How Will Bodies of Knowledges  Speak the Psychoanalyst in the 21st Century? 

Some Thoughts on the Art(s) of Psychoanalytic Education

Paper Presentation by Patrick B. Kavanaugh, Ph.D.

This paper considers some of the underlying philosophic-socio-cultural assumptions producing those Bodies of Knowledges that spoke the analyst of the 20th century as a health care professional, a social scientist, and a social engineer. Consideration is given also to a contemporary version of analysis situated in philosophy, the humanities, and the cultural sciences. This version of analysis develops from the study of the psychoanalytic arts, e.g., the Arts of Communication, the Arts of Continuity, and the Arts of Critical Thinking. Its Bodies of Knowledges speak an analyst of the 21st Century as a Philosopher, Historian, and Artist.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Patrick B. Kavanaugh, Ph.D. is currently President of the Academy for the Study of the Psychoanalytic Arts; Past President of the International Federation for Psychoanalytic Education;  and a former president of the MSPP. He is in the private practice of psychoanalysis in Farmington Hills, Michigan where he also offers study groups, seminars, and consultation.

Psychoanalysis and the Future

Paper Presentation by Michael Shulman, Ph.D.

In this paper I try to show how Freud’s proposal of a psychoanalytic method affords us a new tool to gain access to what is essentially an unprecedented universe of human experience. I argue against psychoanalytic orthodoxies that relatively little of the mind is yet understood, and that being “true” to Freud ought best to mean transcending his work in all kinds of ways. In particular, I show that the work of each analytic case involves the potential requirement of discovering entirely new forms of theory, never before conscious to the analyst, in the service of the patient’s increased freedom.

I will try to show how the tremendous current intellectual controversy in analysis in the name of the “intersubjective,” “two-person psychology”, the “object-relational,” the “self-psychological”, and the “interpersonal,” is inevitably permitted by a properly free creativity of new theory in the service of psychoanalytic understanding; and that growing diversity in theory-creation, though perceived by its critics as representing a threat of “splintering” the “unity” of analysis, serves a truly useful function for psychoanalysis as a movement, indeed is its proper fruition.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Dr. Michael Shulman is currently a lecturer in Psychology at the University of Michigan, a clinical supervisor at McAuley Mental Health Services and the University of Michigan Psychological Clinic in Ann Arbor, and a candidate at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. He maintains a practice of psychoanalytic psychology and clinical supervision in Farmington Hills and Ann Arbor. He is Past President of the Southeast Florida Association for Psychoanalytic Psychology.

Three paper presentations: Sander J. Breiner, M.D. and Silke-Maria Weineck, Ph.D.

“Children of the Holocaust”

 Sander J. Breiner, M.D.

The social pathology of the Holocaust produced and or contributed significantly to the psychopathology for all those who experienced it, directly or indirectly. This occurred not only to those victim adults, but especially to the children in all categories, namely: (1) the child victims who lived in the concentration camps, (2) the children who survived outside the concentration camps, (3) the children of the victimizers of the Jews, (4) the children of the rescuers of the Jews, (5) the children of the bystanders, and (6) the children of the survivors. Each group had their own unique problems, yet there were some similarities.

 “History, Diagnosis, and Incommensurability” ~ Response to Sander J. Breiner, M.D.

Silke-Maria Weineck, Ph.D.

“That it was not the individual anymore that died in the camps but rather the specimen must affect the death also of those who escaped the procedure. Genocide is the absolute integration which is in preparation everywhere where humans are being equalized”, Adorno wrote in Negative Dialectics (1966). The response to Dr. Breiner’s paper on “Children of the Holocaust” will reflect on some of the irreducible tensions that arise in speaking of the Shoah in the normative vocabulary of diagnosis. How can psychoanalysis attend to the unique without, again in Adorno’s words, removing the “terror before the abyss of the self by consciousness of being concerned with nothing so very different from arthritis or sinus trouble”?

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:  Dr. Sander J. Breiner, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst is a professor at Wayne State University who trains therapists in the fields of social work and psychoanalysis. He is a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, the American Society of Psychoanalytic Physicians, a founding member of the Psychohistory Forum, and an active researcher with over 80 published scientific papers. Dr. Silke-Maria Weineck teaches German and comparative literature in the German Studies Department at the University of Michigan. Her research concerns the literature, philosophy, and the culture of the European fin-de-siecle with a special interest in psychoanalysis, the philosophy of madness, cultural theory, and the intersection of science and literature.

Leaving the Garden of Eden: . . . The Codes of the Culture, the Codes of Perversion, and Psychoanalysis

Paper Presentation by Patrick B. Kavanaugh, Ph.D.

“Leaving the Garden…” considers a way of thinking about the Codes of the Culture, their relationship to the images of Woman/Femininity and Man/Masculinity , and their defining influences on the psychologies of psychoanalysis of modern times. The thesis advanced is that the fundamental Codes of the Culture have constituted, in and of themselves, the Codes of Perversion; the rules of formation found in such organizing stories of the culture as the narrative of the Garden of Eden are called into deconstructive question. As we leave the Garden of Eden and the rules of formation contained therein, the very concept and meaning of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy changes.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Patrick B. Kavanaugh, Ph.D. is currently President of the Academy for the Study of the Psychoanalytic Arts; Past President of the International Federation for Psychoanalytic Education;  and a former president of the MSPP. He is in the private practice of psychoanalysis in Farmington Hills, Michigan where he also offers study groups, seminars, and consultation.

Failure in Psychoanalytic Therapy: An Oxymoron

Paper Presentation by Marvin Hyman, Ph.D.

The concepts of “success” and “failure” in psychoanalytic treatment derive from a conceptual framework which is too often assumed to be self-evident. This presentation will consider that framework, challenge it, and propose an alternative framework in which the concepts of success and failure are irrelevant and, indeed, anti-psychoanalytic.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Dr. Hyman is Former President of: the International Federation for Psychoanalytic Psychology; the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association; the Psychologist-Psychoanalyst Practitioners; the Michigan Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology; and the Michigan Psychological Association. He is on the Executive Committee for the Academy for the Study of the Psychoanalytic Arts.

Psychopathology of Post-Communism: A Story of Fear of the Demanding Freedom

Paper Presentation by Janusz Wrobel, Ph.D.

Ten years ago, with the collapse of Communism, the great hope was born that awoke the imagination and anticipation of common freedom and well being. Unfortunately, these quickly aroused expectations died almost as fast as they were born. The new found liberty was understood by some as a license to act regardless of the rights of others to exercise their freedom. The downfall of the physical walls was accompanied by the raising of the invisible, and thus more impregnable, walls of nationalism and hatred, xenophobia and populism. The symbolic Berlin wall did not cease to exist in people’s minds. Most of the inhabitants of the former Communist world had to face responsibilities unknown to them before. Freedom meant liberty to take risks and it was not liked. The demanding nature of freedom was overwhelming and a communostalgia appeared — the one the orphans had for the cruel but providing father.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Dr. Wrobel is a Professor of Linguistics and Polish Studies at St. Mary’s College where he chairs the Modern Languages and Polish Studies Departments. He is also a Special Lecturer at Oakland University, a Mental Health Specialization intern at Oakland University Counseling Center, and the author of the book “Language and Schizophrenia”.

MSPP SPRING CONFERENCE

The Experience of Psychoanalysis: What Does it Have to Offer, If not a “Cure”??

Our SPRING 2000 CONFERENCE, featuring keynote speaker Michael Guy Thompson, Ph.D., president of the International Federation for Psychoanalytic Education and founder of Free Association, Inc. in San Francisco.

In the morning, Michael Guy Thompson, Ph.D. will explore what he means by “The Crisis of Experience in Contemporary Psychoanalysis” . He will explore differences between a version of psychoanalysis dedicated to the primacy of subjective experience, with that which is characteristic of the direction that psychoanalysis has taken over the second half of this century. More specifically, he will argue that our culture currently supports, if not encourages, the minimization (if not loss of) something intrinsic to our humanity: our capacity to attend to and “know” our experience.

In the afternoon, we will view the film “1919” which explores perceived effects of Freud’s technique via the recollections of two former patients who meet to “remember” their respective analyses. Using the film and his paper, Dr. Thompson will explore the nature of experience, and its relationship to psychoanalytic thinking. Dr. Marvin Hyman, Ph.D. will participate in discussing the film, and will be a discussant of Dr. Thompson’s paper.

Please join with us for a unique experience that promises to explore, along with two internationally known scholars and psychoanalysts, this timely topic, and related questions, for those interested in psychoanalytic practice and theory.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Michael Guy Thompson, Ph.D. received his analytic training from R. D. Laing and his associates at the Philadelphia Association in London, England and his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California. In 1988 he founded Free Association, Inc., in San Francisco. He is the author of: The Death of Desire: A Study in Psychopathology (1985); The Truth About Freud’s Technique; The Encounter with the Real (1994); and The Ethic of Honesty: The Fundamental Rule of Psychoanalysis (in press). Dr. Thompson is on the adjunct faculty of the California School of Professional Psychology, Alameda, CA, and is the current president of the International Federation for Psychoanalytic Education (IFPE). He practices psychoanalysis in San Francisco, California.

DISCUSSANT: Marvin Hyman, Ph.D. received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He has been active in psychoanalytic and psychological organizations on local, national, and international levels. He is a former president of: the Michigan Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology (MSPP); the International Federation for Psychoanalytic Psychology (IFPE); the Division of Psychoanalysis (39) of the American Psychological Association; the Michigan Psychological Association (MPA); and the Psychologist-Psychoanalyst Practitioners. He has recently retired from the practice of psychoanalysis in West Bloomfield, Michigan. Dr. Hyman currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Academy for the Study of the Psychoanalytic Arts.

CONFERENCE CO-CHAIRS:  Bette Glickfield, Ph.D.  & Theresa I. Egan, Ph.D.

The Futures of Psychoanalysis: How Might They Unfold?

Gloria E. Cruice, Ph.D., George Rosenwald, Ph.D., &  David St. John, M.A.

Facilitator: Roxanna P. Transit, Ph.D.

As we enter the new millennium, it seems timely to consider the futures of psychoanalysis. Will the psychoanalysis of the past foretell a future or will the futures explain what has passed? If we consider that there is not one psychoanalysis but many, what form(s) will they take? What will psychoanalytic education consist of? Who will be the practitioners? What role will professional organizations serve? To consider these questions, a roundtable discussion will be convened with panelists offering their individual perspectives on the futures they envision. Please join us in a discussion which will also invite you to share your visions of the futures of psychoanalysis and consider how we might begin shaping those futures!!

ABOUT THE PANELISTS

DR. GLORIA E. CRUICE is President of the Michigan Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology. She is a Lecturer at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan and is in private practice of psychoanalysis from the perspective of Multi-Verse-ity in Rochester and Southfield. DR. GEORGE C. ROSENWALD is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan, where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in The Psychological Study of Lives; in The Theory and Practice of the Interview; and in The Psychology of Literary Experience. MR. DAVID ST. JOHN is a doctoral candidate at the University of Detroit Mercy, and is currently working psychoanalytically with children and adults at McAuley Outpatient Mental Health services in Ann Arbor and Plymouth. He serves as the Membership Chair of the MSPP executive board. DR. ROXANNA TRANSIT serves on the Board of Directors of the Academy for the Study of the Psychoanalytic Arts as Chair of the Website Operations Committee. She also serves on the program committee for MSPP.

According to the U. S. Census Bureau, in 2010 there will be 39 million Americans over the age of 65. By 2030, the 65-plus age group is expected to swell to 69 million. As the population ages, more and more individuals may find themselves in nursing homes. This series of papers is devoted to gaining an understanding of three areas of the nursing home experience.

Susan Flinders, Ph.D. will discuss various dilemmas of aging as she has seen them expressed/felt/resolved by older adults in the nursing homes. Lisa A. Kelly, Ph.D. will speak of challenges in the milieu for patients and therapist from the perspectives of patient, therapist, staff, and institution/culture. Susan Greenshields, Ph.D. will talk about her work in conducting psychotherapy with older adults. This conference is designed as an outreach to both the professional and lay communities who have a curiosity about, or experience in work with the elderly.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Dr. Flinders has a private practice in Huntington Woods, and is a consultant with the Behavioral Healthcare Group for nursing homes. She is an adjunct faculty member at Michigan State University’s School of Osteopathic Medicine. Dr. Greenshields is in private practice in Dearborn, MI where she sees adolescent and adult clients. She also specializes in eating disorders. She is a consultant with Behavioral Healthcare Group, Inc. for nursing homes. Dr. Kelly is the Clinical Manager of Behavioral Healthcare Group. She has a small private practice in Harper Woods, MI where she conducts psychotherapy with adolescents and adults.