Humankind is reaching a breaking point whereby the prevailing forces of relating are wholly characterized by greed, hate, and domination. This worldview objectifies and reduces other humans perceived as different, and animals, birds, insects, trees, and plants as lesser and expendable. What if the universal attitude was one of kinship with all dynamic beings? A stance that values all forms of living matter as one of us; where relationships are characterized by reverence, reciprocity, and the real sense that there is abundance. Possession of love, hate, and concern (Winnicott, Suttie, Fairbairn), selfhood and otherness (Laplanche, Goldin), and the thinking and kinship apparatuses (Bion) in equilibrium may engender abundant internal and therefore external space for all of earth’s creatures.
This course will offer contemplative space for being with and clinically organizing around the kinship object elements. Psychoanalytic and sociocultural synthesis may be incorporated into our clinical work as activism to help our clients (and us) experience greater wholeness and connection with the sentient world. Please come prepared for a deep, broad, and intimate discussion.
NCSPP is aware that historically psychoanalysis has either excluded or pathologized groups outside of the dominant population in terms of age, race, ethnicity, nationality, language, gender, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, disability, and size. As an organization, we are committed to bringing awareness to matters of anti-oppression, inequity, inequality, diversity, and inclusion as they pertain to our educational offerings, our theoretical orientation, our community, and the broader world we all inhabit.
Presenters Response:
This course is all about inclusion and equity in the broadest sense. Kinship object is about acknowledging that inside of us, we are all self, and we are all other, that we are unified by our humanity and by our sentience. Humans, birds, plants, cats and dogs are all interdependent. This course is about recognizing the inherent qualities that all humans have in common which may lead to living in reciprocity with all others rather than the existent structure of domination and submission which citizens are systemically and systematically forced into. Through the lens of kinship object and kinship love, we may look at and perhaps grieve together the partitioning that capitalism alongside all of the other isms creates between mortals, destroying our bonds and our earth.
At the conclusion of this course, participants will be able to:
- Learn at least 3 components of kindship object and apply them to our clinical work.
- Broaden their conceptions of self and other to capture a pro-earth, collectivist sensibility and apply it to the clinical context. Attendees will be able to describe 2 ways a collectivist sensibility can positively impact treatment in a clinical context.
- We will address the place of our mourning in processing the destruction of our earth, its peoples, civil war, the age of false information, etc., and translate that to identifying at least 3 ways in which our patients would benefit from exploring their mourning processes to make way for a shared sense of kinship.
- Develop a sense of how a subjectively activist ethical mindset can coexist with psychoanalytic treatment. Participants will be able to describe 2 ways an ethical mindset can coexist with psychoanalytic treatment.
- Explain two ways the novel construct of kinship object extends our current understanding of psychoanalytic approaches.
Bromberg, P.M. (2011). Introduction: When reality blinks. In Awakening the Dreamer, New York: Routledge, pp. 1-13.
Chen, Y. (2024). Dear mother nature. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, Kinship: Keystones to connection, and disconnection special Issue, in process.
Haq, S. (2024). Alterity, kinship and repair-When psychoanalysis attends to the natural world. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 34(5).
Koshkarian, L. (2024). Reflections on the experience of being a whole human: Ogden, Winnicott, and poetry. Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 21(1): 71-91.
Koshkarian, L. & Larralde, C. (2024). Kinship object: A creation engendered from the bewilderment of a pillaged world. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 34(5).
Koshkarian, L. & Larralde, C. (2024). Love in the time of technophilia. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, Kinship: Keystones to connection, and disconnection special Issue, in process.
Koshkarian, L. & Larralde, C. (2024). The innateness of kinship object. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 34(5).
Kuzniar, A. (2017). Precarious sexualities: Queer challenges to psychoanalytic and social identity categorizations. In Giffney, N. & Watson, E. (Eds.) Clinical encounters in sexuality: Psychoanalytic practice & queer theory (pp. 51-76). Earth, Milky Way: punctum books.
Ogden, T. (2024). Rethinking the concepts of the unconscious and analytic time. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 105(3); 279-291.
Rao, J. (2022). The insistence on inclusion: The anti-integrative impulse and thwarted mourning in large groups. Int J of Applied Psychoanalysis, 1-13.
Valhali, H.O. & Valhali, D.A.O. (2024). Redreaming the nation: Embracing otherness along with the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet’s politico-spiritual vision. Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, https://doi.org/10.1057/s41282-023-00399-0
Lisa Koshkarian, Ph.D., is a psychoanalytic psychologist with graduate school foundations from the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration. She/they specialize in working with socio-culturally-economically diverse adolescents and adults in private practice, community mental health, and college counseling center settings.
This intermediate course is for clinicians with moderate to extensive experience in clinical work with some background in the principles of psychoanalytic approaches.
LCSW/MFTs: Course meets the requirements for _ hours of continuing education credit for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs and/or LEPS, as required by the CA Board of Behavioral Sciences. NCSPP is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (Provider Number 57020), to sponsor continuing education for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCS, and/or LEPs. NCSPP maintains responsibility for this program /course and its content.
Psychologists: Division 39 is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Division 39 maintains responsibility for these programs and their content.
Enrollees who cancel at least SEVEN DAYS prior to the event date will receive a refund minus a $35 administrative charge. No refunds will be allowed after this time. Transfer of registrations are not allowed.
For program related questions contact Natasha Oxenburgh, NOxenburgh@wi.edu.
For questions related to enrollment, locations, CE credit, special needs, course availability and other administrative issues contact Niki Clay by email or 415-496-9949.
Education Committee
The Education Committee is responsible for the development of a variety of courses and workshops given throughout the year in San Francisco and the East Bay.