Category Archives: Archives

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 […]

Negative therapeutic reaction, a term coined by Freud (1923) to describe the patient’s abrupt and reflexive turning away from the analytic relationship immediately following recognition of the analyst’s understanding and interpretive helpfulness, has evolved in how it is understood theoretically and applied clinically over the past century. Notably, identifying the determinative role of envy and […]

Psychoanalysts often speak of the infant-mother unit as a model; in this “we” of the first group, the infant’s mind is born. The purpose of this paper is to bring this speculative imagination of pre-natal and neonatal life experiences and examine how this position of we-ness in the here and now of the session wakes us up […]

The Western Branch of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society presents 2020 Annual Scientific Conference“Aftermath of Trauma” Howard Levine, Judy Eekhoff and Dominique Scarfone The impact of trauma, especially if experienced early in development, can mark the psyche and result in PTSD symptoms such as nightmares, flashbacks, panic, and psychosomatic symptoms triggered by environmental representations of the […]

WBCPS presents the Quarterly Scientific Meeting #4 “Rescuing Conscience from the Moralistic Superego: Notes on the New Puritanism in Psychoanalysis” | Donald L Carveth, Ph.D., RP, FIPA November 28, 2020 9:30am – 12pm PST (Pacific Standard Time) One way we defend ourselves against the persecutory superego is by identifying with it and targeting various scapegoats. […]