32 Weeks | September 12, 2014 – May 8, 2015
Fridays | 10:00 am – 12:00 pm
Location: Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC)
530 Bush Street, 7th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94108

Resolving Implosive Defenses
Bob Carrere, Ph.D., ABPP
September 12, 19, 26; October 3, 10, 17, 24, 31

This seminar will focus on what has been called “implosive defenses,” or the narcissistic defense, by which the patient as child unconsciously turned against the self to protect the caregiver from the patient’s own hate through targeting the self, mind, or body with destructive aggression. We will consider the therapeutics that can facilitate a patient’s emergence from implosive defenses into a fuller, more vibrant emotional resiliency. Release from destructive aggression against the self occurs through the direct expression of aggression/hate towards the analyst/therapist. Thus, we will learn how to appreciate being hated as an indication of the resolution of the implosive defenses.

Whose Difficulty Is It? Taking a Second Look
Patricia Marra, MFT
November 7, 14, 21; December 5, 12, 19; January 9, 16
“Whose Difficulty Is It? Taking a Second Look”

What’s happening in the consulting room when the unconscious collaboration between therapist and patient becomes “difficult”? It may seem like the difficulty resides in the patient. But it is only when therapists locate themselves in the difficulty that they can begin to help their patients find their way out of it.

We will read seminal papers that at first labeled the patient as too difficult to be analyzed, such as Ferenczi’s “Confusion of Tongues” and Joan Riviere’s “A Contribution to the Analysis of the Negative Therapeutic Reaction.” We will also read papers on the use of reverie and analytic field thinking to find our way into and out of difficulties.

Loosening the Narcissistic (K)not: Working with Difficult Couples
Barbara Blasdel, Ph.D.
January 23, 30; February 6, 13, 20, 27; March 6, 13

Couples therapy is especially challenging when one or both partners struggle with pathological narcissism or similar defensive states. Various psychoanalytic concepts (projective identification and splitting, complementary and concordant countertransferences, bastions, and the invasive object, among others) can provide an anchor or third for the therapist’s anxieties as she works with these difficult emotional defenses, enabling her to ‘take a second look’ at the interlocking dynamics that have stopped growth and aliveness in the couple’s relationship. In addition to this ‘couples-oriented analytic third’, various interpretative strategies will be discussed that may foster the couple’s increased capacity to use reflection, curiosity and containment of these intense states.

Difficulties in Treatment: Varieties of Psychic Collapse
Dianne Elise, Ph.D.
March 20, 27; April 3, 10, 17, 24; May 1, 8

We will attend to difficulties of stasis — varieties of psychic collapse — where therapeutic leverage is obstructed as certain persistent patterns envelop both patient and clinician. Impairments in the capacity for symbolization and resultant impediments to transformations in emotional experience form obstacles to increasing the capacity to cope with mental pain. Asking, “How can a psychoanalytic process stimulate the development of creative symbolization?” (de Cortinas, 2013) underscores the importance of expanding the mental container in the analytic relationship. We will also consider how countertransference contributes to tightening the “k(not)” in the exchange.