor. He was the Brill Lecturer in 1988.

Theodore Jacobs, M.D. is a Training and Supervising Adult, Child and Adolescent Analyst at the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute.  He is currently on the editorial boards of the Psychoanalytic Quarterly and Psychoanalytic Inquiry. Among his many publications are The Use of the Self: Countertransference and Communication in the Analytic Situation, The Possible Profession and a novel, The Year of Durocher. He was the Brill Lecturer in 1993.

Albert Sax, M.D.  is a Training and Supervising Adult, Child and Supervising Analyst at the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute. In 1999 he received the Brenner Teaching Award. He chaired the Progression Committee and also served as President of the Society from 1999-2001.

Martin Willick, M.D.  is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute.  He served on the editorial board of the Psychoanalytic Quarterly. He has published and taught courses on Schizophrenia and Paranoid Disorders as well as Depressive States. He was the Brill Lecturer in 1991.

The Brill Memorial Lecture honors the many contributions to psychoanalysis of A.A. Brill (1874-1948), the founder of the New York Psychoanalytic Society in 1911. Although the lecture series was founded in 1950, it was decided to retroactively recognize as the first A.A. Brill Memorial Lecture the paper given by Clarence P. Oberndorf, “Development of Psychoanalysis in America” on the occasion of the A.A. Brill Memorial meeting on March 29, 1949. Brill lecturers have included Sander Abend, Jacob Arlow, Siegfried Bernfeld, Peter Blos, Sr., Heinz Kohut, Margaret Mahler, Annie Reich, and Robert Waelder.

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Administrative Director

Dr. Bennett Roth on Violence

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  •  March 6, 2019
     8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Works in Progress Seminar:

“Dr. Bennett Roth on Violence”

Wednesday, March 6, 2019

8:00 pm

Presenter: Bennett Roth, Ph.D.

Dr. Roth’s interest in violence was awakened by the limited devastation of the 9/11 attack in New York City that he viewed. Three responses emerged as he worked with people near the WTC site. His psychological responses were enhanced by his prior psychoanalytic treatment of a man who claimed he killed someone as a child and Dr. Roth formulated the following questions: 1) How did they motivate people to kill unarmed/innocent people? 2) Was there a dynamic link between the interest in survivors as victims and turning away from the perpetrators?

After immersing himself in the enormous literature of the Nazi period, he painfully reflected on the absence of clinical theory concerning violence until recently. This included the dynamics of mass (state directed) murder. Psychoanalytic theory of individuals and groups offered no frame or path to understand the attempts to exterminate the European Jews. Is there a different development progression of violent individuals than offered by classical psychoanalytic theory’s narrow perspective of development and sexuality? If forms of self-interested violence had to be suppressed for collective safety when large social groups were formed, what were the conditions for its appearance in individual and mass violence? The mystery deepened for him and the answers were slow to be revealed. Despite the voluminous literature on the Holocaust and the killing fields of wars, there was an absence of psychoanalytic interest in “killing” and murder until recently. Is there a scotoma for violence and harm?

One deeper psychoanalytic explanation is found in Bion’s concept of hallucinosis. “Hallucinosis” is a term coined by Wilfred Bion in “Transformations” (1965) to denote the psychic act of the ”normal” unconscious part of the personality that transforms an object in reality into useable information. It is a powerful idea of Bion’s and offers an explanation that a false belief can exist in a relatively functional individual or individuals that transforms them and their environment in accord with a focal delusion. Malevolence, danger or an exalted idea is then assigned to a real external entity that becomes a source of threat. Individuals then react to their imaginary threat with violence to remove it. Dr. Roth believes this pattern appears in a wide range of violent behavior, from the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting to mass genocide.

No CME or CE credit offered.

Bennett Roth received his Ph.D. at NYU. He was certified in both psychoanalysis and group therapy. He has written frequently on Bion and on films such as “Lord of the Flies,” “Schindler’s List,”  “Son of Saul,” “The Act of Killing,” and the depiction of violence in Western movies. He also published Getting Away with Murder concerning his analytic treatment of a man who “killed someone” as a child.  Recently he published a book on A Group Analytic Approach to Understanding Mass Violence: The Holocaust, Group Hallucinosis and False Beliefs (Routledge, 2018).

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Administrative Director

Conversion (Functional Neurological) Disorders: An Update

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  •  March 2, 2019
     10:00 am - 12:00 pm

Arnold Pfeffer Center for Neuropsychoanalysis:

“Conversion (Functional Neurological) Disorders: An Update”

Saturday, March 2, 2019

10:00 am – 12:00 pm

Presenter: Daniel Schneider, M.D.

Known to 19th century thinkers as “hysteria,” that specific form of psychosomatic illness known today as “conversion disorder,” or “functional neurological syndrome,” has been a source of controversy within the field of medicine for centuries.  Questions such as the proper means to make a diagnosis, etiology of symptoms, patient motivations, treatment options, and even what to call the syndrome, have all been vigorously debated over the years.  This talk will make a nod to that long history, while focusing on the recent research and evolution in understanding that has occurred over the past few decades. We will learn how modern physicians make this diagnosis (hint, it is NOT a diagnosis of exclusion), what we have discovered about the brains of patients with this disorder, and current notions of “best practice” in treatment of the condition.

2 CME/ CE credits will be offered.

Dr. Schneider is a board-certified psychiatrist and neurologist with specialty training in movement disorders. He is currently an associate professor at Rutgers – Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, where he sees patients with a variety of neuropsychiatric and movement conditions. He runs the only weekly clinic for patients with conversion symptoms in the Northeast, and has worked with his department of Occupational and Physical Therapy to create a specialized program for the study and treatment of these patients.

Educational Objectives: Upon completion of this activity, participants will be able to:

  1. Discuss the relative merits and deficiencies of terms like “functional”, “conversion”, and “psychogenic” to describe the condition.
  2. Describe at least two symptoms or dynamics which are used to diagnose this condition.
  3. Recount at least two aspects of our current understanding of the pathophysiology of the disorder.
  4. Identify current treatment strategies.

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 this program and its content.

Social Workers
New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute 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 #SW-0317.

Physicians
This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the Essential Areas and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education through the joint providership of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the New York Psychoanalytic Society and 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/CE program have 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.

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Administrative Director

Defects in the Process of Representation in Early Childhood

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  •  March 12, 2019
     8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

NYPSI’s 1035th Scientific Meeting:

“Defects in the Process of Representation in Early Childhood: Consequences in Child Development and Analytic Technique in Dyadic Therapy”

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

8:00 – 10:00 pm

Presenter: Christine Anzieu-Premmereur, M.D., Ph.D.

Discussant: Patricia Nachman, Ph.D.

In this paper presentation Dr. Anzieu will discuss the normal and pathological development of representation in childhood. Using clinical examples, she will demonstrate the ways in which the child’s analyst can foster the process when it has gone off track. By integrating Freud’s idea of autoeroticism and early instinctual life with concepts from Klein, Winnicott, and Bion, she will describe the formation of the child’s self and will consider how its representation progresses from an initially symbiotic double of the mother to a differentiated object.

In doing psychoanalytically informed work with children, the analyst encounters behaviors, anxiety states, and syndromes that may be said to result from a failure of the early symbolization process. A discharge of tension, as opposed to play, reveals the failure of association between representation and emotion. Why the child acts rather than plays, why behavioral problems are on the rise, and how both relate to a failure in the capacity for representation, a failure that leads to severe anxieties and other disorders in the absence of loved ones, will therefore provide the focus of the discussion.

2 CME/CE credits offered.

Christine Anzieu-Premmereur is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in private practice in NYC.  A member of the Société Psychanalytique de Paris and the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute, she is on the faculty of the Columbia Psychoanalytic Center for Training and Research, where she directs the Parent-Infant Psychotherapy Training Program, and Assistant Clinical Professor in Psychiatry at Columbia University.  Among her several publications, Dr. Anzieu-Premmereur most recently co-edited A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body in Today’s Psychoanalysis.

Patricia A. Nachman, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and child and adult psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City and a member of the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute.  She is an Attending Psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine;  and a Lecturer in Psychiatry at the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Dr. Nachman is a former Assistant Professor of graduate psychology at the New School University and Director of the Margaret Mahler Observational Research Nursery;  prior to that she was a Senior Research Scientist in the Laboratory for Developmental Processes headed by Dr. Daniel Stern in the Dept. of Psychiatry, New York Presbyterian Hospital, Cornell Medical College.

Educational Objectives: Upon completion of this activity, participants will be able to:

  1. Describe and critically evaluate the consequences of disorders in representational capacity.
  2. Evaluate the role of mental representation in psychic functioning.
  3. Identify techniques of analytic therapy in child and adult work in the theoretical context of representation and its deficit.
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Administrative Director

Thinking Psychoanalytically (and Historically) about the State of the Nation: 1939, 2019

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  •  April 9, 2019
     8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

NYPSI’s 1036th Scientific Meeting:

“Thinking Psychoanalytically (and Historically) about the State of the Nation: 1939, 2019”

Tuesday, April 9, 2019

8:00 – 10:00 pm

Presenter: Elizabeth Lunbeck, Ph.D.

Discussant: Ben Kafka, Ph.D.

Many have observed that emotion has increasingly come to dominate in the realm of politics, eclipsing rationality, nurturing violence, and threatening democratic forms of governance around the globe.  Historians in particular have sounded the alarm, invoking the catastrophic consequences of democracy’s dismantling in the 1930s to caution against complacency.  In this presentation, I look at the writings of the 1930s and 1940s psychoanalysts who witnessed  Europe’s embrace of fascism.  I show that concepts rooted in the idiom of narcissism (among them omnipotence, grandiosity, and magical thinking; humiliation, helplessness, and insecurity) and drawn from psychoanalysis’s disavowed originary practices (such as hypnosis and suggestion) figured centrally in their understandings of their own historical moment.  I suggest that their focus on feelings and emotions rather than on instinctual drives was lost to American psychoanalysis in the postwar period, rendering it phenomenologically impoverished, and conclude by arguing that their conceptualization of narcissism as a coherent structure of feeling offers us a powerful tool with which to understand the shocks and dislocations of the present.  If, as has been suggested, the “right to feel” is now consensually recognized in the political sphere, then current analytic understandings of narcissism are critical to grasping its complexities and power.

2 CME/CE credits offered. 

Elizabeth Lunbeck, Ph.D., is a professor in the department of the history of science at Harvard University and the author of several prize-winning books, most recently The Americanization of Narcissism (Harvard, 2014).  She is Academic Associate Member of APsaA and BPSI, and holds an MA in counseling psychology.

Ben Kafka, Ph.D. is a professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU. He is also an advanced candidate at IPTAR, and sees patients in private practice downtown. He has been a member of the School of Social Science of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton; Fellow and Chair of the Executive Committee of the New York Institute for the Humanities; and a Rita Frankiel Memorial Fellow of the Melanie Klein Trust. He is the author of The Demon of Writing: Powers and Failures of Paperwork (2012) as well as a number of articles, essays, and reviews. He is currently working on a book about gaslighting, double binds, folies-à-deux, and other forms of induced insanity.

Educational Objectives: Upon completion of this activity, participants will be able to:

  1. Discuss the contributions of 1930s and 1940s analysts to understandings of mass followership in non-democratic societies;
  2. Explain the differences between feelings and emotions on the one hand and apparatuses and energic cathexes on the other as frameworks for understanding individuals’ psychologies;
  3. Explain the ways in which leaders can mobilize narcissism to connect to their followers.
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 this program and its content.
Social Workers
New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute 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 #SW-0317.
Physicians
This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the Essential Areas and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education through the joint providership of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the New York Psychoanalytic Society and 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 have 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.
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