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.
What conditions do we need to proceed?
A patient walks past me into the office and sits or lies down on the couch. Looking occurs along the way, sometimes no more pointedly than at the door. One patient beams, giggling almost instantaneously across the threshold; another barely looks my way. Nod, hi, hello. We don’t discuss these interactions, not usually, not unless we’re so deep in that the most foundational, procedural of behaviors surrender themselves to punctuation. Joseph Sandler (1976) considers commonsense ways of proceeding in terms of “free-floating behavioral responsiveness,” a phrase to normalize empathic engagement and the enacted dimension of any analysis: As with all relationships, patient and analyst are entrained, one to the other, the rhythmic push and pull of interpersonal process the substrate upon which sense-making depends.
But what “sense” is this?
by Psychoanalytic Couple Psychotherapy Group (PCPG)
2026 ANNUAL PSYCHOANALYTIC COUPLE PSYCHOTHERAPY LECTURE
Please join PCPG for our Annual Psychoanalytic Couple Psychotherapy Lecture at the Brower Center in Berkeley, CA, or via Zoom on Saturday, October 3rd, 2026 | 9:00 am – 3:00 pm (PDT).
Kate Thompson, M.A., our invited scholar, will present her paper, “Too Close, Yet Too Far: Working Therapeutically with Couples Caught in Claustra-Agoraphobic Dilemmas,” with discussant Paula Mandel, Ph.D.
Couples can become preoccupied with the perpetual back and forth between fears of losing their identity within merger versus disintegration through abandonment. This often leads to a familiar psychic retreat that is near impossible to escape. Kate Thompson will explore how to work therapeutically with such couples to free them from rigid projective identification. She will explain how to manage the constant and inevitable tension between each partner’s legitimate separate needs and the needs of their couple relationship—and how to help couples tolerate the reality of being separate individuals within an intimate partnership, which involves mourning what has been lost.
Please click here to learn more and to register.
Any questions, please contact Dr. Romi Mann.
by San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis
SFCP 2026-2027 YEARLONG PROGRAMS
Deepen your psychoanalytic thinking and practice with two separate SFCP San Francisco Yearlong Programs!
SFCP’s San Francisco didactic yearlong, Transformation and Movement in the Consulting Room, asks, “What facilitates psychic growth amid both longing for and fear of change?” From various clinical perspectives, we will explore what it means and what it takes to grow a mind.
Fridays, October 2nd, 2026 - June 18th, 2027
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Visit our website for more information.
The San Francisco Yearlong Continuous Case Conference provides a supportive gathering place to present and reflect on clinical cases alongside peers. Together, we have an opportunity to experience how theory and practice come alive in the consulting room and to benefit from the extensive collective experience of the group leaders.
Designed for early to mid-career licensed and pre-licensed clinicians.
Fridays, October 16th, 2026 - June 4th, 2027
1:45 pm - 3:00 pm
Visit our website for more information.
by Nicholas Hack, Psy.D.
“THANKS FOR THE CHAT, DR. HACK.”
One of my little joys is seeing how people enter and leave sessions.
Whether it’s an exuberant “What’s up?!”, a simple “Hi,” or a loaded “I know I’m not supposed to ask you how you’re doing, so I’ll just say I hope you’re doing well,” entrances and exits somehow feel quintessentially of the patient, and there’s something delightful about that.
Over the years, I’ve been struck by how many people end sessions with some version of that title quote—thanks for the chat, thanks for listening, thanks for letting me talk at you—and I’ve watched my reaction to that sentiment change over time.
Early in my career, referring to treatment as a “chat” brought up my insecurities. “Oh no,” I’d think. “Is that all we did today? We just chatted? Did I not ‘do therapy’ with them?”
by Mara Gerson, Psy.D.
DAYLONG EVENT WITH DR. USHA TUMMALA-NARRA: SOCIAL, CULTURAL, AND POLITICAL STRESS IN PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOTHERAPY
NCSPP is excited to host the esteemed clinical psychologist Dr. Usha Tummala-Narra in a day-long course on Saturday, September 19th. Dr. Tummala-Narra is well known for her scholarship on race, immigration, and multiculturalism within the field of psychoanalysis. In this workshop, she will discuss how culturally-informed psychoanalytic psychotherapy can engage social, cultural, and political stress and trauma. Specifically, she will focus on interactions between personality, social context, and relational stress as they show up in transference and countertransference dynamics, and how these dynamics carry new meanings in the current sociopolitical environment.
This is an in-person only event, from 10:00 am - 5:00 pm at St. Clement’s Church in Berkeley.
Learn more and register online here!
UNION SQUARE THERAPY OFFICES AVAILABLE. Full-time (unfurnished, $900) & part-time (furnished, $325/day) psychotherapy offices available in Union Square, San Francisco. Please contact Pirouz for more information.
Film Screening: Outsider.Freud
Sat, Sept. 12 / 6:00 pm - 8:30 pm / 422 Alhambra Blvd. / Sacramento
Sacramento Psychoanalytic Society / (415) 814-6585 / N. Lupo, MFT / $10 - $25
Social, Cultural, and Political Stress in Psychotherapy
Sat, Sept. 19 / 10:00 am - 5:00 pm / 2837 Claremont Blvd. / Berkeley
NCSPP / (510) 603-3490 / Usha Tummala-Nara, Ph.D. / $90 - $270
PINC Symposium: The Ethics of Care for the Other
Sun, Sept. 27 / 10:00 am - 12:00 pm / Zoom / San Francisco
PINC / (415) 288-4050 / M. Wilson, M.D.; D. Elise, Ph.D. / $0 - $35
Western Regional Child Psychoanalytic Conference
Sat, Oct. 3 / 9:00 am - 3:00 pm / 444 Natoma / San Francisco
SFCP / (206) 271-0839 / A. Lieberman, Ph.D.; R. McGehee, M.D. / $30 - $225
Western Regional Child Psychoanalytic Conference
Sun, Oct. 4 / 9:00 am - 12:00 pm / 444 Natoma / San Francisco
SFCP / (206) 271-0839 / A. Lieberman, Ph.D.; R. McGehee, M.D. / $30 - $225