by Eric Essman, MA

Freud identified psychological health with the ability to love and to work; Winnicott added play and Bion, dream. The 2015-16 East Bay and San Francisco Intensive Study Groups on "What Works: The Nature of Therapeutic Action" aim to understand the unconscious processes and conscious techniques that endow clinical exchanges with the power to transform lives. As this year's instructors, readings, and case materials will demonstrate, loving, working, playing, and dreaming are self-reflexively part of the clinical process: transference love motivates the interaction; the analytic frame supports the "working through" that integrates knowledge and emotions; and the play of associations, fantasy, and dream expands containment and meaningful representation of experience. One of the earliest beneficiaries of psychoanalysis named it "the talking cure." One of our instructors neatly formulated the educational focus of these ISGs: how the talking cures. We hope you will join us to share what promises to be an informative and exciting year-long experience. 

To register or to get further information, please consult the NCSPP website or contact ISG Committee Chairperson Eric Essman (epessman@gmail.com or 415-412-2970).