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 Ben Diamond, Psy.D., Managing Editor
How long do I have to wait for you, honey? - Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings
Waiting can be a one- or a two-person game. Notice the thought, but don’t say it yet. Finish the page, lick your finger before turning; don’t hurry. Many tiny everyday movements become thrilling if we linger; many thoughts become terrifying so we don’t. There’s pleasure in waiting, and being waited for, and how long is long enough? How long can you restrain yourself? Can you really restrain yourself?
Glenn Gould recorded two versions of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations, one at 22, in 1955, and the other in 1981, mere months before his untimely death. Much has been made of the differences... In 1981 they’re slower, more measured, some say mystical…and yet they’re so even they are also excruciating. (That must be the point.) The younger, brasher, faster Gould was onto something, and carries me away, where the elder version of that self aimed at something else, higher and plainer. Listening to both recordings again and again, whatever I thought the differences might illustrate seems harder to put into words than I bargained for. The variations need the aria; the parts don’t make sense until they’ve become the whole, one at a time…which is something like being in analysis: my germinal idea turns out to have been the seed of a plant I didn’t know could grow on this continent.
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 San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis
SFCP IS PLEASED TO PRESENT THE SEASONED CLINICIANS PROGRAM: 2026 - 2027
A clinical case conference for psychoanalytically-oriented clinicians practicing individual psychotherapy a minimum of 20 years.
Wednesdays, 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
November 18th, 2026 - May 19th, 2027
Online via Zoom
Tuition: $750
Learning to Listen to Find One’s Voice
Jeffrey Sandler, M.D.
Thinking about Race, Culture, and the Social in Psychoanalytic Work
Clara Kwun, LCSW
The Art of Listening
Jeanne C. Harasemovitch, LCSW
Managing Intense Feelings in the Transference and Countertransference
Gary Grossman, Ph.D.
Grappling with the Reality of Loss
Deborah Weisinger, Psy.D.
For more information, click here.
by Rebecca Deibert, M.A.
HOW DO I PUT THIS?
It’s not metaphor that bees make honey of themselves
while language only dreams the hunted thing.
- Maya Popa, Wound is the Origin of Wonder (2022)
We ping pong words to each other in an attempt to find something adequate—something to describe the predicament she’s in, something of substance, reality, stuff.
Stuff, really. Really, reality. I scream internally. She groans externally.
Why can’t we settle on a word? We exchange brief flashes of what she’d later describe as self-induced frustration and both begin laughing. Neither of us can think of the word that fits quite right. Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe that’s the point. She chooses a word that, for her, at that moment, is just okay. I follow suit and we continue the work.
by Sullivan Oakley, Psy.D.
2026 - 2027 YEARLONG INTENSIVE STUDY GROUP: MAKING CONTACT: SKIN, CONTAINMENT, AND THE SOMATIC IN PSYCHIC LIFE
Fridays, September 18th, 2026 - May 21st, 2027 | 10:00 am - 12:00 pm | In-person
St. Clement’s Episcopal Church
2837 Claremont Blvd, Berkeley, CA 94705
Faculty: Kristian Kemtrup, LMFT, Ph.D.; David T. Gatta, Psy.D.; Maiga Berzins, Psy.D.; Alice Jones, M.D.; Mary Margaret McClure, D.M.H.
Skin is the threshold of contact–where internal and external realities meet and are continually re-negotiated. It embodies the possibility of reaching out and being touched and the inherent vulnerability this entails. At this sensory threshold, experience is not only represented in thought or language, but registered in states of the body–dissociation, disconnection, overwhelm, enactment–which resist easy interpretation. This year-long intensive will examine how the skin-ego constitutes psychic life and what is at stake when this organizing membrane is strained or fails.
We will explore clinical states ranging from fragmentation and disintegration in trauma and psychosis to defensive characterological organizations, including authoritarian structures and false-self formations that substitute containment for aliveness. We will also consider the literal skin as a surface of projection, where personal and cultural anxieties play out and processes ranging from meaningful contact to dehumanization are enacted. The course will ask how psychic skin might be supported and rebuilt through sound, rhythm, and relational presence. It will draw on psychoanalytic concepts such as adhesive identification, psychic retreats, and pseudo-vitality to think about the ways containment is structured, defended, and lost, and explore ways in which psychic skin might be restored so that greater cohesion, continuity, and vitality emerge.
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.
Save the Date: Reading Group for Usha Tummala-Narra's NCSPP Annual Address
Sun, Aug 30 / 11:00 am - 1:00 pm / Online via Zoom
NCSPP / (415) 496-9949 / Faculty TBD / $10