The Elusive Good Object

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  •  April 10, 2018
     8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

NYPSI’s 1028th Scientific Program Meeting

The Elusive Good Object

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

8:00 pm

Presenter: Lynne Zeavin, Psy.D.

Discussant: Richard Zimmer, M.D.

There are two distinct ways in which Melanie Klein writes about idealization.  Insofar as she maintains that “The whole of [the infant’s ] instinctual desires and his unconscious phantasies imbue the breast with qualities going far beyond the actual nourishment it affords”, and her  increasingly stressed conviction that the libidinally invested breast, when introjected, forms ‘the core of the ego’,  Klein is suggesting that the original good object must be experienced as ideal.  Nothing less  than this would adequately address ‘the whole of [the infant’s] instinctual desires.’  In this view, the infant projects  his entire loving capacity, as well as his capacity for pleasure, onto the object and this is then introjected, together with the object’s actual goodness, to become his very core.

At other moments,  though,  idealization is  different, for Klein also asserted that much of what the infant experiences as positive is in fact due to idealization as a psychological defense:  in this view idealization  is seen as the result of a defensive exaggeration of the object’s goodness: “Idealization is bound up with the splitting of the object, for the good aspects of the breast are exaggerated as a safeguard against the fear of the persecuting breast”;  that is, a defense against persecutory anxieties stemming from the infant’s projection of hateful impulses and hate-filled parts of the self into the (bad) breast/mother.

Case material will be used to describe idealization as it permeates and governs the analytic relationship.  The analyst’s eventual capacity to discern the workings of idealization in the second sense in which Klein means it brought about significant change for the patient.

2 CME/CE credits offered. 

 

Dr. Lynne Zeavin is a Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalyst in full-time private practice in New York City.  She is on the faculties of  The New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute  where she teaches  Melanie Klein and the Contemporary Kleinians.  Dr. Zeavin has published widely on various subjects but she has a particular interest in Kleinian theory and the nature of the object in psychical experience.  In addition, with three colleagues, she has founded Green Gang, a group devoted to the study of psychoanalysis and our human relationship with the natural world.  Chair of the Fellowship Program of the American Psychoanalytic Association, she also serves on the editorial boards of JAPAThe Psychoanalytic Quarterly, and Division/Review.

Dr. Richard Zimmer is Training and Supervising Analyst at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, and Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Weill-Cornell Medical Center.   He is on the Editorial Boards of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalytic Quarterly, and has published papers in numerous areas of interest, including perversion, creativity and the creative process, and field theory.  His latest paper, “Common Sense – Its Uses, Misuses and Pitfalls” will appear in a forthcoming edition of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.

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

  1. Explain the Kleinian notion of the good object as being foundational to the health of the ego and object relationships.
  2. Have a greater sense of the differences between paranoid schizoid and depressive functioning in Kleinian theory, the oscillations between them and the role idealization plays in helping to keep more primitive fantasies and anxieties at bay.
  3. Discern the workings of idealization in the transference/countertransference relationship.

Meet the Author: Donald Moss

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  •  March 28, 2018
     7:30 pm - 9:30 pm

Brill Library Book Series

Meet the Author: Donald Moss

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

7:30 pm

The Friends of the Brill Library invite you to an evening with Donald Moss, the author of At War with the Obvious: Disruptive Thinking in Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2017).

The author situates each chapter of At War with the Obvious at the border between common and psychoanalytic sense. Cumulatively, the book argues that in order for psychoanalysis to retain its original vitality, it must continuously work against becoming “common sensical”.  Common sense–clinical and cultural– almost invariably obscures the uncommon/unconscious determinants that would expose its insufficiencies.  The most pointed expression of this border tension may be in the chapter, “The Insane Look of the Bewildered Half-Broken Animal.”

Copies of the book will be made available for purchase for $35 at the event. NYPSI students will get a $20 discount on the book. 

Donald Moss is a faculty member of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, and is in private practice in New York City. He is also a member of the Green Gang, a four-person collective that studies the relationships between the human and non-human environments. He is currently the incoming Chair of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Program Committee, and has been on the editorial boards of the Psychoanalytic Quarterly, the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, American Imago, and Studies in Gender and Sexuality.  Over the past 35 years, Dr. Moss has authored more than 50 psychoanalytic papers and three books: Hating in the First-Person Plural (2003), Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Man (2012), and At War with the Obvious (2017).

No CME/CE credits offered.

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HUB Tutorial

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  • HUB Tutorial
     April 22, 2018
     10:00 am - 1:00 pm

Join the communications committee for a tutorial in the new HUB desktop/laptop version.

We are phasing in the use of HUB, the communication tool designed by NYPSI member, Andrew Rosendahl, MD, PhD. It will eventually replace our email ListServ as the primary mode of communication among the NYPSI community.

You’ll learn:

  • What HUB Streams are
  • How to participate in a discussion
  • How to receive notifications

And many other important HUB facts

Please reserve your spot, and remember to bring a laptop, if you have one.

 

Before He Becomes a Man: The Adolescence of Shakespeare’s Prince Hal

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  •  April 19, 2018
     8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Advanced Seminar in Child and Adolescent Analysis:

“Before He Becomes a Man: The Adolescence of Shakespeare’s Prince Hal”

Thursday, April 19, 2018

8:00 pm

Presenter: Leon Hoffman, M.D.

This talk discusses Shakespeare’s adolescent Prince Hal, his relationship to his father, his rebellion, including a turn to an anti-social mentor, a substitute father, Falstaff. This study explores Shakespeare’s portrayal of the evolution of the complex father-son relationship. Eventually, Prince Hal gives up his rebellion and takes on his adult role, becoming Henry V. Relevant aspects of adolescence are highlighted, including the transition from an adolescence dominated by a narcissistic object choice to an adulthood in which the ego ideal is the most prominent driving force of his behavior.

Leon Hoffman, MD is a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist; Training and Supervising Analyst in adult, child, and adolescent analysis; co-Director, Pacella Research Center at NYPSI (New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute); Faculty, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; Chief Psychiatrist, West End Day School in NYC.

He has published the Manual for Regulation-Focused Psychotherapy for Children with Externalizing Behaviors (RFP-C): A Psychodynamic Approachco-authored with Timothy Rice and with Tracy Prout. A clinical trial using the manual has been underway at Yeshiva University’s School-Clinical Child Psychology Program at Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, with Tracy Prout as Principal Investigator.

 

2 CME/CE credits offered.

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

  1. describe contemporary formulations of adolescence as a result of Shakespeare’s depictions of the father-son relationship during adolescence
  2. describe contemporary formulations of adolescence as a result of Shakespeare’s depictions of the transition from adolescence to adulthood

Reading Karl Friston: A discussion of predictive coding and consciousness

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  •  March 3, 2018
     10:00 am - 12:00 pm

The Arnold Pfeffer Center for Neuropsychoanalysis

Reading Karl Friston: A discussion of predictive coding and consciousness

Saturday, March 3, 2018

10:00 am

In preparation for Mark Solms’ presentation in April, we will read and discuss a paper by Karl Friston on predictive coding, “free energy,” and consciousness. Together we will explore this dense but stimulating paper in an open discussion, facilitated by Maggie Zellner.  We will focus on the first few pages of the paper. (Click on title to download PDF.)

Friston, K. The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory? Nat Rev Neurosci. 2010 Feb;11(2):127-38

See other publications by Dr. Friston by clicking here.

No CME/CE credits offered.