Community Events (non-Alliance)

"The Confusional Link"

Years ago on a panel entitled Clinical Gray Zones focusing on those times when abandonment of traditional neutrality was the better part of valor, Hedda Bolgar was asked how active she would be in the treatment of a seriously ill patient.  She replied: “All our clinical work is about protecting the future of our patients. When the future’s in doubt, what becomes the work of the analyst?”

 Her answer reverberated for me when a patient in an established analysis was diagnosed with Huntington's disease.

The relationship between psychoanalysis and religion has long been fraught, yet religion or spirituality can play a significant role in patients’ lives or our own. When patients bring up material of a religious or spiritual nature, many clinicians find themselves at a loss. Can we understand and engage patients’ spiritual material in treatment in a way that is neither reductionistic nor uncritically accepting? Can we expand our frame to welcome this varied aspect of our clients’ experience?

The International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education's Annual Conference will take place Oct 17-19, 2024, at the Mayflower Park Hotel in Seattle!  Our theme this year is "Friends, Enemies, Allies, Suspects." 

Our award winners who will be presenting at the conference are:

Hans Loewald Award: Lynne Layton, PhD

Distinguished Educator Award: 

B. William Brennan, ThM, MA, LMHC

Caprice Hollins, PsyD

John Totten, LMHC

This event will be presented in two parts. 

In Part 1, Jeff Eaton will read his 2006 Frances Tustin Memorial Lecture titled “A Permanent Earthquake: Notes on the Treatment of a Young Boy.” This paper describes in detail the psychoanalytic treatment of a boy diagnosed with Autism by the University of Washington Autism Center. The essay gives a detailed feel for the therapeutic process while also exploring many of Frances Tustin’s seminal ideas. 

“All are syllables of the great word

that is very slowly spoken

by the shining of the stars.”

~Ursula Le Guin

Cultivating radical openness, courageous speech, and disciplined spontaneity in the psychodynamic relationship.

Pulling from the seven core competencies that evolved from his qualitative and quantitative research, this workshop with Dr. Roy Barsness will focus on: therapeutic outcome; therapeutic stance; deep listening/affective attunement; relational dynamics; patterning and linking; conflict; and courageous speech/disciplined spontaneity.

Maternal eroticism is explored as an etiological agent in the birth of psychic freedom. Pre-Oedipal functioning is revealed in an otherwise sophisticated patient, with pseudo maturity concretized in virginity. Themes of pregnancy, early infant care and breastfeeding repeatedly erupt in the analysis with a predominantly erotic transference-countertransference. Waves of abjection in the treatment, culminating in the analyst’s pregnancy, are emphasized in the development of independent thought and Oedipal operations.

Seattle Balint Group Intensive: A Concentrated Leadership Training

•   Friday, January 12 - Sunday, January 14

•   9am-6pm, lunch provided

•   Fees: before Nov 15, $900, after November 15, $975

•   American Balint Society members receive a discount of $100

•   Registration:  https://tinyurl.com/mcyyrdux