PIECE OF MIND

REFLECTIVE SPACES/MATERIAL PLACES

March 17, 2012
Instituto Familiar de la Raza, 2919 Mission St, San Francisco
Discussion by Neil Altman, Ph.D.
Conference directors: Lani Chow, Francisco Gonzalez, Beth Kita

Community mental health clinics are under enormous pressures to deliver more service with less and less resources. Meanwhile, the cases themselves are often extraordinarily complex, often involving layers of personal and multi-generational trauma, multiple mental health diagnoses in the context of personality issues and substance abuse, fractured families and social networks -- and all in a system that suffers from cutbacks, turf battles, conflicting contractual expectations, and inadequate support. And yet, extraordinary therapeutic work gets done.

Access Institute, PINC, and NCSPP are encouraged to co-sponsor a day of reflection, collaboration, connection, and networking in an innovative conference that will bring together frontline mental health workers, community activists, psychoanalysts, and therapists. The conference will take place on March 17 at Instituto Familiar de la Raza in the Mission district from 9:00am to 4:00pm.

In order to provide a common starting point, providers from Larkin Street Youth Services and Family Service Agency will present case material about a complex client who uses services at both sites. Neil Altman, Ph.D., a New York-based analyst and author of "Analyst in the Inner City", will discuss the case, emphasizing larger issues and the importance of sociocultural context. We will then break up into smaller work groups, using the morning presentation as a stimulus to further thinking. We will end the day with a large group roundtable discussion and a social hour.

We believe the intersection of community mental health and psychoanalytic thinking is a place of vibrant dialogue and creative mutual enrichment for both disciplines. We invite you to join us in what we hope will prove to be the first of a series of creative partnerships.

Fees:
$80 General Public
$65 NCSPP Assoc. & Full Members, Access Members, PINC Members
$20 Students, PINC Candidates, Community Mental Health Providers
$10 CE Credit Processing Fee

Lunch included. Registration at NCSPP website www.ncspp.org.

POTENTIAL SPACE: MARK MCKINLEY, PSY.D.

POIESIS AND THE ART OF THERAPY

Our understanding of psychotherapy has traditionally focused on the interplay between theory and technique. As is often the case, a gap emerges in practice between these two concepts. The persistence of such a gap may suggest that our conventional schema for understanding the practice of psychotherapy obscures a more basic and immediate engagement in the therapeutic encounter. The pre-Socratic sense of poiesis (literally "bringing-forth") offers a more accessible way to understand what occurs in the activity of psychotherapy.

In its broadest sense, poiesis refers to a bringing-forth, the "bursting of a blossom into bloom," as Heidegger described it. In contrast to a technical proficiency, poiesis is associated with the artful skill of master craftsmen who use their practical and embodied knowledge to work with their craft to bring out its best qualities. It is the craftsman's skill that facilitates an opening that clears the way to see meaningful distinctions and determine what is worthwhile. By recognizing the uniqueness of each situation, the craftsman is able to create each craft by revealing its most desired possibility of being.

Within the domain of psychotherapy, therapists work with their patients to open a space from which new possibilities may emerge. Poiesis, however, engenders these possibilities not merely, as our conventions dictate, by making the unconscious conscious, generating new narrative meanings, and unveiling universal truths, but also by skillfully working with the patient to bring forth his or her own possibilities of being-in-the-world. Through the process of therapy, patients develop resonance with particular experiences of the self that emerge as having meaning and value out of the array of possibilities that are considered in the space of therapy.

Herein is the artistic act of psychotherapy. Art can be said to organize and focus meaningful possibilities to reveal that which is significant. In this manner, we can construe psychotherapy as the art that works to bring-forth that which matters most with respect to the patient's own possibilities of being. In other words, the process of psychotherapy aims at bringing-forth a more authentic life, which is always at play within the therapeutic encounter.

This more ontological view of the activity of psychotherapy can be understood as an emergence and refinement of a poietic dimension of life. Just as the therapist engages the poietic through psychotherapy, so too the patient cultivates his or her own poietic style that ultimately transforms how the patient sees and experiences the world.

Mark McKinley, Psy.D.
Impulse Potential Space Editor

NCSPP'S CORNER: MATTHEW MORRISSEY, MFT

The NCSPP Annual Event in March will focus on body modification. Dr. Alessandra Lemma, author of Under the Skin: A Psychoanalytic Study of Body Modification, will be speaking. This event promises to be uniquely fascinating. By way of piquing our readers' interest in the overall topic, we were able to get a few NCSPP members to share their tattoos and the meanings they evoke.



My sleeve represents a combination of my Serbian identity and my all-in approach to life. The double-headed eagle and the crown are inspired by the Serbian crest. The girl is a visual representation of the gratefulness I have for my life, and what it might have been had I stayed behind.


A complex whirl of origins
Transforming functions
Ways to interpret
"Gambits"
Seeking connection
Initiation and ritual
Oedipal
Aesthetics
Meaning making
Unresolved



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APPOINTMENT BOOK

CLASSIFIEDS

BERKELEY OFFICE TO SUBLET. Suitable for psychoanalysis and/or psychotherapy. One minute walk to Chez Panisse, 12 minute walk to downtown Berkeley BART. Available Wednesday and Thursday afternoons from noon (including evenings), Friday mornings and early afternoon (through 2 pm), and all day Saturday and Sunday. $150 for a full day (and evening) per month; $75 for a half day per month, but willing to negotiate. Call: (510) 849-0288.

2 BRIGHT, NEWLY-CONSTRUCTED OFFICES: in Berkeley. Skylights, soundproofing, kitchen, parking. Available either full-time or half-time. Dr. Alice Jones, (510) 845-8800, alicejonesmd@gmail.com.

PSYCHOANALYTIC WRITING GROUP: for those writing or interested in getting started. Focus on developing individual voice and style and on support with writing anxieties. Oakland. Monthly meetings, Saturday mornings. $85 for 3 hr session. Annie Sweetnam, Ph.D. (510) 531-5212, Anniesweetnam@gmail.com.

ANALYTIC OFFICE SUBLET: Lovely upper Fillmore office in suite with three analysts available immediately for up to two and a half days other than Wednesday all day, and Friday afternoon. The office has a bay window, analytic couch and closet with built in desk. If interested please call (415) 346-8868.

CONSULTATION GROUP: Psychodynamically oriented group with particular attention to working across cultural and other differences and similarities. The group meets twice monthly on Mondays from 2:45 to 4:15. If interested, please call Nadine Tang, MSW at (510) 843-1512.

PSYCHOTHERAPY OFFICES AVAILABLE FOR RENT: In Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco from $550-$990. Light, bright with shared waiting area and bathroom. Contact Gina Enriquez, Keynote Properties, (415) 447-8210.

PSYCHOANALYTIC OFFICE FURNITURE: Couch, with black upholstery $275; small-scale black leather sofa $275; matching swivel chair $175. Perfect condition; photos available. Erik Ambjor, erik@sonomaforge.com.

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.