Impulse is a community newsletter produced by the Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology (NCSPP) and distributed electronically to subscribers at no cost. We envision Impulse as an integrative source for local news, events, and thinking of interest to the psychoanalytically inclined. Our goal is to be your guide as you explore the Bay Area's rich array of analytic resources.
We invite you to become a member of NCSPP, if you are not already. And, we welcome you as a subscriber to Impulse. Join us as we highlight the exceptional diversity of psychoanalytic thought and practice in Northern California.
by Rebecca Shapiro, Psy.D.
The San Francisco-based artist John Chiara takes photographs with a 50”-by-80” camera so large he hauls it on a flatbed, entering it like a room to set up sheets of direct-to-print photographic paper before exiting through a chute to prevent light from spoiling his exposure. A characteristic series, Treasure Island Photo Documentation Project (2022), features sepia-toned images of the Bay Bridge behind an iridescent bay so luminous as to be molten, more gold than water. The effects Chiara achieves are a testament to the physicality of his process, highlighted in the scale of his setup and use of his hands to manipulate light as it penetrates the lens during exposures that sometimes last as long as thirty minutes. Chiara makes photographs that comment on the world, but beyond representation, his process encourages us, momentarily, to peer inside the black box housing the interface between meaning and materiality. Chiara’s work generates a product but it is in the play of forces determining the product’s final form that his work’s true substance lies, that is, the ceaseless becoming-present of representation through embodiment.
Fashioning a “camera obscura…of receptivity” to dyadic (“group-of-two”) processes in analysis, Giuseppe Civitarese (2021) similarly articulates the substance of therapy as a kind of fleshly inter-corporeality uniting the group in the work of symbolization. Before understanding, words function materially as proto-representational connective tissue that shapes the coming-to-presence of the analyzing situation.
by San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis
SAN FRANCISCO CENTER FOR PSYCHOANALYSIS PRESENTS: VISITING PROFESSOR WEEKEND MARCH 14-15, 2026, WITH RUDI VERMOTE, M.D., Ph.D.
Saturday, March 14th | 10:00 am - 3:00 pm: A Day with Rudi Vermote, M.D., Ph.D.
Sunday, March 15th | 10:00 am - 11:30 am: Professor's Choice
In-person only at SFCP
444 Natoma Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
Please join the SFCP community for a weekend with Visiting Professor Rudi Vermote, M.D., Ph.D., a training analyst with the Belgian Society of Psychoanalysis. Past president of the Society and emeritus professor at the University of Leuven, Dr. Vermote has played a major role in shaping psychoanalytic training and research. Internationally known for his presentations and author of Reading Bion (2019), Dr. Vermote draws on late Bion, Eastern philosophy, the writings of Meister Eckhart, and neuropsychoanalysis to illuminate the nonverbal communications of the unconscious ("something beyond thinking") and its relevance to clinical practice.
For registration and information, please visit https://www.sfcp.org/visiting-professor-weekend-2026.
by San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis
SAVE THE DATE AND CALL FOR PAPERS
Western Regional Child Meetings
Yearly meetings of the five psychoanalytic institutes of the Western region of the United States that have child training programs
October 2nd - 4th, 2026
San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis
444 Natoma Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
The San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis invites you to attend these clinically focused meetings. This year, we aim to explore children’s ability to play and disruptions to that developing capacity. Please consider submitting a paper for clinical discussion.
For questions or more information, please contact Catherine Phillips or Phyllis Cath.
by Lisa Koshkarian, Ph.D.
JAGGED TEETH
A free-standing chalkboard was stationed in the psychoanalytic institute library where my mom volunteered on weekends. Accompanying her one Saturday after watching the movie Jaws, I drew a giant shark on the board with jagged teeth and sweeping lines indicating ocean waves. The following weekend my image remained—albeit accompanied by a large caption in bold letters: “CASTRATION COMPLEX!” Innocently, I asked my mom and another volunteer what it meant. They snickered, fumbling over words. Looking back, I imagine that whoever wrote that knew the image was drawn by a child, yet nevertheless succumbed to the urge to insert a “clever” interpretation. And the people who ought to have assisted me completely dropped the ball.
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What Can Psychosis Teach Us About Psychoanalysis?
Sat, Feb 7 / 1:00 pm - 3:30 pm / 422 Alhambra Blvd. / Sacramento
Sacramento Psychoanalytic Society / (415) 814-6585 / B. Fimiani, Psy.D. / $10-$25
Tell A Story / Create Action
Fri, Feb 13 / 6:30 pm - 8:45 pm / Online via Zoom / San Francisco
PINC / (415) 288-4050 / J. Bradwell; L. Slome, Ph.D. / $0 - $20
Writing the Unconscious
Sat, Feb 21 and 28 / 10:00 am - 11:30 am / Online via Zoom / Sacramento
Sacramento Psychoanalytic Society / (415) 814-6585 / A. Rogers, Ph.D.; N. Lupo, MFT / $80-$150
Visiting Scholar Bruce Reis: Bion and Winnicott via Milner
Sat, Feb 21 / 10:00 am - 12:00 pm / 530 Bush St. / San Francisco
PINC / (415) 288-4050 / B. Reis, Ph.D. / $0 - $20
Community Mental Health Botanical Tour
Sat, Mar 7 / 1:30 pm - 4:00 pm / 1550 Wildcat Canyon Rd. / Berkeley
NCSPP / (209) 552-1559 / $10