Sponsored by the Baltimore Washington Society for Psychoanalysis

Saturdays 5:00 - 6:30 p.m.

For programs at the Center, please join us for refreshments from:

4:30 - 5:00 p.m.

October 13, 2007

“Repeating and Recalling Pre-Verbal Memories Through Play: The Psychoanalysis of a Six-Year-Old Boy Who Suffered Trauma as an Infant.”

Inge-Martine Pretorious, Ph.D.

Discussant: Charles Parks, Ph.D.

Inge-Martine Pretorius, Ph.D., is a Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist and Parent-Toddler Group leader at the Anna Freud Centre.  She is a Clinical Tutor for Psychoanalytic Developmental Psychology at University College London and the Anna Freud Centre where she organizes and teaches the MSc Child Development course.  Her current research focuses on psychoanalytic and genetic factors that contribute to disorganized parent-child relationship.  She works part-time in the National Health Service and is the author of published articles and book chapters.

This paper explores the impact of trauma on the later development of a six-year-old boy.  The trauma disturbed his development and psychic functioning in almost every area, including, his attainment of object constancy, capacity to regulate affects and tolerate frustration, his sense of self and self-protective functioning, as well as his capacity to symbolize.  Three phases can be distinguished in his analysis based on his capacity to deal with memories of his traumatic past: initially attempting to forget but expressing them through persistent increased arousal and re-enactment behavior, followed by recalling and re-enacting salient incidences and finally remembering and playing through early memories in displacement.  Each phase was characterized by an increasing level of affect regulation, symbolic play and capacity to tolerate and think about the unbearable.  The paper explores the different ways in which chronic trauma and the salient traumatic event, experienced in infancy are repeated, recalled and expressed verbally and through behavior.

February 2, 2008

Betty Huse Memorial Lecture

Note the time is 2:45 – 4:15 p.m.

“Integrating the Penis in Feminine Development and Analytic Technique”

Charles Wasserman, M.D.

Dr. Wasserman, who completed his psychiatric training at the Johns Hopkins Henry Phipps Clinic and his psychoanalytic training at the Baltimore Washington Institute for Psychoanalysis, is a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.  He is certified in adult psychoanalysis.  He has presented papers in subjects ranging from narcissism to aspects of female psychology at the University of Maryland Hospital, Sheppard Pratt, the V.A. Hospital and Div. 39 of the American Psychological Association. He has discussed several films at the Psychoanalytic Film Series in Baltimore including The Remains of the Day, Vertigo and Portrait of a Lady.   He has taught courses in the Psychology of Dreaming and Female Psychology at the Johns Hopkins University and is in private practice in Baltimore.

Dr. Wasserman draws from the literature in female psychology to correct the basic flaw in Freud’s castration theory of women. He suggests that Freud’s literalizing penis or penile-function interfered with a  nonconflictual way in which the girl could penetrate and be fertilized by her mother at the same time she negotiated separation-individuation and entry into a mature Oedipal complex. 

The penis-link-father identification (see Birksted-Breen 1996 and Elise 1998) is an integral prerequisite for a girl to have symbolic intercourse with her mother, (which the writer speculates is), the other side of the maternal lap, (Ogden-1988), the successful achievement of active femininity, genitality and movement from the paranoid schizoid to the depressive position.

The analyst’s ability to be penetrated by her story, demonstrated by two clinical studies, as well as to provide her with an identificatory, penile-linking-other, helped movement from paranoid schizoid to depressive position and consolidation of feminine identifications.                                  

February 23, 2008

"Conceptualizing and Communicating Female Symbols in Psychoanalytic Treatment" 

Judith Huizenga, M.D. and Roberta Apfel, MD, MPH

Discussants: Earle Baughman, M.D., and Mavis Wylie, Ph.D.

Body-based symbols in psychoanalysis give patients a language by which to express their individual experiences.  For the past century, psychoanalysis has primarily used male symbols. Although both men and women may express their experiences through female symbols, and we believe that this topic is relevant to both male and female analysts and analysands, we will focus our discussion on women patients. 

These female symbols can be used both to analyze intrapsychic conflicts and to enhance communication between analysands and analyst.  The patient and the analyst elaborate and link female symbols to patient’s present and past experiences.  These symbols are also valuable links to the maternal transference.  The analyst and the analysands create a shared, rich, and unique language.  The patient feels increasingly known and understood.  This intersubjective experience helps manage the anxiety of change and promotes positive identification with the analyst. We will refer to the workshop “Vaginas: Real and Symbolic” that we have co-chaired for the past decade at the meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association.  We will review our current work on Virginia Woolf in her 1929 book A Room of One’s Own  in which the author calls for the creation of a female language for writers to create authentic literature that express women’s life experiences. 

Judith Huizenga, M.D., has been in private practice of psychiatry and psychoanalysis since 1972 in Weston, MA.  She is on the faculty of Harvard University Medical School and the staff at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital where she currently teaches the “Theory of Child Development in Psychoanalysis” series.  She is on the faculty of Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Massachusetts Institute of Psychoanalysis. She has chaired the Parenting Workshop at BPSI for the past 12 years. 

Roberta Apfel, M.D., M.P.H., has been in private practice of psychiatry and psychoanalysis in Boston and environs since 1975. Currently she is an Associate Clinical Professor at the Longwood Harvard psychiatry residency program and teaches first year medical students at Harvard Medical School. She was a pioneer in work on psychoanalysis and assisted reproductive technologies.

March 8, 2008

“Manic Defenses Against Loneliness in Adolescents”

Speaker:  Thomas Barrett, Ph.D.

Discussant: James Kleiger, Psy.D.

Dr. Thomas Barrett is the Executive and Clinical Director of the Hanna Perkins Center for Child Development and serves as a member of the Center’s training Faculty.  He is an Associate Professor at the CASE School of Medicine and holds the John A. Hadden, Jr., M.D., Chair in Psychoanalytic Child Development.  Dr. Barrett holds degrees in Child Development and Clinical Psychology and undertook post-graduate training in Infant Mental Health.  He completed child analytic training through the Hanna Perkins Center; from 1986-1990 he worked with Erna Furman on the Hanna Perkins toddler research project, which culminated in the publication Toddlers and Their Mothers.  

This paper focuses on the challenges adolescents face as they progress in the process of object removal.  The loosening of primary libidinal object ties triggers object loss and a unique form of loneliness specific to adolescence, which may be misdiagnosed as depression.  Clinical vignettes illustrate work with adolescents wherein the ability to tolerate lonely feelings is recognized as a developmental accomplishment leading to personality growth and maturity.    

April 26, 2008

Fourth Annual Paul Gray Visiting Scholar Program.

“Psychotherapy and Close Process Attention”

Visiting Scholar: Cecilio Paniagua, M.D.

Audience Discussion Moderator: Dorothy Holmes, Ph.D.

Did Paul Gray underestimate the potential of his technique for working with patients in psychotherapy? Dr. Paniagua will demonstrate the applicability of close process attention to psychotherapeutic treatments. Assisting patients to focus on intra-clinical sequences (whether genetic, transferential or extratransferential) advances self-reflectiveness in briefer forms of treatment. Additionally, Gray’s methodology permits a more scientific evaluation of psychoanalytic approaches. Dr. Paniagua was a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Madrid Psychoanalytic Association, and Hon. Professor at the Madrid Medical School. He is the Spanish Editor of International Psychoanalysis. He is the most published psychoanalytic author in Spain, and the translator of the Spanish edition of Paul Gray’s The Ego and Analysis of Defense. Dorothy Holmes, Ph.D., a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Baltimore Washington Institute for Psychoanalysis, will moderate an audience discussion.

April 27, 2008

Colloquium. Fourth Annual Paul Gray Visiting Scholar Program.

“Psychotherapy and Close Process Attention”

Visiting Scholar: Cecilio Paniagua, M.D.

10:00 a.m.– Noon; continental breakfast at 9:30 By subscription.

The colloquium will offer a round table setting to promote an open discussion. Dr.  Paniagua will use detailed vignettes to illustrate the advantages of the close process attention technique (derived from Freud’s structural theory) for the analysis of drive derivatives. William C.Wimmer, M.D., a Child and Adolescent Supervising and Teaching Analyst at the Baltimore Washington Institute for Psychoanalysis, will moderate.

Registration for the colloquium is required; the registration fee is $35. CME and CEU credits for non-members $20. Please register by Friday, April 18th. For registration click here.

Make checks payable to the Baltimore Washington Society for Psychoanalysis. Late registration will be accepted on a space-available basis. Any reading recommendations for the April 27^th Colloquium will be posted here in advance of the Visiting Scholar Program.

The Colloquium is intended for graduate analysts or experienced practitioners of dynamic psychotherapy.

The Psychoanalytic Forum is intended for mental health professionals, either graduates or in training, who use psychoanalytic therapy as a treatment modality.

*There is no charge for attending the Forum. For those who wish CEU and CME certificates, there will be a $15.00 charge for participants who are not dues-paying members of the Center. Center members receive CEU/CME certificates free of charge. Continuing education credit certificates will only be available at the time of each Forum. Checks should be made payable to the Baltimore Washington Society for Psychoanalysis and brought to the Forum.

This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the Essential Areas and Policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint sponsorship of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the Baltimore Washington Society for Psychoanalysis, Inc.  The American Psychoanalytic Association is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians and takes responsibility for the content, quality, and scientific integrity of this CME activity.

RSVP to Judy Devito at, exec@marylandpsychology.org.

RSVP to Judy Devito at, exec@marylandpsychology.org.

RSVP to Judy Devito at, exec@marylandpsychology.org.