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 Candice Turner, Psy.D.
Happy New Year, Impulsers!
It brings me great pleasure to say that we are no longer in 2025! Though the impact of 2025 may still be with us, I hope this year brings new light and moments of joy to each and every one of you.
One of our joyful moments this year includes a proud accomplishment—the Annual Lecture is back. Please mark your calendars for May 16th, 2026 to spend the day with Dr. Jamieson Webster, Ph.D. We are so excited to have her with us to grapple with hard questions in conversation with Bay Area community stalwart Dr. Francisco González, M.D. It is bound to be a truly enriching day.
Additionally, each January we announce the Community Service Award. This year NCSPP is honored to celebrate Dr. Anna Zozulinsky, Ph.D., the Director of Child, Youth, and Families Services at RAMS in San Francisco. In the words of her nominator, “she brings a deep sensitivity to identity, culture, and immigration in both her clinical work and leadership. She models true relational supervision, guiding clinicians who support adults, children, and families under extraordinary stress. Beyond RAMS, she has enriched the wider psychoanalytic community through NCSPP programming and other contributions. Her humility, creativity, and dedication to community psychoanalytic care exemplify the spirit of this award." Thank you, Anna, for all that you do!
by Rebecca Shapiro, Psy.D.
Gift-giving season: What gives in a clinical hour?
No topic exists within a therapy not constitutive of the texture of that therapy. That a distinction obtains between analytic and extra-analytic material, that some topics are suitable for inquiry and others not, misses the point. This is not so much an admission that everything in therapy is important or an assertion that excluding certain experiential categories is an abuse of therapeutic power (it likely is), as it is a suggestion that we rule nothing out. The film editor and sound designer Walter Murch (2002) comments: “If I go out to record a door-slam, I don’t think I’m recording a door-slam. I think I am recording the space in which the door-slam happens.” Therapy, similarly, “happens” in the space in which a topic unfolds. It is the perturbations to the space’s texture due to the quality of a topic’s unfolding that become climacteric for therapeutic action: A door-slam does something to the sound of the space in which it occurs and it is to the shift in space that we necessarily respond. We might say that the point of a topic is precisely its point.
But what is the point?
by San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis
SFCP’S PALO ALTO PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOTHERAPY TRAINING PROGRAM (PAPPTP) OPEN HOUSE
Thursday, March 12th | 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Private Home in Palo Alto (Address upon RSVP)
by Sacramento Psychoanalytic Society
WHAT CAN PSYCHOSIS TEACH US ABOUT PSYCHOANALYSIS? A CONVERSATION WITH BRET FIMIANI, PSY.D.
Sacramento Psychoanalytic Society
Saturday, February 7th | 1:00 pm - 3:30 pm
422 Alhambra Blvd., Sacramento, CA 95816
by Mia Semelman, Psy.D.
It is wrong to set a patient tasks, such as collecting his memories or thinking over some particular period of his life. On the contrary he has to learn above all—what never comes easily to anyone—that mental activities such as thinking something over or concentrating the attention, solve none of the riddles of a neurosis; that can only be done by patiently obeying the psycho-analytic rule, which enjoins the exclusion of all criticism of the unconscious or of its derivatives. (Freud 1912/1958)
Freud’s view that “tasks” get in a treatment’s way runs contrary to CBT’s directionality. This quote reminded me of a major challenge I currently face as a therapist: I haven’t decided how directive to be, in part because “different things work for different people.”
When I started graduate training, I requested placement at The Wright Institute’s CBT Clinic—funny, because I’d benefitted from a five-year psychodynamic therapy with the therapist who inspired me to become a psychologist.
by Peter Silen, Ph.D.
NCSPP ANNUAL WRITING AWARD NEWS
We are pleased to announce that Dr. Mara Gerson, Psy.D., is the winner of the 2025 NCSPP Annual Writing Award. Her personal essay, "At Least Give Me the Finger”: Reflections on Identification, Guilt, and Aggression in the Aftermath of a Patient’s Death is a moving account of working with patients for whom hostility, defensiveness, and retaliation create the conditions for meaningful connection—and the emotional toll it takes when we come to understand the limits of our care. As Dr. Gerson writes: “There is an irony in working with people on the brink of death and realizing that in order to truly help them—to truly listen—we must relinquish our personal need to keep them alive.” fort da hopes to publish her essay in a forthcoming edition.
We invite any graduate students or recent graduates to apply now for next year’s Writing Award. We will be accepting entries until October 31st, 2026.
https://www.ncspp.org/fortda/call-entries-annual-writing-award
ALSO
WRITING MINDS: NEW PSYCHOANALYTIC READING SALON
Sunday, January 25th | 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Popoca Restaurant
906 Washington St., Oakland, CA 94607
The winner of the 2024 NCSPP Annual Writing Award, Liza Veale, MFT, will be facilitating a reading salon of “new psychoanalytic writing.” She will read her winning essay Writing For You along with five other writers reading curated essays and poetry, followed by discussion. This event, focused on building community among early-career clinicians, is sponsored by the NCSPP journal fort da as a way to support new voices and to mentor writers looking to publish in the psychoanalytic field.
by NCSPP
PERSONALITY STYLES IN PSYCHOTHERAPY: A ROADMAP TO DEEP AND LASTING CHANGE WITH DR. JONATHAN SHEDLER
Saturday, January 31st | 10:00 am - 5:00 pm
Zoom
PINC CURRENTLY ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS. The Admissions Committee is very pleased to announce we are currently accepting applications for PINC’s Certificate in Psychoanalysis Training Program commencing Fall 2026. Applications from the local and national community are due no later than March 31st to be considered for the Fall 2026 class. For the application guidelines, please see PINC’s website. If you have questions about the process, please feel free to contact Admissions Chair Barbara Baer, Ph.D., at (510) 841-3317 or by email.
PINC Open House for Analytic Training
Thu, Jan 8 / 7:00 pm - 8:45 pm / 530 Bush St. / San Francisco
PINC / (415) 288-4050 / E. Geltman, LCSW; D. Liebowitz, LCSW / $0 - $20
PINC Shaping Cultural Experience: Creativity and Connection
Fri, Jan 9 / 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm / Artist's studio / Berkeley
PINC / (415) 288-4050 / E. Chong Shuch; L. Lyndon, Psy.D. / $0 - $20
Foundations of Psychodynamic Clinical Work in CMH
Thu, Jan 15 / 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm / 444 Natoma St. / San Francisco
SFCP / (415) 519-3267 / J. St. George, LCSW, et al. / $285 - $380
Writing Minds: New Psychoanalytic Reading Salon
Sun, Jan 25 / 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm / 906 Washington St. / Oakland
NCSPP / (510) 525-4557 / L. Veale, LMFT / $10
Personality Styles in Psychotherapy
Sat, Jan 31 / 10:00 am - 5:00 pm / Zoom
NCSPP / (925) 939-7500 / J. Shedler, Ph.D. / $90 - $270
Specialized Parent Work: Supporting Gender-Exploring Youth
Sat, Jan 31 / 10:00 am - 12:00 pm / 444 Natoma St. / San Francisco
SFCP / (650) 218-0662 / M. Holub, Ph.D.; M. Jurkiewicz, Psy.D. / Free