Director’s Column
Eleanor Howe, Director
My first job out of college was as an accounting clerk at a trucking company in Oregon. West Coast Truck Lines paid for the two Accounting courses that I failed to bring with me to the job. Through this entry-level job (yes, I did the mail) I learned such solid life lessons: the efficiency that is ultimately gained by closely tracking data, that writing skills are valuable and sought after, even in an accounting department, and that a company’s annual financial reports tell a story about the company, in much the way a musical score relates an aural tale.
The business of ICP+P is post-graduate education of contemporary psychoanalytic and psychodynamic theory and practice. As we develop our curricula, plan our conferences, short courses and study groups, of course our minds are primarily on selecting the content, and then the method best suited to teach the material. What I find unique and affirming — and what motivates me as a volunteer at our institute — is how skilled and committed we are to making our dyads and groups function meaningfully, with respect for one another, and with laughter, warmth and smart thinking.
Our annual financial reports tell the same tale. We hold ourselves to best practices. We ask ourselves planning questions and analyze our financial data for the answers. We offer transparency of our financial practices and standing to our education planners, board and members. We spend what we must for a modicum of comfort and we stop well short of luxury, for as a non-profit, spending for luxury is an unnatural fit. Our priority is on providing quality education and creating a community that is professionally sustaining to all.
Our value is to be a learning community that is attractive to a heterogeneous group, in terms of age, race, gender and culture. As an organization committed to non-hierarchical leadership and practice, we do not offer tiers of membership rates that provide tiered access to privilege. Striving to be affordable to all interested, we keep membership prices as low as possible and provide reductions for students, new members, retirees, and those in need. 40% of our Members-In-Training receive some level of scholarship. Even as venue rates and honoraria are rising steeply, we strive to keep conference prices as low as possible.
ICP+P increasingly relies on income from donations to make each year’s budget. Membership dues cover only roughly 75% of our operating expenses. We need your help to sustain our current offerings and to support our organization’s continued growth as an attractive and available professional home to a heterogeneous membership. When we’re younger we’re so caught up in our careers that we may not realize even small donations are a pleasure to receive. As we move further along, however, with the grace and perspective wrought by experience, we realize that community becomes like our children: precious and worthy of our nurture. Please consider nurturing ICP+P by participating in “kindness contagion” and help us with our momentum toward further dialogue and representation in our professional community.
Because of our 501(c)(3) status, your donations are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law on your tax returns. To donate, go to https://icpeast.org/donations/.
Thank you for your commitment to ICP+P and for all the work you do to make our institute a home for learning, exploration, and friendship. Wishing you a very happy, healthy holiday season!
In Peace,
Eleanor
Upcoming Training + Education
TOMORROW – Sunday, December 2, 2018 from 12:30-5:30 pm immediately followed by reception for Rosemary
The Georgetown University Conference Center, Washington, DC
About the Conference:
Group therapy adds a broadened perspective to individual treatment. Expanding beyond an emphasis on the client’s inner experience as well as their immediate environment to their engagement with larger and more complex worlds offers the therapist and client increasing awareness of the impact of these larger contexts.
Conference attendees will have the opportunity to consider the impact of a combined treatment model of individual and group therapy. A panel of group experts will discuss the value of such a model and how it can be implemented.
Small and large groups will be part of the program, giving participants the opportunity to discuss the panel’s presentations as well as processing their own experiences in both the small and large groups. There will be an emphasis on the relational dimensions of group therapy.
At the conclusion of this conference, participants will be able to:
1. Describe when it may be beneficial to the patient to incorporate group psychotherapy into an individual treatment.
2. Discuss the pros and cons of working in a combined treatment model of individual and group psychotherapy.
3. Compare treatment outcomes between individual treatment and a combined treatment model.
4. Effectively utilize both individual and group therapy theories to create an individualized combined treatment model.
5. Utilize large group experiences in order to gain greater awareness of relevant social contexts such as race, gender, culture etc.
About the Reception:
November 2018 marks the 80th birthday of Rosemary Segalla. In honor of Rosemary’s passion for groups, we celebrate this occasion as a large group — As the warm professional community Rosemary co-founded and actively sustains. Your registration includes the champagne/wine and hors d’oeuvres reception that directly follows the conference.
Featuring Richard A. Chefetz, MD
Saturday, January 26, 2019 from 9:30 am-12:30 pm ~ Silver Spring Civic Building at Veterans Plaza, Silver Spring, MD
Register Here!
About the Conference:
Sometimes a patient vacillates between angry attacks on the therapeutic relationship and tenacious attachment to it. As a participant in the relationship, the therapist will inevitably also experience difficult feelings. The clinical atmosphere can be so poisoned by such extremes of push and pull between the participants that it can cause emotional exhaustion, shame and fear of humiliation, intolerable loss, intense dislike, disgust, and contempt.
As we now know, patients who have experienced frightening parents and disorganized/disoriented attachment in their early development will likely demonstrate a degree of chaos in their present attachment relationships. But when shame-contempt dynamics are present, the behaviors we see may exceed even the predictable, and establish patterns of “baiting” between therapist and patient. In this conference, Dr. Chefetz will describe these dynamics and how to identify them. Additionally, he will offer suggestions for understanding and working with patients when our clinical relationships include these types of extremely difficult dynamics.
At the conclusion of this conference, participants will be able to:
1. Describe the difference between the words affect, feeling, and emotion as well as the clinical utility of distinguishing between them.
2. Describe the parental contribution to each of the four major infant attachment styles and their clinical relevance to adult psychotherapy and the exploration of a traumatic past.
3. Explain how “attackment” describes a shift from proximity seeking in the attachment paradigm to guaranteeing distance when domination-submission, power and control, dynamics overwhelm the interpersonal world of a child.
Register Here!
Other 2018-2019 Training
- December 2, 2018, Conference – Contextualized Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis: Creative Input from Groups, Large and Small and 80th Birthday Celebration for Rosemary Segalla, Georgetown University Conference Center, from 12:30-5:30 pm immediately followed by reception for Rosemary, 4.25 CEs.
- January 26, 2019, Conference – Attackments: Subjugation, Shame, and the Attachment to Painful Affects & Objects, with Richard Chefetz, MD, Silver Spring Civic Building, 9:00am-12:30pm, 3 CEs. Register Here Now.
- February 8, 2019, Short Course – To Group or Not To Group: Assessment and Preparation of Potential Group Members, with Rob Williams, LICSW, CGP, ICP+P Office, 12:30-3:45pm, 3 CEs.
- April 28, 2019 – Joint Institutes Candidates’ Committee (JICC) 22nd annual conference, 3:00-6:30 pm, 3 CEs.
- May 4, 2019, Annual Conference, with Steven Stern, Chevy Chase, MD, 9:00am-4:30pm, 6 CEs.
- September 28, 2019, Conference with Mark J. Blechner, PhD, Silver Spring Civic Building, 9:00am-12:30pm, 3 CEs.
- December 7, 2019, Conference with Anton H. Hart, PhD, Silver Spring Civic Building, 9:00am-12:30pm, 3 CEs.
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