Author Archives: WCPSI Admin

Psychoanalytic Basics … and Beyond The Course Committee of the Western Branch CPS is very pleased to announce a seminar series of 8 sessions to introduce basic psychoanalytic concepts and how they are used in everyday clinical practice. An historical survey from Freud to contemporary contributors will look at the epistemology of psychoanalytic ideas. The […]

“Confidentiality, Consent, and Moral Fallibility” with Bradford Cokelet, Ph.D. In this ethics training seminar, we will cover three main issues: confidentiality, consent, and moral improvement.  For confidentiality and consent, the instructor will begin by summarizing the typical standards and practices that apply in non-therapeutic medical settings.  We will then transition to group discussion about how […]

“Wayfinding in the underland of gender.” With Guest Speaker: Dr. Oren Gozlan Art credits: “Untitled” by Wallace Keck  |  photograph This presentation draws upon Robert MacFarlane’s (2021) notion of storytelling as the human’s mechanism for “wayfinding” and his concept of “deep time” to consider our stake in orienting ourselves within non-normative gender formations. My purpose […]

WBCPS 2022 ASM :  At the Frontier of Psychoanalytic Oneness: On Working analytically in the Throes of the Unthinkable Featured Speaker Dr. Ofra Eshel Dr. Eshel believes that contemporary psychoanalytic approaches can extend the reach of psychoanalytic treatment to more and the most disturbed patients, to more deeply disturbed aspects of all patients’ personalities and […]

WBCPS 2022 Quarterly Scientific Meeting #1:  How do we as psychoanalytic couple psychotherapists hold a place for the creative, aesthetic, and non-realistic qualities of experience as we also help couples develop capacities for mature, differentiated object relating? What are the technical implications that these considerations suggest? Building upon foundational Kleinian concepts regarding psychoanalytic work with […]

Western Branch Study Group on Early Childhood Development  Sandor Ferenczi’s writings continue to provide the psychoanalytic reader insight into early infant and childhood developmental milestones and challenges. In contrast to Freud’s metapsychological psychosexual theory of development, Ferenczi explored the manner in which environmental trauma impacted psychic development. This series of seminars will delve into his […]

WBCPS 2021 Scientific Meeting #3: Psychoanalytic work with patients who make extensive use of dissociation to protect themselves from experiencing affect can take on a superficial feel. The resulting countertransference impression of ‘stuckness’ puts pressure on the analyst to reformulate the treatment approach in order to find a way to move beyond the impasse, if […]

This series of seminars will explore the analytic concept of faith as a fundamental cornerstone of the analytic process in constant rhythm with its counter-partner negative capability. The focus of our study will be to approach and expand awareness of ‘faith’ both as a tangible and technical aspect of analytic methodology and as an ineffable […]

WBCPS Ethics 2021 – Seminar 2: There are many post-Freudian ‘schools’ in psychoanalysis but few have been as preoccupied by ethical concerns as those inspired by the so-called French model. The epistemological earthquake of Lacan’s revisiting of Freud stimulated two post-Lacanian generations of innovative thinking, both clinical and theoretical. Aulagnier, Laplanche, Green, and Zaltzman (to […]

The moment is opportune for a renewed look at what we understand about patient consent to treatment. Until recently, little reference to informed consent could be found in the literature as though it has never really been a preoccupation for psychoanalytic practitioners. Yet, several post-Freudian authors offer reasons to suppose the risk of misunderstandings about […]