44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Paper and Additional Sessions:
There are three sessions for Paper Presentations and seven papers being presented simultaneously.
Additional sessions: Meet the Authors, Child & Adolescent Initiative Group Meeting, Couples Therapy
Interest Group, Social Justice Interest Group will also have presentations.
For the paper sessions, registrants will register for one paper presentation of the seven options in eachsession.
For a description of the session, learning objectives, presenter bios and other details, please click on thepaper’s listing (ie: Paper 1-X).
Paper Sessions 1-C, 2-F & 3-B will be offered both for in-person and virtual attendees.
Paper Session 3-F will only be available via zoom and can be attended by all.

Paper Session 1: Saturday, October 21, 2:00 - 3:30pm
Paper 1-A: A Call for an Expanded Self Psychology: Incorporating Socio-Cultural-Historical Perspectives in
Teaching and Clinical PracticePresenters:
Discussant:Moderator:
Elizabeth Carr, RN, MSN, BC & Judith Aronson, PhD, LCSW
Adriana Couto Silva, MS,MA,LCPC
Ruth Migler,MSW
Paper 1-B: Working the Creative Edge with Alzheimer’s Company
Presenter:
Discussant:Jan Chess, MFT, PhD
Greg Kolodziecjcak, PsyD

Moderator:
Gloria Barbacoff, LICSW

Paper 1-C: The Possible Profession: Joe Lichtenberg and the Restoration of the Bodily Self
Presenter:
Discussant:Moderator:
Daniel Posner, MD
Judith Rustin, LCSW
Arthur A. Gray, PhD
Paper 1-D: The Political is Personal: “Wounds of History” in the Formation of Self
Presenter:
Discussant:Moderator:
Simone Drichel, PhD
Jeffrey Stern, PhD
Lucy Freund, PhD
Paper 1-E: Masked Resonance
Presenters:
Jonathan Blazon-Yee, LCSW

Discussant:Janna Sandmeyer, PhD

Moderator:
Molly Witten, PhD

Paper 1-F: CANCELLED: Unbearable Trauma, Impasse, and Mutual Analysis; Surviving Murder on the Analyst’s
Couch This paper session has been canceled because Dr Atwood is unable to participate due to illness.
Presenters:
Discussant:Moderator:
Susan Burland, PhD & George Peter Maduro, JD, PsyD, PsyD
Irit Felson, PhD
Atwood, PhD
Paper 1-G: Psychodelics in Psychoanalysis: Problems and PromisePresenter:
Discussant:Leonard Bearne, PsyD, MFT
n/aModerator:
Carol Mayhew, PhD, PsyD

Paper Session 2: Saturday, October 21, 4:00 – 5:30pm
Paper 2-A: Working Beyond the edges: A White Therapist and a Black Client
Presenter:
Discussant:Moderator:
Stella Kiser, LCSW
Ida Roldan, LCSW
Cynthia Sortwell, MD
Paper 2-B: Dancing with the Demons – Making Sense of Schizophrenia
Presenter:
Discussant:Moderator:
Karen Stewart, MA
Peter Maduro, JD,PsyD,PsyD
Elizabeth Canick, MD
Paper 2-C: The Moving Edge of Creativity in Clinical Practice and in the Practice of Writing
Presenters:
Discussant:Moderator:
Brenda Solomon, MD,
Marcia Dobson, PhD
Christina Connell, RP
Karen Martin ,MA,LCSW
Carol Mayhew, PhD, PsyD
Paper 2-D: Struck Dumb: Dissociation and Language Games in Psychoanalysis
Presenter:
Discussant:Moderator:
Darren Haber, PsyD, MFT
George Hagman, LCSW
Susanna Federici-Nebbiosi, PhD
Paper 2-E: Hide and Seek: Writing Fiction as a Way of Finding Hidden Selves
Presenter:
Discussant:Moderator:
Amanda Kottler, MA
Joye Weisel-Barth, PhD, PsyD
Eldad Iddan, MA
Paper 2-F: Freedom, Creativity and Self Ownership: An Emergence Theory of Free Will
Presenter:
Discussant:Moderator:
William Coburn, PhD, PsyD
Samuel Guzzardi, MSW
Elizabeth Feldman, PhD
Paper 2-G: Complexity and the Body – How Individual Neurodevelopmental Differences Shape Intersubjective
Process and the Meaning of Self Cohesion
Presenter:
Discussant:Moderator:
Christina Peters, PhD
Amy Eldridge, PhD
Alison Fellowes Comly, LICSW

Paper Session 3: Sunday, October 22, 8:00 – 9:30am
Paper 3-A: Self Psychology and the Self in History
Presenters:
James Block,PhD, Charles Strozier,PhD, David Terman, MD

Moderator:
n/aPaper 3-B: Rabbits and Hares are Alike and Different: Psychoanalytic Systems Contextualized
Presenter:
Discussant:Moderator:
Elaina Vasserman-Stokes, PhD
Gita Zarnegar, PhD, PsyD
Laura D’Angelo, M.Div, LP
Paper 3-C: Students & Candidates Session: Reverie – A Creative Edge of Two Minds
Presenter:
Discussant:Moderator:
Brandon Beeler, PsyD
Karen Bloomberg, PhD
Shaké Topalian, RN
Paper 3-D: When the Play Stops: Transformations in Child Treatment
Presenter:
Discussant:Amy Joelson, LCSWGianni Nebbiosi, PhD

Paper 3-E: Art and Sexuality in Psychoanalysis

Moderator:
Rosalind Kindler, MFA

Presenters:
David Schreiber, MFT, PsyD &Stacy Berlin, PsyD, PsyD

Discussant:Paolo Stramba Badiale,PhD

Moderator:
Anna Stothart, Psyd, LMHC

Paper 3-F: Is Healing Possible in Such a Context: Mourning and Aggression: The Shadow of the NeverCommemorated
Presenters:
Discussant:Moderator:
R. Neslihan Ruganci, PhD,
Penelope Starr-Karlin, PsyD, MFT Allen Siegel, MDİrem Yıldız, MD, Banu Bülbül, MA& Gökçe Silsüpür, MD
Paper 3-G: Beyond Private Practice: Psychoanalytically – Informed Work in Community Settings
Presenters:
Moderator:
Heather MacIntosh, PhD, C. Psych., Michelle McMartin,
Paula Christian Kliger, PhD
LCSW, Erica Young, MA

Additional Sessions:Thursday, October 19, 2023 4:15 – 5:15pm
Meet the Authors:
Presenters and Books:
Doris Brothers, PhD & Jon Sletvold, PsyD: A New Vision of Psychoanalytic Theory, Practice and Supervision:
Talking Bodies
Marcia Dobson, PhD: Metamorphoses of Psyche in Psychoanalysis and Ancient Greek Thought:
From Mourning to Creativity
Arthur Nielsen, MD: Interactive Couple Therapy in Action: A Practical Guide for Handling
Common Relationship Problems and Crises
Ingrid Pedroni, PhD: Clinical Journeys in Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy

Friday, October 20, 2023 12:00 – 1:15pm
Child and Adolescent Group Initiative: How Old Are We Really? The Role of Play in Cultivating a Leading Edge
Transference
Presenter:
Discussant:Moderator:
Ashley Leeds, LCSWAmy Eldridge, PhD
Erica Young, MA
Friday, October 20, 2023 12:00 – 1:15pm
Couples Therapy Interest Group: A Self Psychologically Informed Couples Treatment
Presenter:
Moderator:
Arthur Neilsen, MD
David Shaddock, PhD
Friday, October 20, 2023 12:00 – 1:15pm
Social Justice Interest Group: “Climate Café”
Co-Chairs: Margy Sperry, PsyD, MFT & Judith Aronson, PhD, LCSW

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Paper Session 1-A: A Call for an Expanded Self Psychology: Incorporating Socio-Cultural-Historical
Perspectives in Teaching and Clinical PracticePresenters: Elizabeth Carr, RN, MSN, BC & Ruth Migler, MSW
Discussant: Judith Aronson, PhD, LCSW
Moderator: Adriana Couto Silva, MS,MA,LCPC
Saturday, October 21, 2:00 – 3:30pm

Abstract:
We are living in a moment in which psychoanalysis is finally recognizing the foundational nature of therelevance of the broad socio-cultural-historical turn in both its thinking, its teaching, and its clinicalpractice. An emphasis on including a socio-cultural perspective has gained traction in response to theacknowledgement of the profound impact of historical and lived trauma on a person’s mental health anddevelopment. Historical and lived trauma reach beyond the traditional focus on family to include societal
problems such as toxic, pathologic, and systemic racism, the discrimination and othering of members of
the LGBTQ community, and the intergenerational trauma of immigration. Incorporating the need toincorporate socio-cultural perspectives in psychoanalysis demands the field change in fundamental ways
to achieve an inclusionary and equity posture that reflects and welcomes the diverse world in which welive. In meeting this call for action, we are working to educate ourselves and our trainees (a diverse groupwith multiple identities, both minority and majority) to the principles and practices of an expanded self
psychology while demonstrating their efficacy toward promoting transformation and growth.
In this paper, we share our continuous journey to incorporate racial, socio-cultural, and historicalperspectives in our teaching and clinical activities as contemporary self psychologists. While we primarily
focus on our teaching activities, we believe its message will be of interest to all clinicians.
Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of this presentation, the participants will be able to:
1. Describe essential aspects of an expanded self psychology that incorporates socio-culturalhistorical perspectives.
2. Identify and gain access to important authors that expand Kohut’s foundational ideas about the
selfobject cultural surround.
3. Describe teaching and clinical approaches that support equity and inclusion.

Presenter Bios:Elizabeth M Carr is an Advanced Practice Registered Nurse and Psychoanalyst. She is Director Emeritus
and a Founding Member of the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis (ICP+P) in
Washington, DC where she is a training and supervising analyst and a faculty member. She is Co-Chair of
Psychoanalytic Training at ICP+P. She serves on the Executive Board of IAPSP and Chairs, the Teaching
Interest Group. She is an Associate Editor of Psychoanalytic Inquiry.
Ruth Migler is a graduate of the ICP+P Psychoanalytic Training program and is on the faculty for
Psychoanalytic Training and the Contemporary Approaches to Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Training
programs. She is Co-Director Emeritus at ICP+P and serves on the Board of Directors. She has a private
practice serving adolescents and adults in Maryland and the District of Columbia.
Judith Aronson, PhD, LCSW is the co-chair of the IAPSP Committee for Social Justice and in that role cofacilitated the creation of the IAPSP Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Statement. She has a private practicein Evanston, Il. In addition, she is on the faculty of the Institute for Clinical Social Work in Chicago, Illinois
where she teaches, serves as a theory mentor, student advisor, consultant and on dissertationcommittees.
References:
Leary, K. (2014), Adaptive challenges in the consulting room: A discussion of Sue Grand’s “skin memories:
on race, love and loss.” Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society, 19(3),250-254.
Stoute, B. (2021), Black Rage: The psychic adaptation to the trauma of oppression. Journal of the American
Psychoanalytic Association, 69, 259 - 290.
Tummula-Narra, P. (2022), Can We Decolonize Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice? Psychoanalytic
Dialogues, 32(3),217-234.

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Paper Session 1-B: Working the Creative Edge with Alzheimer’s Company
Presenter: Jan Chess, MFT, PhD
Discussant: Greg Kolodziejczak, PsyD, PhD
Moderator: Gloria Barbacoff, LICSW
Saturday, October 21, 2:00 – 3:30pm

Abstract:

If we are fortunate we get to wrestle and struggle with the vicissitudes of our later years. For someof us that will include being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia. A
psychoanalytic approach for this population is an essential lack that begs to be filled. This
presentation explores the benefits psychoanalysis, with its unique invitation to intimate relationshipcan offer a patient with Alzheimer’s. I will demonstrate how a combination of creative associational
thinking from the analyst’s perspective when paired with Expressive Art therapy techniques yields
therapeutic gains for the patient. The interweaving of language threaded with an appreciation for thenonverbal, implicit, and nonrepresentational creates a rich tapestry for communication. The gains forthe patient include the abatement of existential loneliness, moments of insight, self-awareness, andthe use of the analytic relationship to enhance emotional connection to herself and others.
Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of this presentation, the participants will be able to:
1. List three ways to utilize creative techniques in treating dementia
2. Describe three common countertransference dynamics that can occur when confronting issues ofdementia and loss
3. Explain three ways that nonverbal states such as somatic awareness, meditation and music canstimulate affect and cognition and result in greater current day satisfaction.
Presenter Bios:
Jan Chess: Association whether it springs from either right or left brain activity has been a fascinatingprocess that has informed both my personal and professional life. As an Expressive Arts Therapist I haveused art, movement and music as the vocabulary for communication and understanding. While the arts
remained an active underground current in the early and mid years of my career, I came to specialize intrauma treatment. The discovery of Kohut’s theory of Self-Psychology awoke me to the potential of
psychoanalysis. When my children were grown I stepped boldly into the adventure of Candidacy andcompleted my training in psychoanalysis in 2022. I now relish my career as a psychoanalyst, instructor andcreative writer in the service of my own growth and as an offering to others.

Greg Kolodziejczak is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts, specializingin the treatment of BPD, as well as the integration of psychology and the spiritual life. He received his
PsyD from Divine Mercy University in 2006, having previously received an MA in theology from Catholic
University of America and a PhD in ocean engineering from MIT. Although he finds his home in
Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, his background also includes training in DBT, Mindfulness, Emotionally
Focused Therapy, Mentalization Based Treatment, Internal Family Systems, Bowen Family Systems
Theory, and neurobiology. Prior to studying psychology, he was engaged in various forms of ministerial
service, including hospital ministry, youth ministry, hospice care, providing psycho-social support toinmates in prison, and providing material and emotional support to children on the streets in DC. On thelighter side, he's enjoyed being a Massachusetts Big Brother for over 15 years, and several years ofcompetitive ballroom dance.
References:
Schore, A. (2011). The right brain implicit self lies at the core of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Dialogues
Vol 21 75-100.
Ogden, T.H. (2014) Fear of breakdown and the unlived life. International Journal of Psychoanalysis
95(2)205-223.
Goldberg P. (2018) Discovering the living world: discussion of "life on her own terms: a story ofreclamation", Psychoanalytic Dialogues. 28(6), 711-718.
Richard, A., Brothers, D. (2020). When “old ladies” meet: on being seen and heard in a lonely world.
Psychoanalytic Inquiry 40(3)189-196.

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Paper Session 1-C: The Possible Profession: Joe Lichtenberg and the Restoration of the Bodily Self
Presenter: Daniel Posner, MD
Discussant: Judith Rustin, LCSW
Moderator: Arthur A. Gray, PhD, CGP
Saturday, October 21, 2:00 – 3:30pm

This paper session is being live-streamed via Zoom. In person registrants will attend in the meeting
space and virtual registrants will attend via Zoom.
Abstract:
Beginning with “The Psychoanalytic Situation and Infancy, I consider Joe Lichtenberg’s legacy of creating
an experience-near holistic psychology of the self in terms of a larger attempt to make psychoanalysis amore possible profession. By grounding developmental theory in an empirical-phenomenological scienceof subjectivity, Lichtenberg not only helped give self psychology a more “clinically relevant baby” (Stern,1994)—he also widened the scope of analytic theory to include both the non-dynamic unconscious andthe bodily subject, which Freud (1923/1955) had abandoned in his search for a purely psychologicalscience of subjectivity. In this sense, “The Psychoanalytic Situation and Infancy” represents the first major
installment in Lichtenberg’s decades-long project toward what we might call, the restoration of the bodily
self. Furthermore, by freeing psychoanalysis from its pathomorphic developmental theory—whichconstrued adult psychopathology in disembodied terms, as evidence of the fragmented, conflicted natureof infant experience—Lichtenberg helped catalyze an “enactive” turn in psychoanalysis, opening the way
for re-conceptualizing mental pathology in adaptive terms as “varieties of self-disorder” (Sass, 2018)—
ensuring psychoanalysis’ relevance to the understanding and treatment of conditions long consideredoutside of its purview.
Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of this presentation, the participants will be able to:
1. Describe 3 key aspects of Lichtenberg’s early synthesis of infancy research.
2. Explain how Lichtenberg’s role as an integrationist revises Kohut’s structural model of the self.
3. Identify 2 differences the enactive/bodily self and the Freudian ego.

Presenter Bios:
Daniel Posner is Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He
completed residency training at Beth Israel Medical Center and a fellowship training in public psychiatryat NY State Psychiatric Institute and was appointed to the faculty as Assistant Professor of ClinicalPsychiatry (2008- 11) at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and then, after departing for fulltime private practice, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry (2011-) at Icahn School of Medicine @Mount Sinai. Dr. Posner’s clinical expertise has revolved around psychodynamic treatment of substanceabuse and young adult mental health. His research has focused on embodied approaches tounderstanding and treating neurodevelopmental disorders. He has published on this research in the
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, in Psychoanalysis, Self and Context and in Psychoanalytic
Inquiry here he has edited a two-volume issue on “The Interpersonal World of the Autistic Infant.” He now
serves as an associate editor at Psychoanalytic Inquiry where he is also the co-founder and co-host with
Daniel Goldin of “The Conversation” the podcast of Psychoanalytic Inquiry.
Judith Rustin, LCSW, is Faculty and Supervisor at The Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of
Subjectivity in New York City. She has authored papers and spoken nationally and internationally on the
integration of Intersubjectivity Theory with Infant Research and Neuroscience. She is author of Infant
Research and Neuroscience at Work in Psychotherapy: Expanding the Clinical Repertoire, published in2013 by W.W. Norton and Co. and Co-author with B. Beebe, S. Knoblauch and D. Sorter (2005) of Forms
of Intersubjectivity in Infant Research and Adult Treatment. Other Press, New York, New York. Her
current interest includes finding ways to integrate a social justice component with psychoanalysis andpsychotherapy. Judith is in Private Practice in New York City.
References:
Trevarthen, C., & Delafield-Butt, J. T. (2013). Autism as a developmental disorder in intentional movement
and affective engagement. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 7, Article 49.
Fuchs, T. (2015). Pathologies of Intersubjectivity in Autism and Schizophrenia. Journal of Consciousness
Studies 22 (1-2):191-214.
Fogel, A (2020). Three States of Embodied Self-Awareness in Rosen Method Bodywork: Part 1: Practitioner
Observations of their Clients. Rosen Method International Journal, 13, 4-36.

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Paper Session 1-D: The Political is Personal: “Wounds of History” in the Formation of Self
Presenter: Simone Drichel, PhD
Discussant: Jeffrey Stern, PhD
Moderator: Lucy Freund, PhD
Saturday, October 21, 2:00 – 3:30pm

Abstract:
The fact that “the sociopolitical” strikes such a chord of unease within self psychology may indirectly point
to an as-yet under-realised potential for growth and creative transformation that could come from a fuller
exploration of the intricate intersection between the two fields in the formation of self. Focusing on aliterary “case study” (Celeste Ng’s 2014 novel Everything I Never Told You), the paper traces the ways in
the political can become deeply personal, focusing particularly on the profound inner-psychic damage
that violent social forces and formations can inflict on an emergent sense of self.
Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of this presentation, the participants will be able to:
1. Define psychosocial studies
2. Describe the chiasmic feedback loop between the social and the psychic in the formation of self
3. Explain the psychic mechanism for the transgenerational transmission of trauma
Presenter Bios:
Dr Simone Drichel teaches in the Department of English & Linguistics at the University of Otago, New
Zealand. A cross-disciplinary researcher, her current work traverses the fields of continental philosophy
and relational psychoanalysis to address the widespread erosion of ethical responsiveness in thecontemporary global political situation. Her work has appeared in a broad range of journals (American
Imago; Levinas Studies; Modern Fiction Studies; Philosophy & Social Criticism; Psychoanalysis, Self &Context; Textual Practice), and she is the editor of two recent special issues: “Vulnerability” (SubStance42,3) and “Relationality” (Angelaki 24,3).
Jeffrey Stern, PhD is a research and clinical graduate of the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute where he isa supervising analyst and faculty member and past President of the Chicago Psychoanalytic Society. Dr.
Stern received his PhD at the University of Chicago in English Literature, where his dissertation on
Shakespeare's late romances won the Humanities Prize. He has been a lecturer in Psychiatry at Rush
University and the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine, where he won the teaching award.
He has also lectured at the University of Chicago in the Committee on General Studies in the
Humanities. Dr. Stern is in addition Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis at Wuhan University in Wuhan

China. In 2017 he was the keynote speaker at the annual meeting of the International Association for
Psychoanalytic Self Psychology.
Dr. Stern writes on clinical psychoanalysis, literature and film and is the associate editor of The Annual of
Psychoanalysis. His work including papers on clinical cases, Shakespeare’s King Lear, The Wizard of Oz and
Alomodovar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown has appeared in Shakespeare Quarterly, The
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Psychoanalysis, Self and Context, and The Annual of
Psychoanalysis, among others. A volume of his papers from Routledge is scheduled for publication next
year. He maintains a private practice in Chicago and throughout the world on line.

References:
Salberg, J. (2015). The texture of traumatic attachment: Presence and ghostly absence intransgenerational transmission. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 84(1), 21–46.
Frosh, S. (2019). Postmemory. The American Journal of Psychoanalysis,79(2), 156-173.
Stern, S. (2019). Airless Worlds: The Traumatic Sequelae of Identification with Parental
Negation. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 29(4), 435–450.

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Paper Session 1-E: Masked Resonance
Presenters: Jonathan Blazon-Yee, MFA, LCSW
Discussant: Janna Sandmeyer, PhD
Moderator: Molly Witten, PhD, MA
Saturday, October 21, 2:00 – 3:30pm

Abstract:
Jonathan Blazon Yee, an Asian American analyst, offers a chronicling of his work with an Asian patient that
culminates in its sudden interruption by the Covid-19 pandemic, provoking a dramatic and spontaneousact of creativity that unmasks an essential misalignment and shakes the pair into a long-absent
connection. Organizing the formulation of this treatment from within the tensions arising at theintersection of racial groupings and family bonds, improvisation and enactment, intimacy and alienation—
each being constituent parts of a relational whole—leads Blazon Yee toward the internal resolution of atreatment truncated by global catastrophe. Working to align his experience as a mixed-race American
within the experiential framework of his mono-cultured analytic partner, distinctions become thepathway to synthesis as each of the analytic partners contends with intra-psychic, interpersonal, andinter-cultural estrangements, in a moment of meeting that is more than simply an ending.

Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of the presentation, the participants will be able to:
1. Identify certain psychosocial issues pertinent to Asian, Asian American, and mixed-raced
patients.
2. Interrogate the construction of their own sociocultural subjectivity and how it influences
counter/transference reactions in a therapeutic dyad.
3. Recognize and examine clinical issues that can arise from under- or over-identification withpatients.
4. Examine the role of creativity and improvisation in analytic treatment, especially in dyads
mired by paralysis or unseen enactments.
5. Explore concepts of attunement, rhythmicity, and recognition of specificity in the search forneeded therapeutic relationships.

Presenter Bios:
Jonathan Blazon Yee, MFA, LCSW, is a graduate and faculty member of the National Institute for thePsychotherapies (NIP). Jonathan is currently the co-director of NIP’s One-Year Evening program and wasrecently elected to the institute’s Board of Directors. In addition, he has recently joined the teachingfaculty of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (NPAP). Jonathan received his MSW
from New York University following a career in fine arts, teaching, and education management. He
operates a private practice in New York City that engages in experiences of immigration and cultural
integration, particularly within the Asian American community.
Janna Sandmeyer, Ph.D. is faculty and supervisor at the Washington School of Psychiatry and The Institutefor Contemporary Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis (ICP+P) in Washington, DC; Founding Chair of theContemporary Approaches to Psychodynamic Psychotherapy program and the Sexual Diversity Task Forceat ICP+P; On the editorial boards of Psychoanalytic Inquiry and Psychoanalysis, Self and Context, and on
the Council of the International Association of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology. Dr. Sandmeyer was thewinner of the 2018 Ralph Roughton Award from the Committee on Gender and Sexuality of the American
Psychoanalytic Association. She is in private practice in Washington, DC.
References:
Alvarez, A. (2021) The Therapist’s Voice: Discussion of “Expressivity and Transformation through
Language in Work with Serious Disorder”. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 31(6), 664-667.
Bass, A. (2021) Unmasked: Personal Transformations, Frame Alterations, and Making theConscious Unconscious During the Traumatic Times of the COVID and Other Plagues.
Psychoanalytic Perspectives 18(3), 347-357.
Knoblauch, S. H. (2020) Fanon’s Vision of Embodied Racism for Psychoanalytic Theory andPractice. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 30(3), 299-316.
Shah, D. (2022) When Racialized Ghosts Refuse to Become Ancestors: Tasting Loewald’s “Bloodof Recognition” in Racial Melancholia and Mixed-Race Identities. Psychoanalytic Dialogues
32(6), 584-597.

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

CANCELLED: Paper Session 1-F: Unbearable Trauma, Impasse, and Mutual Analysis; Surviving Murder on
the Analyst’s CouchThis paper session has been canceled because Dr Atwood is unable to participate due to illness.
Presenters: Susan Burland, PhD & George Atwood, PhD
Discussant: Peter Maduro, J.D., Psy.D., Psy.D.
Moderator: Irit Felson, PhD
Saturday, October 21, 2:00 – 3:30pm

Abstract:
This panel will explore a challenging impasse that developed in the panelists’ therapeutic work together
and the parallels between their clinical journey and the one that took place between Elizabeth Severn andSandor Ferenczi almost a century ago. It is the view of the panelists that such impasses are often notrecognized as such by the therapists. They occur pervasively in our field, rooted in the continuing
unconscious demand for idealization of the therapist and an associated disavowal of the analyst’svulnerability, both originating from Freud.
Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of this presentation, the participants will be able to:
1. Describe the elements of the conceptualization of trauma
2. Discuss aspects of Freud’s authoritarianism and their impact on psychoanalysis
3. Utilize the discussion of Severn’s dream theory in their clinical practicePresenter Bios:
Susan Burland was awarded her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Waterloo, Waterloo,
Ontario, Canada in 1985. She began her American psychoanalytic training at Northwestern University
Medical School, where she completed both her internship and fellowship years. Dr. Burland also
completed a two-year Certificate program at the Family Institute of Chicago in Psychoanalytic Family
Therapy in 1990. She also completed Level ll in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy in 2017. Currently. Dr.
Burland is Associate Clinical Faculty at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy where
she graduated with a Certificate in Psychoanalysis in 2018. Dr. Burland is on the board of the International
Forum for Psychoanalytic Education, co-facilitating their Racism and Social Responsibility DiscussionActivism Group. She has a private practice in Chicago in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy with a special
interest in early trauma, parent-focused child therapy, family therapy, parent-infant attachment, and the
myriad ways the body expresses our feelings, and the history of psychoanalysis.
George Atwood is a licensed clinical psychologist in Providence Rhode Island and also Professor of
Psychology (Emeritus) at Rutgers University. He received his PhD in psychology in 1969 from the Universityof Oregon and followed up with a postdoctoral fellowship in clinical psychology from 1969 to 1971 at

Western Missouri Mental Health Center. Since then he has maintained a private practice in psychology in
New Jersey and Rhode Island, he also has been on the faculty in psychology at Rutgers University from1971 to present. He retired from teaching in 2012 but continues to maintain a private practice. He has
written or coauthored many books, including most importantly The Abyss of Madness and Faces in a Cloud(coauthored with Robert Stolorow).
Peter N. Maduro, J.D., Psy.D., Psy.D. is a clinical and forensic psychologist and psychoanalyst with a private
practice in Santa Monica, CA. He is a Faculty Member and Training and Supervising Analyst at the Instituteof Contemporary Psychoanalysis in West Los Angeles.

References:Bass, A. (2015) The dialogue of unconsciousnesses, mutual analysis and the uses of self in contemporary
relational psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 25(1), 2-17.
Fortune, C. (2015). Thwarting the psychoanalytic detectives: defending the Severn legacy. American
Journal of Psychoanalysis, 75(1), 19-28.
Stern, Steven (2019) Airless Worlds: The traumatic sequelae of identification with parental negation.
Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 29(4), 435-450.

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Paper Session 1-G: Psychedelics in Psychoanalysis: Problems and PromisePresenter: Leonard Bearne, PsyD
Discussant and Interlocutor: Carol Mayhew, PsyD, PhD
Saturday, October 21, 2:00 – 3:30pm

Abstract:
Almost 130 thirty years ago, with the publication of Studies on Hysteria, Sigmund Freud initiated a
revolution in Euro-American society. That revolution came to be known as Psychoanalysis and it was botha method of exploration and a mode of treatment. This paper concerns the history and development ofan entirely different mode of exploration and treatment – the use of psychedelics and empathogens –which are now being studied experimentally and which will, most likely within 5 years time, be madeavailable for use in clinical settings.
Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of this presentation, the participants will be able to:
1. Describe how the perceptual effects of psychedelics relate to their clinical mechanism.
2. Explain how the perceptual disruptions by psychedelics deconstruct the understandings that
determine our sense of ego and ego boundaries.
3. Discuss how 21st century psychedelic science continues to think in terms identified by Huxley,
Leary and Freud.
4. Distinguish between psychedelics and empathogens as regards their uses in analytic treatment.

Presenter Bios:
Dr. Leonard Bearne is a senior analyst and a training and supervising analyst at ICP-LA where he is also a
core faculty instructor. In addition to his 25 years as a psychoanalyst he has been involved in the study ofpsychedelics since his first personal experience with these substances 55 years ago. For the past several
years he has served as a mentor in the Psychedelic Therapy Training Program (CPTR) for the California
Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco.
Carol Mayhew, Ph.D., Psy.D., is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in Los Angeles,
California. She received her psychoanalytic training at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in
Los Angeles, where she is past-president of the Institute, as well as a training and supervising analyst andfaculty member.

References:
Reiff, C. M., Richman, E. E., Nemeroff, C. B., Carpenter, L. L., Widge, A. S., Rodriguez, C. I., Kalin, N. H.,
McDonald, W. M., & the Work Group on Biomarkers and Novel Treatments, a Division of the American
Psychiatric Association Council of Research (2020). Psychedelics and Psychedelic-Assisted
Psychotherapy. The American journal of psychiatry, 177(5), 391–410.
Barrett, K. (2022) Psychedelic Psychodynamics: Relational Knowing and the Unthought
Known. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 32(5), 484-496.
da Costa, S. C., Oesterle, T., Rummans, T. A., Richelson, E., & Gold, M. (2022). Psychedelic drugs forpsychiatric disorders. Journal of the neurological sciences, 440, 120332.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jns.2022.120332

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Paper Session 2-A: Working Beyond the Edges: A White Therapist and a Black Client
Presenters: Stella Kiser, LCSW
Discussant: Ida Roldán, LCSW
Moderator: Cynthia Sortwell, MD
Saturday, October 21, 4:00 – 5:30pm

Abstract:
In this paper I discuss my experience as a White therapist working with a client who identifies as Biracial
and Black. I describe some of the anxieties and complexities that arose during the treatment and explore
my journey to understand and manage my countertransference to create a deeper empathic connection
with the client. I discuss how my own history created blind spots which threatened my ability to remain
empathically immersed in the client’s experience. I describe the process we engaged in to work throughthose blind spots to create a space for deeper knowing. I illuminate my idea that attending to race as aninexorably intertwined aspect of a client’s identity and experience is critical to fostering a fuller andmore complete understanding of the client’s reality.
Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of this presentation, the participants will be able to:
1. Describe the ways our socio/cultural/political histories can block us from knowing the lived
experiences and realities of others, particularly those of another race.
2. Discuss the transformative power of a white therapist acknowledging “misrecognitions” aroundrace in the treatment of a black client.
3. Identify 3 ways the concept of “clinical humility” can prevent empathic lapses in treatment.
Presenter Bios:
Stella Kiser is an LCSW in private practice in Evanston, IL. She treats both individuals and couples. Before
becoming a psychotherapist, Stella practiced law as a commercial litigation attorney at a premier law firmin Chicago. She also built a commercial real estate company with her husband, where Stella continues toserve as General Counsel and business strategist. Stella chose to pursue a career as a psychotherapist
after representing teens in juvenile criminal court as a volunteer attorney.
Ida Roldán, is a licensed clinical social worker and psychoanalyst. She is Interim Academic Dean at theInstitute for Clinical Social Work in Chicago. Dr. Roldán received her doctorate in philosophy in clinicalsocial work from the Institute for Clinical Social Work, a master’s in social work from the University of
Illinois in Chicago, and is a graduate of the National Training Program for Contemporary Psychoanalysis in
New York. She has held numerous professional positions including faculty at the Institute for Clinical Social
Work, Associate Director of Fillmore Center for Human Services, Therapist and Clinical Supervisor at
Scholarship and Guidance Association, Clinical Consultant at Casa Central, Pedro Albizu Campos
Alternative High School, Cathedral Counseling, BUILD and RUSH Medical Center. Dr. Roldán has publishedin the areas of HIV/AIDS, and mentoring in qualitative research. She has presented in national andinternational conferences on topics of colonization, immigration, and the impact of the social/political on
oppressed populations.
References
Orange, D.M. (2017). From fallibilism to clinical humility: Brothers and Corpt on the feminine and thematernal. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 37(6), 425-428.
Long, C., Matee, H., Jwili, O., & Vilakazi, Z. (2020). Racial difference, rupture, and repair: A view from thecouch and back. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 30(6), 698-715. Doi:10.1080/10481885.2020.1829432.
Sperry, M (2020). Living History: Responsibility and blindness in the therapeutic process. Psychoanalysis,
Self and Context, 15(3), 267-275. doi:10.1080/24720038.2020.1769102.

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Paper Session 2-B: Dancing with the Demons – making sense of schizophrenia
Presenter: Karen Stewart, MA
Discussant: Lorraine Cates, PhD
Moderator: Elizabeth Canick, PsyD
Saturday, October 21, 4:00 – 5:30pm

Abstract:
This paper explores the empathic nuances of the therapeutic process with a person experiencing ongoing
psychosis associated with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, and with a history of severe relational trauma. Thiscase study emerged from work within a framework of somatic psychodynamic Self Psychologicallyoriented psychotherapy. Incorporating the Self Psychological principles of working withthe therapist’s and client’s Forward Edge, utilising Experience Near empathic attunement, and theSomatic Psychotherapy essential of Kinaesthetic Conversation were essential elements for the ongoing
integration of the client’s self. This work demonstrates the development of a nuanced
understanding of pathological accommodation with its internal self-organising dynamics as well as offers
examples of Forward Edge movement with a psychiatric presentation.
Interweaving vignettes from the two year therapy (to date) with the subjective and intersubjective
somatically animated experiencing of the therapist, the puzzle of how to work with all parts of the client
unfolds gently and carefully. This paper outlines how connections were made between the twoparticipants, in a clinical sense and within the client, creating a sense- making structure within the nuclear
self experience of the client. Real life clinical experiences of what Somatic Psychotherapy, undertaken
within a relational, intersubjective psychodynamic process, looks and feels like are in short supply. The
presentation of this case hopes to remedy that by demonstrating the bodymind integration required towork this way.

Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of this presentation, the participants will be able to:
1. Describe how the forward edge within the therapeutic encounters is demonstrated in the casestudy.
2. Explain the purpose of the internal psychological structure of Annie’s demons with regard to herinternal organizing principles, and how this relates to the concept of pathologicalaccommodation.
3. Identify 2 key principles of working therapeutically with people experiencing psychosis

Presenter Bios:
Karen Stewart is a middle-aged white woman living and working on Ngunnawal and Ngambri land in
Canberra, Australia. Karen was raised by a military father and a nursing mother, living in many different
places during her upbringing. Karen has a private practice and works primarily in a psychodynamic
psychotherapeutic way. Karen’s professional background includes working with people of all abilities who
have experienced trauma and mental ill health, with offenders in the justice system, people in crisis due
to family violence, and as an individual and couples therapist. Her work is infused with a somaticorientation and informed by self psychology and affect theory.
Lorraine Cates, PhD is a contemporary practicing psychoanalyst, organizational consultant, and former
adjunct professor at Columbia University. She is a founding and faculty member of Association of
Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, and is a training and supervising analyst for NPAP (National Psychological
Association of Psychoanalysis) in New York City. Her journal articles published in Psychoanalysis Self andContext (formerly IJPSP): “Silencing of Sadness (2018). Insidious Emotional Trauma (2014) and Nonverbal
Affective Experience Revisited (2011) focus on the importance of transforming bodily emotional
experience into relational meaning. Presently in contract with Routledge of London, she is completing abook on Traumatic Shame. She received a PhD in 2008 from Columbia University. In her former life, shetrained and performed as an actor. Dr. Cates maintains a private practice in Manhattan.
References:
Cates, L. (2014). Insidious Emotional Trauma: The Body Remembers …1. International Journal of
Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, 9(1), 35-53.
Doctors, S.R. (2017). Brandchaft’s Pathological Accommodation - What It Is and What It Isn’t.
Psychoanalysis, Self and Context, 12(1), 45–59.
Geist, R. A. (2021). From Theory-Centered to Patient-Centered Treatment: How Kohut’s Attitudes Impact
Contemporary Therapeutic Work, Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 41(3), 174-186.

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Paper Session 2-C: The Moving Edge of Creativity in Clinical Practice and in the Practice of Writing
Presenters: Brenda Solomon, MD, Karen Martin, MA, LCSW, Carol Mayhew, PsyD, PhD
Discussant: Marcia Dobson, PhD
Moderator: Christina Connell,RPSaturday, October 21, 4:00 – 5:30pm

Abstract:
Three papers presented will demonstrate creative edges in contemporary Self Psychology practice . All
three authors will demonstrate how discoveries in their clinical writing alerted them to issues notpreviously recognized. These discoveries were about both their analysands as well as insights about
themselves. Spontaneous enactments often occur in treatment that go beyond the usual frame. When
writing about these moments, the analyst came to appreciate her theoretical underpinnings and how
they’ve changed over time. Three cases will be briefly presented to illustrate both the analyst’s creativity
and how clinical writing allowed the analyst to formulate what had previously been unformulated.
Papers:Finding Me in Others and Others in Myself
Secret Lives and Secret Selves
Visiting the Death Star: An "Airless World".

Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of this presentation, the participants will be able to:
1. Discuss how clinical writing enhanced creativity in the treatment situation.
2. Explain how clinical writing can reveal analysts’ counter-transferences.
3. Demonstrate how the creative edge of treatment has been restrictive over the years.

Presenter Bios:
Brenda Solomon, MD is a training and supervising analyst at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. She
attended her University of Illinois Abraham Lincoln Medical School. Her psychiatric residency was at
Michael Reese Hospital, Chicago. Psychoanalytic training was at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute.
Carol Mayhew, Ph.D., Psy.D., is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in Los Angeles,
California. She received her psychoanalytic training at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in
Los Angeles, where she is past-president of the Institute, as well as a training and supervising analyst andfaculty member.

Karen Martin is a Clinical Social Worker and Certified Psychoanalyst. She was awarded a Masters of Arts
in Clinical Social Work from the University of Chicago in 1972. In 2003 she became certified as a
psychoanalyst by the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. She is on the faculty of the Chicago Instituteand has a private practice in Highland Park, Illinois.
Marcia D-S. Dobson holds PhDs in Classical Philology and Clinical Psychology. She has been an awardwinning Professor of Classics at Colorado College since 1976, and is Chair of the Psychoanalysis Minor
there. She started a private practice in relational Self Psychology in Colorado Springs in 1998. She has
been an Associate Editor of the presently named Psychology Self and Context since 2009. Her publishedscholarship spans the disciplines of ancient Greek Drama and Self Psychology. She has presented at IAPSP
conferences, as well as conferences on Classics and Psychology in London and Belgium. Marcia has justpublished a book under the Art Creativity and Psychoanalysis Series, whose editor is George Hagman,entitled: Psychic Metamorphoses in Psychoanalysis and Ancient Greek Thought: From Mourning toCreativity (Routledge, 2023).

References:
Doctors, S.R. (2017). Brandchaft’s Pathological Accommodation - What It Is and What It Isn’t.
Psychoanalysis, Self and Context, 12(1), 45–59.
Stern, S. (2019) Airless Worlds: The traumatic sequelae of identification with parental negation.
Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 29(4), 435-450.
Doctors, S. R. (2020). On the impact of psychotherapy on psychological growth: The waning of defenses.
Psychoanalysis, Self and Context, 15(4), 392-396.

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Paper Session 2-D: Struck Dumb: Dissociation and Language Games in Psychoanalysis
Presenter: Darren Haber, PsyD
Discussant: George Hagman, LCSW
Moderator: Susanna Federici-Nebbiosi, PhD
Saturday, October 21, 4:00 – 5:30pm

Abstract:
This paper considers the language games of analytic treatments marked by dissociation and disavowal,
especially with those struggling with addiction or other forms of compulsive numbing. Such patients often
futilely strive for differentiation and agency within archaic systems of compliance, accommodation, or
subjugation (Shaw, 2014), smothering the spark of emotionality for such “little therapists” or caregivers(Atwood, 2015.) The pain of severed selfhood, archaically unrecognized, perseverates in treatment, withaffect vexingly deadened or otherwise unavailable for dialogue. This de-vitalizes dyadic language,“dousing” the spark of dialogic engagement, and mitigation of traumatic mis-use of the patient by
caregivers, as the patient mis-uses substances and words to “fix” or bypass emotional pain. How toaddress such aversion when no contrasting “counter-example” has ever been experienced? A vignette
illustrates how words are concretely employed by participants, per Wittgenstein’s concept of “language
games” and their relational employment. With this patient, sober in AA, an unspoken yet felt futility
finally bursts through, a dissatisfaction previously inexpressible. Relationality is re-sparked, with Haber’s
empathic re-framing of the fallible “failure” of the patient to “figure out” and thus detour suffering,leading to this precocious patient’s loneliness (even as a “loyal” adherent to AA and its slogans); a newchance emerges, to speak from and not just of his exile. Both participants are “in the soup”, siblings infallibility, the patient’s selfhood diligently re-embodied, a spoken tenderness mutually valued, in cocreating language games with shared overlap or “family resemblances” (Wittgenstein, 2009), a kind of
blended family.
Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of this presentation, the participants will be able to:
1. Identify ways that dissociation and other entrenched self-protections deaden or dampen dialogic
engagement, and the language games of dyadic exchange.
2. Describe the potential impact of such deadening on analysts’ subjectivities and their subsequent
hopes and means of dialogic relatedness.
3. Outline three ways in which a patient’s addictive behavior or compulsive “numbing” leads tofleeting enlivenment of self-expression—while undermining subjective agency, and any means ofconceptualizing and verbally addressing such stilted development.

Presenter Bios:
Darren Haber, PsyD, MFT, is a psychoanalyst practicing in west Los Angeles. He specializes in treating
survivors of childhood trauma, addiction, and anxiety/depression. His book, Circles Without a Center:
Addiction, Accommodation and Vulnerability in Psychoanalysis was published in July 2022 by Routledge.
He is the winner of several analytic writing awards, and has been published online at the Los Angeles
Review of Books, Aeon/Psyche, Psychology Today, GoodTherapy.org, and the APA blog site. He has
appeared numerous times in the journals Psychoanalysis, Self and Context and Psychoanalytic Inquiry. His
website is www.therapistinlosangeles.com .
George Hagman, LCSW is a clinical social worker and psychoanalyst in private practice in New York Cityand Stamford, Connecticut. He is on faculty of the Training and Research in Intersubjective Self
Psychology, and is a training analyst, supervisor, and faculty member of the Westchester Center for the
Study of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. George is co-editor with Peter Zimmermann and Harry Paulof Intersubjective Self Psychology: A Primer (Routledge, 2019). He is also the General Editor of the Art,
Creativity and Psychoanalysis book series and New Directions in Self Psychology book series bothpublished by Routledge.

References:
Atwood, G. (2015). Credo and reflections. Psychoanalytic Dialogues. 25(2),137-152.
Stolorow, R. (2015). A phenomenological-contextual, existential, and ethical perspective on emotional
trauma. Psychoanalytic Review. 102(1), 123–138.
Doctors, S.R. (2017). Brandchaft’s pathological accommodation—What it is and what it isn’t.
Psychoanalysis, Self, and Context. 12(1)45-59.
Lemberger, D. (2017). Wittgenstein’s ‘Lighting up of an aspect’ and the possibility of change in
psychoanalytic therapy. British Journal of Psychotherapy. 33(2):192–210.

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Paper Session 2-E: Hide and Seek: Writing Fiction as a Way of Finding Hidden Selves
Presenter: Amanda Kottler, MA
Discussant: Joye Weisel-Barth, PhD, PsyD
Moderator: Eldad Iddan, MA
Saturday, October 21, 4:00 – 5:30pm

Abstract:
This paper is interested in the hidden selves that hover silently in the spaces that all human relationships
create. It asks how these hidden self-states can find the light of day. It suggests that one way is throughfictional creative writing.
The author shares a piece of a patient’s fictional writing in which an elusive character - Isobel – appears.
This ethereal and fictional manifestation occurs in the context of an excruciatingly painful relationship in
which the narrator describes repetitive impotent self-pitying attempts at transformation. Speculative
attempts to understand the meaning of the fictional material reveal how the creative writing processoffers a different kind of lens through which to see and experience our patients’ (and possibly our own)
hidden self-states. The paper demonstrates how compelling creative writing can be, how it facilitates anelaboration, from an experience near perspective, of hidden self-states in the narrator/patient - but also
in the therapist.
Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of this presentation, the participants will be able to:
1. Identify one way in which creative writing can offer a different kind of lens through which to see
and experience our patients’ (and our own) hidden self-states.
2. Identify one way in which a patient’s fictional writing can help elaborate a patient’s emerging
forward edge.
3. Identify one way in which a patient’s fictional piece can help elaborate a hidden but fledging senseof agency within a patient
Presenter Bios:
Amanda Kottler, M.A. (Clin. Psych.) is a clinical psychologist practicing as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist
in Cape Town, South Africa. She is a founding and faculty member of the Cape Town Psychoanalytic Self
Psychology Group and an Emeritus Council Member of the International Association of Self Psychology.
She has previously held the position of a senior lecturer at the University of Cape Town but now works
full time in private practice. Her academic interests are in the areas of “difference” and the twinship /alter-ego selfobject experience. She has published and presented on these issues in South Africa, the UK
and USA. She has co-edited two previous books and is a co-author of "Kohut's Twinship across Cultures:
The Psychology of Being Human, published by Routledge in 2015.

Dr. Joye Weisel-Barth, PhD/PsyD, is a senior instructor, training analyst, supervisor, and Board member
at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. She teaches Basic Concepts, Self
Psychology, Issues in Relational Analysis, Interpersonal Psychoanalysis, and Freud. Her psychological andanalytic practice is in Encino, California. Joye has served as Book Review Editor for Psychoanalysis, Self
and Context and Associate Editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and Psychoanalytic Inquiry. She loves
writing and is a frequent contributor to major psychoanalytic journals and guest presenter at
psychoanalytic institutes and conferences. Her book, Theoretical and Clinical Perspectives on Narrative in
Psychoanalysis: The Creation of Intimate Fictions, has been published by Routledge.

References:
Brandchaft, B. (2007). Systems of Pathological Accommodation and Change in Analysis. Psychoanalytic
Psychology. 24(4), 667-687.
Doctors, S.R. (2017). Brandchaft’s pathological accommodation—What it is and what it isn’t.
Psychoanalysis, Self, and Context. 12(1)45-59.
Hagman, G. (2020). Self-agency: Freedom and context in Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis, Self andContext, 15 (1), 33-39.
Terman, David M. (2021). The Negative Selfobject. Psychoanalysis, Self and Context, 16 (4), 380-389.

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Paper Session 2-F: Freedom, Creativity and Self-Ownership: An Emergence Theory of Free Will
Presenter: William Coburn, PhD, PsyD
Discussant: Samuel Guzzardi, MSW
Moderator: Elizabeth Feldman, PhD
Saturday, October 21, 4:00 – 5:30pm

This paper session is being live-streamed via Zoom. In person registrants will attend in the meeting
space and virtual registrants will attend via Zoom.
Abstract:
Perspectives on freedom, liberty, agency, creativity, and free will have a rich and varied history inphilosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and psychoanalysis. We want nothing for our patients, nor fromour patients, if not the expansion of their personal freedom, agency, individuality, creativity, and selfownership. What is freedom, exactly? What does it mean to have and to exercise free will? What does itmean to be truly creative? Do we have true choices, or are we overdetermined puppets faltering under
the illusion of self-generated acts of freedom? Does feeling free to choose, and then perhaps acting tochoose, equate with actual freedom? These perspectives and questions demand further examination inlight of how we think about emotional health and the phenomenology of therapeutic action. A complex
systems sensibility, along with other persuasive viewpoints, simultaneously offers some ideas as well ascompliments additional contemporary perspectives about them. This presentation explores an
emergence theory of free will and the centrality of self-ownership in defining and understanding theexperience of self-creation and freedom of choice. A clinical example is offered in the spirit of what it
might look like and what it might mean to enable self-creation and to make truly free choices.
Learning objectives:
At the conclusion of this presentation, the participants will be able to:
1. Describe the origins of an emergence theory of free will
2. Explain the importance of the experience of self-ownership in the exercise of free will
3. Identify and assess the emergence of true free will in the clinical setting

Presenter Bios:
William J. Coburn, Ph.D., Psy.D. is a psychoanalyst, a licensed clinical psychologist, and a licensed marriage
and family therapist practicing in West Los Angeles. He is Founding Editor Emeritus of Psychoanalysis, Self
and Context (formerly the International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology), Associate Editor of
Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and an Editorial Board Member of Psychoanalytic Inquiry. He is a Faculty
Member and Training and Supervising Analyst at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los
Angeles. He is a Founding Council Member Emeritus of the International Association for Psychoanalytic
Self Psychology (IAPSP), Former Chair of the IAPSP Publications Committee, and an Advisory Board

Member of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (IARPP). He coedited (with Nancy VanDerHeide) Self and Systems: Explorations in Contemporary Self Psychology (2009,
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences), and also co-edited (with Roger Frie) Persons In Context:
The Challenge of Individuality in Theory and Practice (2010, Routledge). He is also author of Psychoanalytic
Complexity: Clinical Attitudes For Therapeutic Change (2014, Routledge).
Sam Guzzardi is a member and graduate of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity in New
York and a faculty member at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies. He has a diverse practicewhere he is curious about questions of queerness, identity, development, and trauma. Sam is bilingual,working in Spanish and English, and has recently published papers in the Journal of the American
Psychoanalytic Association and Psychoanalytic Dialogues. His 2022 publication "The Only Fag Around:
Twinship in Gay Childhood," which details his attempt to integrate Kohutian and Freudian principles in thetreatment of a gay man, was the winner of the Ralph E Roughton Paper Award for making "an original andoutstanding contribution to the psychoanalytic understanding and/or treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual,
queer, trans*, or gender-variant people." Sam's scholarship often revolves around his interest incomparative psychoanalysis and in placing psychoanalytic theory in dialogue with ideas from othertraditions, including disciplines such as queer theory, post-colonial studies, performance studies andliterature.
References:
Hagman, G. (2020) Self-Agency: Freedom and Context In Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis, Self, andContext 15(1)33-39.
Shabad, P. (2020) The Forward Edge of Resistance: Toward the Dignity of Human Agency. Psychoanalytic
Dialogues 30(1)51-63.
Sell, C. (2022) Medio-Passive Agency in Psychoanalysis: Responding to Hopelessness and Despair in the
Therapeutic Relationship. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 32(4)353-368.

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Paper Session 2-G: Complexity and the Body – How Individual, Neurodevelopmental Differences Shape
Intersubjective Meanings and the Process of Self-Cohesion
Presenter: Christina Peters, PhD
Discussant: Amy Eldridge, PhD
Moderator: Alison Fellowes Comly, LICSW
Saturday, October 21, 4:00 – 5:30pm

Abstract:
Paying attention to the stories we tell and the formulations we make, Weisel-Barth (2019) reminds us, isimportant to understand the intersubjective process of treatment. One often overlooked area that shapes
meaning, and is hence overlooked in the stories that we tell, is the impact of individual,
neurodevelopmental differences. This presentation will use both a child case (in which executivefunctioning challenges are present) and an adult case (in which ADHD challenges are present) to explore
how understanding neurodevelopmental differences adds complexity to a therapist’s formulations andopens up new ways of understanding interpersonal and intrapsychic dynamics, helping the therapist tounderstand and empathize with the patient, especially how neurodevelopmental differences impact the“experience of.”

Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of this presentation, the participants will be able to:

1. Demonstrate an understanding that neurodevelopmental differences impact interpersonal andintrapsychic dynamics.

2. Assess one’s own understanding of neurodevelopmental differences and when to look for
consultation from multi-disciplinary professionals for better understanding the role ofneurodevelopmental factors.
3. Consider the role that neurodevelopmental factors have on a therapist’s formulations and ability
to fully empathize with patients’ experiences.

Presenter Bios:
Christina Peters, PhD, has worked as a psychoanalytic clinician for over 30 years in the Chicago area withchildren, adults, families, and couples. She teaches psychoanalytic theory and methodology at theInstitute for Clinical Social Work and the Chinese American Psychoanalytic Association, and has presented
at national and international conferences.
Amy Eldridge, PhD is Immediate Past President of the International Association of Psychoanalytic Self
Psychology and Dean Emerita of the Institute for Clinical Social Work. Under Dr. Eldridge’s leadership asdean, her team developed and implemented ICSW’s distance learning and master’s programs. She has apsychotherapy practice with adults, adolescents, and couples in downtown Chicago and more recently, inAsheville NC. She also consults on clinical practice, training and leadership issues. Dr. Eldridge is on theeditorial board of Psychoanalytic Social Work Journal, is the author of numerous published papers on
clinical practice and has been a frequent presenter at professional conferences. Most recently, Dr.
Eldridge is teaching psychoanalytic practice and theory to professionals in China.
References:
Greenspan, S.I. (2007) Levels of Levels of Infant-Caregiver Interactions and the DIR Model: Implications
for the Development of Signal Affects, the Regulation of Mood and Behavior, the Formation of a Sense
of Self, the Creation of Internal Representation, and the Construction of Defenses and Character
Sructure. Journal of Infant, Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy, 6(3), 174-210.
Weisel-Barth, J. (2019) Stories That Open and Stories That Close: Theoretical and Clinical Narratives in
Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 39(7), 485-493.
Geist, R.A. (2021) From Theory-Centered to Patient-Centered Treatment: How Kohut’s Attitudes Impact
Contemporary Therapeutic Work. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 41(3), 174-186.

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Paper Session 3-A: Self Psychology and the Self in History
Presenters: James Block, PhD, Charles Strozier, David Terman, MD

Sunday, October 22, 8:00 – 9:30am

Abstract:
This panel is the product of an intensive collaboration over the past two years between an intellectual
historian & cultural/political theorist and several senior theorists and clinicians in the field of Self
Psychology. The goal has been to integrate the historian-theorist’s reframing in major publications of theevolution of Western selfhood as a psychohistorical process in recent centuries and the resulting
emergence of the contemporary Western self with the dynamic elaborated in the originative depth
psychological processes by the work of Heinz Kohut and Self Psychology. In this panel, the historiantheorist and two of the senior collaborators hope to share our work on the deep interrelation between
the rise of the Western self as a broad cultural self-selfobject process and the conceptual framework of
Self Psychology illuminating this dynamic process as the foundation of self-development.
We hope to explain the importance of Self Psychology for understanding the deeper dynamic of Western
history and at the same time to suggest ways that Self Psychology is a critical tool that can be applied forbroader psychohistorical understanding. The panel will be organized as follows: 15 minutes for one of thesenior self psychologists to lay out the role of historical analysis in Kohut’s thought, 35 minutes for theextension of Kohut’s thinking through an innovative theoretical-historical framing in the work of thehistorian-theorist, and 15 minutes for the second senior self psychologist to consider some implicationsof this theoretical application for highlighting new dimensions and directions for further work within Self
Psychology as a discipline. The remainder of the time will be reserved for discussion.
Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of the presentation, the participants will be able to:
1. Describe the relation between the core depth psychological dynamic in Kohut’s work and theevolution of the self in the Anglo-American religious and cultural experience.
2. Discuss the stages of development of the modern and contemporary Anglo-American and broader
Western self and assess the relation between this historical process and the formation of the selfin contemporary society.
3. Assess the potential role of Self Psychology as a conceptual frame for understanding thecomplexities of contemporary self formation and the many challenges faced both culturally andclinically in consolidating the self in our time.

Presenter Bios:James Block, PhD: I have a Ph.D. from the Committee on Social Thought from the University of Chicago,and have taught political and cultural theory, political psychology, and cultural studies at DePaul
University for three decades. My major work traces the process of Western self-defvelopment in a series
off volumes. My first book, A Nation of Agents: The American Path to a Modern Self and Society(Harvard/Belknap University Press, 2002) traced the decline of traditional self and society during the mostinnovative phase of the early modern period and the emergence of a distinctly modern identity arising in
Anglo-American dissenting Protestantism and realized in American liberal society. The Crucible of Consent:
American Child Rearing and the Forging of Liberal Society (Harvard, February 2012) examines theembedding of this identity in a modern citizenry through radical innovations in child socialization andeducation. The current book projects, The Agony of American Ascendancy: The Crisis of Liberalism in the
Organizational Age and The Authoring Self: The Emersonian Tradition from Rousseau to Kohut and the
Post-Liberal World along with many conference papers delivered throughout the world, published essays,
and lectures treat the similar decline of the classic Protestant-liberal American consolidation regarding
self and society and the rise in the past century of a post-Protestant, post-liberal culture and experimental
selfhood and community in the U.S. and elsewhere. In addition, I have regularly written on the crisis ofcontemporary politics and the incipient forms of emerging cultures for Huffington Post, medium.com andother on-line publications.
David M. Terman, M.D. is a past Director of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis where he had beena Training and Supervising Analyst for the over 40 years. Dr. Terman had his undergraduate and medical
education at the University of Chicago and his psychoanalytic training at the Chicago Institute for
Psychoanalysis. He has been one of the analysts who helped develop the work of Heinz Kohut and what
has become known as self psychology. He has contributed to several central aspects of clinical anddevelopmental theory. He reconceptualized the Oedipus complex in self psychological terms, and he wasone of the first to note the importance of positive experience in forming psychological structure indevelopment. He has also explored the history of anti-Semitism from a self psychological perspective, andhe has coauthored and edited a book with Charles Strozier and James Jones on the psychology offundamentalism and other political and social forces, The Fundamentalist Mindset (Oxford University
Press: 2010). He has applied his work on paranoia to an understanding of some of the features of classic
psychoanalytic theory. He is now retired from clincial practice but continues to teach, supervise, and writein the area of applied psychoanalysis.
Charles B. Strozier is a Professor Emeritus of History, John Jay College and the Graduate Center, City
University of New York, and a practicing psychoanalyst. He has been twice nominated for the Pulitzer
Prize. His books include Heinz Kohut: The Making of a Psychoanalyst (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, April, 2001,
paperback from Other Press in the spring of 2004 and now translated into Italian, Japanese, and Hebrew,with a translation into Mandarin in progress); Apocalypse: The Psychology of Fundamentalism in America(Beacon, 1994); The Fundamentalist Mindset (Oxford, 2010); and many other books and scores of articles.
References:
Riker, J. (2021). The Philosophical Significance of Kohut’s Theory of the Self. Psychoanalytic review,108(2), 215-237.
Terman, D. (2021). Negative Selfobject. Psychoanalysis, Self and Context 16(4), 380-389.
Strozier, C. (2023).Psychological Reflections on the Tragic Dynamics of War. Bulletin of Atomic Scientists,
February 15, 2023.

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Paper Session 3-B: Rabbits and Hares are Alike and Different: Psychoanalytic Systems Contextualized
Presenter: Elaina Vasserman-Stokes, PhD, LPC
Discussant: Gita Zarnegar, PhD, PsyD
Moderator: Laura D’Angelo, MDiv,LPSunday, October 22, 8:00 – 9:30am

This paper session is being live-streamed via Zoom. In person registrants will attend in the meeting
space and virtual registrants will attend via Zoom.
Abstract:
The analysis described in this paper aims to highlight an emerging awareness of the ways in which older,
intra-psychically focused models of psychoanalysis can detract from the analyst’s ability to form a moresecure and nuanced connection with the patient whose experiences are both similar to and different fromthe analyst’s own. Specifically, considerations of intersectionality and the ways in which these enhance
the analytic process will be discussed. This paper will also aim to capture the inter- and intra-personal
differences within the experiences of a white woman analyst and a Mexican-American male patient, both
affected by the immigrant experiences of their families, and how these present in a modern analysis. The
intra-psychic dynamics and the experiences of a self in a hegemonic context are also considered, in hopesof describing a wider and deeper empathic connection within a treatment.
Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of this presentation, the participants will be able to:
1. Identify features of psychoanalytic frameworks aimed at understanding and treating
developmental trauma and how these can be made ore relevant within an intersectional
approach to psychoanalysis.
2. Describe how an openness to the differences of skin color, ethnicity, and culture facilitated theanalyst’s empathic responsiveness to her patient in their ongoing clinical engagement.
3. Describe how the activation of the therapist’s own traumatic experience in a number of clinicalmoments and their subsequent exploration in supervision, enhanced her ability to empathicallyconnect with her patient.
Presenter Bios:Elaina Vasserman-Stokes, PhD, LPC is a child and adult psychotherapist, a newly graduated psychoanalyst
trained at ICP&P in Washington DC, a clinical supervisor, an adjunct professor at George Washington
University Graduate School of Education and Human Development, a research scientist, and a yogi. In her
career she has had the privilege of working with people of different ages, cultures, races, ethnicities,
genders, and sexual identities. Her approach can broadly be described as insight-oriented and rooted inattachment, self-psychology, and other relational theories. Her expertise rests on meaningful personal

experiences and on continuing rigorous training and teaching. She works in private practice with bothchildren and adults. Her passion is play therapy with children under five, with a focus on strengthening
early life parent-child relationships. She leans deeply into the values of honesty, complexity, empathy,
life-long learning, depth, and humor. She is experienced in talk and play therapies and is bilingual in
English and Russian.
Dr. Gita Zarnegar is a training and supervising psychoanalyst and the cofounder for The Center for
Authenticity (https://www.thecenterforauthenticity.com/.) She has received her Ph.D. in ClinicalPsychology, from California School of Professional Psychology and her Psy.D. in psychoanalysis, from theInstitute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis. She has a Master’s Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy
From Loma Linda University and is a licensed M.F.T since 1988. She has been in private practice for 35
years in Los Angeles, California. Dr. Zarnegar specializes in mood disorders, trauma related issues andcouples therapy.
References:
Beebe, B., & Lachmann, F. (2003). The relational turn in psychoanalysis: A dyadic systems view from infant
research. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 39(3), 379–409.
Benjamin, J. (2004). Beyond Doer and Done To: an Intersubjective View of Thirdness, The Psychoanalytic
Quarterly, 73:1, 5-46, DOI: 10.1002/j.2167-4086.2004.tb00151.x
Eng, D., & Han, S. (2019). Racial melancholia, racial dissociation. Duke University Press.
Datta-Barua, I. (2023). A plea for linking or how are yoga, K-pop and psychoanalysis connected?
Psychoanalysis, Self, and Context, 18(1), 1-13.
Dennis, E. (2022) The Paranoid-Schizoid Position and Envious Attacks on the Black Other.
Psychoanalysis, Self and Context, 17(2), 141-153, DOI: 10.1080/24720038.2021.1977306

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Paper Session 3-C: Students & Candidates Panel: Reverie: A Creative Edge of Two Minds
Presenters: Brandon Beeler, PsyD
Discussant: Karen Bloomberg, LCSW, PhD
Moderator: Shaké Topalian, MA,RN, PMHCNS-BC
Sunday, October 22, 8:00 – 9:30am

Abstract:
Reverie is a creative edge emerging in a two-system dyad between patient and analyst. How can we use
reverie, an image that emerges in the analyst’s mind, within a Self Psychology framework? Whatdimensions does reverie open? In this paper, I discuss how self psychologists use empathy and how reverie
can be integrated into a Self Psychology orientation, rather than opposed to it. Traditionally Self
Psychology analysts empathized through introspection. However, the paper proposes a different way toempathize with patients’ dissociated self-states, particularly by using the analyst’s reveries. I also argue
that the analyst can use reverie as a prospective function to understand, anticipate, and manage future
enactments. I provide a clinical example to illustrate. Theoretical implications for using reverie within a
Self Psychological framework will also be discussed.
Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of the presentations the participants will be able to:
1. Identify and explain the two main ways reverie is defined, and describe reverie from a self
psychological perspective
2. Discuss how reverie may not have been traditionally used within a self psychology framework.
3. Explain the intersection and relationship between reverie and empathy and how to utilize thisrelationship with patients.
4. Demonstrate effective use of reverie in empathizing with dissociated self-states and managing
enactments.
Presenter Bios:
Brandon Beeler is a Clinical Psychologist in private practice in New York City. He earned his B.A. in
Psychology from University of Michigan and doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Ferkauf Graduate
School of Psychology, Yeshiva University. He has been committed to training psychoanalytically. He
completed a practicum at NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. His research
focused on how microaggressions impact identity. He also teaches and supervises doctoral students at
Yeshiva University and he taught Ego Psychology at the Training Institute for Mental Health. He has a
special interest in reveries.

Karen W. Bloomberg, LCSW, Ph.D, is on the faculty at both the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute and theInstitute for Clinical Social Work where she is also Dean of Students. She previously taught at the
University of Chicago, her alma mater. Karen is one of three core faculty who began the one-year virtual
Certificate Program in Integrative Couple Therapy, co-sponsored by the Institute for Clinical Social Workand the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. She has been a long-standing member of IAPSP, being a memberof the International Council as well as the Early Career Professional Committee and the Couples Interest
Group. Karen is in private practice in Chicago where she treats individuals and couples and provides
supervision and consultation.
References:
Geist, R. A. (2013). How the empathic process heals: A microprocess perspective. International Journalof Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, 8(3), 265-281.
Ogden, T. H. (2017). Dreaming the analytic session: A clinical essay. The psychoanalytic quarterly, 86(1),1-20.
Brown, L. J. (2018). Transformational processes in clinical psychoanalysis: dreaming, emotions and thepresent moment. Routledge.
Ogden, T. H. (2019). Ontological psychoanalysis or “What do you want to be when you grow up?. The
Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 88(4), 661-684.

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Paper Session 3-D: When the Play Stops: Transformations in Child Treatment
Presenter: Amy Joelson, LCSW
Discussant: Gianni Nebbiosi, PhD
Moderator: Rosalind Kindler, MFA
Sunday, October 22, 8:00 – 9:30am

Abstract:
When treatment was forced out of the office and into the Zoom room, 8-year-old Chloe panicked. Eachtime the digital connection failed she thought it was her fault, aggravating her shame around her sense of
inadequacy. Pre-pandemic, we had an established play repertoire. However, in the new screennegotiated context, our familiar way of playing together was stymied despite our mutual determination.
What was the meaning of our new-found constriction? And, how might we effectively restore the vitality
between us as our worlds were becoming radically redefined? The treatment of Chloe illustrates anintersubjective systems view of development. The therapeutic approach detailed applies to work withadults as well as children.
Learning objectives:
At the conclusion of this presentation, the participants will be able to:
1. Discuss development as a nonlinear ongoing process of change that is responsive to and inspiredby new challenging situations.
2. Describe play as an improvisational and experimental process that is cocreated between partners
and cannot be scripted.
3. Illustrate how the therapeutic dyad can move in and out of a state of being able to play, and toassess multiple functions of these fluctuations in playing and not-playing.
Presenter Bios:
Amy Joelson, LCSW, is Faculty, Supervisor, and the Director of Distance Learning at the Institute for thePsychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity in New York City; Associate Faculty at the Japanese Forum of
Psychoanalytic Self Psychology in Hiroshima, Japan; President of the International Association for
Psychoanalytic Self Psychology; and Member of IARPP’s Child, Adolescent and Parent Psychotherapy
Committee. A frequent presenter at international conferences and author of several publications on childand adolescent development, Amy maintains a private practice in downtown New York City in adult, childand adolescent psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.
Gianni Nebbiosi PhD is the President, founding member, supervising and training analyst, of ISIPSÉ Institute for Self Psychology and Relational Psychoanalysis in Italy; Founding and Board Member of IARPP– International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy; Member International
Council of IAPSP - International Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology; Member Editorial Boardof the journal “Psychoanalytic Dialogues”; Member Editorial Board of the journal “Psychoanalytic Inquiry”;
Corresponding Editor of the journal "Contemporary Psychoanalysis”.

References:Gray, A. A. (2015) Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances: Improvisation in Psychoanalysis.
Psychoanalytic Dialogues 25(6)725-742.
Gotthold, J. (2017). Paul’s Tale: A Clinical Tale in Three Parts. Psychoanalysis, Self, and Context 12(4),306-316.
Barish, K. (2020) The Role of Play in Contemporary Child Psychotherapy: A Developmental Perspective.
Journal of Infant, Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy 19(2)148-158.
Warshaw, S. C. (2020) Why Play? … Musings during This Pandemic. Journal of Infant, Child & Adolescent
Psychotherapy 19(2)107-108
Corbett, K. (2021) Credo: So Our Lives Glide On. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 31(2),253-261.
Lichtenberg, J. (2021) Is This Analysis – No and Yes. Psychoanalytic Inquiry 41(4-5),292-295.

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Paper Session 3-E: Art and Sexuality in Psychoanalysis
Presenters: David Schreiber, MFT, PsyD & Stacy Berlin, PsyD
Discussant: Paolo Stramba-Badiale, PhD
Moderator: Anna Stothart, PsyD, LMHC
Sunday, October 22, 8:00 – 9:30am

Abstract:
Two papers presented in this panel will explore the topic of art and sexuality in psychoanalysis. The first
paper explores the intersection of art and psychoanalysis by way of a clinical vignette in which thepatient’s love for a particular painting creates associations for both the patient and the analyst, areas of
exploration which lead into deeper realms of the patient’s unconscious relational world and his
exhibitionism. Although the patient in this vignette is intelligent, articulate and has significant pastexperience with the analytic process, elusive realms of his unconscious organizing processes remain. The
patient’s affinity for a painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Giorgione, and his associations to thispainting and the subject matter depicted, along with the analyst’s associations after viewing the painting,helped to illuminate hidden sectors of the patient unconscious organizing.
The second paper discusses how trauma is converted into voyeurism and how art is used as a medium fora third or self-object in the treatment room. The paper provides various ways to utilize art inpsychoanalysis and discusses how the patient’s fixation is equivalent to a self-object experience ofsoothing and self-regulating.
Learning Objectives
At the conclusion of this presentation, the participants will be able to:
1. Discuss the unique potential of using art and specific works of art to broaden and deepen
psychoanalytic exploration.
2. Describe the process of unconscious association as it relates to a patient’s unique life history
and interests.
3. Analyze a patient’s intersubjective relatedness within the framework of themes in a specificwork of art.
4. Describe three aspects that turn early trauma into voyeurism.
5. Discuss the utility of re-living unique facets of early sexual trauma.
6. Analyze and discuss the art that a patient brings into treatment.
Presenter Bios:David Schreiber is a member of The Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles, where hereceived his doctorate in psychoanalysis. He has served on the Board of Directors at ICP, as well as taught
as a core faculty instructor. He is a recipient of the Daphne S. Stolorow Memorial Essay Award, and has
been writing and presenting papers on the intersection of Self Psychology and Intersubjective Systems
Theory. In his private practice in Santa Monica, California, David specializes in treating complex
developmental trauma, severe depression and anxiety, and family systems. In addition to his private
practice, David has extensive experience working in residential treatment centers treating acute
psychiatric disorders.

Dr. Stacy A. Berlin is a licensed psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in LA, CA, for over two decades,a faculty member at ICPLA, where she conducts advanced graduate seminars in Relational Theory, and aguest editor for the journal Psychoanalytic Inquiry, where she is editing a journal on sexuality andgender. With her extensive and broad education, and experience in psychoanalysis, she brings exceptionalawareness to her work. She is integrative and works from within a safe relational framework, in acollaborative and interactive manner. She is egalitarian and contextual in her approach to psychoanalytic
theory and practice. Dr. Berlin emphasizes developmental relational traumatic self-states, creative
openings, play and humor.
Paolo Stramba-Badiale graduated in Philosophy and Specialized in Clinical Psychology at the University of
Milan, Italy. PhD in Experimental Psychology. Psychoanalyst. Faculty and Training Analyst of ISIPSE’(Institute of Specialization in Self Psychology and Relational Psychoanalysis), Rome and Milan, Italy.
Coordinator of ISIPSE’ Institute in Milan. Member Emeritus of the International Council of IAPSP. Memberof IARPP. Presenter of many papers in the International Conferences of IAPSP and IARPP. More than fifty
papers published, in Italian and International Reviews. Private practice in psychoanalysis in Milan, Italy.

References:
Stolorow, R. D. (2015). A phenomenological-contextual, existential, and ethical perspective on emotional
trauma. Psychoanalytic Review, 102(1), 123-138.
Atwood, G. E. & Stolorow, R. D. (2016). Walking the tightrope of emotional dwelling. Psychoanalytic
Dialogues, 26(1), 103-108.
Knafo, H. Y. (2018) The Intersection of Unresolved Loss, Trauma, and Psychotic Symptoms: A Dyadic
Case Illustration. Attachment: New Directions in Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy 12(2),113126.
Coburn, W. J. (2019) A Most Complex Paradox: Rethinking the Individual. Psychoanalytic Inquiry
39(1),77-87.
Doctors, S. R. (2020) The Selfobject Concept: The Heart of Kohut’s Psychology of Health. Psychoanalysis,
Self, and Context, 15(1), 25-32.
Swan-Foster, N. (2022). The other made visible: Creative methods, inner figures and agents of change
when working through early childhood trauma in adulthood. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 67(4),1020-1044.

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Paper Session 3-F:
Presenters: R. Neslihan Rugancı,PhD, İrem Yıldız, MD, Banu Bülbül Çam, MA Gökçe Silsüpür, MD
Discussant: Penelope Starr-Karlin, PsyD, MFT
Moderator: Allen Siegel, MD
Sunday, October 22, 8:00 – 9:30am

This paper session is being presented via Zoom. All registrants will attend online.
Abstract:
The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of socio-political context on mourningemphasizing the dynamics of experienced and transferred trauma, dread, aggression and rage, throughintegrating the perspectives of Kohut’s Psychoanalytic Self Psychology and Intersubjective Psychoanalysis
to the Psychoanalytic explanations of Mourning. We mainly focus on the social dynamics whichtransform the Grief into continuous Trauma and on which was/is disavowed, repeated and intensified by
the rulers after these traumas during the mourning process and, has the impact on the Psychology ofSociety, particularly in Turkey. We try to utilize the current context of Turkey through the cases of those
who are and/or their old generations were exposed to human made disasters, and discuss the possibilities
to restore this impact through creative solidarity and through identifying with the forward edge strivingof the idealized wounded selves.
Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of this presentation, the participants will be able to:
1. Utilize the factual experiences of “how the history flows through us” and our patients andreflects on the sociopolitical atmosphere of a country
2. Portray how the trauma repeats, ghosts of traumatic history wanders among us, if the systemand the public resist and disavow the truth and victims are not buried through mourning
properly.
3. Discuss the creative ways of healing the self outside and inside the therapy rooms and thepositive impact of societal mourning and solidarity in a broader sense, and its reflection intherapy rooms.
Presenter Bios:
R. Neslihan Rugancı took her Clinical Psychology PhD. degree from the Psychology Department of the
Middle East Technical University (METU) in Turkey and certified from the Distant Education Program ofChicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. She participated and contributed to Self Psychology Conferences asa presenter, a discussant and a member of an Overseas organizing committee. She had publications in
IJPSP (PSC) and several other International and National Psychology Journals. She is an international
consulting editor of Psychoanalytic Inquiry.

She is affiliated with International Association for Psychoanalytic Self psychology (IAPSP) and a founding
member of and affiliated with Ankara Contemporary Psychoanalytic Psychotherapies Association,
Anatolian Psychoanalytic PsychotherapiesAssociation: A leraning place of Self Psychology (APPA,
Affiliated with IAPSP as an Institute). Ruganci is currently in private practice in Turkey and Teaching at
APPA, and one of the advisors of Amy Joelson (current IAPSP President) on the Executive Board.
Banu Bülbül completed her Psychology education at Hacettepe University and her Master's Degree inClinical Psychology at Rumeli University. She started working as a psychotherapist with children andadolescents. She now works only with late adolescents and adults. She conducts group activities aimed at
empowerment of women. She has published many papers in Psychology, Art (specifically Cinema) and
Political Journals and online newspapers and had a published novel.
She is a member of IAPSP and Anatolian Psychoanalytic Psychotherapies Association (APPA affiliated with
IAPSP). Bülbül is currently in her private practice in Turkey.
Gökçe Silsüpür completed her medical education at Anadolu University. She received her adult psychiatry
training at Ankara University School of Medicine. She is members Anatolian Psychoanalytic
Psychotherapies Association: A learning place of self psychology. She is currently working as a psychiatristpsychotherapist in her own practice.
M. İrem Yıldız, MD received her adult psychiatry training at Hacettepe University School of Medicine,
Psychiatry Department and master degree of consultation liaison psychiatry from the Department ofClinical Neurological Sciences and Psychiatry, Institute of Neurological Sciences and Psychiatry of the
Hacettepe University in Turkey. She is a member of Ankara Contemporary Psychoanalytic Psychotherapies
Association, Anatolian Psychoanalytic Psychotherapies Association: A learning place of Self Psychology. Dr
Yıldız’s clinical interest is in the area of liaison psychiatry, functional neurological disorders and trauma.
Dr Yıldız teaches and conducts research at the Hacettepe University School of Medicine (where she is anassociate professor).
Penelope Starr-Karlin, PsyD, LMFT, M.Arch. is in private practice in W.LA California and is a supervisingand training analyst at ICP/LA where she teaches Stolorow and Atwood’s intersubjective-systems theory:a phenomenological contextual perspective, and dream studies. Penelope’s relational psychoanalysis isrounded out by studies in continental philosophy, Jungian psychology, architecture/urban design, andclimate psychology. She has been published in Psychoanalytic Inquiry, International Journal of
Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, and elsewhere.
References:
Ornstein, A. (2015) The Missing The Tombstone: Reflections On Mourning and Creativity. Journal of
American Psychological Association, 58(4), 631-648.
Topalian, S. (2015) Hayaletlerden atlara: “Kendi” soykırım deneyimime tanıklık ederken. (From Ghosts toHourses: while bystanding the genocide experience of my “Self”) Suret: Psikokültürel Analiz, 15(1), 3651.
Kohut, A. T. (2020) History flows through us: Psychoanalysis, historical trauma, and the shaping ofexperience, Psychoanalysis, Self and Context, 15(1), 20-24, DOI: 10.1080/24720038.2019.1688330.

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Paper Session 3-G: Beyond Private Practice: Psychoanalytically – Informed Work in Community Settings
Presenters: Heather MacIntosh, PhD, C.Psych, Michelle McMartin, LCSW, Erica Young, MA
Moderator: Paula Christian Kliger, PhD
Sunday, October 22, 8:00 – 9:30am

Abstract:
An important growing edge of contemporary self psychology is recognizing the need to makepsychoanalytically-informed treatment more widely accessible, rather than primarily a treatment
available only to the wealthy upper class. This panel will present three different efforts toward this goal,
followed by a discussion between the presenters and with the audience regarding these and other waysof accomplishing it. It will be moderated by Paula Kliger who has extensive experience in this area andwill briefly comment on the presentations as time allows.
Heather MacIntosh will begin by presenting her research on providing support to survivors of trauma
during the Covid-19 pandemic using her manualized model of couple therapy, Developmental Couple
Therapy for Complex Trauma, in a virtual, time-limited group format. Most groups were comprised ofmembers of traditionally underserved or equity-seeking populations, including BIPOC, LGBTQ+,
Indigenous, and French speaking, with an open group option also available, and were facilitated bymembers of the identified groups. The treatment focused on fostering a sense of community andexploring psychoanalytic concepts of attachment, emotion regulation and mentalizing, and results werevery positive. The implications of this project for making psychoanalytic couple therapy more widely
accessible will be discussed.
Michele McMartin will then describe the origins and mission of the Kedzie Center, an innovative
community-funded mental health center grounded in psychoanalytic/psychodynamic theory. She will
describe what psychodynamic treatment in the community looks like, including ways that the analytic
frame may need to be expanded to meet patients’ needs.
Finally, Erica Young will present her work teaching self-psychological concepts to public school teachers
to help them better support students with social/emotional difficulties. She will briefly summarize theacademic literature that supports the efficacy of relational interventions for public-school students, thenpresent a case example in which she provided ongoing
consultation to a paraeducator in applying a self psychology-based approach to support a studentwith violent and aggressive behaviors.
Learning Objectives:
By the conclusion of this presentation, the participants will be able to:
1. List three ways that psychoanalytically-oriented treatment can be made more accessible to more
people, outside of the traditional private practice model.
2. List several ways that flexibility in the analytic frame may be needed in order to meet the needsof patients outside of traditional private practice settings.
3. Describe three psychoanalytic relational concepts that can be taught to public school teachers to
help them better support students with severe social/emotional needs.

Presenter Bios:
Heather MacIntosh is Associate Professor and Director of the MScA Couple and Family Therapy
Programme at McGill University, where she is the recipient of the H. Noel Fieldhouse Award forDistinguished Teaching. Dr. MacIntosh is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst who graduated fromthe Institute for the Advancement of Self Psychology. Her funded research projects examine the impactof early life trauma on the process and outcome of couple therapy. Through this research, Dr. MacIntosh
has developed a psychoanalytically-informed approach to couple therapy for survivors of trauma which isoutlined in her book Developmental Couple Therapy for Complex Trauma: A Manual for Therapists
published by Routledge Press.
Michelle McMartin, LCSW has 25 years of experience working with youth and families in the Chicago area
in residential treatment, foster care and community based clinical services. She has experience working
with families across the lifespan, working with couples and families who are just forming their createdfamily, to helping families launch young adults. She has specialized training and experience with kids 0-8
years of age, youth and families who have experienced abuse and trauma, chronic mental health issues,
adoption and families experiencing chronic health issues. Michelle&#39;s clinical interests integrate
psychodynamic therapies with family systems work, with a strong emphasis on using the client-therapist
relationship to build the relational capacities of each family member through an attachment framework.
She also works with individual clients to express and make meaning of their feelings, beliefs and pastexperiences. In Chicago Michelle has been affiliated with The Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School at The
University of Chicago, The Family Institute at Northwestern University and The Erikson Institute. Michelle
currently oversees the psychodynamically informed clinical training program at The Kedzie Center in
Chicago- a community funded community mental health organization working within a diverse
community.
Erica Young, M.A. is a special educator and psychologist intern who runs a therapeutic classroom forchildren in kindergarten through fifth grade in Vermont. Erica has been working with children in a wide
variety of settings for over 15 years. She has additional training in using a self psychology-informed
approach as a means of supporting struggling students. She has assisted in training and consulting withother educators in implementing an applied self psychology approach in schools. In 2022, she copresented a paper regarding the use of this approach at the IAPSP conference in Washington, D.C. In 2021,
Young was awarded the Schillinger Prize from APA Division 39 for her paper, The Restorative Classroom:
A Psychoanalytic Playground in a Public School.

References:
Stearns, C. (2020). Let them get mad: Using the psychoanalytic frame to rethink SEL and trauma
informed practice. Occasional Paper Series, 2020 (43), 23-32.
Plakun, E. M. (2020). Access to psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in the US. Psychoanalytic
Psychotherapy, 34(2), 100–110. https://doi.org/10.1080/02668734.2020.1750052.
Yassine, J., Tipton-Fisler, L.A. & Katic, B. (2020). Building teacher-student relationships and improving
behaviour-management for classroom teachers. Support for Learning, 35(3), 389-407.
MacIntosh, H. (2023). Developmental Couple Therapy for Complex Trauma Survivors: A detailed casestudy of a manualized, time-limited, psychoanalytically-informed treatment. Psychoanalysis, Self andContext, 18(2), 294-313.

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Meet The Author Session
Presenters: Doris Brothers, PhD & Jon Sletvold, PsyD; Marcia Dobson, PhD; Arthur Nielsen, MD;
Ingrid Pedroni, PhD
Thursday, October 19, 4:15 – 5:15pm

Abstract:
In this presentation, the authors of four recently published books related to psychoanalytic theory will
each give a brief overview of the key points of their books and respond to questions from the audience astime allows.
Doris Brothers and Jon Sletvold will begin by discussing their book A New Vision of Psychoanalytic Theory,
Practice and Supervision: Talking Bodies. In this book, they ask: what changes when we view
psychoanalytic theory through the lens of embodiment? And answer: nothing—and everything! Seenfrom the perspective of embodied connectedness, such enduring psychoanalytic concepts as dissociation,transference, resistance, and interpretation are radically transformed. The authors offer new ways todescribe the therapeutic process, understand traumatic experiences, and enhance the supervisory
process. They suggest that psychoanalytic dialogues are conducted by talking bodies—sometimes withwords and sometimes without them. Since traditional psychoanalytic language does not easily lend itself
to embodied experience, they prefer using such words as I, you, we, and world. They show how attention
flows back and forth among I, you, we, and world in a way that complexly intermingles with the I-you-weworld flow of one’s relational partners. They demonstrate how traumatic experiences and constitutional
conditions profoundly disrupt this flow.
Next, Marcia Dobson will discuss her book Metamorphoses of Psyche in Psychoanalysis and Ancient Greek
Thought: From Mourning to Creativity. The book explores the transformative power of liminal experiencesin ancient Greek texts, psychoanalytic theory, and the author’s own life, to demonstrate how acontemporary understanding of ancient thought can illuminate modern psychoanalytic theory andpractice especially as it relates to trauma, grief, and the development of psyche. Asserting that liminal
experiencing involves engaging a psychic space outside the boundaries of ego organization, the bookinterweaves autobiography, literary analysis, philosophical ontology, and psychoanalysis to formulate a
new paradigm for how to construct human beings, how to enliven and deepen personal and therapeutic
experience, and how poetic language is the gateway to this magical realm of transformation. Alongsiderichly detailed case analyses, the author uses her dual expertise in psychoanalysis and ancient Greek
literature to explore how the maternal and liminal in human life were displaced with the rise of Athens
and a new way of being human ― the rational citizen ― and how this repression has resulted indiminished, constricted experiencing and the suppression of women throughout western history.
Arthur Nielsen will follow, discussing his book Interactive Couple Therapy in Action: A Practical Guide for
Handling Common Relationship Problems and Crises. The book is a comprehensive, user-friendly guide tohandling the most common problems and crisis situations seen by couple therapists. Grounded in an indepth review of the clinical and research literature and drawing on the author’s 40-plus years ofexperience, the book investigates each topic to discover what makes certain issues (like sex) or situations(like extramarital affairs) so stressful for clients and challenging for therapists. Unlike most graduate
programs and texts on couple therapy that focus on theory and technique, Integrative Couple Therapy inAction fills in the details. While written for couple therapists of all experience levels, the book should
prove helpful to individual therapists as well. To whet your appetite and encourage you to read his book,
Dr. Nielsen will describe the personal and clinical journey that led him to write this book and offer asampling of some of the practical advice it contains. That journey began with a commitment to integrating
models of psychoanalytically informed couple therapy while eschewing name-branding, as discussed in
his first book, A Roadmap for Couple Therapy: Integrating of Systemic, Psychodynamic, and Behavioral
Approaches. The present book grew out of the need for a compendium of practical advice, termed“domain specific knowledge,” which further improves results. This presentation argues for more curriculartime devoted to such accumulated practical wisdom and will illustrate its utility with a case vignette.
Ingrid Pedroni will end the hour with a brief summary of her book Beyond Fragmentation: Clinical
Journeys in Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. The book is an attempt to assess, andhighlight through clinical examples, how new epistemological paradigms have paved the way to anincreasing integration of contemporary psychoanalysis with other therapeutic models and revitalized
authors traditionally considered outcasts of mainstream psychoanalysis. The first part explores theintegration of these different models, with special attention to moments of impasse in the therapeutic
relation and how they are explained and worked through in a self psychological versus a relationalframework. The second outlines how the sense of self is created and enforced in significant areas ofexperience, such as creativity, spirituality and gender, and how this process, which implies consistentintra-psychic transformations, also significantly affects inter-relational dimensions. The third section
centers on the treatment of couple and family relations, combining psychoanalytic understanding withother, essentially systemic modes of intervention. An introduction to the clinical material describes the
lifecycle of the couple relation, drawing on its artistic representation in literature, theatre and cinema.
The final part deals with the treatment of cultural diversity, understood in the framework of theoverarching role of Culture in building the mind and through the universal validity of attachment bonds.
Learning Objectives
At the conclusion of this presentation, the participants will be able to:
1. Describe the difference between the concept of embodied connectedness and the traditional
concept-based perspective, as proposed by Brothers and Sletvold.
2. Explain ways that a contemporary understanding of ancient thought can illuminate modern
psychoanalytic theory and practice, as suggested by Dobson.
3. Explain the importance of integrating systems theory, psychodynamic theory and relationshipeducation in couple therapy, as well as the need for “domain specific knowledge” about
particular couples’ problems, as described by Nielsen.
4. Discuss ways that new epistemological paradigms have paved the way toward an increasing
integration of contemporary psychoanalysis with other therapeutic models and have revitalized
authors traditionally considered outcasts of mainstream psychoanalysis, as Pedroni asserts.
Presenter Bios:
Doris Brothers, Ph.D. serves on the advisory board and council of the International Association for
Psychoanalytic Self Psychology (IAPSP). She was a co-editor of Psychoanalysis, Self and Context with Roger
Frie from 2015 to 2019. She is an associate editor of Psychoanalytic Inquiry. She has written three books
and many journal articles. Her last book is Toward a Psychology of Uncertainty: Trauma-Centered
Psychoanalysis (Analytic Press, 2008). A forthcoming book with Jon Sletvold is entitled, A New Vision of
Psychoanalytic Theory, Practice and Supervision: Talking Bodies (Routledge). She practices on the upper
west side of Manhattan, New York, USA, and in Oslo, Norway.
Jon Sletvold, Psy.D. is a licensed specialist in clinical psychology and psychotherapy. He is Faculty, Training
and Supervising Analyst at the Norwegian Character Analytic Institute. He has published articles on therole of the body in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. He is the editor of three books, and the author of

The Embodied Analyst: From Freud and Reich to Relationality, the Gradiva Award winning book of 2015.
In 2019 he wrote From Muscular Armor to Bodies in Dialogue with Per Harbitz. He co-leads online
supervision/study groups in Europe, North America and China with Doris Brothers.
Marcia D-S. Dobson holds PhDs in Classical Philology and Clinical Psychology. She has been an awardwinning Professor of Classics at Colorado College since 1976, and is Chair of the Psychoanalysis Minor
there. She started a private practice in relational Self Psychology in Colorado Springs in 1998. She has
been an Associate Editor of the presently named Psychology Self and Context since 2009. Her publishedscholarship spans the disciplines of ancient Greek Drama and Self Psychology. She has presented at IAPSP
conferences, as well as conferences on Classics and Psychology in London and Belgium. Marcia has justpublished a book under the Art Creativity and Psychoanalysis Series, whose editor is George Hagman,entitled: Psychic Metamorphoses in Psychoanalysis and Ancient Greek Thought: From Mourning toCreativity (Routledge, 2023).
Arthur Nielsen, M.D. is a full-time, practicing psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and couple therapist in Chicago,
Illinois. He is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, a faculty
member at Northwestern's Family Institute in Evanston, and a faculty member of the Chicago Institute for
Psychoanalysis where he is Associate Director of the Integrative Psychoanalytic Couple Therapy Program.
For many years and until recently, he was the coordinator of a popular for-credit course he developed forNorthwestern undergraduates, “Marriage 101: Building Loving and Lasting Relationships.” In recent years,
he has lectured nationally and internationally, and has taught courses on couple therapy to students in
Iran and China.
He is the author of more than 40 published professional papers in the fields of psychiatry, psychoanalysis,
and couple therapy, together with two textbooks, A Roadmap for Couple Therapy: Integrating Systemic,
Psychodynamic, and Behavioral Approaches and Integrative Couple Therapy in Action: A Practical Guide
for Handling Common Relationship Problems and Crises.
Ingrid Pedroni has been trained as family psychotherapist and later as relational and self-psychology
analyst. Her interests in intercultural psychotherapy led me to form an association of which I have beenpresident, operating for the assistance of migrants in cooperation with the United Nations
Organization for Migration.
She has been the President of Isipsé School for Psychotherapy and am still in the Faculty as supervising
analyst and teacher of Self Psychology and Transcultural psychotherapy.
Ingrid works in private practice with individual patients, couples, family with adolescent children andimmigrants.
References:
Teicholz, J. G. (2016). The end of comparative psychoanalysis? Blurring the boundaries between
contemporary theories. International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, 11(4), 325-339.
Nielsen, A. C. (2017). Psychodynamic couple therapy: A practical synthesis. Journal of Maritaland Family Therapy, 43(4), 685-699. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1111/jmft.12236
Dobson, M. D.-S. (2020) Young Kohut and The Ancient Greek Satyr Play. Psychoanalysis, Self
and Context, 15(1), 87-93.
Sletvold, J. & Brothers, D. (2022), The Embodiment of Us and Them: Facist Experience in a Traumatized
World. Ricerca Psicoanalitica | pISSN 1827-4625 | Year XXXII, n. 2, 2021 doi:10.4081/rp.2021.495.

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Child & Adolescent Initiative: How Old Are We Really? The Role of Play in Cultivating a Leading Edge
Transference
Presenter: Ashley Leeds, LCSW
Discussant: Amy Eldridge, PhD
Moderator: Erica Young, MA
Friday, October 20, 12:00 – 1:15pm

Abstract:
In working with children and adolescents from a self-psychological perspective, we need to adapt both
our use of self-states and the theoretical framework to what a young mind and psyche can take in. Many
young people come to therapy at the insistence of their parents and can enter into the process with great
hostility. In this paper I will discuss how creativity in the consulting room can ease the pressure to dotherapeutic work, and therefore progress can be made. From a self-psychological perspective, I will
illustrate how trailing edge transferences can render an analyst stuck in an impasse, and by surrenderingto the creative edge of play, leading edge transferences can surface. I will demonstrate how play is not
only helpful, but a necessary way of promoting connection and communication, even after early andmiddle childhood, and how analysts can grapple with changing the look of the therapeutic process inservice of the patient’s developmental needs. This paper will demonstrate how the concepts ofleading/trailing edges and positive and negative selfobject transferences, can move or stymie a treatment
and how creative edges and interventions can unexpectedly surface to pull a dyad out of impasse.

Learning Objectives
At the conclusion of this presentation, the participants will be able to:
1. Cultivate understanding of how leading/trailing edges manifest in work with young people.
2. Identify ways in which creative interventions can promote leading edge transferences.
3. Learn ways in which connecting with younger self-states that generate connections withyounger patients in order to facilitate communication.
Presenter Bios:
Ashley Leeds is a third year candidate in NIP’s Four Year Training Program in Psychoanalysis andPsychotherapy and she maintains an adolescent and adult private practice in Brooklyn where her areas ofinterest are gender and sexuality, children of divorce, and eating disorders. She is a trained grouptherapist, has a certificate in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy, and is a 200 hour-YTT certified yoga
instructor. She is the Co-Dean of Admissions for Eastern Group Psychotherapy. Ashley’s theoreticalorientations lean towards Self-Psychological, relational, and attachment modalities, but she integrates
other modalities into her work. In the rare moments that Ashley is not working, she enjoys spending timewith her very anxious beagle, Dolly.

Amy Eldridge, PhD is Immediate Past President of the International Association of Psychoanalytic Self
Psychology and Dean Emerita of the Institute for Clinical Social Work. Under Dr. Eldridge’s leadership asdean, her team developed and implemented ICSW’s distance learning and master’s programs. She has a
psychotherapy practice with adults, adolescents, and couples in downtown Chicago and more recently, inAsheville NC. She also consults on clinical practice, training and leadership issues. Dr. Eldridge is on theeditorial board of Psychoanalytic Social Work Journal, is the author of numerous published papers on
clinical practice and has been a frequent presenter at professional conferences. Most recently, Dr.
Eldridge is teaching psychoanalytic practice and theory to professionals in China
References:
Smaller, M. (2013). The Plague of Bullying: In the Classroom, the Psychoanalytic Institute, and on theStreets. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 33(2), 144-152.
Burg, J. (2018). A Therapist's Fallibilism and the Hermeneutics of Trust. Psychoanalysis, Self and Context,
13(3), 272-287.
Perlitz, D. (2019). The Implicit Analyst: Qualities of Salience. Psychoanalysis, Self and Context, 14(4), 428444.
Brier, R., & Orenstein, A. (2021). Tracking Changes in the Disruption/Repair Sequences: Important
Aspects of Clinical Work. Psychoanalysis, Self and Context, 16(4). 371-379.

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Couples Therapy Interest Group: A Self Psychologically Informed Couples Treatment
Presenter: Arthur Nielsen, MD
Moderator: David Shaddock, PhD
Friday, October 20, 12:00 – 1:15pm

Abstract:
In this case conference, Dr. Arthur Nielsen will present an ongoing couple case for discussion. The casehas been chosen to show the utility of self psychology for treating couples when combined with theauthor’s integrative approach, one that integrates and sequences systemic, psychodynamic, andbehavioral approaches. This case is both typical in many ways and presents unique challenges. After acase synopsis and a detailed session report, the audience will have the opportunity to discuss the caseand therapeutic options.
Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of this presentation, the participants will be able to:
1. Formulate similar cases, evaluate integrative psychodynamic intervention options, and discuss
how to sequence them.
2. Identify countertransference feelings evoked by the couple.
Presenter Bios:
Arthur Nielsen, M.D. is a full-time, practicing psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and couple therapist in Chicago,
Illinois. He is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, a faculty
member at Northwestern's Family Institute in Evanston, and a faculty member of the Chicago Institute for
Psychoanalysis where he is Associate Director of the Integrative Psychoanalytic Couple Therapy Program.
For many years and until recently, he was the coordinator of a popular for-credit course he developed forNorthwestern undergraduates, “Marriage 101: Building Loving and Lasting Relationships.” In recent years,
he has lectured nationally and internationally, and has taught courses on couple therapy to students in
Iran and China.
He is the author of more than 40 published professional papers in the fields of psychiatry, psychoanalysis,
and couple therapy, together with two textbooks, A Roadmap for Couple Therapy: Integrating Systemic,
Psychodynamic, and Behavioral Approaches and Integrative Couple Therapy in Action: A Practical Guide
for Handling Common Relationship Problems and Crises.
References:
Prowe,D. (2023). Couples therapy as intention: A flexible approach to treatment, Psychoanalysis, Self
and Context, 18(2), 234-246, DOI: 10.1080/24720038.2023.2177297
Stern, S. (2023). Airless worlds and couples therapy, Psychoanalysis, Self and Context, 18(2)2, 164179, DOI: 10.1080/24720038.2023.2176857
Winitsky, M. (2023). Trust theory and working with couples, Psychoanalysis, Self and Context, 18(2), 180189, DOI: 10.1080/24720038.2023.2181964

44th Annual IAPSP International Conference
The Creative Edge(s) of Contemporary Self Psychology
October 19-22, 2023

Social Justice Interest Group Meeting: “Climate Café”
Co Chairs: Margy Sperry, PsyD, MFT & Judith Aronson, PhD, LCSW
Friday, October 20, 12:00 – 1:15pm

Bring your favorite beverage or lunch and join us for a "climate cafe." Climate cafes are facilitator-led open
spaces to share thoughts, feelings and experiences rather than data or actions we are taking to address
the climate crisis. Our previous online discussions of the climate emergency led many to request
additional opportunities to share our emotional responses to the climate crisis as we learn how torecognize and work with the worry, despair and helplessness. Climate cafes are emerging as a global
movement founded on the idea that eco-anxiety and despair about global warming are exacerbated byfeelings of isolation and hopelessness. The cafe will further deepen our communal reflection.
CEs will not be applicable for this session