Impulse is a community newsletter produced by the Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology (NCSPP) and distributed electronically to subscribers at no cost. We envision Impulse as an integrative source for local news, events, and thinking of interest to the psychoanalytically inclined. Our goal is to be your guide as you explore the Bay Area's rich array of analytic resources.
We invite you to become a member of NCSPP, if you are not already. And, we welcome you as a subscriber to Impulse. Join us as we highlight the exceptional diversity of psychoanalytic thought and practice in Northern California.
by Ben Diamond, Psy.D., Managing Editor
Do I remember the painting? I want to have remembered it. I know I saw it, but was it in New York or Boston or Palo Alto or Philadelphia? I know it was purple, and rectangular, and huge, and vibrating, and by Rothko. Maybe it was I who was vibrating.
Whatever else I remember, I remember the painting’s electric purpleness and I remember being arrested in awe before it. I had to sit down–it struck a chord in me that hadn’t been struck before, anxious, overwhelmed, fearful. There was no hiding before that massive purple expanse. It demanded stillness, and so I sat, pulsing, humbled by its indescribable beauty.
by San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis
AN AFTERNOON OF POETRY & ART: MUSING ON LISTENING, A FUNDRAISER FOR THE SFCP CANDIDATE TRAINING GRANTS FUND FOR EQUITY AND DIVERSITY
Sunday, April 19th | 3:00pm – 5:30pm
In-person at SFCP
444 Natoma Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
and on Zoom
by Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California
RACIAL TRAUMA IN THE AFTERLIFE OF THE MIDDLE PASSAGE: FROM PLANTATION TO PROVISION GROUND
Saturday, April 11th | 9:00am – 2:30pm
In-person at PINC
530 Bush Street, 7th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94108
and on Zoom
by Christi Baker, L.M.F.T.
FAKE OUTRAGE
I have been thinking about what happens when powerful people harm others and then recast the injury as overreaction. The harmed person names what happened and describes its impact. The authority figure responds by minimizing, distorting, or denying it. With the help of loyal echoes, the story shifts: Nothing really happened. The person who was hurt becomes the problem–too sensitive, too dramatic, making much ado about nothing. Already wounded, they are wounded again.
This is gaslighting. We know it well in our clinical work: the undermining of another’s perception to preserve power. Through repetition and authority, the manipulator induces doubt–about memory, emotion, even reality itself. Words spoken from positions of power carry particular force. When reality is contested by someone who controls the narrative, the destabilization can be profound.
by Jonathan Willett, L.M.F.T.
My name is Jonathan Willett and I am a licensed marriage and family therapist working in Oakland. I first heard of NCSPP when I moved from Portland to Oakland in 2010 and asked a friend in the field for advice on how to get more involved. I was not yet licensed and working as a case manager for Bay Area Community Services, where I worked with folks struggling with major mental illness while living in challenging socioeconomic circumstances. I was learning to navigate the complexities of the non-profit, city, and county systems. I started to piece together the psychoanalytic education I hadn’t received in grad school, reading and taking classes through NCSPP and PINC. This helped to bring a much deeper perspective to my work with my clients and the systems they were in.
by Natasha Oxenburgh, Psy.D.
2026 ANNUAL LECTURE: JAMIESON WEBSTER ON PSYCHOANALYSIS IN TIMES OF CATASTROPHE
May 16th | 2:00pm – 6:00pm
In-person at the Brower Center
2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94704
or join live online
NCSPP is excited to invite you to our 2026 Annual Lecture. Jamieson Webster, Ph.D., clinical psychoanalyst, author, and professor, will present her work “Psychoanalysis in Times of Catastrophe.” This year’s event will be both in-person and online, making it accessible to remote participants.
by San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis
SPRING SYMPOSIUM: MAGGIE NELSON IN CONVERSATION WITH FRANCISCO GONZÁLEZ
Saturday, Apr 11, 2026 | 10:00am – 12:00pm
SFCP
444 Natoma St., San Francisco, CA 94103
and on Zoom
Join acclaimed writer and critic Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts and On Freedom, and psychoanalyst Francisco González, for an expansive conversation exploring the resonances between their work and the intersection of literature and psychoanalysis.
Nelson’s writing is celebrated for its intellectual daring and ability to keep thought open, courting complexity and fostering deep reflection without dissolution into relativism.
Expect a lively and wide-ranging conversation between these bold and subtle thinkers. They will reflect on writing and psychoanalysis as un/related practices, and explore questions of sex and intimacy, desire and ethics, fantasy and form, attachment and freedom, and what it means to stay with ambiguity while rigorously engaging the psychic, bodily, relational, and collective social dimensions of our lives.
Maggie Nelson is an acclaimed writer, poet, and critic known for her genre-bending work that blends memoir, cultural criticism, theory, and poetry. Her books, including The Argonauts, On Freedom, Bluets, and The Art of Cruelty, explore identity, sexuality, desire, art, and cultural life with rigorous intellectual inquiry and lyrical precision. The Argonauts won the National Book Critics Circle Award and has become a landmark work of contemporary autotheory. Nelson holds a Ph.D. in English literature and is a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. Her work has been recognized with a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and numerous other honors.
Francisco J. González, M.D., is a psychoanalyst, teacher, and writer, affiliated with PINC and NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. He serves on several editorial boards and was on the Holmes Commission on Racial Equality. He practices privately in San Francisco and Oakland and in the public domain at Instituto Familiar de la Raza in San Francisco.
Register here!
READ ON FOR A REVIEW OF MAGGIE NELSON’S LATEST BOOK
by Mara Gerson, Psy.D.
by Natasha Oxenburgh, Psy.D.
HOLDING A COUPLE STATE OF MIND: AN INTRO TO THE “TAVI” MODEL OF COUPLES THERAPY
In February, NCSPP hosted Dr. Ortal Kirson-Trilling, Psy.D., PCPG’s Director of Training, who taught a four-week course on the “Tavi” (Tavistock) model of couple therapy. The approach encourages therapists to move beyond understanding a couple’s observable dynamics (like the classic anxious/avoidant or pursue/withdraw pattern) to consider what a couple is up to unconsciously, and what it means to the couple to be in relationship. As a participant, I reflected on how popular consumption of attachment dynamics can lead to the idea that, for example, a pursuer need stop pursuing and a withdrawer need stop withdrawing to resolve a couple’s problematic relational dance. But, from the psychoanalytic perspective, this begs for a game of whack-a-mole, inviting behavioral solutions for unconscious problems that simply show up in different dance moves. Repetitive fights and rigid roles are surface expressions of deeper, co-created structures.
Old couches, new books, hot jobs, cool internships, office rentals? List them in Impulse's Classifieds for a modest fee. Please see our submission guidelines for details.
Community Mental Health Botanical Tour
Sat, Apr 18 / 12:45pm - 2:30 pm / 1550 Wildcat Canyon Rd. / Berkeley
NCSPP / (415) 496-9949 / $10
Launching Your Private Practice: Developmental and Frame Considerations
Mon, Apr 20 (begins) / 7:10pm - 8:40pm / 4026 Piedmont Ave. / Oakland
NCSPP / (415) 496-9949 / C. Brandt, Psy.D. / $90-$210
Jamieson Webster: Psychoanalysis in Times of Catastrophe
Sat, May 16 / 2:00 pm - 6:00 pm / 2150 Allston Way / Berkeley
NCSPP / (415) 496-9949 / J. Webster, Ph.D., F. González, M.D. / $45 - $135
The Dissociated Body: From Freud’s Hysteria to Contemporary Technophilia
Sat, May 30 / 10:00am - 4:00pm / 2837 Claremont Blvd. / Berkeley
NCSPP / (415) 223-1674 / P. Goldberg, Ph.D. / $75-$225