From its inception, psychoanalysis has sought to break through the barriers of conventional understanding, going beyond what we already know about ourselves in search of brave new insights about the human condition. In that spirit, we are pleased to highlight what must surely be a groundbreaking event, as SFCP asks Adrienne Harris to reflect on transgendered identity from an analytic point of view. To learn more, visit our APPOINTMENT BOOK section, where you'll also find envelope-pushing offerings on subjects as varied as love, war, and popular song.

Also in this issue, NCSPP President Drew Tillotson spotlights several of NCSPP's upcoming offerings; IMPULSE editor Cleopatra Victoria finds that love is in the air; and PINC previews a two-part series on the Oedipus complex with Diane Elise and Jody Messler Davies.

We hope that you enjoy our February issue, and we hope you'll join NCSPP or contribute to our scholarship fund to assist us in fostering a vibrant psychoanalytic community in Northern California.

As I write this, I have just returned invigorated from the meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the International Psychoanalytical Studies Organization in Manhattan. These meetings were exciting and gave me the sense that NCSPP's programming in the Bay Area is right on the pulse of what is pertinent and contemporary in psychoanalytic discourse.

This month, I want to encourage you to access our NCSPP educational opportunities. I'd like to call your attention to two NCSPP upcoming events that offer great learning potential. On February 23rd, The San Francisco and East Bay Intensive Study Groups' Mid-Year Event presents internationally renowned Dr. Ruth Stein, with Dr. Peter Goldberg as her discussant, in A Deep Well: Ruth Stein on the Feel of Unconscious Experience. It has the markings of a great day by combining an exciting and influential guest lecturer with one of our most distinguished Bay Area analysts.

On March 29th, we celebrate our 21st Annual Lecture, with Dr. Lewis Aron. This event, A Day With Lewis Aron, Ph.D.: Relational Psychoanalysis: Fantasy, Feminism and Contemporary Clinical Practice, will be an opportunity to hear two rich, clinical papers: "Rethinking Psychotherapy vs. Psychoanalysis: What Does Feminism Have To Do With It?" and "Origination and Birth Fantasies." This program promises to be an engaging experience for the audience, for which Dr. Aron is known. Dr. Aron was initially trained as a Freudian analyst at New York University and, after graduating, began supervision with Stephen Mitchell, Emmanuel Ghent, and other founders of what has become American relational theory. His considerable contributions to relational psychoanalysis are too numerous to mention here, but he is widely published, (his book, A Meeting of Minds, has been translated into several languages), and teaches internationally. His papers for our annual lecture are based on his next authored work.

So, I hope you will join us for these or some of our other offerings listed in detail on our website. Right now is an auspicious time in our NCSPP community for learning, and we hope you enjoy what we enthusiastically present.

Warm regards,

Drew Tillotson, Psy.D.
President, NCSPP

back to top

It's a curious culture in which one is alerted to upcoming holidays by the changing seasonal aisle in Walgreen's. If you've missed the pink foil-swathed chocolate roses and the wildly blooming fields of red cards, February embraces Valentine's Day, and love. It's relevant to speak of patient-analyst love — something different than just transference/ countertransference, or the clearly stickier-than-caramel erotic transference. Love for a patient enfolds empathy, interest, continuity, patience and self-restraint...no actual tarrying or marrying our decidedly delectable 4:00 patient... Some analysts feel that love for a patient is essential for the treatment to flourish. The patient may love the analyst too — for her attention, concern, dependability, insight, soothing, or charm. Like all affairs of the heart, patient-analyst love is mysterious.

Our thoughts may turn to romantic love in our private lives. Neuropsych shows us that, in love, our brains stir in the same areas that manifest hunger, thirst, and drug cravings. It's theorized that love is hard-wired to be addictive because, without it, humanity would die out. The coital cocktail of oxytocin, vasopressin, dopamine, and norepinephrine makes us feel good and enhances the connection to our lover. Oxytocin released during sex bonds us to our partner and vasopressin facilitates affiliation and pairbonding — well, at least in the male vole.

In Buddhism, kama is sensuous, sexual love and an obstacle to enlightenment, since it is selfish. During courtly times, romantic love was pursued outside of marriage, an institution preoccupied with ensuring that wealth stayed in the family. Of course, for Freud, every new love is a refinding of an old love. As a patient wearily informed me, "Everybody marries their parents."

In our circles, it's often murmured that great literature reveals the most about passion, so perhaps we should jilt the scholarly titans this month and turn to fiction for the last word on love. When the 19th-century French novelist Gustave Flaubert penned prose to his paramour, the poet Colet, he describes falling in love:

"What irresistible impulse drove me towards you?
For an instant I saw the abyss
I realized its depth
And then vertigo swept over me."

Cleopatra Victoria, MFT
IMPULSE Editor

back to top

PINC presents The Oedipus Complex, a two-part series with Diane Elise and Jody Messler Davies.

In the first event, Dr. Elise will present her paper "The Black Man and the Mermaid." Taking erotic experience in the female clinical dyad as her starting point, she will illustrate how the recognition of Oedipal "threeness" can serve as a traumatic disruption which is experienced as an assault on dyadic "reality". Lisa Buchberg and Martine Aniel will serve as discussants.
Saturday March 8th: 10 am - 1 pm

In the second event, Dr. Davies will present her paper "From Oedipus Complex to Oedipal Complexity". In this work she reconceptualizes positive and negative Oedipal configurations of identification and counteridentification, not as specific phases of childhood sexual development, but as a lifelong struggle to sustain romantic and sexual attachments.
Friday, May 2nd, 2008 6:30 - 9:00 pm

Both events held at the Unitarian Universalist Society
1187 Franklin Street, San Francisco

back to top

Appointment Book offers a sampling of the psychoanalytically oriented events taking place in Northern California over the coming month. Where available, simply click an event title to view details on the sponsoring organization's web site.

Psychoanalysis and Music: The Symbology of Popular Song
Sat, Feb 2 / 10 AM - 1 PM / Calvary Presbyterian Church, 2515 Fillmore Street / San Francisco
PINC / (415) 922-4050 / Albert Mason, M.D.; Charles Dithrich, Ph.D. / $40 - $70

SFCP Child Colloquia
Sat, Feb 2 / 10 AM - 12 PM / 2340 Jackson St., 4th Floor (entrance on Webster) / SF
SFCP / (415) 563-5815 / Mirta Berman de Oelsner / free

Traumatic Aspects of Normal Development
Sat, Feb 2 / 9 AM - 1 PM / Christ Episcopal Church, 1040 Border Rd. / Los Altos
SFCP / (415) 563-5815 / Nancy Peters, L.C.S.W. / $100

SFCP Friends Clinical Forum (East Bay)
Wed, Feb 6 / 7 PM - 9 PM / Herrick Hospital, Conf. Room CC, 2001 Dwight Way / Berkeley
SFCP Friends / (415) 563-5815 / Kristen Carey, Psy.D. ; Sue von Bayer, Ph.D. / free (CE $15)

Peninsula Student Outreach: Formulating Transference Interpretations
Wed, Feb 6 (begins) / 7:30 PM - 9 PM / Psychiatry Build., 401 Quarry Rd., Room 1206 / Palo Alto
SFCP / (415) 563-5815 / Janice Mill, Ph.D. / free

Peninsula/South Bay Salon: Psychoanalytic Valentines: The Possibility of Love
Fri, Feb 8 / 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM / phone MJ Myatt for location / Redwood City
NCSPP / (650) 364-8095 / Peter Carnochan, Ph.D. / $30

A Day with Adrienne Harris: The Flexible Body and the Transgendered Self
Sat, Feb 9 / 9 AM - 3:30 PM / 2340 Jackson St., 4th Floor (entrance on Webster) / SF
SFCP / (415) 563-5815 / Adrienne Harris, Ph.D., Susan Stryker, Ph.D.,
Michel Feldman, M.D. / $55 - $140

SFCP Scientific Meeting: Repairing the Reparative Object
Mon, Feb 11 / 8:30 PM - 9:30 PM / 2340 Jackson St., 4th Floor (entrance on Webster) / SF
SFCP / (415) 563-5815 / Robert Bartner, Ph.D. / free

On the Role of the Psychoanalyst During Times of War
Thu, Feb 14 / 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM / Location TBA / Berkeley
SFCP / (415) 563-5815 / Rachel Peltz, Ph.D.; Nancy Caro Hollander, Ph.D. / free

SFCP Theater on the Couch: The Blood Knot by Athol Fugard
Fri, Feb 15 / 8 PM / ACT Theater, 415 Geary Street / San Francisco
SFCP / (415) 563-3366 / Panelists: Linda Lagemann, Ph.D.; Peter Goldberg, Ph.D. / $19 - $59

SFCP East Bay Student Outreach: Case Conference
Sat, Feb 16 (begins) / 10 AM - 12 PM / Herrick, 2001 Dwight Way, Conf. Rm CC / Berkeley
SFCP / (415) 563-5815 / Instructors TBA / free

Friends Clinical Forum (San Francisco)
Tue, Feb 19 / 7 PM - 9:30 PM / 2340 Jackson St., 4th Floor (entrance on Webster) / SF
Friends of SFCP / (415) 563-5815 / Margot Dexler, Ph.D.; Michael Wagner, Ph.D. / free

SFCP Friends Clinical Forum (South Bay)
Tue, Feb 19 / 7 AM - 9 PM / Psychiatry Building, 401 Quarry Road / Stanford
Friends of SFCP / (415) 563-5815 / Vinh Q. Thai, M.D.; Gail Bates, Ph.D. / free

East Bay ISG Midyear Event: Small Study Group with Peter Goldberg, Ph.D.
Fri, Feb 22 / 3 PM - 5 PM / The Dream Institute, 1672 University Ave. / Berkeley
PINC & NCSPP / (415) 457-9949 / Peter Goldberg, Ph.D. / $25 (limit 15 people)

A Deep Well: Ruth Stein on the Feel of Unconscious Experience
Sat, Feb 23 / 9 AM - 2:30 PM / UCSF Laurel Heights, 3333 California Street / San Francisco
PINC & NCSPP / (415) 457-9949 / Ruth Stein, Ph.D.; Peter Goldberg, Ph.D. / $25 - $160

SFCP Stanford Grand Rounds: Shame Veiled and Unveiled
Wed, Feb 27 / 6:10 PM - 7:30 PM / Psychiatry Building, 401 Quarry Road / Stanford
SFCP / (415) 563-5815 / Mali Mann, M.D. / free

SFCP Public Lecture Series: Navigating Work-Family Balance
Wed, Feb 27 / 7:30 PM - 9 PM / 2340 Jackson St., 4th Floor (entrance on Webster) / SF
SFCP / (415) 563-5815 / Daphne de Marneffe, Ph.D. / free

Film The Butcher Boy: Program in Honor of Woodrow Donovan
Sat, Mar 1 / 1 PM - 5 PM / UCSF Laurel Heights; 3333 California St. / San Francisco
Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies / (415) 679-0997 / Diane Borden, Ph.D.; Mark Levy, M.D.; Abbot Bronstein, Ph.D.; Frank Lossy, M.D. / $15 - $35

Friends of SFCP East Bay Clinical Forum (Case Presentation and Discussion)
Wed, Mar 5 / 7 PM - 9 PM / Herrick Hospital, Conf. Rm. CC, 2001 Dwight Way / Berkeley
Friends of SFCP / (415) 563-5815 / Emily Taylor Johnson, L.C.S.W. (presenter);
Maureen Katz, M.D. (discussant) / free (CE $15)

To submit an event, please see our submission guidelines.

back to top

PSYCHOANALYTIC GROUP THERAPY: Ongoing, for men and women, focusing on relationships, traumas, depression, anxieties, isolation. Tuesday evenings, 7:00 - 8:30pm. Sliding scale fee. Group therapist: Sue Saperstein, Psy.D. (415) 641-4146.

MEMORIAL: SFIPS (the San Francisco Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies) presents a memorial program in honor of Dr. Woodrow Donovan, its deceased President. The film The Butcher Boy will be shown, with papers by Diane Borden, Ph.D. and Mark Levy, M.D., an introduction by Abbot Bronstein, Ph.D., and moderated by Frank Lossy, M.D. The program will be held Saturday, March 1, 2008, from 1-5 pm at UCSF Laurel Heights Conference Center. For more information, see www.sfips.org/programs.php or contact frozy@concentric.net or (415) 679-0997. CEUs for MFTs and LCSWs. $35; $25 SFIPS members; $15 students.

INTERNSHIP: SF Bay Area 12-mo. FT-PT post-degree internship, 08/08-08/09. $11.50 hr. To apply: girlsinc-alameda.org/about/employment.htm.

PSYCHOTHERAPY SUITE: On University Ave., Sacramento. Large corner office, good location. Share rent, expenses with two psychotherapists. Contact Chris Larsen, M.D. (916) 920-4028 or Carol Ekstrom, Ph.D. (916) 564-6248.

Old couches, new books, hot jobs, cool internships? Post classified ads on NCSPP's online bulletin board at no charge. We will also feature your listing in IMPULSE for a modest fee. Please see our submission guidelines for details.

back to top

The Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology (NCSPP) is committed to the study of psychoanalytic psychology and the encouragement of its interest in the professional and general communities. We are a multi-disciplinary, non-profit membership organization open to mental health professionals and all others interested in the study of psychoanalytic psychology.

Our more than 650 members form a community that spans the greater Bay Area and Northern California. NCSPP is a local affiliate of Division 39 (psychoanalysis) of the American Psychological Association. Our vast array of lectures, intensive study groups, scientific meetings, courses, our journal fort da, and numerous special events and projects are all brought to you by scores of volunteers who work to support NCSPP's mission. Our educational programs include continuing education credit for psychologists, marriage and family therapists, and licensed clinical social workers. We welcome you into the psychoanalytic community in Northern California. Join us.

back to top

Drew Tillotson, Psy.D., NCSPP President
Cleopatra Victoria, M.A., MFT, Editor
Cate Corcoran, Psy.D., Features Editor
Meg Earls, M.A., Copy Editor
Brad Falconer, M.A., Managing Editor

Each month, IMPULSE reaches over 1,830 psychoanalytically interested professionals and students in Northern California.

back to top

IMPULSE is a monthly newsletter published by the Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology for the purpose of connecting Northern California psychoanalytic practitioners, students, and scholars. IMPULSE aims to foster the development of psychoanalytic practice and thought in our region through collaboration and understanding.

For information on submitting event listings and other content to IMPULSE, please see our guidelines and policies page on the NCSPP web site.

back to top

IMPULSE is published electronically once a month by the Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology. Comments are welcome and should be sent via our online contact form.

You are receiving this monthly newsletter from the Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology (NCSPP) because of your interest in psychoanalysis. Any mental health professional or student interested in psychoanalytic thought may subscribe free to IMPULSE, regardless of organizational affiliation. To ensure that IMPULSE isn't misidentified as junk mail, we recommend adding impulse@ncspp.org to your email program's address book. If you haven't done so already, click to confirm your interest in subscribing. To unsubscribe, click the SafeUnsubscribe link at the bottom of this message.

back to top