Scientific Meeting: We don’t trust YOU

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 webinar 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 webinar. 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 webinar.
4. Evaluation survey and CME/CE documentation will be emailed the day after the event.

The 1059th Scientific Program Meeting:

“We don’t trust YOU: Reflections on Anti-Racism in Psychoanalysis”

Tuesday, October 11, 2022

8:00 – 10: 00 pm (EST)

Presenter: Leon Hoffman, M.D.

Discussant: Paula Christian-Kliger, Ph.D.

When an issue becomes live — when it becomes salient, as political scientists put it — people disagree. The question is how to handle and structure that disagreement…

Jamelle Bouie – New York Times, July 30, 2022

Discussions about race and racism are very difficult among psychoanalysts, and are often polarizing. The paper argues that the conception of Whiteness as the pathogenic agent of our social ills has created a deal of animosity which has interfered with the goals of examining structural racism in psychoanalysis, as in the rest of society. The concept of Whiteness is compared to the scientific racism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Both constructions are manifestations of essentialism. Epistemic trust and mistrust, potential malignant polarization, and a back-fire effect occur which distracts from paying enough attention to critical social problems at the moment. Terror Management Theory, fear of one’s mortality, is postulated to result in the avoidance of open discussions about differences. Group discussions utilizing deliberative norms are more productive than the usual psychoanalytic-style of free and open-ended discussions, which often promote polarization. Can there be a recovery of epistemic trust among analysts who have similar values but may strongly disagree on the right course to follow? Understanding and addressing the difficulties of discussion among psychoanalysts can contribute to addressing these issues in the social realm.

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

Leon Hoffman, M.D., Psychiatrist and 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 and Institute); faculty Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; Chief Psychiatrist/Psychoanalyst, West End Day School in NYC. He is co-author of Manual for Regulation-Focused Psychotherapy for Children with Externalizing Behaviors (RFP-C): A Psychodynamic Approach. A Randomized Clinical Trial (RCT) which demonstrated the effectiveness of the approach, has been published in Psychotherapy Research. The manual has also been translated into Italian. Hoffman’s publications include collaboration with different colleagues. He has written on the application of linguistic measures to the evaluation of psychotherapy and psychoanalytic sessions; studied the impact of teletherapy during the COVID-19 pandemic; and has written theoretical and clinical papers, papers discussing social problems, book reviews, and book essays, including “Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Populism” in Contemporary Psychoanalysis in 2018 and “The evolution of racism in the Western world: addressing fear of the other” published in 2021 in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association.

Paula Christian-Kliger, Ph.D. is a board-certified clinical psychologist and a psychoanalyst who founded Psychological Assets, PC and Kliger Consulting Group, LLC 30 plus years ago. With broad professional expertise, she works with children/adolescents, adults, families, leaders, organizations, and communities from diverse social, cross-generational, and cultural backgrounds. She is Principal Organizational, Relational and Cultural Consultant of Harlem Psychoanalytic Family Institute, a member of APsaA and IPA, the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations, American Psychological Association (APA), and Black Psychoanalysts Speak (BPS). Dr. Kliger’s writings and artwork, which speak to her long-standing work with people from multidimensional and relational contexts of life, offer an innovative approach to working side by side with psychoanalytically informed partners. Dr. Kliger is winner of the 2020 Next Generation Indie Book Finalist Award for both poetry and illustrations for her book: Power Your Heart, You Power Your Mind, Self-Study then Build A Bridge to Someone. Her co-produced podcast: “We Are Human First” received the 2020 Hermes International Creative Gold Award and can be found on Spotify, Apple, and the website www.psychassets.com.

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

1. describe similarity between the construct of Whiteness and that of Scientific Racism from the 19th Century
2. explain the role of essentialism and epistemic distrust in the development of extreme polarization
3. recognize that Terror Management Theory (TMT) can help explain the avoidance of open discussions of differences