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 Natasha Oxenburgh, Psy.D.
NCSPP has had a busy first half of 2026. We have had a surge in energy and engagement across our programming and events, with community members enthusiastically participating in opportunities to gather, learn, and be with other clinical minds.
The response to the return of the Annual Lecture with Jamieson Webster, Ph.D., in conversation with Francisco González, M.D., was overwhelmingly positive. Attendees said they were captivated by Webster's mind and exploration of political and psychic life and engaged by González's groundedness, humor, and commitment to community psychoanalysis.
One theme that resonated was the distinction between politics and the political: the idea that psychoanalysis can take up the political (the deeper structures of power, exclusion, identification, and social relations that shape both individual and collective life) rather than politics itself (parties and ideological positions). Webster moved from Freud's study of Woodrow Wilson to Erik Erikson's reflections on American identity, connecting both to contemporary realities. She spoke of politics as a symptom of a failure, and, by extension, as an attempt at a solution to our collective anxieties. We might ask, what desire, resentment, hope, or fantasy is organized by and expressed through politics?
Webster invited critique as well as creation or “world-building,” which lent itself to dialogue about institutions. As one attendee remarked, “What a thing to be in a psychoanalytic dialogue that says, ‘We don’t just have to play in the rubble.’”
Since the Annual Lecture, Peter Goldberg, Ph.D., led a daylong workshop on the body in psychoanalysis that sold out, drawing over 50 participants. Alexander Zinchenko, Ph.D., is now leading a month-long seminar, also full, on the immigrant experience, in which the class is exploring displacement, nostalgia, and the uncanny in a nonlinear way.
Coming up on July 25th, 2026, check out the introductory event to our year-long Intensive Study Group beginning in September. This year's theme is Making Contact: Skin, Containment, and the Somatic in Psychic Life, with instructors Kristian Kemtrup, David Gatta, Maiga Berzins, Mary Margaret McClure, and Alice Jones.
In organizational news, I am delighted to welcome Sam Given-Dennis, MFT, as NCSPP's new Community Outreach Chair and newest Board member. As Sam builds the Community Outreach Committee, NCSPP will have greater capacity to offer free and low-cost events that foster connection and community.
Finally, more big news: Please save the date for September 19th, 2026, when we will welcome Usha Tummala-Narra, Ph.D., for a daylong event in which she will present and consult on her latest ideas and areas of research. Details and registration information will be available soon.
Lastly, if you are not already a member but have taken a class or attended an event or workshop with us, chances are a membership makes sense for you as programming is less expensive for members. Membership benefits also include a subscription to our journal, fort da, as well as journal discounts and invitations to our community events.
by San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis
SFCP IS PLEASED TO PRESENT THE SEASONED CLINICIANS PROGRAM: 2026 - 2027
A clinical case conference for psychoanalytically-oriented clinicians practicing individual psychotherapy a minimum of 20 years.
Wednesdays, 12:00pm - 1:30pm
November 18th, 2026 - May 19th, 2027
Online via Zoom
Tuition: $750
by Lorrie Goldin, LCSW
SUBJUNCTIVE/INDICATIVE
Phuc Tran, who as a child barely escaped death in the last days before Saigon fell, speaks in a TED talk about how grammar and culture shape one another and create different worldviews. English, he notes, employs the subjunctive tense–the could haves, would haves, and should haves. It communicates hope, imagination, and possibility, but also regret and longing.
Vietnamese, on the other hand, offers no such grammar. Lacking the subjunctive, it traffics in the indicative–how things are rather than how things might be or could have been. Tran credits to this foible of grammar his parents' resiliency in tackling the survival needs of their transplanted family: “There was no psychic energy drained to focus on what could have been.”
Tran, however, thinking primarily in the English of his adopted country, often imagined the What ifs? of past, present, and future, musings his elders saw as pointless. The subjunctive tense allowed him to dream but also proved a quagmire when life didn't pan out as he wished it would. “Accepting things for what they are, their indicativeness,” says Tran, “was my first step away from depression and anxiety.”
Tran's talk led me to reflect upon how often we use the subjunctive in therapeutic dialogue: “What would it be like if you could let yourself ____?” “What could you have done instead?” “How should your mother have responded?” “If you could feel, what might it be?” The subjunctive softens defenses and helps gain access to feelings, fantasies, and memories, allowing the patient's experience to emerge without too much interference. Most importantly, it fosters the expansive space in which possibility and creativity thrive.
by Sullivan Oakley, Psy.D.
ANNOUNCING 2026-2027 NCSPP INTENSIVE STUDY GROUP INTRODUCTORY EVENT
MAKING CONTACT: SKIN, CONTAINMENT, AND THE SOMATIC IN PSYCHIC LIFE
Saturday, July 25th, 2026 | 11:00am - 12:30pm
St. Clement’s Episcopal Church
2837 Claremont Blvd., Berkeley, CA 94705
This introductory event to NCSPP’s year-long Intensive Study Group (ISG) features the course’s five instructors—Kristian Kemtrup, MFT, David Gatta, Psy.D., Maiga Berzins, Psy.D., Mary Margaret McClure, D.M.H., and Alice Jones, M.D.—in conversation on this year’s theme, Making Contact: Skin, Containment, and the Somatic in Psychic Life. Instructors will provide an introduction to the concept of “psychoanalytic skin,” highlight foundational underlying theory and thought-provoking perspectives on the topic, and invite discussion and associations from participants.
UNION SQUARE THERAPY OFFICES AVAILABLE. Full-time (unfurnished, $900) & part-time (furnished, $325/day) psychotherapy offices available in Union Square, San Francisco. Please contact Pirouz for more information.