Director’s Column

Roger Segalla, PhD

Segalla_Headshot--3Welcome Back ICP+P’ers!

School is back in session, summer vacations are coming to an end and the weather even seems to be moving (slowly) toward the promise of cooler days in the fall and the start of another ICP+P program year. Have you got your book bags and sharpened #2 pencils? Don’t worry – no tests, no grades – just a multitude of opportunities to learn and grow as clinicians and to find connections with a community of fellow professionals and friends!

We have a terrific year planned – great programming; busy, active study groups and three training programs that are humming along. The institute itself has never been stronger. Financially we are comfortably flush and now have a reserve savings large enough to weather even a tough economic downturn – knock on wood! Structurally we are halfway through a two-year pilot restructuring program that has significantly improved the efficiency and effectiveness of our organization. With five (6 actually) Associate Directors and a hardworking Board we can now manage the day-to-day operations of the institute in a way that doesn’t require any one person to sacrifice mind and body to keep the institute running. With one of the strongest memberships in the DC area we have created a professional home for our members and a community for learning and exploration.

I look forward to seeing all of you return for another year of exploration, learning and fun – don’t forget about fun!

Please join us in getting the fun started with our annual Welcome Back from Summer Potluck Dinner and Town Hall Meeting! Bring your favorite casseroles and your best hula-hoop to the Chevy Chase Center on Sunday September 20th at 4pm and help us kick off another great year in ICP+P style.

Roger

Note from the Editor – Jonathan Lebolt, PhD, DCSW, CGP

Jonathan Lebolt, PhD, LCSW, CGP

Jonathan Lebolt, PhD, DCSW, CGP

Fall greetings! I hope you all enjoyed your summer, and that you’re ready to get back into the thick of all things ICP+P-clinical and committee work, study groups, teaching and coursework. Our September issue of Connections features a new note from our Director, an elegant review of Psychoanalytic Inquiry by Gwendolyn Pla, PhD, MSW, and another lovely blog post on group therapy from Trish Cleary, MA, LCPC-MFT-ADT, CGP.

I am grateful to Gwen and to Eileen Boyle, PhD for their regular contribution of reviews of PI for this newsletter. And here’s an opportunity for you, Dear Reader: Please let me know at Therapy@Doctor-Jon.com or 240-507-7696 if you have an interest in contributing journal reviews, and I’ll be happy to guide you through the process. I’d love for someone to share with me in reviewing issues of the International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, and it would be delightful if one of you were interested in reviewing Psychoanalytic Dialogues. So don’t be shy-Hop on board! I’d be happy to discuss this with you further if you’re “on the fence.”

Have a wonderful, fulfilling fall at ICP+P!

Yours,
Jonathan
therapy@doctor-jon.com

Review of Psychoanalytic Inquiry

Gwendolyn Pla, PhD, MSW

Alexandra Murray Harrison, M.D., editor
Ed Tronick’s Contribution to the Theory and Technique of Psychoanalysis,
Psychoanalytic Inquiry, Vol. 35, No. 4, May-June 2015

This issue is a must-read for all who are interested in relational psychoanalysis. The contributors who presented eight articles were Beatrice Beebe and Frank Lachmann; Steven H. Cooper; Peter Fonagy; Kay M. Long, Lindsay Clarkson, Shelly Rockwell, and Lynne Zeavin, ; Joseph D. Lichtenberg; Colwyn Trevarthen,; Gisele Apter; and J. Timothy Davis. A prologue and an epilogue were contributed by the editor, Alexandra Murray Harrison.

Six of the articles were theoretical. The articles by Apter and Davis included clinical cases. All of the writers discussed the importance of the implicit processes in each dyad concerning the process of mutual regulation and therapeutic action.

Beebe and Lachman discussed the importance of Tronick’s theory of mutual regulation and the importance of repair following disruption.
Click Here to Read More…

Puzzle Pieces: Reflections on Repair

Trish Cleary, MS, LCPC-MFT-ADC, CGP

For the past few months we’ve been working through various aspects of the 4 Rs model (Rupture, Regression, Repair and Resolution). We have learned that when a Rupture unbalances us in the here-and-now, Regressive emotions can be activated to bring the past unexpectedly into the present with a disorienting array of feelings. The discomfort that follows can be painful and often puzzling. In Repair, we take time to approach and honor these feelings in order to identify and explore their significance.

For many, making sense of Regressive emotions is like sitting down to one of those puzzles of a thousand pieces. It requires patience sorting for patterns, persistence linking the pieces, and cleverness joining them to reflect the picture on the puzzle lid. The difference when decoding one’s personal emotions is that there is no picture for guidance, only painstaking effort until awareness and meaning evolve.

In this blog post, we will rejoin the group members from the June 2015 vignette. Observe how, in Repair, their collaborative approach supports curiosity about oneself and each other as they identify puzzle pieces which emerge in their ongoing work.
Click Here to Read More…

In Celebration of the Inquiring Spirit and Life of Joseph D. Lichtenberg

with Joseph D. Lichtenberg, MD,
Sandra Hershberg, MD and Linda Gunsberg, PhD

Saturday, September 12, 2015
Registration: 8:30-9am
Program: 9am-12:30pm
National 4-H Conference Center
7100 Connecticut Avenue
Chevy Chase, MD 20815

Narratives and Clinical Engagement

We are pleased to offer this conference to honor and celebrate Joseph D. Lichtenberg, MD on the occasion of his 90th birthday. In the first part of the morning, Dr. Lichtenberg will share his latest proposal about the importance of narratives and their central purpose in achieving meaning, with a particular focus on the clinical exchange. Using verbatim notes from a clinical session, Dr. Lichtenberg will discuss the interplay of narratives that were developed by the clinical couple. Against the backdrop of Dr. Lichtenberg’s ten user-fr

Making Meaning: The Public Narrative, the Private Narrative and the Collaborative Narrative
In the second half of the morning, Sandra G. Hershberg, MD and Linda Gunsberg, PhD, Co-Editors and Contributors to Psychoanalytic Theory, Research and Clinical Practice: Reading Joseph D. Lichtenberg* to be published by Routledge this fall, will describe ways in which they have been struck by the process of how various narratives have emerged and evolved, existing independently of each other and/or becoming integrated into Dr. Lichtenberg’s larger life narrative. The presenters will illustrate how the catalyst for the development of these narratives has been what Dr. Lichtenberg refers to as “the spirit of inquiry.” During their presentation, they will dialogue with Dr. Lichtenberg and the audience about these narratives.

After the conference
We hope you will join us for a luncheon at La Ferme Restaurant, 7101 Brookville Road, Chevy Chase, Maryland, from 1:00 to 3:00 pm. The lunch is paid and optional, but is a further opportunity to celebrate Joe’s birthday and to share personal remembrances. You can attend the lunch without attending the conference.
Click here to register online for the Conference.

Click here to see the full flier…

 

Help Promote ICP+P on September 12th

Dear ICP+P Members,
We are looking for volunteers to help us enhance our website and publicity.
What’s involved? It’s simple!
Consider how ICP+P is important to your professional (or personal) life. You might think about training programs, study groups, collegiality and support, mentorship, the great library, the opportunity to teach, our conferences (including free ones), feeling affiliated, etc.
Then you have two options:

  1. Send a few written comments and your picture or
  2. Send notes for what you might say in a brief comment (like 1 minute-long). Video commentaries will be filmed on September 12th, at Joe Lichtenberg’s talk, because that is the only time we will have a professional videographer on hand.

If selected, quotes or videos will appear on the ICP+P website and/or publicity to help us show potential members what we have to offer.

To volunteer, please send your written comments – OR some notes for what you’d like to say in a video – to us (at the emails below)
by 9/4 or sooner.

In addition, you may nominate other members or encourage your friends who you think might be good representatives!

Thanks in advance!
Eleanor H.S Howe, eleanorhowe.phd@verizon.net
Jen Sermoneta, jen.sermoneta@gmail.com
Martha Gibbons, marthagibbons123@verizon.net

 

Annual Potluck & Fall Kickoff

Sunday, September 20th
4:00 to 7:00 pm
Sunday, September 20, 2015 4:00 PM to 7:00 PM

Chevy Chase Village Hall
5906 Connecticut Avenue, Chevy Chase, MD 20815
(a couple of blocks north of Chevy Chase Circle)

Please park on the street.

This kick-off event gives us a chance to come together as a community to renew ongoing relationships as well as to welcome new members. Members-in-Training and individuals who have joined ICP+P during the last year will be introduced. In addition, we are planning to have a town hall meeting, in which members can participate in open discussion about ICP+P, including the year’s upcoming programs, planning for future programs and other areas of interest or concern to the ICP+P community. The potluck has always been an informal, lively, and fun event with lots of great food!

Please RSVP to this event by emailing (no phone calls, please), Kathy Beck at kathy.beck@rcn.com indicating what you plan to bring:

*appetizer *side dish *fruit salad *green salad *entrée
*dessert *beer/wine *non-alcoholic beverage

*notify me and I’ll bring whatever is most needed.

* Also please indicate whether you are available to help with set-up or clean-up.

Thank you! We look forward to seeing you there!

 

CAPP Outreach Group

Gail Winston, LICSW

ICP+P’s Contemporary Approaches to Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (CAPP) Program is offering a five (5) week discussion group for graduate students or interested clinicians, with a focus on the basic tenets of Self Psychology. It would be particularly useful for anyone who are considering further training in a self-psychological and relational orientation.

Dates: The group will meet on five Thursday evenings: October 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29, 2015

Time: 7:15 to 8:30 pm

Place: ICP+P Office, 4601 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 8, Washington, DC

Cost: There is no fee for this group.

Leader: Gail Winston, LICSW is a Founding Member and has served on the Board of ICP+P. She is also a graduate from the ICP+P Couples Training Program. Currently she is facilitating one of the Institute’s study groups on The Reading of Novels and Memoirs through the Lens of a Psychotherapist. Gail has maintained a private practice in Washington, DC for over 30 years, focusing on individuals and couples.

To register and for further information, please contact Gail at 202.686.1177 or GWINSTON@GAILWINSTON.COM.

Short Course:
Cultural Issues and Relational Practice: Racial and Sexual MinoritiesCultural Issues and Relational Practice: Racial and Sexual Minorities

with Jonathan Lebolt, PhD, DCSW, CGP and Yan Ni, PsyM

Sunday, October 4, 2015
1:00 – 4:15 pm
ICP+P Office
4601 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 8
Washington, DC 20008

Meets Cultural Competence Requirement

Relational practice, with its honoring of the subjectivities of both clinician and client, has the capacity to enhance sensitivity to all aspects of the client’s humanity, including cultural variables such as race, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Until recently, however, contemporary psychoanalysis has not carefully and consistently attended to such variables. This short course is a small part of a movement in contemporary psychoanalysis toward integrating culturally sensitive and relational practice. It will focus on increasing clinicians’ awareness of, and sensitivity to, issues to consider when working with clients who are members of racial and sexual minorities.

Initially, we will use a screening of a part of the video, Black Psychoanalysts Speak (Winograd, 2014), to stimulate our thinking about what challenges clients of color may face in seeking help from white providers. We will then explore how practitioners may increase awareness of their own prejudices and avoid acting on them in the countertransference, and how to use cross-cultural enactments to increase intimacy and promote psychosocial healing in the therapeutic encounter. Finally, we will address how clinicians may interact sensitively with gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender clients.

This conference is intended for professionals at all levels of experience.
Click here to register online for the October 4th Short Course.

Click here to see the full flier…

Save the Date For The Next Annual Conference

Featuring Richard Geist, EdD on April 16, 2016

Connectedness: Transforming the Clinical Relationship

ICP+P’s Contemporary Approaches to Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (CAPP) Program is sponsoring the Annual Conference on Saturday, April 16, 2016

Richard Geist, EdD will be our featured speaker and will be discussing his notion of
Connectedness in the Clinical Encounter. Janna Sandmeyer, Chair of the CAPP Program, will be presenting a case, and Sally Bloom-Feshbach, CAPP Faculty, will be the discussant. It promises to be an interesting and thought-provoking day!

 

News and Notes

    • Stephen R. Stein, PhD, President of the DC Psychological Association, composed the DCPA Response to the Hoffman Report regarding the APA’s relationship with the Dept. of Defense (click here to view the response). Jean Gearon, PhD is Vice President of Operations and also a member of the ethics committee at DCPA and Oksana Zadoro, LICSW is the Social Work Liaison for DCPA.
    • Marc Nemiroff’s Indian memoir, STEPPING INTO THE RIVER: AN AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST IN MOTHER INDIA was published in August.
      Marc spent one month each winter for nine years working primarily in the Mumbai (Bombay) area with an Indian psychologist, two strangers until they met in Bombay. Together, they provided pro bono mental health services to a wide variety of people. This was feet-on-the-ground, get-your-hands-dirty work with abandoned blind elderly people in an institution, children and their families in numerous Bombay slums, street children, young adults kidnapped as children for the sex trade, parents of deepest poverty living in hospital with their very young children receiving cancer treatment, students and teachers in Bombay’s slum schools, the inhabitants of a remote tribal village, and others.Aspects of this work have been presented at The Washington School of Psychiatry, the Baltimore-Washington Center for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, the Washington Society of Psychoanalytic Psychologists, and the New Directions Program of The Washington Center for Psychoanalysis.
      The book is also the story of aspects of Marc’s personal background as they relate to the Indian story, as well as the tale of the development of a deep cross-cultural relationship between an Indian and an American, with ever-increasing trust, warmth, and humor. A true cross-cultural collaboration and ongoing friendship. (These have not been presented previously.)
      Attached is a copy of the cover and book description, which expands a bit on the above. Seeing the photo of those children tells its own story (and lets you know that this is anything but a grim book, despite its being clear-eyed).
      It is available through amazon.com in both paperback and kindle editions.

 

Members in the Arts

      • Beth Altman, MSW is participating in an upcoming exhibit at Strathmore Mansion, Women Chefs – Artists in the Kitchen, where 22 local women chefs are portrayed by artists. Beth is a photographer. The exhibit runs from Sept. 5 until Nov. 8 and also includes weekly cooking demonstrations and tastings by some of the chefs. Opening reception is Thursday, Sept 10, 7-9 pm. All are invited to drop by. Click here to learn more.

 

Upcoming Events

      • Saturday, September 12, 9:00 am-12:30 pm,
        In Celebration of the Inquiring Spirit and Life of Joseph D. Lichtenberg –
        This will be a 90th Birthday Celebration for Joseph Lichtenberg, MD with a discussion on his contributions. The free-to-members talks will be followed by a paid luncheon (at La Ferme) celebrating Joe’s 90 years and his contributions to psychoanalysis and ICP+P.
        Click HERE to register.
      • Sunday, October 4, 2015, 1:00-4:15 pm, Short Course – Cultural Issues and Relational Practice, with Jonathan Lebolt, PhD, DCSW, CGP and Yan Ni, PsyM, Meets Cultural Competence Requirement, at ICP+P Office, 4601 Connecticut, Ave., NW, Suite 8, Washington, DC 20008. Click HERE to register.
      • Friday, November 6, 2015, 10:00 am-1:00 pm, Short Course – Couples Therapy with Angela Snyder, PsyD and Ashley Seeger, PsyD at the ICP+P Office, 4601 Connecticut, Ave., NW, Suite 8, Washington, DC 20008.
      • Saturday, November 21, 2015, 9:00 am-12:30 pm, Alice Kassabian Memorial Conference: Reflections on Wisdom~ Its Nature, Value, and Relevance to Contemporary Practice, with Nancy McWilliams, PhD, ABPP at The Cosmos Club, 2121 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington DC. Co-sponsored by ICP+P and GWSCSW. Click HERE to register.
      • Saturday, December 5, 2015, 9:00 am-12:30 pm, ICP+P Conference on Adolescents and Conflict with Shelley Doctors, PhD and Jackie Gotthold, PsyD.
      • Saturday, February 27, 2016, 9:00 am-12:30 pm, ICP+P Couples Conference. Chaired by Tybe Diamond, MSW this free-to-members half-day program will be created and presented by Couples Training Program Faculty and Graduates.
      • Saturday, April 16, 2016, 9:00 am-4:30 pm, ICP+P 22nd Annual Conference, Connectedness: Transforming the Clinical Relationship with Richard Geist, EdD.

 

 

 

Bulletin Board

 

      • Marilyn Voigt is retiring. Her office is at 3 Washington Circle, Washington, DC 20037. It is across the circle from GWU and a metro stop. Her office will be available for rent in September. Please call Virginia Voigt at 410-808-3422 for more information.
      • Elizabeth Haase, a clinical psychologist, is looking for a new space to sublet in the Springfield, Burke, Alexandria area of Northern Virginia. She is establishing a Northern Virginia practice but her current space does not give much flexibility with her practice in DC. If you or anyone you know has any possibilities, please email Elizabeth Haase at emthaase@verizon.net or call (202) 232-7877. Thank you.
      • Experiential Supervision Group Starting – We will explore our clinical work using a combination of psychodrama-based enactment techniques and contemporary psychoanalytic theory. Meetings will be biweekly, early afternoon on Friday, in Bethesda. For more information, contact Monica L. Callahan, PhD at Callahanml@erols.com.
      • Heidi Block and Ann Ewing are co-facilitating a Daring Way Weekend Intensive for Therapists on Oct. 16th, 17th and 18th in Dupont Circle, Washington, DC. The Daring Way is a highly experiential methodology based on the research of Dr. Brene Brown. We explore topics such as vulnerability, courage, shame, and worthiness. We examine thoughts, emotions and behaviors that are holding us back and we identify new choices and practices that will move us toward more authentic and wholehearted living. Please contact Heidi at heidiblock1@gmail.com or 301-651-6906.

 

 

ICP+P Connections is the e-Newsletter of the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, issued at the beginning of each month.