32 Weeks | September 10, 2021 — May 13, 2022
Fridays | 10:00 am – 12:00 pm
Location through December 31, 2021: Virtual Event (Zoom)
Location in 2022: Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC), 530 Bush Street, 7th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94108

THE UNCONSCIOUS, REPARATION, AND REPARATIONS
Forrest Hamer, Ph.D.
September 10, 17, 24; October 1, 8, 15, 22, 29

In this course, we will investigate psychoanalytic and socioanalytic theories of reparation as they apply to efforts to address injury between persons and between groups. Among the topics we will consider: what reparation means and what makes reparations meaningful; how theories of internal object relations, of attachment, or mentalization, or of restorative and retributive justice relate to the impact of reparative efforts and acts; how we might understand resistances to reparation; how theories of intrapsychic repair compare with those of intersubjective and institutional repair; and the particular focus on racism and racial reparations in the redress of social and historical injustices.

MENDING THE CRACKS, EASING THE PAIN:
Current Approaches to Trauma and Its Treatment
Vivian Dent, Ph.D.
November 5, 12, 19; December 3, 10, 17; January 7, 14

This course will offer analytic therapists an introduction to contemporary trauma theory, looking at trauma’s psychophysiological impact, effects on memory and personality integration, and interrelationship with attachment patterns. We will examine trauma at multiple levels: somatic, dynamic, relational, collective, transgenerational, and historical. In this context, we will explore recent ideas about what it takes to heal ingrained traumatic patterns. Throughout, we will be discussing how these ideas confirm, refine, or at times contradict widely held analytic beliefs, both theoretical and technical, and how to integrate these different insights into analytic work.

RUPTURE, REPAIR, REPRESENTATION
Paula Mandel, Psy.D.
January 21, 28; February 4, 11, 18, 25; March 4, 11

Ruptures in the clinical encounter, an unavoidable reality, offer invaluable opportunities for earlier ruptures to emerge. Therapeutic ruptures may be experienced as a breach in the sensory floor, splitting open a chasm in the relationship and in the self. They may alternately present as absence, emptiness, a blank space. In works as disparate as Tronick’s infancy research or Klein’s theory of the depressive position, we see how people have a fundamental need to repair mismatches and ruptures. We will consider these needs and will look at the possibility of repairing ruptures, as can be found in the work of Ferenczi, Balint, Benjamin, Gurevich, Grossmark, Kohut, and Stern. We will also consider paths toward representation, as can be found in the work of Anzieu, Ferro, or Parsons. In the process we will think about how cultural factors can impact the experience of alignment or breach in the therapeutic relationship.

CLINICAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCE IN TREATMENT
Maria Pilar Bratko, MFT
March 18, 25; April 1, 8, 22, 29; May 6, 13

This course provides an overview of targeted literature related to the treatment dyad when immigrant identity is a consideration. Clinically, this course will provide treatment interventions for individuals who lead with an immigrant identity in psychological makeup. Related themes to be addressed include ways to think about systemic racism as it relates to the immigrant experience and consequent symptom presentation; the unique ways transference and countertransference manifest when immigration is a consideration; and language considerations in treatment when the dominant language, often perceived as the language of the oppressor, is incongruent with the language of origin.