Scientific Meeting: The Ethics of Analytic Authenticity: creative freedom and presence

1. Buy your ticket at nypsi.org. PLEASE NOTE: Ticket Registration is NOT the same as ZOOM registration.
2. One day prior: Complete ZOOM registration for meeting which you will receive by email from Sharon Weller. This step involves entering your name and email address. If you do not complete this, you will NOT receive link to meeting. PLEASE CHECK ALL EMAIL FOLDERS IN CASE IT GOES INTO SPAM OR OTHER. YOU MUST COMPLETE BOTH NYPSI WEBSITE REGISTRATION AND ZOOM REGISTRATION.
3. Click on email from Lois Oppenheim (host) which contains ZOOM link  to “enter” the meeting.
4. Evaluation survey and CME/CE documentation will be emailed the day after the event.

The 1064th Scientific Program Meeting:

“Scientific Meeting: The Ethics of Analytic Authenticity: creative freedom and presence”

(Note: Registration closes 3/14 at 4 PM.)

Tuesday, March 14, 2023

8:00 pm – 10:00 pm (EST)

Presenter: Henry Markman, M.D.

Discussant: Steven Cooper, Ph.D.

In this presentation, Dr. Henry Markman explores the foundations of what it means to “be oneself” in doing ethically and clinically sound analytic work. He defines analytic authenticity as two connected aspirations: to allow for the singular way each analyst finds and brings their true, creative nature to the meeting with each patient, offering a space for emotional growth, and one’s personal ethical aspirations. The expression of analytic freedom is found in spontaneity, improvisation, and play, and the unique way each analyst expresses love and care. Our unique way of analytic relating is our personal signature imparted to the work, and the freedom to express ourselves makes us most alive, honest, and real. Markman’s ethical aspiration acknowledges the limits of our freedom and spontaneity by a commitment to the patient as an equal subject—not a case– in the relationship, a “thou” who cannot be fully known. His fundamental approach does not emphasize technique but rather how we stand in relation to the patient; this stance inherently changes us. Markman’s ethical commitment is to “presence”.  Presence, after the philosopher Gabriel Marcel, means a commitment to availability, openness, and permeability, opening an internal door to the patient—a state that requires emotional work to face our internal obstacles to availability. How we are as analysts in the way we engage is personal and unique, the human foundation for real therapeutic contact and a fundamentally ethical way of relating to another in our care.

2 Contact Hours. 2 CME/CE credits offered. See details below.

Henry Markman is a Training & Supervising Analyst, San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis (SFCP) and Co-chair of Dialogues in Contemporary Psychoanalysis at SFCP. In 2021 he published the book, Creative Engagement in Psychoanalytic Practice (Routledge). Recent publications include: “A Pragmatic Approach to Bion’s Late Work” (JAPA, 2015); “Presence, Mourning, Beauty: Elements of Analytic Process” (JAPA, 2017); “The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Dead: A Typology of Analytic Fields” (fort da, 2018); (Accompaniment in Jazz and Psychoanalysis” (Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 2020); “Embodied Attunement and Participation” (JAPA, 2020); and “One sided analysis is no longer possible: the relevance of ‘mutual analysis’ in our current world” (fort da, 2021). He has appeared on the IPA podcast “Off the Couch” entitled: An Analyst’s Journey to Authenticity and Presence, and the podcast “New Books in Psychoanalysis.”

Some of Dr. Markman’s interests include modes of therapeutic action, embodied communication and the relevance of music in psychoanalysis, aesthetic experience, the emotional work of the analyst in the clinical encounter, and the emotional development of a therapist. He is currently working on a manuscript entitled “Five Un-easy Pieces: five psychoanalytic articles that changed my mind.” His clinical work and writing draws from Bion, Ferenczi, Balint, Winnicott, the American Relational Group, and Latin American field and link theorists. He is in private practice in Berkeley, where he consults and leads study groups.

Steven Cooper is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. He is on the faculty at the New York University Postdoctoral Program and at the Austen Riggs Center. He is Chief Editor Emeritus of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and Contemporary Psychoanalysis. He serves on the advisory board of the Hans Loewald Center.

In 1988 Dr. Cooper won the Prize of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. He is the author of numerous journal articles and four books on topics including play, transference-countertransference, working with narcissistic disturbance, and comparative psychoanalysis. He has authored, Objects of Hope: Exploring Possibility and Limit in Psychoanalysis (Analytic Press, 2000); A Disturbance in the Field: Essays in Transference-Countertransference (Routledge, 2010); The Analyst’s Experience of the Depressive Position (Routledge, 2016); and most recently, Playing and Becoming in Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2022).

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

1. Express analytic authenticity to be more spontaneous and creative in patient sessions, while keeping in mind the limits to freedom by being attentive to the patient’s responses to the analyst’s actual personality.
2. Explain the idea of “presence” and its ethical foundation for analytic relating.