For decades, SPSI (Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute) has been holding Open House events in order to interest and inform possible applicants for training.
We have been fortunate in attracting many good people who have gone on to become psychoanalysts and members of our faculty. We encourage anyone interested in SPSI’s programs to come and see our facilities, as well as a presentation by current students of what the program entails and how they feel about it.
Click for full description of OPC event
Click for full description of OPC event
Click for full description of OPC event
Click for full description of OPC event
We all feel stuck at therapists. This may be difficult to admit (and seldom do we tell our patients). But rest assured, the experience is universal. Feeling stuck has been discussed.....(click for full description of OPC event)
Freud wrote that “the initial helplessness of human beings is the primal source of all moral motives.” If caring for the newborn, a stranger on arrival in this world, is our most primal human ethic, it serves the survival of the group. The biblical command that “you shall not wrong nor oppress the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt,” and the admonition “to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares,” express core values of compassion for the vulnerable in the Judeo-Christian faiths (as well as in other matriarchal religions).
The renewed and revitalized interest in the body in contemporary psychoanalysis has occurred within a socio-cultural context that simultaneously demands our consideration of the social determinants of psychic life. In particular, the murder of George Floyd, overturning of Roe v. Wade, and increased violence against both Asian-American and LGBTQ individuals raise important questions regarding how fantasies about bodies are generated, inscribed, and perpetuated as well as what purpose such fantasies serve.
The COVID pandemic has infused the clinical encounter with the risk of transmission. Negotiating this risk with my patients has revealed how we use group identities to manage our sense of vulnerability. Each group’s risk strategies are interwoven with other values that are core constructs of identity. How do we navigate these interrelated, overdetermined constructs in the treatment room?