2006 Paper Workshop Sessions

There will be two separate workshop sessions - A and B - each offering twelve topics from which to chose. Click on a workshop title to learn more.

SESSION A (Saturday, October 28, 2:15 - 3:45 PM)

1. Heinz Kohut Remembered: A Look at His Last Words and How We Hear Them Now (Part 1)
2. Searching for Love and Expecting Rejection: Implicit and Explicit Dimensions in Co-Creating Analytic Change
3. Desire and the Self: Reflections on J. M. Coetzee's Slow Man
4. Letting It Hang Out a Little: A Self-Psychological Perspective on Self-Disclosure
5. The Whole is More: The "Local Level" and Heinz Kohut's Psychoanalysis
6. Immanent and Transcendent Empathy
7. Original Paper Workshop Session: Musings on Mourning... With Aaron
8. Intimacy, Selfobject, and Mindsharing
9. Repulsion in the Analyst and its Impact on Empathic Capacity
10. Affectcommunication - the "Something More Than Interpretation"
11. Notes on Incorporating Attachment Theory and Research Into Self Psychology/Intersubjective Clinical Work
12. (Bilingual Workshop): Some Reflections on Narcissistic Rage, Empathic Understanding and Explaining 25 Years After Kohut

SESSION B (Saturday, October 28, 4:15 - 5:45 PM)

1. Heinz Kohut Remembered: A Look at His Last Words and How We Hear Them Now (Part 2)
2. Meditation and the Cohesive Self
3. Restoration of Hope: The Creation of a Dance
4. American Idiot as a Mirror to Society: Disorders of the Self and Selfobject Experiences Through Popular Culture
5. The Edge of Awareness: Gendlin's Contribution to Explorations of the Implicit
6. Freud, Kohut, Sophocles: Did Oedipus Do Wrong?
7. Freeing the Analytic Dyad from Its Cell
8. Disorganized Attachment Issues in the Treatment of Dissociative Identity Disorder: A Self-Psychological Intersubjective Systems Perspective
9. A New Definition of Twinship
10. Kafka's Window and Kohut's Mirror: A Dialogic Journey to the Center of Traumatic Worlds
11. Looking at Sensuality and Sexuality Across the Divide of Shame
12. (Bilingual Workshop): How Dalí Used the Psychoanalytic Theories of His Time, and How We Can Use Self Psychological and Intersubjective Perspectives to Understand Dalí

A1. Heinz Kohut Remembered: A Look at His Last Words and How We Hear Them Now

Paper Workshop Session (Part 1)

Leader:
Estelle Shane, PhD

Discussants:
Howard A. Bacal, MD, FRCPC; Arnold I. Goldberg, MD; and Marian Tolpin, MD

Abstract:
A LOOK AT HIS LAST WORDS: In early October of 1981, at the Fourth Annual Conference on the Psychology of the Self, Heinz Kohut spoke to us for the last time. In a remarkable address, which was recorded on video, Kohut offered his final words on the role of empathy in psychoanalysis and how analysis cures. The room was filled to capacity. The anticipatory excitement was palpable. As Kohut arose from his wheel chair to address the assembly, the room fell silent. He spoke extemporaneously for 45 minutes. Six days later he died. The video, which captures Kohut's last presentation, his charisma and the electricity of that day, will be shown in its entirety. Generally, Kohut objected to being photographed. This film is one of only two known events at which he permitted taping of him.

AND HOW WE HEAR THEM NOW: Following the screening, three of Heinz Kohut's colleagues-Howard Bacal, Arnold Goldberg, and Marian Tolpin - who knew Kohut both professionally and personally, will reflect on their relationship with him, as well as on his groundbreaking ideas in the light of contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice.

The event will take place over two 1 1/2 hour periods, which will allow ample time for registrants to join the conversation.

A2. Searching for Love and Expecting Rejection: Implicit and Explicit Dimensions in Co-Creating Analytic Change

Paper Workshop Session

Presenter:
James L. Fosshage, PhD

Moderator:
Wolfgang Milch, MD

Discussant:
Brenda Solomon, MD

Abstract:
Fundamental experiences of love - to love and to be loved - are central in development and maintenance of vitalized self experience. With various shadings, nuances and emotional valences, love experiences range from parental love, to caregiver's love, to a friendship love, to a romantic love. Repetitive thwarting of developmental needs for love during childhood establishes negative percepts of self and other and implicit patterns of thinking and relating that encumber co-creating life-long needed experiences of love.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed clinical illustration of the pulls and pressures that interactively are played out between patient and analyst, involving a patient's hopes for varied forms of love and expectancies of rejection, and an analyst's reactions to both. A central focus is to describe and illustrate clinically two fundamental avenues of therapeutic action. One pathway of change involves repetition of new experience that gradually gets logged in memory as new implicit procedural relational knowledge - vitalizing enactments that may or may not get discussed. A second pathway of change involves patient and analyst finding their way through a maze of problematic implicit and explicit patterns of thinking and relating (repetitive enactments) that requires explicit exploration and conscious awareness to extricate patient and analyst from the powerful hold of these patterns. Freedom from these patterns enables patient and analyst to co-create, implicitly and explicitly, the varied needed experiences of love that serve to establish new percepts of self and other.

The discussant is Brenda Solomon, M.D. There will be ample opportunity for audience participation for raising questions and discussing these complex issues.

A3. Desire and the Self: Reflections on J. M. Coetzee's Slow Man

Paper Workshop Session

Presenter:
Barry M. Magid, MD

Moderator:
Tessa M. Philips, MA

Discussant:
Hazel R. Ipp, PhD

Abstract:
J.M. Coetzee's novel Slow Man offers a fictional critique of various solutions of the problem of desire and suffering. The central character undergoes a series of crises that challenge, in turn, organizing principles centered first, around the pursuit of self control and autonomy; second, the pursuit of stable attachment and love, and finally detachment and compassion. These attempted solutions will be examined in light of relational, self psychological and Buddhist approaches to desire. Clinical material drawn from the treatment of a Buddhist meditator caught in the grip of sexually compulsive behavior will further illuminate the contrast between these different approaches to the nature of desire and its relation to self experience.

At the end of the presentation, participants will be able to understand and contrast the differing perspectives on the nature of the self and desire within three theoretical frameworks, those of self psychology, relational analysis and Buddhism. These different perspectives, and the consequences for clinical work will be illustrated by reference to fictional material in J.M. Coetzee's novel Slow Man and clinical material drawn from the treatment of sexually obsessive behavior.

A4. Letting It Hang Out a Little: A Self-Psychological Perspective on Self-Disclosure

Paper Workshop Session

Presenter:
Marc A. Sholes, LCSW

Moderator:
Sheldon J. Meyers, MD

Discussant:
Todd F. Walker, PsyD

Abstract:
In this paper I discuss the treatment of a thirty-one year old man, who had never had any sexual relations with another person. He was unsure of his sexual identity and did not experience the sensation of feeling like "a man." When an event in the treatment left my patient feeling that he had lost his selfobject connection to me, and he became deflated and depressed, I began to respond to his needs for information about me through the disclosure of personal facts about myself and my body. These self-disclosures helped to repair a rupture in the selfobject transference, which, over time, helped to facilitate his developing a sense of feeling like "a man," and which contributed to his growth and integration in the world.

Self-disclosure has been a much bantered about topic. Mostly it is referred to in relationship to the relational/interpersonal modes of working; that the disclosure of the therapist's subjective experience can facilitate the patient's greater awareness of himself, through his growing awareness of his effect on the therapist. I am considering self-disclosure from a self psychological perspective in which I responded with self disclosures to my patient's self-object needs. After this presentation the participant will have a greater understanding of how self disclosure can fit into a self psychological perspective as well as be able to compare and contrast self disclosure with other theoretical perspectives.

A5. The Whole is More: The "Local Level" and Heinz Kohut's Psychoanalysis

Paper Workshop Session

Presenter:
Donna M. Orange, PhD, PsyD

Moderator:
Christine C. Kieffer, PhD, ABPP

Discussant:
William J. Coburn, PhD, PsyD

Abstract:
The developmentally-oriented Boston Change Process Study Group places a central emphasis on "working at the local level", by which they understand the moment-by-moment exchange in the clinical process of psychoanalysis. This paper workshop compares their idea with the clinical spirit and recommendations of Heinz Kohut, especially as found in his posthumously published Chicago Institute Lectures, and concludes, that both Kohut's emphasis on the overall "curve of life" and the Boston Group's "local level" work are useful. They may, for a particular clinician, variably become figure and ground, or a clinician may, as a matter of personal inclination, prefer one or the other emphasis.

At the end of the presentation, the audience members will be able to compare and contrast the Boston Group's clinical emphasis with that of Heinz Kohut.

A6. Immanent and Transcendent Empathy

Paper Workshop Session

Presenter:
Frank L. Summers, PhD

Moderator:
Jacqueline J. Gotthold, PsyD

Discussant:
Steven Stern, PsyD

Abstract:
The thesis of this paper workshop is that two forms of empathy are required for the successful completion of psychoanalytic therapy. The argument is made that a developmental arrest model requires that the therapist play a role in understanding and explaining how the current patterns evolved and in facilitating the creation of a new self structure. The former is the realm of immanent empathy, that is, empathy that understands and explains how the current patterns came to be. However, the result of such an inquiry does not lead to the discovery of the nuclear program of the self as an organized entity waited to be revealed. Rather, clinical experience indicates that defense analysis leads to potentially new ways of being and relating that must be brought to fruition. The realization of new patterns requires transcendent empathy, an empathic connection with the patient's possibilities, with who the patient may become. The importance of these two forms of empathy is explicated via a detailed description of the treatment of an inhibited young woman who suffered from a variety of somatic symptoms.

A7. Original Paper Workshop Session: Musings on Mourning... With Aaron

Paper Workshop Session

Presenter:
Joan M. Rankin, LCSW, PsyD

Moderator:
Jane C. Jordan, MSW

Discussant:
R. Dennis Shelby, PhD

Abstract:
This paper workshop is an addition to recent discussions of the mutative value of implicit and explicit communications in the clinical hour. Having recently lost her father, the author attempts to capture how this loss impacted both her, and her patient Aaron, and the self and interactive regulations between them, within the unique intersubjective system we form in treatment. Dr. Rankin views the interactions through two frames of experience: intersubjective systems theory, authored by Robert Stolorow and collaborators, and the three principles of salience: ongoing regulations, heightened affective moments, and disruption and repair, as defined by Beatrice Beebe and Frank Lachmann. The presentation depicts the application of Intersubjective Systems Theory and the Theory of Dyadic Interaction to understanding clinical material demonstrating the impact of an external life event on self and interactive regulation in the analytic dyad.

At the conclusion of the presentation, the participant will be able to depict the application of Intersubjective Systems Theory and the Theory of Dyadic Interaction to understanding clinical material demonstrating the impact of an external life event on self and interactive regulation in the analytic dyad.

A8. Intimacy, Selfobject, and Mindsharing

Paper Workshop Session

Presenter:
Joseph Palombo, MA

Moderator:
Elizabeth F. Feldman, PhD

Discussant:
Sanford Shapiro, MD

Abstract:
Until recently, the concept of intimacy had not been systematically conceptualized metapsychologically or within a psychoanalytic clinical theory. Its function in the therapeutic process has received little attention from clinicians. Its relationship to the construct of selfobject functions remains unexplored. In this paper workshop, the author introduces the construct of mindsharing, a form of intersubjectivity, to provide a metapsychological foundation for the construct of intimacy, discuss its relationship to selfobject functions and its applicability to the clinical setting. A case illustration is given to demonstrate the usefulness of this approach to clinical material.

At the conclusion of the presentation, participant will become familiar with a new definition of intimacy within the therapeutic context and the relationship between the experience of intimacy, selfobject functions, and mindsharing.

A9. Repulsion in the Analyst and its Impact on Empathic Capacity

Paper Workshop Session

Presenter:
Bruce Herzog, MD, FRCP

Moderator:
Bernard Brickman, MD

Discussant:
Caryle Perlman, LCSW

Abstract:
For a successful treatment process to occur, it's necessary for there to be a few areas of significant empathic contact. This requires some matching up of relational premises between analyst and patient. If the number of areas of fit are not sufficient, or if there is an area where there is overwhelming repulsion created in the analyst, the analyst is precluded from entering into the world of the patient, and the analysis may fail. In this paper workshop, three clinical vignettes are used to illustrate how the experience of disgust in the therapist can both effectively or unsuccessfully be dealt with in the consultation room. Techniques that the therapist might employ to make use of the experience of revulsion are explored, including the application of an other centered listening position (Fosshage), which can be intentionally shifted to, in order to deepen understanding and prevent the analyst from feeling affectively "off center". Interpreting from the other centered position is seen as potentially harmful if it's intent is to protect the analyst from the feelings of repulsion that empathic listening creates, as it could create a actualization of a traumatic relational template of an unacceptable child and an unempathic caregiver. Fostering awareness of the origins, acceptability, and ways to cope with repulsion in the analyst, helps the analyst to maintain his reflective state, minimize interference with his empathic capacity, and improve the chances for a successful analysis to take place.

At the conclusion of the presentation, the participant will be able to explain how feelings of repulsion in the analyst can interfere with empathic functioning and reflective capacity, and know some of the clinical techniques that can be employed in the event of severe discordance between the relational premises of therapist and patient.

A10. Affectcommunication - the "Something More Than Interpretation"

Paper Workshop Session

Presenter:
Martin W. Gossmann, MD

Moderator:
Dorienne Sorter, PhD

Discussant:
Rosemary A. Segalla, PhD

Abstract:
In this paper workshop, the author presents his clinical concept of affectcommunication. Applying the observation that affectcommnication is our Ôprimary language' to the clinical exchange he outlines the ways in which affectcommunication becomes relevant in the progress and outcome of psychoanalytic treatment. He thereby widens the concept of the Boston Study Group and their focus on procedural communication limited to the non-verbal now moments and includes the verbal domain, as i.e. interpretation in his concept of the ongoing process of affectcommunication throughout the entire analytic encounter.

This presentation shall widen the participant's appreciation of the way in which non-verbal as well as verbal communications are embedded in the ongoing process of affectcommunication which builds the basis for the way in which a patient experiences his treatment and benefits from it beyond the non-verbal procedural impact of the now-moments.

A11. Notes on Incorporating Attachment Theory and Research Into Self Psychology/Intersubjective Clinical Work

Paper Workshop Session

Presenter:
Shelley R. Doctors, PhD

Moderator:
Peter A. Lessem, PhD

Discussant:
Judith C. Pickles, PhD, PsyD

Abstract:
Attachment concepts can helpfully be incorporated into clinical work despite the impossibility of full theoretical integration. The overlap between attachment theory and research on the one hand and self psychological/intersubjective theory on the other is explored in regard to affective exchanges and the patterns and expectations formed therein. Two clinical cases illustrate how themes of safety and security and patterns that characterize insecure attachment may be a "royal road," enhancing individual and couples' treatment conducted from a self psychological/intersubjective point of view.

At the conclusion of the presentation, the participant will be able to describe aspects of attachment theory and research which can be usefully incorporated into self psychological/intersubjective clinical work.

A12. Some Reflections on Narcissistic Rage, Empathic Understanding and Explaining 25 Years After Kohut

Bilingual Paper Workshop Session

Presenter:
Ingrid Pedroni, PhD

Moderator:
Jill R. Gardner, PhD

Discussant:
Paula B. Fuqua, MD

Abstract:
Major developments in Self Psychology after Kohut's death can be indicated in the opening up of Self Psychology to other therapeutic traditions and practices, the impact of results attained through the observation of mother-infant interactions on the clinical level: the wide-spread scientific paradigm of systemic complexity and the outstanding results in some fields of Neuroscience that have enlarged the scope of analytic understanding and validated basic self psychological concept.

The clinical example, centered on the therapeutic treatment of strong narcissistic rage reactions and persecutory feelings deals with the understanding and explaining of the situations triggering those reactions, on their developmental origin and the relational pattern and on the proper balance between empathic listening and mirroring and direct expression of the analyst's subjectivity.

According to a systemic approach, empathy as an intersubjective field, may include resources pertaining to the patient's relational context which should be recognized and properly employed in the therapeutic process.

Empathic understanding implies, at a certain stage of the therapeutic process, the expression of the analyst's subjectivity, so that the problem is the timing and the balancing of these two different empathic attitudes, not their opposition.

B1. Heinz Kohut Remembered: A Look at His Last Words and How We Hear Them Now

Paper Workshop Session (Part 2)

Leader:
Estelle Shane, PhD

Discussants:
Howard A. Bacal, MD, FRCPC; Arnold I. Goldberg, MD; and Marian Tolpin, MD

Abstract:
Please see abstract for Part 1.

B2. Meditation and the Cohesive Self

Paper Workshop Session

Presenter:
Judith Blackstone, PhD

Moderator:
Gary Rodin, MD

Discussant:
Doris Brothers, PhD

Abstract:
This paper workshop looks at the dialogue between relational and intra-psychic models of psychoanalysis, regarding the autonomy of the self. The presenter also shows how certain types of meditation practice can facilitate both the cohesion of the individual self described by Kohut and the fluidity of the self-world matrix described in Intersubjectivity Theory. Dr. Blackstone discusses how deepening inward contact with oneself through meditation develops both autonomy and openness to the environment, at the same time.

At the conclusion of the presentation, the participants will be able to describe the dialogue between relational and intra-psychic theorists on the problem of personal autonomy, and how meditation practices can enhance both self-contact and openness to the environment.

B3. Restoration of Hope: The Creation of a Dance

Paper Workshop Session

Presenter:
Carol M. Press, EdD

Moderator:
Nancy P. VanDerHeide, PsyD, PsyD

Discussant:
Judith Rustin, LCSW

Abstract:
Combining a psychoanalytic and personal perspective, the author discusses her choreographic process during the creation of her solo Splinter of Hope. Dr. Press explores the impact of her subjective relationship to her embodied aesthetic, family and cultural history, and Anna Ornstein's, M.D. book My Mother's Eyes: Holocaust Memories of a Young Girl. She shows how the choreographic journey is analogous to Daniel Stern's descriptions of "present moments," "now moments," and "moments of meeting." Significantly, Dr. Press' feelings of trauma in response to the horror of the holocaust and her quest for the hope of restoration are addressed through artistic processes, exploring joy, trauma, and the transformation of ugliness into beauty through integration.

At the conclusion of the presentation, the participants will be able to describe connections between Daniel Stern's depiction of "present moments," "now moments," and "moments of meeting" and creative processes.

B4. American Idiot as a Mirror to Society: Disorders of the Self and Selfobject Experiences Through Popular Culture

Paper Workshop Session

Presenter:
Judith M. Bealke, MD

Moderator:
Mark D. Smaller, PhD

Discussant:
Hans-Peter Hartmann, MD, PhD

Abstract:
Since the age of Freud's repressed sexuality, the developmental strivings of a generation become crystalline from time to time and therefore, subject to mass awareness and later scrutiny. Although no one has defined the halcyon features of this age with academic precision, the heart and soul of the current longings for change have been encapsulated on the rock album, American Idiot, by the American punk rock band Green Day. Not surprisingly, it in turn has captured the imaginations of millions worldwide. This paper workshop attempts to highlight the creative elements of American Idiot which demonstrate the distortion of selfobject functions in the modern family configuration and its devastating consequences on the adolescent in particular. It also presumes the premise of the album, that change occurs upon exposure to new experiences, which in American Idiot are appropriate but somewhat unusual selfobjects.

At the conclusion of the presentation, the participant should be able to identify the trends of today's developmental strivings as presented through an artistic popular medium. This should include an appreciation for culture as a catalyst for bringing to light generational unconscious themes, in this case, the brokenness of the current-day nuclear family. This fracture is occurring not only on a societal scale, as with the phenomenon of single-parent families and divorce, but more importantly on the intrapsychic level, where parental structures are too fragile to support the proper development of a cohesive sense of self in the child.

B5. The Edge of Awareness: Gendlin's Contribution to Explorations of the Implicit

Paper Workshop Session

Presenter:
Lynn Preston, MA, MS

Moderator:
Marty Livingston, PhD

Discussant:
Sandra M. Kiersky, PhD

Abstract:
In the last several years there has been an upsurge of ideas about the implicit dimension of experience. Each of these concepts contributes its own unique perspective to our increasing understanding of this vital domain of experience. In this paper workshop the author highlights the experience just beneath the surface of consciousness which she calls "the edge of awareness." Ms. Preston wants to show how the Asensing into of empathic attunement can be a royal road to the implicit. Using Gendlin's concept of the "felt sense" she explores how therapeutic interaction can enliven the link between the implicit and explicit dimensions of experience. The presentation details some of Gendlin's ideas about working with the felt sense and includes clinical process to demonstrate these ideas in action. It also explores the nature of emergent experience and proposes that seeing empathy as a "sensing into" these implicit processes can help us to conceptualize this fulcrum of self psychological treatment in contemporary nonlinear metaphors.

At the conclusion of the presentation participants will be able to articulate how Gendlin's concept of felt sense contributes to current explorations of the implicit dimension of experience.

B6. Freud, Kohut, Sophocles: Did Oedipus Do Wrong?

Paper Workshop Session

Presenter:
Marcia D-S. Dobson, PhD

Moderator:
David R. Shaddock, MA, MFT

Discussant:
Ruth Gruenthal, MSS

Abstract:
In emphasizing the necessary integrity of Sophocles' Oedipus plays, this presentation shows that the character of Oedipus opens itself more powerfully to a Kohutian than to a Freudian reading. Kohut's and Sophocles' views of "Tragic Man" are compared to and distinguished from Freud's "Guilty Man," and Oedipus' fate at the end of Oedipus Coloneus is conceived self psychologically in terms of what it means to be fully alive in the face of suffering and transience. In conclusion, we shall understand how Kohut develops our understanding of Oedipus beyond Freud, and how profoundly Kohut's view resonates with Sophocles' own psychological intuitions.

B7. Freeing the Analytic Dyad from Its Cell

Paper Workshop Session

Presenter:
Margaret A. Allan, MSW

Moderator:
Philip A. Ringstrom, PhD, PsyD

Discussant:
Stan T. Dudley, PhD

Abstract:
In this paper workshop, the author describes the steady decline of a patient in treatment whose life is overly determined by an emotional conviction of being "essentially bad." Freedom for both patient and analyst emerges in a process of developing a new vantage point and, with it, new emotional access to one another. The concept of antidote function in exploring the use of drugs and alcohol is central to this clinical discussion.

At the conclusion of the presentation participants will understand intersubjectivity theory's attention to what is present (rather than an emphasis of what is lacking) as it emerges intersubjectively and will understand the concept of antidote function.

B8. Disorganized Attachment Issues in the Treatment of Dissociative Identity Disorder: A Self-Psychological Intersubjective Systems Perspective

Paper Workshop Session

Presenter:
Carol Mayhew, PhD, PsyD

Moderator:
Yavuz Erten, MA

Abstract:
Arthur Malin, MD

Abstract:
Ideas from attachment research and the disorganized attachment classification research in particular are examined as they appear in the treatment of a patient with Dissociative Identity Disorder. In looking closely at case material, disorganized attachment experience and behavior, as well as associated role-inverting, controlling behavior and the presence or lack of reflective capacity connected with attachment security, are seen to arise intersubjectively within the context of analyst-patient interactions. In addition, a wide and complex range of different attachment representations of self and other are seen to be constantly dynamically at play and to be associated with an array of controlling attachment strategies.

At the conclusion of the presentation, the participant will be able to describe two ways a disorganized attachment style might manifest itself in clinical work with a client.

B9. A New Definition of Twinship

Paper Workshop Session

Presenter:
Koichi Togashi, MA, PhD

Moderator:
Masayo Isono, MSW, PsyD

Discussant:
Diane L. Martinez, MD

Abstract:
In this paper workshop, the author attempts to propose an additional and new definition of twinship selfobject need. In contrast to Kohut's (1984) original definition of the twinship, "a need to experience the presence of essential alikeness" (p. 194), the new definition refers to a patient's yearning for being experienced by an analyst as having an essential alikeness or as having a similar subjectivity. This new definition is also stated as a patient's need to have a sense that an analyst recognizes the essential element of his or her own subjectivity in a patient. Through clinical vignettes with two Japanese patients, Mr. Togashi illustrates that the new definition and Kohut's original definition are related, but represent two different kinds of transferences. He contends that the two needs should be strictly differentiated in our clinical practice because they require an analyst to provide two different selfobject functions. Although previous self-psychological literature suggests the reciprocity of twinship experience in the relational or intersubjective paradigm, they neither address an individual's yearning for a sense of being experienced by another as a twin, nor do they pay attention to the reciprocity of twinship needs in an individual's unconscious fantasy. The author interprets this failure to acknowledge this new dimension of twinship need arises from the cultural setting in North America; it originates in a perspective provided by the "I-self" culture, in which people wish to experience their own needs as an individual entity entirely independent of all others.

At the conclusion of the presentation, the participants will be able to understand that there is an additional dimension of twinship need that has not been fully addressed either by the Kohut's original definition of twinship need or by self psychologists in the post-Kohut era, and be able to recognize that the new understanding and the Kohut's original twinship need require an analyst to provide two different selfobject functions, and thus two different interpretations.

B10. Kafka's Window and Kohut's Mirror: A Dialogic Journey to the Center of Traumatic Worlds

Paper Workshop Session

Presenter:
Max Sucharov, MD

Moderator:
Carol A. Munschauer, PhD

Discussant:
Henry J. Friedman, MD

Abstract:
This paper workshop considers the overlapping worlds of Heinz Kohut and Franz Kafka to bring forth a relational dialogic view of trauma and its psychoanalytic management. The author's central thesis is that an important dimension to the traumatic experience is the freezing of the victim in non-dialogic space thereby shattering his/her capacity to generate meaning. Where trauma has been prolonged, the victim may be left with large chunks of endured experience with no meaning, creating disquieting gaps and discontinuities in the experience of one's life history. An important therapeutic vehicle is the analyst's provision of a window function whereby the analyst uses his presence to supply a framework of orientation that can initiate a meaning generating dialogic process. The yearning for a window - the authentic presence of a dialogic other will be shown to constitute an important relational striving that includes but is not restricted to a more dialogic view of mirror yearnings.

At the conclusion of the presentation the participant will be able to understand a dialogic view of trauma and to apply this view in his/her clinical work.

B11. Looking at Sensuality and Sexuality Across the Divide of Shame

Paper Workshop Session

Presenter:
Joseph Lichtenberg, MD

Moderator:
Andrew P. Morrison, MD

Discussant:
Leslie Smith, MSW

Abstract:
This paper workshop will consider the emergence of sensuality and sexuality, the distinctions between them, and the critical role of shame - developmentally and clinically.

B12. How Dalí Used the Psychoanalytic Theories of His Time, and How We Can Use Self Psychological and Intersubjective Perspectives to Understand Dalí

Bilingual Paper Workshop Session

Presenter:
Ramon Riera, MD

Moderator:
Robert A. Fajardo, MD

Abstract:
Dalí suffered, from his childhood, deep anguishes of death and fragmentation (Gibson, 1998). His typical paintings of melting worlds are the visual representation of his fragmented emotional world. From the age of 18 (1922) he was an eager reader of Freud, and tried to use his understanding of Freud's theories to understand and relieve his suffering; Dalí concluded that that the intense, early sexualization of his relationships was evidence of his "polymorphous perversity", and interpreted his anguishes as the result of his guilt. In his emblematic painting The Great Masturbator, his soft, devitalized self-portrait appears as a consequence of his compulsive masturbation. Many years later, the 50-year old Dalí met the French psychoanalyst Roumeguère, who interpreted that the melting, putrefying self-perception of his body was because of his identification with his dead brother, also named Salvador. Thus, Dalí, at this later stage in his life, was able to start to consider the impact of his brother's dying just 9 months before his own birth.

Now, we can consider that his compulsive masturbation, as Kohut showed us in his autobiographical paper on Mr. Z, was his last resort to feel alive. And we can consider his feelings of death and fragmentation a result of his experience of personal annihilation (Atwood 2002): the little Dalí grew up in a relational context where the impact of his brother's death remained absolutely outside of the family's experience. Only in his paintings we can perceive how Dalí was able to experience his depressed parents: so the paintings were the last redoubt where this experience survived - artistic creation as a last resource for personal survival.

Method:
The presentation is in power point: all the concepts are supported with paintings or quotes from Dalí, this way the audience can follow the presentation while looking at Dali's material. Each slide has the text of the presentation in Spanish and English, so Spanish-speakers and English-speakers will be able to follow the presentation. And each slide has a piece by Dalí (paintings or quotes), the only way that we have today to let Dalí express himself.

At the conclusion of this presentation, the participant will be able to asses how different psychoanalytical theories lead to different interpretations.

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