Past Weekend Conferences and Summer Institutes

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Past Weekend Conferences

October 28-30, 2005

When Trauma Strikes: Psychotherapy with Couples and Families

A Weekend with IPI Faculty, Students, Alumni and International Guest Speakers

Couples and families increasingly seek help after traumatic experience for dysfunction caused by sexual abuse, severe physical and emotional neglect, birth disorders or the results of war and terrorism.  The focus of this conference was on families with psychological and social impairment stemming from traumatic experiences.  International Keynote speakers: Hans-Jurgen Wirth from Frankfurt; Serge Arpin and Carole Hamel from Montreal; Felix Velasco from Mexico.

Saturday Morning Workshop: "Trauma, Neuroscience and Family Therapy" with David and Jill Scharff.

January 27-29, 2006 

Levels and Types of Pathology: Levels and Types of Intervention

With Anne Alvarez, Ph.D., emeritus child psychotherapist, Tavistock Clinic, London. Author of Live Company.  In this weekend Dr. Alvarez discussed the processes of mourning, narcissism, depression and autism with an eye towards finding languages that allow access to varying levels of pathology in children and adults.

Saturday morning workshop: “Unintegration, Disintegration and Integration”, with Anne Alvarez. 

March 10-12, 2006 

Attachment and the Self: Research and Therapy

With Dr. Mary Target, University College and Anna Freud Clinic, London.  Member of the British Psychoanalytic Society.  Dr. Target is known for her work on attachment and affect regulation, and other aspects of development.  In this conference, she discussed implications for psychotherapy with children and adults. 

Saturday morning workshop: “Mind as World: Developmental Theory and Technique as Successful Narcissism Breaks Down” with Mary Target.

April 28-30, 2006

Ferenczi and the Origin of Object Relations: History and Application

With Dr. Andre Haynal, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Geneva, Training Analyst and former president of the Swiss Psychoanalytic Society.  Dr. Haynal is author of Disappearing the Reviving: Sandor Ferenczi in the History of Psychoanalysis and Controversies in Psychoanalytic Method: From Freud and Ferenczi to Michael Balint.  In this conference, he introduced Ferenczi's ideas, detailed the way psychoanalysis has used them while ignoring their origins, and explored their modern application.

Saturday morning workshop: "Technical Problems in Relation-Based Psychoanalysis", with Dr. Haynal.

October 20-22, 2006

Recent Advances in Neuropsychoanalysis: Impact on Clinical Practice

With Allan Schore, Ph.D. A leading neuropsychoanalyst, Dr. Schore has published three landmark volumes on affect regulation and the neural mechanisms of development of the self. This weekend will feature careful exposition of this work and integrate brain research with psychoanalysis, leading the way to a modern rapprochement between the fields.

Saturday morning lecture: “The Right Brain is Dominant in Psychoanalytic Treatment”

Douglas Dennett, MD and Allan Schore, PhD

February 2-4, 2007

Transforming Narcissism: Infant Research and Therapeutic Action

With Frank Lachmann, Ph.D. With a reputation as an engaging teacher, Dr. Lachmann is best known for his ground-breaking research on parent-infant interaction carried out with Beatrice Bebe. This weekend he will present his recent work applying the lessons of infant development to adult psychotherapy.

Saturday morning lecture: “The Road to Empathy”

Frank Lachmann, PhD

March 9-11, 2007

Interfaces of Modern Psychoanalysis

Held in Panama City, Panama

With Otto Kernberg, M.D. Otto Kernberg is a giant in the development of modern psychoanalytic theory and practice from the standpoint of American object relations theory, studying particularly the role of affect and the treatment of personality disorders. This weekend’s work will present an integration of ideas at the frontier of psychoanalysis.

Saturday morning workshop: “Severe Personality Disorders”

Samuel Pinzon, PhD and Otto Kernberg, MD

April 27-29, 2007

The Bi-Personal Field in Psychotherapy

With Antonino Ferro, M.D. (from Milan, Italy): Dr. Ferro presents a fresh use of Bion’s ideas on the treatment of children and adults. Until now, his warm and responsive teaching has not been well known in the U.S. He is the author of The Bi-Personal Field: Experiences in Child Analysis, Seeds of Illness, Seeds of Recovery, and Psychoanalysis as Therapy and Storytelling. In this weekend he will examine some theoretical foundations of therapeutic experience.

See an interview with Dr. Ferro.

Saturday morning lecture: Countertransference and the Characters of the Psychoanalytic Session.

Sheila Hill, MSW and Antonino Ferro, MD

October 19-21, 2007

The Violent Patient, and Analytic Listening and Countertransference in Borderline Patients

With Rosine Josef Perelberg, PhD: Rosine Josef Perelberg, Ph.D., is a Training and Supervising Analyst of the British Psychoanalytic Society, and Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Psychoanalysis Unit, University College, London. Her most recent book is Freud: A Modern Reader, (London: Wileys), a collection of previously unpublished papers from the British and French Psychoanalytic Societies.

Saturday Morning lecture: “The Violent Patient: Research & Treatment”

February 8-10, 2008

Psychotherapy Terminable and Interminable

Organized by Charles Ashbach, PhD, with Faculty Presenters: This weekend reconsidered some of the central ideas of Freud’s 1937 paper “Analysis: Terminable and Interminable.” Questions of the “end point” and “limits” of the therapy process were considered, as well as the use and abuse of the therapy process in the face of perverse and parasitic attachments. Also considered: therapeutic ambition, addiction to therapy, and the role of envy and pathologic narcissism as anti-therapeutic forces. Charles Ashbach, PhD is a senior and founding member of the IPI faculty and co-author of Object Relations Group Therapy.

Saturday Morning lecture: Charles Ashbach: “Where are we when the working-through is through?” Some considerations on factors limiting the psychotherapy enterprise.

March 28-30, 2008

Encountering the Slippery Slope in Psychoanalytic Family Therapy: International Conference on Child, Couple, and Family Therapy

Therapists who work in-depth with families must be prepared for the slippery slope of the family unconscious. The papers and presentations at this conference featured American and international contributions on the clinical practice of psychoanalytic family therapy. The conference format included daily small group discussions, conference participant and presenter dialogues, and panel discussions, so that working in depth could be affectively and intellectually taken in and processed. Keynote presentations by Molly Ludlam (Scotland), Andrew Balfour (London), Qijia Shi (China), David and Jill Scharff (Washington DC) and Michael Stadter (Washington DC).

Saturday Morning lecture: "The Post-natally Depressed Couple" by Molly Ludlam, MA

David Scharff and Andrew Balfour

Dr. Qijia Shi (China)

April 25-27, 2008

Character

With Christopher Bollas: In this weekend Christopher Bollas will explore the many dimensions of character, from inherent quality to disorder, and focus on the process of character analysis. He will also read from his new novel-in-progress. Christopher Bollas is a Member of the British Psychoanalytical Society, Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies, and the European Study Group on Unconscious Thought. His first book was The Shadow of the Object. His most recent, Mayhem, is a novel.

Saturday Morning lecture: “Reflections on Character”

Paul Koehler, Christopher Bollas, David Scharff in
Closing Dialogue

Summer Institutes

July 9-15, 2006

Infant Observation and Research Contributions to Object Relations Theory and Practice, with Jeanne Magagna, Hope Cooper, Christine Norman, Steve Suomi, Charles Ashbach, Nancy Bakalar, Norma Caruso, Karen Fraley, Paul Koehler, Vali Maduro, David Scharff and Jill Scharff. Infant observation, non-human primate research, and attachment research were applied to containment and countertransference in clinical work.

July 8-14, 2007

Object Relations Theory and Practice:
This institute covered the basics of object relations theory from Kleinian and British Independent object relations points of view, and applied them to clinical practice.