Impulse is a community newsletter produced by the Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology (NCSPP) and distributed electronically at no cost to subscribers. 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 NCSPP Board of Directors
A statement expressing grief, outrage, and the denunciation of the latest racist atrocities and acts of terror can feel like a hollow gesture that does not begin to address the terror, pain, and loss engulfing the Asian American and Pacific Islander community. However, NCSPP remaining silent perpetuates the violence against the AAPI community. Anti-AAPI acts of violence rose 150% between 2019 to 2020, and yet we as a nation and as a community largely remained silent. Included below are resources for action, training, and donating as additional means to counter this silence.
AAPI organizations across the Bay Area have been raising the alarm for months that their communities are being traumatized by the increasing number of attacks against Asian women and elders. The horrific acts in Atlanta were an escalation of on-going racist and misogynistic violence, which tragically resulted in femicide — the intentional murder of a person because they are female, femme, or feminine presenting.
by June Lin-Arlow, AMFT
Those of us who were at Division 39’s 40th Annual Spring Meeting: Reckoning / Foresight witnessed and participated in a bold convening on, dare I say, the future of psychoanalysis. It was nice to see familiar faces from the NCSPP community presenting on important topics that psychoanalysis is finally grappling with: Gregory Desierto, Alexander Shen, Tim Kim, Mamta Dadlani, Molly Merson, Ben Morsa, Carnella Gordon-Brown, and Tara Bredesen, just to name a few. Psychoanalysis is reckoning with its history, and there was an intentional focus on deconstructing foundational topics, like neutrality and the Oedipal Complex, and centering voices that are typically marginalized in these spaces.
by Todd Rising, Psy.D.
After months of careful consideration, NCSPP’s Board of Directors has decided to dedicate the 2021 - 2022 academic year to critically rethink our approach to creating and offering community programming. In order for our work to be anti-racist and anti-oppressive, we will pause the majority of our programming to take stock of how White supremacy and racism are built into the structures of the academic home we extend to our diverse community and how they cause harm. While our mission is to offer our membership and community thoughtful spaces for thinking and reflection, our organization has also been in need of a similar space for ourselves.
With six committees producing a variety of programming throughout the academic year, our Board has little room to think together about our own bigger picture structures. This has led to important issues being dropped and decisions made without enough information and thinking. Structures that have been in place for the bulk of NCSPP’s 35-year existence continue without critical evaluation of the ways in which they can perpetuate our own blind spots and result in harmful transgressions among BIPOC and marginalized community members. Lessening our potential to create further harm among our community is an important intention of our year in reflection.
by San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis
I AM WALKING IN THE WOODS IN THE POURING RAIN: A CONSIDERATION OF INDISPENSABLE OBJECTS
The San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis presents the Haskell Norman Prize for Excellence in Psychoanalysis: I Am Walking in the Woods in the Pouring Rain: A Consideration of Indispensable Objects
Presenter: Donald B. Moss, M.D.
Moderator: Charles P. Fisher, M.D.
Monday, May 10 2021
7.30 pm - 9.30 pm
by Rebekah Tinker, ASW
CONVERSATIONS ON RAPE
A few nights ago I lay awake, restless, staring at the moon-drenched pine outside my window, my mind both empty and loud. Hours earlier my partner and I watched A Promising Young Woman, written and directed by Emerald Fennell. The black comedy thriller follows a young woman seeking to avenge her friend’s rape and death (you can read on, no spoilers!). I thought of my clients, my friends, the strangers whose stories I knew intimately from the news, each confusing encounter I have had with men. I thought of each of us alone in our beds, staring into the night, waiting for morning.
by Molly Merson, MFT
Back from the Crocodile’s Belly: Philippine Babaylan Studies and the Struggle for Indigenous Memory. This interview discusses S. Lily Mendoza’s new book of the same title. Mendoza illustrates how moving toward remembrance, history, and complexity offers a path toward liberation from colonizing narratives.
Re-Envisioning Trauma Recovery: Listening and Learning from African Voices in Healing Collective Trauma. These authors offer a path towards healing that decenters White institutional extraction and recenters the focus on innate cultural notions of healing and repair among displaced and traumatized community members.
Mental(izing) Health. This author offers a critique of White “WEIRD” psychotherapy, highlighting the White clinician/person’s failure to mentalize Black patients/people (Vaughans), and challenges White clinicians to take up race with White patients.
THREE QUIET PSYCHOTHERAPY OFFICES in great location on Divisadero Street (next to UCSF Mt. Zion). Suite is 6 therapist offices converted from second story Edwardian flat with spacious shared waiting room and staff kitchen. Internet access provided. One office medium-sized (12.5’ by 11.5’) unfurnished, $900. 2 smaller offices (approximately 8'x10') unfurnished, $750 each. Each office has double doors for soundproofing, carpeting, and window. Neighborhood has variety of restaurants, businesses, and medical offices (Starbucks 2 doors down; specialty pasta shop next door; day spa on ground floor). Easily accessed with public transportation. Street parking (metered and 2-hour zones), and parking garage next block over. For more information text/call Tom at (415) 810-6481.
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.
Holding it Together
Sat, May 1 / 10:00 am - 2:00 pm / Zoom
PINC / (415) 288-4050 / L. Briggs, Ph.D., et al. / free - $40
Symposium – Addressing Basic Faults
Tue, May 4 / 7:30 pm - 9:00 pm / Zoom
PINC / (415) 288-4050 / T. Cornelius, M.D. / free - $35
Conversing with Three Brothers: Black Leadership in 2021
Wed, May 5 / 6:45 pm - 9:00 pm / Zoom
SFCP / (415) 632-2438 / J. Suiter, Psy.D., et al. / free
I Am Walking in the Woods in the Pouring Rain
Mon, May 10 / 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm / Zoom
SFCP / (415) 632-2438 / D. Moss, M.D.; C. Fisher, M.D. / free
Inhabiting Multiple Spaces: The Art of Maria de Los Angeles
Sat, May 14 / 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm / Zoom
PINC / (415) 288-4050 / M. de Los Angeles / free - $40
Perpetrator Memories and Mythologies
Sat, May 15 / 10:00 am - 12:00 pm / Zoom
PINC / (415) 288-4050 / S. Grand, Ph.D. / free - $40
How Our Mind Becomes Racialized: A Developmental Perspective
Sat, May 22 / 10:00 am - 12:00 pm / Zoom
SFCP / (415) 632-2428 / B. Stoute, M.D.; J. Rao, LMFT / free