The Legacy of Margaret Mahler

NYPSI’s 1037th Scientific Meeting:

“The Legacy of Margaret Mahler: Its Relevance to Current Analytic Practice with Children and Adults

Tuesday, September 10, 2019

8:00 – 10:00 pm

Panelists: Diana Diamond, Ph.D., Alexandra M. Harrison, M.D., Wendy Olesker, Ph.D., Susan P. Sherkow, M.D. (moderator)

In honor of Manuel Furer, M.D.

This panel will consider the usefulness today of the key contributions of Margaret Mahler and her co-workers John McDevitt, Manuel Furer, Anni Bergman, and Fred Pine. How does the empirical model of separation-individuation inform our current analytic thinking and practice? How do we view that model in the face of recent research on attachment? Have the findings of this research influenced the way we think about Mahler’s observations? Do they confirm or conflict with her model of development? What do we know about the relative attachment of a baby raised primarily by a parent caretaker as compared with one raised by a parent and a nanny or one in full-time daycare? How have “anxiety about separation” and “anxiety about separateness” come to be confused with “separation anxiety?” These and other questions will be addressed at a round-table discussion among the panelists.

2 CME/ CE credits offered.

Diana Diamond, Ph.D. is on the faculties of the Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology in the City University of New York, the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and the Weill Cornell Medical College where she is a Senior Fellow in the Personality Disorders Institute.  She is also on the faculty of NYPSI and the New School for Social Research.  She is the co-author and co-editor of four books including Attachment and Sexuality (Taylor & Francis, Routledge Press), Cinematic Reflections on the Legacy of the Holocaust: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, and the forthcoming A Clinical Guide to Treating Narcissistic Disorders:  A Transference Focused Psychotherapy.  She has published extensively in the areas of mental representation and attachment theory and has investigated therapeutic changes in object relations and attachment in patients with personality disorders. She is in private practice of individual and couple therapy as well as psychoanalysis.

Alexandra Murray Harrison, M.D. is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute in Adult and Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis, is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and is on the Core Faculty of the Infant-Parent Mental Health Program. Clinically, she specializes in treating preschool children, including children with ASD, and has developed a parent consultation model that is widely applied. Dr. Harrison also founded an NGO, Supporting Child Caregivers, Inc., which promotes global infant mental health through training infant mental health workers. Dr. Harrison’s research work includes collaborating on developing a clinical model that integrates developmental and psychoanalytic theory. She has co-authored a book on autism with Dr. Susan Sherkow and has published articles on subjects such as body image, play therapy, therapeutic change, and volunteer consultation. Dr. Harrison has received many awards, including the Deutsch Prize and the Arthur Kravitz Award for Humanitarian Service.

Wendy Olesker, Ph.D. is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and on the Faculty of the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. She is Senior Editor of The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child and on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. From 1991 until 1997, Dr. Olesker collaborated with John McDevitt and Anni Bergman following up on the original Mahler/McDevitt babies of the Separation-Individuation Study and, for the past ten years, she has been involved with further follow-up of eight of the original babies who have been given the Adult Attachment Interview, along with other measures, and are now followed into their sixth decade.

Susan P. Sherkow, M.D. is Director of The Sherkow Center for Child Development and Autism Spectrum Disorder, a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Berkshire Psychoanalytic Institute, and a Supervising Analyst and Instructor in the Child and Adolescent Division of NYPSI. She is on the faculties of the Departments of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai College of Medicine and The Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Sherkow’s work, which has been published in JAPA, The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, Psychoanalytic Inquiry, and elsewhere, focuses on the topics of autism spectrum disorder, primal scene, intergenerational eating disorders, the diagnosis of sexual abuse in young children, watched play, and working in analysis with children under five. She is co-author of Autism Spectrum Disorder: Perspectives from Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience. In 2010, Dr. Sherkow received the Ritvo Prize in Child Psychoanalysis from the Yale Child Study Center.

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

1. Describe how an analyst would apply the model of the processes of separation-individuation to the evaluations of a patient
2. Identify how current research has confirmed or refuted Mahler’s contributions
3. Differentiate between separation anxiety and anxiety about separation