Online Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Practice and Training in Times of Social Division, Pandemic and War

Weekend Conference October 13-15, 2023 will be offered Online. Open to any mental health professional or mental health professional-in-training.

REGISTER

limited scholarships monies are available, apply now

IPI welcomes all Clinicians, beginner to advanced, to attend this weekend event.

View the Frequently Asked Questions for October 2023

Program Date(s):

October 13, 2023 - October 15, 2023

Weekend Overview

This weekend conference addresses teletreatment and teletraining under geopolitical conditions of pandemic, division between factions and countries, international tension with China and Russia, and war in Ukraine.  We review APsaA empirical studies on teleanalysis uptake, reconceptualize online teaching for challenged psychoanalytic psychotherapy training programs in China and Russia, illustrate technology-mediated support for traumatized Russian/Ukrainian colleagues, and explore the impact of technology on psychoanalytic psychotherapy practice and analytic process.

The course will use lecture, large group discussion, small group/GAM group discussion, case presentation and discussion and informal discussion to achieve the course objectives.

General weekend schedule

Friday 9:45am – 6:15 pm US ET

Saturday 9:45am – 6:15pm US ET

Sunday 10:00am – 2:00pm US ET

Detailed schedules, reading lists, and educational objectives will be provided to registered participants.

Attendance at IPI’s October 2023 Weekend Conference offers you …

  • An international diverse learning community
  • Pros and cons of distance treatment, learning and supervision
  • Theory and best practice of technology-mediated treatment and training
  • Clinical examples of technology-mediated psychotherapy
  • Development of the clinician’s ethical stance in IPI’s group affective model in the GAM group
  • Effects of the internet and artificial intelligence on professional and personal development
  • Research on teletherapy and teleanalysis
  • Technology for geographic outreach training for therapists in countries under threat.

Presenters

Todd Essig, Ph.D (NY, USA), is Faculty and Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the William Alanson White Institute, member of the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN) Advisory Board and of the International Psychoanalytic Association’s Task Force on Contemporary Education. From 1994 to 2009 he was founder and director of The Psychoanalytic Connection (aka psychoanalysis.net). Widely known as a pioneer, editor, and author in the innovative uses of mental health technologies, he publishes and lectures widely. He is a recipient of Distinguished Service awards by APsaA and the NY State Psychological Association.

Harold Kudler, MD (NC, USA) is an Associate Consulting Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University and the VA Medical Center where he specializes in the nature and action of trauma  and its intergenerational effects and in the identification and treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  He conducts research and develops training programs on the dynamics of trauma and treatment of PTSD.

Mino Zanchi MD (Italy) specialist in Internal Medicine, Cardiology and Psychosomatic Medicine; Member Italian Psychoanalytic Society and IPA; co-founder and member, Adriatic Psychoanalytic Center; Author/coauthor of scientific articles in national and international journals and scientific meetings; in practice in Fano and Senigallia, Italy.

Caroline M. Sehon, MD, FABP (MD, USA) Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine; Director of the International Psychotherapy Institute (IPI) where she is a supervising child and adult psychoanalyst in its analytic training programs; Member ApsaA and IPA; author of articles and book chapters, including chapters on teletherapy and teleanalysis in Psychoanalysis Online 1, 2, 3, and 4;  past chair of IPI’s International Teleanalysis Working Group; in private practice in Bethesda, Maryland, USA.

Andi Pilecki Eliza-Christie LPC (PA, USA) licensed professional counselor and psychoanalyst in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, working primarily with LGBTQ adolescents and adults and providing supervision and consultation;  Member ApsaA; national faculty member of IPI, and chair of its Diversity Committee; teaching analyst at the International Institute for Psychoanalytic Training (IIPT — IPI’s psychoanalytic training program) and a clinical case conference consultant with IPI China.

Michelle Kwintner PhD, LCSW-R (NY, USA) is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Ithaca, NY, USA.  She offers analytic treatment for adults as well as analytic consultation via zoom.She is a national faculty member at International Psychotherapy Institute, is chair of the curriculum committee for the analytic training program at IPI, and is a member of the Colleague Assistance Committee. She is a member of APsaA and IPA. Michelle is the author of a number of presentations and publications including articles on object relations theory and community-based mental health. Her latest publications are “Thucydides on the Ancient Athenian Epidemic: Body, Mind, Society, and Trauma” (2021) and “Psychoanalytic social work:  How to do things with words and how to say things with deeds” in the 2022 volume of Psychoanalytic Social Work in memory of William Meyer.

Yolanda Varela, PhD. (Panama, RP) Training analyst, member of the International Psychoanalytic Association; Member, APSaA; member, FEPAL; faculty member of the International Psychotherapy Institute (IPI) and supervising analyst at the International Institute of Psychoanalytic Training at IPI, Bethesda, Maryland; former Chair of IPI-Panama. Past Director of the Panamanian Psychoanalytic IPA Provisional Society.

Flora Barragan, MA, (Mexico) Psychoanalyst, associate faculty, Combined Child Analytic and Child Psychotherapy Program at IPI.  Practice of adult analysis and child psychotherapy with specialization in school consultation and the treatment of children and adolescents with school performance issues.

Jill Savege Scharff MD, FABP, (MD, USA) Co-founder of the International Psychotherapy Institute (IPI) where she is a supervising child and adult psychoanalyst in its analytic and child training programs; Member APsaA and IPA; Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine; Author, editor and series editor of books on object relations theory, psychoanalytic child, couple and family therapy, and psychoanalysis online; in private practice in Chevy Chase MD; a recipient of The Sigourney Award 2021. Latest book: Psychoanalysis Online volume 4.

Janine Wanlass, PhD (UT, USA) Psychoanalyst and psychologist practicing in Salt Lake City, Utah; Member, APsaA; past director of The International Psychotherapy Institute (IPI) in Chevy Chase, Maryland and current chair of IPI’s Combined Program in Child Psychotherapy and Child Analysis; Professor of Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Westminster College for over 30 years; and Director of the online psychoanalytic psychotherapy training program at the International Psychotherapy School in Moscow, Russia.

David Scharff MD, FABP (MD, USA) Co-founder of the International Psychotherapy Institute (IPI) where he is a supervising child and adult psychoanalyst in its analytic and child training programs and Chair of Overseas Programs in China; Director of online psychoanalytic couple and family psychotherapy training for the International Psychotherapy School, Russia; Member APsaA and IPA; Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine; Author, editor and series editor of books on object relations theory, psychoanalytic child, couple and family therapy, and psychoanalysis in China; in private practice in Chevy Chase MD; a recipient of The Sigourney Award 2021. Latest book Couple and Family Life in Modern China.

Registration

REGISTER

Registration options:

  • Full Conference
    • $475 up to 21 days in advance; $525 thereafter
    • *Full members: $359
    • *Associate members: $410
    • Full time students: $175

  • Saturday All Day (morning and afternoon): $175

  • Saturday Morning only: $100

*Login to the website with your member information to access your discounted registration rate

Limited scholarship funds are available for this training: https://theipi.org/scholarships/ apply at least 2 weeks prior to conference start date.

Continuing Education Credit Hours

Credit hours are based on 100% attendance at your chosen participation level. (schedules for each registration option are shown below)

Full Weekend Conference:

  • 14.5 CE/CME credits
  • Attendance is required at all large group lectures, small group discussions, plenary and closing dialogue to receive credit hours.

Saturday All Day:

  • 6 CE/CME credits
  • Attendance is required at both large group lectures, both small group discussions, and the plenary to receive credit hours.

Saturday Morning only:

  • 2.5 CE/CME credits
  • Attendance is required at the large group lecture and small group discussion to receive credit hours.

Full Weekend Schedule of Presentations

Full Weekend Conference participants attend all of the following

13 Oct
Group Teleanalytic Support for Psychotherapists Under Conditions of War
Caroline Sehon MD, Mino Zanchi MD, and Howard Kudler MD
13 Oct
GAM Group
13 Oct
Online Treatment of Unrepresented States In individuals and Relationships
Michelle Kwintner PhD and Andi Eliza-Christie MS,LPC
13 Oct
GAM Group
14 Oct
From Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Artificial Intimacy (the other AI): Promise and Peril for the Analytic Therapist
Todd Essig, PhD
14 Oct
GAM Group
14 Oct
The impact of telecommunication on psychoanalytic process, practice, and training in a foreign language
Jill Scharff MD, Flora Barragan MA, and David Scharff MD
14 Oct
GAM Group
14 Oct
Plenary
all participants
15 Oct
Research: Therapists’ attitudes to teleanalysis and returning to the office
Janine Wanlass PhD
15 Oct
GAM Group
15 Oct
Closing Dialogue

Saturday Schedule of Presentations

Saturday All Day participants attend all of the following

14 Oct
From Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Artificial Intimacy (the other AI): Promise and Peril for the Analytic Therapist
Todd Essig, PhD
14 Oct
GAM Group
14 Oct
The impact of telecommunication on psychoanalytic process, practice, and training in a foreign language
Jill Scharff MD, Flora Barragan MA, and David Scharff MD
14 Oct
GAM Group
14 Oct
Plenary
all participants

Saturday Morning Schedule of Presentations

Saturday Morning participants attend all of the following

14 Oct
From Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Artificial Intimacy (the other AI): Promise and Peril for the Analytic Therapist
Todd Essig, PhD
14 Oct
GAM Group

Educational Objectives

Friday October 13, 2023 morning:
Group Teleanalytic Support for Psychotherapists Under Conditions of War

How can therapists in a relatively secure environment use technology to provide containment, and group solidarity for Russian and Ukrainian therapists, using psychoanalytic listening and group interpretation to support thinking under fire during wartime and to mitigate wartime trauma? Does that help us to provide containment in peacetime for patients who are troubled by internal strife?

Learning Objectives:

After attending this session, participants will be able to:

  1. Define technology-mediated group containment and give one example of its effects on therapists/analysts working in the context of war and one example of its impact on the clinicians’ families and patients under their care.
  2.  Provide a clinical vignette of how therapeutic efforts might be limited by the means of representation available in the face of war and one example of how such limitations can be overcome.

GAM Group One

Learning Objectives:

After attending this session, participants will be able to:

    1. Use the group experience to generate one example of an ethical stance and one of good containment.
    2. Describe one defense against the disorganizing impact of war trauma.

Friday October 13, 2023 afternoon:

Online Treatment of Unrepresented States In individuals and Relationships

How does a therapeutic relationship survive and can it thrive only in online space? How did patients make use of and respond to this new setting in the midst of crisis? What was the impact of family history, the internal parental couple, attachment style, object relationships, and cultural trauma on couple, relational and social experiences in the pandemic era?

Learning Objective:

After attending this session, participants will be able to:

    1. Describe two examples of the use of countertransference to access the unrepresented state of mind in teletherapy.
    2. Describe one feature of the screen that interferes with and one that actually promotes access to unrepresented states.

Friday October 13, 2023 late afternoon:

GAM Group Two

Learning Objectives:

After attending this session, participants will be able to:

    1. Create one clinical vignette about the value of the frame.
    2. Use the group experience to illustrate two features of the ethical stance.

Saturday Oct 14, 2023 morning:

“From Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Artificial Intimacy (the other AI): Promise and Peril for the Analytic Therapist.”

The psychoanalytic community cannot afford to ignore or deny this tsunami of change rapidly approaching the shore.  This is not the time to be cultural spectators.  As AI continues its logarithmic development it will become increasingly difficult, even impossible, to distinguish between sounds and images on screen emanating from a person and those from AI.  Will intimacies with a person or an AI-agent be taken to be the same thing? The corrective for this, for differentiating between intimate relationships and AI-fueled simulations of intimacy, will be found by plumbing the depths of difference between in-person and screen relations based therapies and experiences. Being bodies together, and the possibility of being bodies together, really matters in the simulations AI provides.

Learning Objective: 

After attending this session, participants will be able to:

    1. Give two examples of promise and two examples of peril in “artificial intimacy.”
    2. Compare the sight and sound of a real therapist with that of an AI-agent providing therapeutic services and distinguish two effects of the differences between them on the therapeutic effect on the mind of the patient.

Saturday October 14, 2023 late morning:

GAM Group Three

Learning Objectives:

After attending this session, participants will be able to:

    1. Give one example of process and one of review of group learning as a major component of the ethical stance.
    2. Discuss one example of promise, one of peril, and one of conflict in a therapist exposed to artificial intelligence.

Saturday October 14, 2023 afternoon:

The impact of telecommunication on psychoanalytic process, practice, and training in a foreign language

What is it like for a candidate to be in analysis in a foreign language?  How do we experience closeness and distance, bodily resonance, and unconscious communication in teleanalytic psychotherapy using telephone and Zoom?

What is the unconscious meaning of cyberspace? Is it a space of negation and negative hallucination? Is it a potential space for creativity and growth? How can we use the technology-mediated frame as a projection screen for unrepresented states?

What kind of reconceptualization of programs online and the use of innovative teaching techniques are needed to bridge the gap between students and faculty, between conscious perception and unconscious apperception when responding to the geopolitical situation in China and Russia?

Learning Objective:

After attending this session, participants will be able to:

    1. Give one example of a non-native English speaking candidate holding uncertainty while struggling to be understood.
    2. Give two examples of a teaching technique used to bridge the gap between English-speaking teaching analyst and non-English speaking candidate in psychoanalytic training or child therapy student.

Saturday October 14, 2023 mid-afternoon

GAM Group Four

Learning Objectives:

After attending this session, participants will be able to:

    1. Give one example of an ethical group-leading teaching technique that is effective in addressing the struggle of a diverse group to understand psychoanalytic concepts.
    2. Describe two effects of technology on the process of psychoanalytic treatment conducted online.

 Saturday October 14, 2023 late afternoon:

Plenary

Learning Objectives:

After attending this session, participants will be able to:

    1. Observe two differences in how one GAM group addresses the learning task compared to another GAM group and use this to understand differences in learning styles.
    2. List two effects of telecommunication and two adaptations needed when conversing in a large group.

Sunday October 15, 2023 morning:

Post-pandemic research into online and offline analytic practice.

COVID-19 challenged our ability to practice amidst panic, infection, and death, yet the need for clinical services only intensified.  How many patients have moved to permanent online work?  How comfortable are clinicians with online work given their increased levels of experience?  What are we learning about transference/countertransference dynamics in online settings?  Still faced with ongoing threat, how have clinicians adapted from crisis to going-on-being?  And are they returning to the office?  And what do they think of hybrid learning experiences? What does the future hold for psychoanalytic psychotherapists in the office and online?

Learning Objective:

After attending this session, participants will be able to:

    1. Generate five questions for a research survey to compare attitudes to technology-mediated therapy before and after the pandemic.
    2. Integrate one quantitative and one qualitative result from a survey to generate one hypothesis about the effectiveness of psychoanalytic teletherapy compared to onsite psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

Sunday October 15, 2023 mid-morning

GAM Group Five

Learning Objectives:

After attending this session, participants will be able to:

    1. Give one example of negative transference to the conduct of online therapy.
    2. List one objection to online therapy and one of its positive acceptance based on traditional best practice standards.

Sunday October 15, 2023 early afternoon:

Closing Dialogue

Director and co-chairs recap and review the themes of the conference

Learning Objectives:

After attending this session, participants will be able to:

    1. Employ two effective teaching techniques in a technology-mediated seminar on psychoanalytic technique for therapists in areas remote from a psychoanalytic center.
    2. Identify two knowledge gaps and devise two remedies for acquiring competence in teletherapy and teletraining.

Weekend Co-chairs

Jill Savege Scharff and Flora Barragan

Jill Savege Scharff MD, FABP, (MD, USA) Co-founder of the International Psychotherapy Institute (IPI) where she is a supervising child and adult psychoanalyst in its analytic and child training programs; Member APsaA and IPA; Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine; Author, editor and series editor of books on object relations theory, psychoanalytic child, couple and family therapy, and psychoanalysis online; in private practice in Chevy Chase MD; a recipient of The Sigourney Award 2021. Latest book: Psychoanalysis Online volume 4.

Flora Barragan, MA, (Mexico) Psychoanalyst, associate faculty, Combined Child Analytic and Child Psychotherapy Program at IPI.  Practice of adult analysis and child psychotherapy with specialization in school consultation and the treatment of children and adolescents with school performance issues.


Should you have any questions about the program or the application process, please feel free to contact:

IPI Administrative Team - contactus@theipi.org

Membership Benefits

Become a member of IPI at any level and you will have the option of adding on a Zoom Pro account as one of your member benefits. Associate and Full Members also receive discounted registration fees for most of IPI’s events, a subscription to PEP Web, the online psychoanalytic library, and other benefits depending on membership level.

HIPAA compliant Zoom video accounts are an optional add on for all IPI memberships. IPI has a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement with Zoom, which provides a HIPAA compliant platform for our accounts. HIPPA compliance is strongly recommended for all internet-mediated clinical work and clinical teaching. The “+ Zoom Pro” add-on to the IPI membership gives the user the ability to host online meetings with multiple people at the same time. [Current members can upgrade to the “+ Zoom Pro” account and only pay the difference in price from your current membership level.]

Click for IPI Membership and Zoom Account information

Continuing Education Information

This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint provider ship of American Psychoanalytic Association and the International Psychotherapy Institute. The American Psychoanalytic Association is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

The American Psychoanalytic Association designates this Live Activity for a maximum of 14.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

IMPORTANT DISCLOSURE INFORMATION FOR ALL LEARNERS: None of the planners and presenters for this educational activity have relevant financial relationship(s)* to disclose with ineligible companies* whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients.

*Financial relationships are relevant if the educational content an individual can control is related to the business lines or products of the ineligible company. -Updated July 2021-

The International Psychotherapy Institute, IPI, is approved by The American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. IPI maintains responsibility for the program and its content. The International Psychotherapy Institute has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 6017. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. The International Psychotherapy Institute is responsible for all aspects of the programs. The International Psychotherapy Institute is an approved sponsor of the Maryland Board of Social Work Examiners for continuing education credits for licensed social workers in Maryland. The International Psychotherapy Institute is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0299.

Participants are responsible for verifying that IPI CE credit is accepted by the licensing boards in their own states. Please note: At this time we are aware that CE credit for IPI events will not be accepted by the New Jersey Board of Social Work.

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