Presenter

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center Annex and Learning Lab

The new NYS law mandating 3 hours of training on professional boundaries for LMSWs/ LCSWs, psychologists, psychoanalysts and licensed mental health counselors might be viewed as an “eat your peas” moment, but it is in fact an opportunity to delve into an issue that is intrinsic to creating “good-enough” therapeutic relationships. This three-hour workshop will take a critical look at real-life scenarios culled from clinical practice, supervision and from famous case histories. The workshop will help participants draw a bright line around potential boundary infractions, while giving them strategies to think through the many gray areas that arise in day-to-day practice. Among the topics covered will be mandated reporting, physical touch, gifts, fee issues, self-disclosure, contact outside of sessions, dual relationships, advice, confidentiality, working within one’s area of expertise, seeking consultation and managing online relationships and social media. The workshop will balance didactic learning and a small group process where rigorous clinical thinking on boundaries will be demonstrated and practiced. Having clarity on these and other issues is essential in creating the Winnicottian “playspace” that we all strive for.

Presenter

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center Annex

A study of the frame-breaking impact of the analyst’s involvement in violent BLM protests. Two cases of patients who were also directly or indirectly involved in protests were subsequently affected.

Panelist

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center Colloquium

In March 2020, our field changed suddenly and significantly. COVID-19's myriad impacts included a transformation of the psychoanalytic session space. Many of us moved to remote sessions, often from our homes, and often in the homes of our clients. Self-disclosures were impacted, along with sensory involvement, and other communications inherent to the session space.

As we each determine how and when to resume in-person session work, we invite you to discuss and consider, not only what we’ve learned from remote communication, but how those experiences continue to impact our work and our space. 

Presenter

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center Annex presents:

Live Webinar on Zoom!
Covid Discount: $50 Regular Admission and $30 Student
 

*This talk has been approved by New York State for 2 hours of Continuing Education Credit for LCSWs, LPs, LMSWs, LMHCs, LCATS.  Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center maintains responsibility for this program and its content. This workshop offers 2 CE credits for psychologists.

Texts and emails can create vexing treatment dilemmas. This is especially so when impulsively employed by the patient and/or the therapist, constituting an enactment or even a rupture in treatment. The potential for miscommunication is rife because of the lack of opportunity to converse in person, thereby missing tone of voice, body language, and other nonverbal cues. A seemingly neutral text from the analyst can come across as critical. 

Texts or emails can have a depersonalizing effect on sender or receiver, sounding dismissive or hostile when not intended. They preclude conversation in the moment, thereby automatically ruling out, at least temporarily, our most potent therapeutic tool, the relationship. 
 
The Pandemic has dramatically changed the frame not only by necessitating virtual therapy but also by challenging traditional boundaries that have been there to preserve the holding environment. We therapists regularly find ourselves breaking our tried and true protocols for a variety of reasons, some beneficial, some questionable, which may in turn affect our patients’ and our use (or misuse) of digital communication. The workshop addresses how these problems occur and ways to deal with them. 

Participants are invited to bring in their own experiences for discussion.

Click Here to buy Tickets for  
“Digital Communication Conundrums in Psychoanalysis and COVID Complications:
 Case problems, mistakes, and solutions”
 

Note: Admission to PPSC Annex webinar will be locked 30 minutes after the scheduled time. Please log into Zoom with password a few minutes early. 

*For a refund to a PPSC Annex event, we must receive cancellation notice of  24 hours prior to the event. Please contact ppscannex@gmail.com if you want to cancel within this time frame.

*Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center (PPSC) is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Work and for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of Continuing Education for Licensed Social Workers #SW-0054 and for Licensed Psychoanalysts #P-0040 and for Licensed Mental Health Counselors #MHC-0166 and for Licensed Creative Arts Therapists #CAT-0083. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center maintains responsibility for this program and its content. 

New Jersey Society of Clinical Social Workers

Dr. Frankfeldt will discuss the dilemmas posed by ubiquitous modern digital communication and how they impact treatment. Seemingly innocuous texts and emails break the treatment frame in ways that telephone calls never did, due to their quietly interruptive nature. Modern texting practice invites the expectation of an immediate response. Digital communications exemplify a potential breaking of the frame and encourage enactments, requiring subtle, carefully considered treatment decisions. This will be a didactic presentation and an opportunity for the group to discuss and work on these issues as they have arisen in our practices. 

Presenter

In this PPSC colloquium, we will tackle the issue of the analytic frame and boundaries looked at through the lens of two papers with different theoretical models; one by Valerie Frankfeldt, PhD, LCSW who works from a Modern perspective and the other by Valerie Zika, LCSW who writes from a Relational perspective.  

Both papers explore what can happen when the traditional 'analytic frame' is broken. Through presentation of the clinical material and discussion we will see both the possibility of detriment and benefit to the treatment and how the analyst works within the ‘here and now’ experience as well as how such experience may push against or reinforce theory as we understand it. 

Presenter

One of the more intriguing aspects of our work occurs when our feeling states appear not to match the verbal content or feeling state presented by the patient. As preverbal phenomena, these experiences may manifest as feelings, per se, or as physical sensations (e.g., hunger, nausea, coughing, yawning, a tic, tightness in chest, changes in heart rate, pain, unexplained tears), psychological sensations (e.g. feelings of derealization, depersonalization, changes in body image, feeling larger or smaller, etc.), hard to grasp ethereal fantasies, dreams, impulses, cognitive problems, or behavioral enactments that feel out of character, and more. 
These moments may be fleeting or ongoing. They can be disturbing, bewildering or confusing, but are always fascinating. 
Developing a sensitivity to noticing and experiencing these countertransference states allows for bringing a raft of new information into the treatment. Dr. Frankfeldt will define and illustrate this phenomenon, grapple with possible meanings, and consider ways of understanding how it comes about.

Presenter

It’s a wondrous new world! Technology gives us unparalleled abilities to connect. Technology adds a level of efficiency and convenience that makes life so much easier, both in and outside of therapy.  

On the other hand, when is a request to plug a phone charger in our outlet based in “reality”? When is it a disguised sexual request-- or assault? How do we feel about being digitally available to patients when they have a brief piece of news to report? What happens when it’s not so brief and it’s late Saturday night? Can patients perhaps express things by email that need to be said but that cannot safely be said in person because it would make them feel too vulnerable? Would it be useful if they could express rage without fear of immediate in-person reprisal? Or might it be a shortcut that interferes with the crucial work of analyzing resistance? Would it be helpful for us to watch that video of the patient’s child’s first steps? Would it be an enactment, or no? How about learning that the patient is pregnant, or has cancer, or wants to end treatment, that comes through in a text? What is the effect on the therapist? How do we view these contacts psychoanalytically? And how do we deal with them in the room?

This workshop will provide a forum to grapple with the myriad dilemmas posed by our patients’ as well as our own use of email and texts  as they impact the treatment situation. Participants are invited to bring in struggles with incorporating (or resisting) the use of texts, email and devices in treatment.

This talk has been approved by New York State for 2 hours of Continuing Education Credit for LMSWs and LCSWs

Panelist

At this workshop each presenter will share personal stories about the dynamics between mothers and daughters that have been obstacles to healthy relationships. The members of the panel will offer strategies to overcome experiences that have negatively impacted personal growth and maturity.

To register, call 973-629-1002 or email events@acapnj.org.

Three presentations to Fordham University School of Social Work MSW students on February 28th, March 2nd and March 4th.

Brief discussion of theory and technique of Imago Couple Therapy for MSW students to inform them about couple therapy work and also, as Director of Training at the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Program, to interest them in applying to PPSC. 

Presenter

The workshop will be experiential and didactic and will cover theory and technique for beginning couple therapists, followed by a live demonstration of the Image Dialogue. Participants will learn how to:

• Assess the viability of the couple for treatment.
• Manage constructive initial and subsequent sessions.
• Have specific tools with which to facilitate sessions.
• Have some interventions to fall back on when you don’t know what to do.
• Stay in charge.
• Transform a negative dynamic into a positive one.
• Enhance an individual treatment by observing first hand what is going on in the relationship your patient is troubled by.
• Conceptualize the underlying issues that are tormenting the couple.
• Incorporate a general theoretical understanding of what people play out and why they do it, and therefore how treatment needs to be structured in order to get therapeutic leverage.

Featuring: Paul Geltner, DSW, Stanley Hayden, Ph.D., Robert Marshall, Ph.D.,
Lucie Grosvenor, LCSW, Judy Levitz, Ph.D., Valerie Frankfeldt, Ph.D.

   This panel takes a Janus-like view of Modern Psychoanalysis. Like the two-faced Roman deity who stood as the guardian of doorways, passages and transitions, this group, chaired by Stanley Hayden, one of the founders of the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies, will examine the prior achievements and future promise of Modern Psychoanalysis. Stanley Hayden will introduce the panelists and moderate the discussion. Paul Geltner will discuss the historical context in which Spotnitz moved beyond the traditional reliance on interpretation and the importance of insight in psychoanalysis and developed the techniques of emotional communication that remain the distinctive contribution of Modern Psychoanalysis to psychoanalytic practice.

   Robert J. Marshall will discuss his experiences in training with Hyman Spotnitz in analysis, supervision, and groups, and how Spotnitz was different from his other analysts. Judy Levitz will discuss the importance of integrating Modern Psychoanalysis with other contemporary schools of thought through embracing both similarities and differences, and developing a common language among various psychoanalytic schools.

    Valerie Frankfeldt will discuss some of her personal experiences with Hyman Spotnitz that illustrate his unique ability to effect change and deconstruct with the group how and why his emotional communications were so powerful. Lucie Grosvenor will discuss how modern psychoanalysis influences her work as the Executive Director of a psychoanalytic training institute known for teaching multiple theoretical models, including Modern Psychoanalysis.

Moderator: Valerie Frankfeldt, Ph.D

Panelists: Sue Sherman, DSW, Patricia Tidwell, Ph.D, David Pauley, LCSW

A PPSC student colloquium.

Panelists will continue to discuss psychodynamic implications of fees for both patient and therapist, particularly as they relate to analytic candidates. Discussion will be followed by a Q&A.

Presenter

As therapists we sometimes have to scratch our heads watching couples or hearing about individuals in relationships compulsively hurting, or even destroying, each other. We wonder, "This is not a match made in heaven; why stay together?" This workshop answers that question, and provides some tools for working with these problems.Committed relationships involve a developmental process that recapitulates in an adult form the developmental process of individuals. Stress between partners holds the clues to the developmental arrests of each partner. The developmental arrest in each partner is similar or identical to that in the other. Adaptations are complementary. Stress between partners is an externalization of internal stress and conflict in each partner, played out in the interpersonal arena of the relationship.

This will be a didactic and experiential presentation, with participants doing a written exercise to identify those traits, the life enhancing ones and repetitive ones, that "hook" us in our own relationships. For therapists it is also of interest to use the exercise to identify how certain patient traits push our buttons, both positively and negatively.

Panelist

The Seminar will examine Modern Psychoanalysis, its prior accomplishments and future promise. Chaired by Dr. Stanley Hayden, with Dr. Valerie Frankfeldt, Dr. Paul Geltner, Dr. Gerald Fishbein, and Dr. Robert Marshall.

Moderator: Valerie Frankfeldt, Ph.D

Panelists: Sue Sherman, DSW, Patricia Tidwell, Ph.D, David Pauley, LCSW

A PPSC student colloquium.

Panelists will discuss psychodynamic implications of fees for both patient and therapist, particularly as they relate to analytic candidates. Discussion will be followed by a Q&A.

Presenter

PPSC Faculty meeting

Didactic and experiential workshop on Imago Therapy for faculty.