Joint Presentation With The Academy For The Study of the Psychoanalytic Arts

Drawn to the asylum: in search of missing parts (on the way to a possible conversation)

A lecture with an audio-visual slide presentation by Judith E. Vida, M.D.

Between 1918 and 1921, German art historian and psychiatrist Dr. Hans Prinzhorn assembled a collection of some 5000 works---paintings, drawings, manuscripts, objects, and collages---made by the patients of psychiatric institutions in Europe over the preceding 40 years. Using drawings from the Prinzhorn Collection as its armature, Dr Vida's presentation suggests we are poised uneasily on the threshold between the compartmentalized madness of the intrapsychic asylum and the madness of the external world. In that difficult space, there is no space: space has collapsed, and the burden of creating and of becoming that space falls upon us, so that what we say and do with one another is of crucial importance. A quality and power of conversation may arise from mingling clinical concerns with personal experience and ideas about art and creativity, as we approach a human meeting.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER: Judith E. Vida, M.D. is one of 12 founders of the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. For many years she has written and lectured extensively about the life and work of Sándor Ferenczi, about the relevance of the history of psychoanalysis for contemporary practice, and about contemporary art. This lecture in part led to the development of her seminar with Gershon J. Molad of Israel, “Introducing the Autobiographical Dialogue in the Dialogue Between Analysts,” inaugurated in Hungary and due in Los Angeles in November.     

  A Psychodynamic Perspective on Post-Partum Depression

 Paper Presentation by Camille J. Greenwald, Ph.D. 

Over the last several years, and especially following the tragic events which occurred in Texas last June, increasing attention has been paid to post-partum depression and other post-partum adjustment reactions.  Most attempts to explain these “conditions” have focused on bio-physiological and sociological explanations.  Very little, however, has been done from a psychoanalytic/psychodynamic perspective.  The current presentation will be an attempt to explore and discuss these issues in this way by Camille J. Greenwald, Ph.D., a specialist in the area of treating post-partum depression.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER: Dr. Greenwald, a graduate of the University of Detroit, has been a member of the Medial Staff, Bioscientific Division at William Beaumont Hospital-Royal Oak for ten years.  Currently she is serving there as a consultant to both the Parenting Program and the nursing staff of the Department of Mother-Baby Care.  In her private practice in Birmingham she focuses on assisting women with the resolution of post-partum and other developmental crises.       

Psyche's Myths of Madness: What is psyche mad about?

 Paper Presentation by Thomas W. Ross, Ed.D., ABPP

Madness appears as one of the human Psyche's fundamental thematic fantasies. In the ever changing relatedness of madness and culture, similar themes, accounts and understandings of madness emerge. These themes are rarely exactly the same, but are nonetheless recognizably alike. Alike in general form, and alike in general meaning; that is, there are myths of madness. In considering Psyche's myths of madness a process is begun which seeks to understand the changing events or movements in an analysand's soul, or perhaps more accurately, a process of the analysand's soul understanding its own events and movement - - - a mythic perspective.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER: Thomas W. Ross is a board certified psychologist-psychoanalyst, and has been in independent private practice in Michigan since 1977. He is a member of IFPE, and a fellow of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis. His research interests include the evolution of multiple self states and their relationship to complex activation, and developing models of post-secondary education in pluralistic psychoanalysis. Dr. Ross served as Clinical Director for over 15 years with two public Community Mental Health Centers, served as Chairperson of the APA Division of Psychoanalysis Task Force on Pluralism in Psychoanalysis, and currently serves as a Director on the American Board of Psychoanalysis of the American Board of Professional Psychology.  

Analyzing in a White Coat, a False Self for Psychoanalysis

A Panel Presentation

Building on Hyman’s chapter, “Why Psychoanalysis Is Not A Healthcare Profession” in Kaley, Eagle and Wolitzkey’s Psychoanalytic Therapy As Healthcare, the panelists will articulate their thinking about Psychoanalysis as other-than healthcare. Associational process material will be presented in detail. The discussants will elaborate on the principles and guidelines each holds for herself about her place in the psychoanalytic encounter, the essential nature of the psychoanalytic enterprise, the aims of the encounter, the context and details of how she listens and processes, the ethical imperatives she experiences, and her self-assigned tasks or activities, including those activities which she abdicates and prohibits herself in the service of the work.

  Whose Psychoanalytic Education Is It Anyhow?

 Paper Presentation by Marvin Hyman, Ph.D.

( Followed by Annual MSPP Members' Reception )

ABOUT THE PRESENTER: Dr. Marvin Hyman is currently working at being a retired psychoanalyst. He was formerly in private practice in West Bloomfield, Michigan; a faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience of Wayne State University School of Medicine; and a consultant to the Detroit Psychiatric Institute. He is co-author (with Dr. Frank Auld) of  Resolution of Inner Conflict: An Introduction to Psychoanalytic Therapy, currently under revision.

  The Utilization of Q method in Psychoanalytic Research

 Paper Presentation by  Irvin Goldman, Ph.D.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER: Dr. Irvin Goldman is currently an associate professor of communication studies at the University of Windsor where he teaches courses in communication theory, research methods and cultural studies. He has published in many journals including Political Psychology and The Canadian Journal of Communication and presented at numerous learned societies such as The International Society for the Scientific Study of Subjectivity and The North American Society for Psychotherapy Research. His education was at the University of Winnipeg, Purdue University and the University of Iowa.

  Touch In The Therapeutic Setting (A Panel Presentation)

Non-Physical Touch: Modes of Containment and Communication Within the Analytic Process

Aspects of the analytic process - such as quality of gaze, tone, or empathic resonance ­ affect feelings of ‘being held’ and also affect how meanings become represented and manifested. The author uses clinical illustrations to explore some uses of nonphysical touch within the analytic environment.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER: Marilyn Charles is an analyst with the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council; Adjunct Faculty at Michigan State University; and is on the Editorial Board of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis. Her book, Patterns: Building Blocks of Experience, was published by the Analytic Press. A second book, Constructing Realities: Transformation through Myth and Metaphor, is currently under review. She maintains a private practice in East Lansing.

A Clinician's Response to Physical Touch in the Psychoanalytic Setting

Paper presentation by Ellen L. K. Toronto, Ph.D.

The effects of physical touch, such as a handshake or a brief hug, are reconsidered within a context of relevant theory, particularly for those patients for whom verbal material is either unavailable or non-existent. Clinical cases are presented wherein physical touch was considered inadvisable as well as a long-term case in which holding hands was an integral part of the treatment.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER:  Dr. Toronto is a Founding Member and Past President of the Michigan Psychoanalytic Council. She is also Past President of the Section on Women and Gender of Division 39 of APA. She has published in the areas of women's issues, mothering and non-verbal communication and maintains a private analytic practice in Ann Arbor.

Codes of Silence and Whispers of Discontent:

Pedagogical, Philosophical and Political Differences in the Analytic Culture

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

Whispers of discontent with the inability of organized psychoanalysis to match its institutional form(s) to its theory of psychoanalysis are gathering into a strong voice, breaking longstanding codes of silence, and calling for the radical reappraisal of our pedagogic enterprise --- the Consortium’s standards for education and training notwithstanding. This essay attempts to contribute to this reappraisal of psychoanalytic education by considering a radical pedagogical strategy. And it speaks to some of the ethical and epistemological implications when different pedagogical practices, philosophical assumptions, and political objectives intersect in the analytic culture. 

Ample time for in depth discussion followed the presentation. The extended time for discussion provides the opportunity to consider some of the current homogenizing trends in professional education, psychoanalytic and otherwise, e.g., healthcare accreditation standards for doctoral education in psychology, Michigan's mandatory continuing education proposal for psychologists, and the consortium's national standards for psychoanalytic education. 

ABOUT THE PRESENTER: Patrick B. Kavanaugh, Ph.D. is the past president of the Academy for the Study of the Psychoanalytic Arts; a former president of the International Federation for Psychoanalytic Education; and, a former president of the Michigan Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology. He is an adjunct professor of psychology at the Center for Humanistic Studies in Detroit; a former director of clinical training of the doctoral program in clinical psychology at the University of Detroit; and, a former member of the teaching and supervisory faculty in various pre- and post-doctoral educational programs in psychology in the Detroit metropolitan area. He has presented and published on psychoanalytic epistemology, theory, practice, ethics, and education. He is in private practice in Farmington Hills, Michigan.  

Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs

Paper presentation by Jonathan M. Metzl, M.D., Ph.D.

My forthcoming book, Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs (Duke, 2003), examines the popular and medical discourse surrounding the success of Miltown, Valium, and Prozac, the three best-selling psychotropic wonder drugs of the latter half of the twentieth century. The book traces the notion of “pills for everyday worries” through psychiatric and medical journals, popular magazine articles, pharmaceutical advertisements, and published first-person accounts of mental illness, in order to explore the development of brand-named psychotropic medications both as forms of treatment and also as symbols of cultural inquietude, made to listen and talk back in response to the perception of social change. 

In exploring the popular and medical discourses through which these drugs are researched, marketed, employed, and dispensed into the American imagination, I show how gender roles shape the specific ways “emotional” problems are understood and treated. By offering a social history of medications in the context of popular culture, I reconfigure the ways in which many histories of psychopharmacology assume the flow of information from science to culture, and I rethink the centrality of gender tensions to the formation of this process.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER: Jonathan M. Metzl, MD, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Women’s Studies and Director of the Program in Culture, Health, and Medicine at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.