Category Archives: Archives

Part I is divided in four sections. The first section is an introduction to a “Tale of Mortality”. The second instalment involves a review of pertinent psychoanalytic themes: Freud’s Analysis Terminable and Interminable, Totem and Taboo; The Future of an Illusion; Steiner’s Psychic Retreats, and Winnicott’s Fear of Breakdown. The third segment is a summary […]

Aftermath of Psychic Trauma VANCOUVER | October 2019 – March 2020 The Western Branch is privileged to have Howard Levine, Dominique Scarfone, and Judy Eekhoff as invited presenters for the next annual conference March 19-20, 2020. They will be discussing their researches into the presentation and representation of the experience of primitive mental states and […]

The Western Branch of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society invites colleagues, analysts, and psychoanalytic psychotherapists from near and far to join us for our annual conference for 2019: GENDER AS A SOFT ASSEMBLY: GENDER MULTIDIMENSIONALITY Adrienne Harris, Ph.D. Keynote speaker In this presentation Dr. Adrienne Harris will outline contemporary models of development, stressing the intersubjective and […]

The collective crimes of history cast long shadows. Our attempts to confront and understand the effects of the Nazi period and the Holocaust on the profession of psychoanalysis have emerged out of a silence and silencing of the past. Part of this process involves considering how we, as psychoanalysts and as individuals, exist in relation […]

“How are we to see, observe…. these things which are not visible?” (Bion, 2005). How does felt experience become thinkable? And what of a painful something which exists in the body, but which never becomes emotionally invested thought? How do we speak about the impact of what is unverbalisable and irrepresentable? How do we as […]

“The name in vain? Clinical and ethical dilemmas in making/not making a personality diagnosis.” Facilitator:  Anita Chakrabarti MD, LLB, FRCPC This seminar will review articles that consider ethical and validity issues that arise when diagnosing patients with personality disorder features.  As well it will review the alternative model of personality disorder as proposed in the DSM-V […]

Photo credit: Anne Gaze “Seasonal Progression” Acrylic paint on board 2018 Scientific Meeting January 26th, 2019   | Symbolic Representation Revisited – Coleen Gold, MA, ATR, FIPA   The related topics of symbol formation, representation, unconscious communication, transformation and aesthetic experience are intrinsically undefinable in any absolute, coherent way. Understandably, attempts to address these concepts in the psychoanalytic literature range […]

Western Branch Canadian Psychoanalytic Society Vancouver Pre-Canadian Psychoanalytic Congress Course The Vancouver chapter Western Branch Course Committee is pleased to offer a 6 session series of seminars in preparation of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society Congress to be held in Vancouver May 29- June 1, 2019. The Congress, entitled “Emotional Turbulence: Working Clinically with unformed experience”, […]

Gender Multidimensionality with Adrienne Harris VICTORIA | September 2018 – June 2019 The Victoria Chapter of the Western Branch Course Committee is pleased to offer a nine session series of seminars in preparation for the Annual Scientific Meeting to be held on March 23, 2019. The annual conference will be entitled “Gender as a Soft Assembly: […]

Western Branch Canadian Psychoanalytic Society Vancouver Pre-conference Course Gender as a Soft Assembly: An introduction to the work of Adrienne Harris (Vancouver) VANCOUVER |  October 5, 2018 – April 12, 2019 The Vancouver chapter Western Branch Course Committee is pleased to offer a seven session series of seminars in preparation for the Annual Scientific Meeting […]