October 17-19, 2008

Through the Life Cycle: The Development of Relating, Identity and Thinking in Klein, Bion and Winnicott

With Meira Likierman, PhD.

NOTE: Unfortunately, Dr. Likierman was taken ill just prior to this conference, and was advised not to fly. IPI instead offered a program featuring international contributor Nasir Ilahi (British Psychoanalytical Society, Independent Group), outstanding NIH primate attachment researcher Steven Suomi, and IPI faculty members Charles Ashbach, Doug Dennett, Jill Scharff and Paul Koehler.

Dr. Meira Likieman is Consultant Child Psychotherapist, Tavistock Clinic, and lectures regularly at Oxford University, the Anna Freud Center, the British Association for Psychotherapists and the London Centre for Psychotherapy. She has lectured internationally and published widely, including her book Melanie Klein: Her Work in Context. In this weekend we will examine the contributions of Klein, Bion and Winnicott to development in childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age, and explore the implications of psychic development of our patients throughout their lives.

Saturday Morning lecture: Nasir Ilahi: Psychic Emptineess and How to Understand It.

February 6-8, 2009

Thinking, Loss and Negation

With David Bell, MD

David Bell is Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst and Chair, the Scientific Committee, the British Psychoanalytic Society; Consultant Psychiatrist, Adult Department and Director, Personality Disorders Unit, the Tavistock Clinic. He lectures and publishes widely on Freud, Klein and Bion, severe disorders and psychoanalysis and literature, socio-political theory and philosophy. In this conference he will pursue themes of loss, negation, paranoia and timelessness in clinical analysis, literature and history.

Saturday Morning lecture: Nothing Matters and Everything is Permitted: Hannah Arendt and the Evil of Mindlessness

March 6-8, 2009

Group Analysis: Theory and Practice in Small and Large 'Groups'

With Earl Hopper, PhD

Dr. Earl Hopper is former Chair, Group of Independent Psychoanalysts, British Psychoanalytical Society; former President, International Association of Group Psychotherapy; Editor, The New International Library of Group Analysis, and author most recently of The Social Unconscious: Selected Papers and Traumatic Experience in the Unconscious Life of Groups. The weekend will feature extensive large group experience, as well as theoretical consideration of group dynamics focusing on transference and countertransference, the social unconscious and the Fourth Basic Assumption (Incohesion: Aggregation/ Massification).

Saturday Morning lecture: The Social Unconscious in Persons and Groups

April 24-26, 2009

The Therapeutic Relationship and the Dialogue of Unconsciouses: A Weekend Clinical Workshop

With Anthony Bass, PhD

Anthony Bass, PhD is Supervising Analyst, NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy; Joint Editor-in-Chief, Psychoanalytic Dialogues; President, the Stephen A. Mitchell Center for Relational Studies; and a Founding Director, the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. This conference will explore the nature of the psychoanalytical therapy relationship through the lens of 'relationship as a dialogue of unconsciouses' to deepen our grasp of unconscious dimensions of psychoanalytic work. Participants are asked to be prepared to share their work with patients with whom they feel an unusually intense affective engagement in order to study the emergent unconscious life of patient and therapist.

Saturday Morning lecture: Psychoanalysis as Mutual Analysis: Ferenczi's Mutual Analysis Updated

2007-2008 Weekends

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