Tag: object relations

CORE Student Reflection on French Psychoanalysis

Posted on by Melonie Bell

In preparing to write this blog on our recent weekend exploring French Psychoanalytic thought and its contribution to understanding psychotic and borderline states, I found myself worrying about using too many “I” statements in my reflections. This urge to avoid writing “I” too many times in this composition, I think speaks to the theme and tone of this past weekend. Alain Gibeault described Freud’s theory of psychosis as de-cathexis from worldly objects and the psychotic terror of being engulfed or consumed by an object. Additionally, he discussed the concept of “the blank,” a space between matter and nothingness. We then watched a recording of an institutionalized patient, François, describe murdering an elderly woman, Jeanette, whom he had cared deeply for. He described Jeanette and himself being up on separate pillars with “something growing up between us.” I was struck by the terror of this image, being alone on a pillar, surrounded by the blank, with something terrifying growing up between François and Jeanette.

This material along with Dr. Gibeault’s discussion of psychodrama led into our small group discussions. During our group affective learning, fear and safety and their relation to individuals, patients, our group, and IPI were central themes. As the group went on, I felt myself feeling strangely disengaged and detached.  Initially, I defended myself as bored.  However, upon reflection, like François I was gripped by a psychotic fear of vulnerability, of being engulfed by the group or by IPI.  I too, had in a sense de-cathected from the horror of the material and was existing in the blank.

I’d like to say that the psychodrama of our small group facilitated my re-cathexis with the material, but I found myself struggling to stay focused on Saturday as well.  On Saturday afternoon, a colleague in the CORE program gave a fascinating presentation on a boy that he had been working with. The presentation was rich with symbolic meaning and beautifully captured the theme of terror of being engulfed that was running throughout the weekend. During one of the sessions presented, the boy was playing with a dollhouse. The presenter described this patient arranging the dollhouse in such a way that there was a “sealed off room, full of drawers” upstairs. For the second time during the weekend, I was struck by the rich imagery described by a patient. During plenary, themes of fear and violence were discussed. The ambivalence concerning feeling for and treating psychotic patients, like François, and recognizing the horror of the acts that they sometimes commit. Jill Savege Scharff brought up confronting gun violence, hate crime, toxic partisan politics, and climate change that are terrifying realities of our daily lives. It was during this dialogue that the image of the “sealed room, full of drawers” popped back into my consciousness.

I wonder if my feelings of detachment and the theme of unease that seeped into the weekend conference acted as a defense against the sealed room, full of drawers inside of all of us. I began to think of these drawers as full of rage, panic, lust, and violence, terrifying emotions/drives that are walled off inside me, but in reality would take little to provoke. In relation to my small group: would these terrifying affects/emotions kill my group? In relation to psychotic or borderline patients: does the fear of violence or panic in myself incline me to split them off as different and distance myself from them? In thinking about the didactic material or engaging with IPI: am I de-cathecting at times and existing in the blank in order not to experience frightening emotions? This weekend spent thinking about French psychoanalysis and psychodrama provided the opportunity to think about borderline and psychotic states and the terrifying moods and affects associated with those states as positions along a continuum on which we are all precariously perched.

 

Thomas Ringwood Jr., NP –  1st year student in 2-year Object Relations Theory and Practice Program (CORE) December 1, 201

IPI Program Graduates

Posted on by Melonie Bell

Congratulations to our IIPT (analytic) graduate Michele Kwintner and our Core (object relations) graduates, and our clinical consultation program graduates.

cake

 

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Suzanne St. John and Karen Fraley announce the names of the Clinical Consultation Program graduates.

 

 

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Graduation Dinner

 

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Caroline Sehon (IIPT chair) Michelle Kwintner (graduate) and Janine Wanlass (IPI Director)
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Two Year Core Students preparing for their last weekend small group as a cohort (Henriette van Eck, Kelly Seim, Steven McCowin, Christie Dietz)
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The graduates acknowledge the support given to them by their group leader (Lorrie Peters)
Core graduates present their group leader with a blanket made of patchwork saris.
Core graduates present their group leader with a blanket made of patchwork saris.

 

The Breadth and Depth of Slavery’s Wounds

Posted on by Melonie Bell
Panel for Case Presentation
Patrizia Pallaro (Conference Co-chair) and Chris Thomas (Conference co-chair and Clinical Discussant) Andrew Price (Presenter) Michael Kaufman (IPI-Metro Chair)

Imagine a young African American man raised proudly by his mother, and now the first generation to go to college. Why might he fall victim to depression and academic failure? What effect does the context of poverty, violence and drug abuse have on such a young man? Dissociating himself from the pain, he breaks from his past. As soon as he sees the possibility of success, he feels the shame of separating from his roots and hurting the loved ones from whom he is growing apart. It is hard for a man in that situation to stay true to himself and aggressively develop his potential, and hard for his mother to believe he will be safe in a world that targets and disables aggressive young Black men. The trauma of slavery generations back reaches far into future generations. How do we stop its transmission?

Featured speaker Dr. Janice Gump addressed the destruction of the attachment bond transmitted across generations and the enslavement that squashed healthy ambition and creativity in young African American men as a result of which mothers are therefore highly protective of their sons. Dr. Gump’s writings and presentation, the clinical presentation by Andrew Price, and discussion in the audience in large and small group affective learning processes alerted us to the impact of enslavement on the United States. White, Black, Hispanic and Asian therapists attending the workshop were privileged to learn from one another as we grappled with the issue of how we contribute to the problems of race. This is so important for therapists, because we have shared the position of the African American male client, all of us struggling with the issues of race, and all of us unable to freely address the obvious.

Audience engagment
Audience engagement

 

We were grateful for a meaningful experience at IPI in which we could voice our concerns and think together about race relations from an object relations perspective. Several people expressed their appreciation for the group conversation, saying they have been needing opportunities like this and had never experienced anything like it. One person said, “We need to have circles like this all over the world….it’s the only way we’re going to make progress.”

Caroline Garland on Grievance

Posted on by Melonie Bell

Caroline Garland presented a psychoanalytic view of grievance, a hatred directed at that which came between the child and the gratifying, ideal maternal object. This obstacle may be the individual Oedipal rival or the parental couple, engaged in intercourse from which the child is excluded.  This hatred for the parental couple is then displaced onto the analytic couple because it is not the gratifying couple of fantasy based on longing to engage in the primal scene.  The hatred may be directed at the patient and the analyst in the form of a masochistic attack on the patient’s capacity to benefit from analysis and a sadistic attack on the analyst’s capacity to be effective. Revenge for Oedipal betrayal may lead to loss of hope and a suicidal act that attacks the patient’s  capacity to benefit and the analyst’s capacity to be effective, and fills the analyst with shockingly intense grief.  Annihilation of the self can be preferred over life in the name of revenge.

—Jill Savege Scharff

Aspects of Trauma

Posted on by Melonie Bell

Caroline Garland speaking today at the International Psychotherapy Institute on aspects of trauma described how the traumatized person experiences the present trauma in the light of past trauma. Defenses against anxiety have broken down and led to extreme distress because the good objects have not been strong enough to protect against reality which now feels immensely unsafe. The person loses a sense of a personal future. When family love and supportive action is not enough, the traumatized person who comes to a therapist needs the containment of analytic psychotherapy — not hugs and action. We do not treat the trauma with compensation or solutions to block the pain. We offer a relationship in which we agree to listen and take in and bear the patient’s fear and pain and contain our reactions of helplessness and emotional distress. We need the support of analytic theory and discussion with our colleagues as we work to contain the trauma past and present and help the patient restore a sense of meaning and purpose in life.

—Jill Savege Scharff