Engaging Diversity through the Therapist’s Being Moved: Radical Openness and the Patient Who is ‘Other’ ~ 3 Diversity CEs ~ Dec 7, 2019

In this clinical exchange, the therapist is openly disclosing aspects of her feelings and intentions in a manner that many psychotherapists might, but she is failing to be open—radically open—to the possible truths contained in what her patient is conveying to her.

Every psychotherapist has had the experience of being seen, by the people whom we are trying to help, in ways that are different from how we see ourselves. Therapeutic dialogues across the borders of diversity can intensify this dynamic. It can be extremely difficult, for example, to have the subjective experience of feeling dedicated and engaged but, in contrast, be experienced by the person we are working with as detached. Or, similarly, we may have the challenging experience of having predominantly benevolent feelings as we strive to be of help, but being experienced, nevertheless as dangerous or malevolent. Often, as psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapists, we rely on the concepts of projection and transference to emotionally protect ourselves and sustain us, as we attempt to survive and make therapeutic use of the experience of feeling misrecognized.

This workshop offers an introduction to the presenter’s concept of “radical openness” as an alternative to a stance of emphasizing transference conceptualization and interpretation. Fleshing out the concept, we will engage in case-based exercises designed to enhance our abilities to listen openly and receptively to communications that we might otherwise be inclined to experience, both intellectually and emotionally, as misplaced or foreign. In short, a stance of radical openness will be shown to seek to receive our patients’ strange experiences of us as if they are bound to contain personal truths and insights, for both them and us alike.

At the conclusion of this conference, participants will be able to:

1. Discuss the anxieties associated with engaging issues of diversity, difference and otherness.
2. Recognize and discuss the central roles of curiosity and radical openness as antidotes to cultural ignorance and insensitivity, and be able to cultivate such qualities in themselves and in their patients.
3. Recognize and discuss pitfalls and breakdowns that can occur in diversity-related explorations and find ways to use these in the service of the restoration of open dialogue.
4. Enhance their capacity for receptive engagement in the psychotherapeutic process by implementing a stance of radical openness.

About our presenter:

Dr. Hart is a Training and Supervising Analyst, former Fellow, and on the Faculty of the William Alanson White Institute where he teaches and supervises in several training programs including the (Division I) Psychoanalytic Training Program, the Eating Disorders, Compulsions and Addictions Service Program (EDCAS), the Couples Therapy Training and Education Program (CTTEP), and the Intensive Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program for Russian Speakers (RIPPP). He supervises at Teachers College, Columbia University and at the Derner Institute of Adelphi University. He teaches at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, at Mt. Sinai Hospital, at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy, at the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute, at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies National Program, and at the Institute for Relational Psychoanalysis of Philadelphia. He is a member of the Editorial Boards of the journals Psychoanalytic Psychology and Contemporary Psychoanalysis. He is a Co-Founder of the White Institute’s monthly Study Group on Race and Psychoanalysis (SGORAP) and the Institute’s Center for Public Mental Health (CPMH). He serves as Chair of the Diversities Section of the Department of Psychoanalytic Education (DPE) of the American Psychoanalytic Association. He is in full-time private practice of psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, supervisory consultation, and organizational consultation in New York City.

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Conference Fees: