We hope that you enjoy this month's 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.

ANGELINA WANTS ONE FROM EVERY CONTINENT AND MADONNA GETS POLITICAL IN MALAWI

There are (rough estimate) 3 million, non-related adopted persons in the US, though it’s a category tracked only in the most recent census surveys. For each of those millions there are definitely two "first parents" and there is at least one, usually two, parents responsible for parenting said "adoptees." Yet, this group of millions with first-hand connections to adoption remains a poorly understood subculture in the US.

I put the terminology above in quotes, because language is complex, and some in the field realm of adoption contest their given labels. Like any other, the language of adoption speaks its history and culture. Take, for example, the term "put up," as in, “She put her child up for adoption.” You can find it in most newspaper articles about adoption.

The term references the orphan trains, which carried approximately 100,000 parentless children from city streets and orphanages to midwestern families between 1851 and 1929. Without regard for previous relationships or sibling status, children were disembarked from trains onto station platforms, so they could be looked over as potential farm hands and adoptive children. Health, heft, and teeth were all surveyed by local farmers. Because the children were small, they were literally put up on platforms for easy viewing. Thus the phrase, “put up” for adoption.

It is this history, invoked when using seemingly everyday language, that also makes me passionate about working with adoption and attendant issues. Adoptive connections are staggeringly simple, mostly based on desire for loving, healthy attachments. The adoptive panorama, spanning psyche, history, culture, class, race, and so on, is, however, equally complex, filled with twists and turns, secrets and shadows, and endless paradoxes -- of connections entwined with loss, of parents who are substitutes for whom there is no substitute, of identities based in dissolution, crying out for integration.

Notwithstanding Hollywood sensationalism of Brangelinas and Madonnas, adoption's internal landscape takes us into primal territory, where powerful fantasies, deep longings and existential questions beg for meaningful expression. Adoptive connections, including all birth and adoptive facets, make up a subculture worthy of psychoanalytic attention and understanding. I am available for conversations or questions.

Warm regards,

Melissa Holub, Ph.D.
NCSPP President


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2012

The upside of a down economy is increased time for personal improvement. (Yes, this could be reading An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis on Kindle. But, bah, humbug, it's summer!) My extra hour was spent skimming celebrities' challenges with substances in a nameless magazine, while an aesthetician rendered services to me, which are confidential. We chatted while she worked, a mature woman, who had weathered a few of life's calamities. "Are your patients talking about 2012?," she asked. "No," I replied, not mentioning that I was too busy with the challenges of '09 to contemplate any date later than an August vacation to a location where a psychoanalytic conference would not be taking place. "I haven't heard of 2012, and if my patients mentioned it, I couldn't tell you," I smiled.

She explained that 2012 is the end of the Mayan calendar, and it's rumored the world will come to a pestilent, global warmed, Al Qaida-ish, faminous, nuclear, brimstone-esque, _______________(insert global terror of your choice ) end. I though of Winnicott's idea that what one fears has already happened. An online search produced a plethora of web sites, including survive2012. Some people have a fantasy of fused mother-infant bliss expressed in the belief that 2012 will herald a spiritual awakening. Others project their terrible anxieties of the pre-Oeidipal mother into a fear of geomagnetic reversal, asteroid strike, or reverse time travel. (Oy vey, do we have to go through the negative transference again?) The threat of alien invasion was mentioned (that darn father, busting up good times with Mother Earth) as well as a calamity called "the rise of the machines." The latter is here. We may be wireless, but we've got umbilical cords to our devices.

My word count for this space is shot. I'll close with the last section from my draft. It's about wanting to taste a $295 bottle of Cab a vintner recently described. It's fitting that this diatribe about the terrors of 2012 ends with a fantasy about the terroirs of an escapist elixir. The vintner noted that some red wines are casked for more than 24 months. A wine may be set for release as far ahead as 2012. "We'll open it and smell it along the timeline," he explained. "And we'll say,wow, that wine is really showing its stuff." Like when we notice, one day in treatment, our patient really is changing.

Cleopatra Victoria, MFT
IMPULSE Editor


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THE RELATIONAL TURN

Are you looking for a small, stimulating, yearlong course to deepen your understanding of psychoanalytic psychotherapy? Are you in need of diverse viewpoints and a learning community to support your clinical work? Then register for the 2009-2010 San Francisco/ East Bay Intensive Study Group.

The 2009-2010 courses examine the Relational Turn in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, engaging participants in a lively debate as to how these ideas are applied in clinical practice. Topics to be addressed, among others, include: the seminal works of Stephen Mitchell, the relational body, working with impasse, and developing one’s own relational voice. The course includes a strong clinical focus.

Watch for our opening event in September: a roundtable discussion with seven ISG instructors. Join us for wine and cheese and a chance for an exciting exchange of ideas. Registration will be on a first-come, first-served basis.

For information please visit our website.


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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.

Mid-Summer Happy Hour
Fri, Jul 10 / 6 PM - 9 PM / The Library at Bourbon and Branch, 501 Jones Street / San Francisco
NCSPP / (917) 405-3308 / free

Lutecium: Open House
Fri, Jul 10 / 6 PM - 8 PM / Flood Building, 870 Market St. / San Francisco
Lutecium / Lutecium Faculty & Candidates / free

A Psychoanalytic Forum - practical app of psa theory
Sat, Jul 11 (begins) / 7 PM - 9 PM / 1330 Lincoln Ave #201 / San Rafael
CIP / (415) 459-5999 ext. 303 / Robert Waska, MFT, Ph.D., FIPA / $30

To submit an event, please see our submission guidelines.

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FOR SALE: San Francisco psychotherapy office space. Unique opportunity to purchase a 376 sq. ft. office space in medical condominium complex located across from Mt. Zion hospital. Remodeled in 2003 and built out specifically for a psychoanalytic practice. Has private waiting room, separate exit for patients and private office space separate from consultation room. Convenient parking lot on site for patients and therapists. Contact Bernard Katzmann for information. (415) 861-5222 X 120.

NCSPP PENINSULA/SOUTH BAY ISG: The Traumatized Self: Theoretical and Clinical Explorations. This year long course will explore psychoanalytic thinking on trauma beginning with Freud's seduction theory and including contemporary perspectives for understanding trauma. Faculty: Sue Saperstein, Psy.D., Robert Carerre, Ph.D., Annie Sweetnam, Ph.D., Stephen Hartman, Ph.D. Begins 9/09. To register click here.


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.

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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.

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Melissa Holub, Ph.D., NCSPP President
Cleopatra Victoria, M.A., MFT, Editor-in-Chief
Bruce Weitzman, MFT, Managing Editor
Meg Earls, M.A., Features Editor
Terra Morais, M.A., Appointment Book Editor
Michele McGuinness, Production Manager
Matthew Morrissey, Technical Editor
Cate Corcoran, Psy.D., Brad Falconer, M. A., Editors Emeritus

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

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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.

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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.

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