Jamieson Webster

December 6-8, 2024

Jamieson Webster is a psychoanalyst in New York City. She is the author of Disorganisation & Sex (Divided, 2022), The Life and Death of Psychoanalysis (Karnac, 2011) and Conversion Disorder (Columbia University Press, 2018); she also co-wrote, with Simon Critchley, Stay, Illusion! The Hamlet Doctrine (Pantheon, 2013). She contributes regularly to Artforum, The New York Times and the New York Review of Books.

Seminar Title: On Breathing in Psychoanalysis

At the center of disagreements between Sigmund Freud and Otto Rank on birth trauma is a question of the process of leaving the uterine environment, beginning to breathe, and the experience of anxiety that is traumatic. Birth trauma places this knot at the center of the constitution of the psyche as a defense against what is overwhelming. This fight was also a fight over the origin of the unconscious, the place where the subject is given birth to—or not, or only with great difficulty—pointing to the vicissitudes of trauma or resilience. The idea of a wish to return to the womb, to undo trauma and anxiety, requires psychoanalytic working-through. This was where the greatest disagreements between Freud and Rank arose. 

Looking at their fight, one wants to ask why there was such a struggle to name and claim this Archimedean point? And what does it mean that this defensive core is tied to women as mothers? Rank is theoretically a proto-feminist, and yet, the stated universal aim to return to the womb is cause for concern. What does it mean that the maternal is seen as a site of trauma and regressive desire? How do women experience being this place? 

Freud, it must be said didn’t want to claim this point or knot—maybe he didn’t have to—but the sons certainly did. While Freud’s neglect of the importance of the mother and hyper-emphasis on the father has been visited and re-visited, from the angle of birth trauma I think we begin to witness something important concerning his efforts to move away from this battleground. Not to erase the mother, but to leave something Real there intact; to not tear it apart prematurely or claim this space for oneself. We will look at some of the thinking about breath and birth that has evolved in the history of psychoanalysis in Freud, Ferenczi, Rank, Reich, Bion, Winnicott, Fenichel, and Lacan.

Readings: 

Bion, W.R. (1978) Four Discussions with W.R. Bion London: Harris Meltzer Trust

Bion, W.R. (1980) Bion in New York and Sao Paulo and Three Tavistock Seminars. London: Harris Meltzer Trust

Carson, A. (1992.) "The Gender of Sound" in Glass, Irony, and God New York: New Directions

Ferenczi, S (1922) “Thalassa: A Theory of Genitality” (out of print)

Ferenczi, S. (1923) The Unwelcome Child and its Death Instinct

Freud, S. (1977). Introductory lectures on psychoanalysis (J. Strachey, Ed. & Trans.). Norton. 

Freud, S. (2012). The letters of Sigmund Freud and Otto Rank: Inside psychoanalysis (R. Kramer & E. J. Lieberman, Eds.). Johns Hopkins University Press. 

Loraux, N. (1995) The Extperiences of Tiresias: The Feminine and Greek Man. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Loraux, N. (1998). Mothers in Mourning. Ithaca: Cornell University Press

Orenstein, P. (2024) “The Teen Trend of Sexual Chocking” in The New York Times Opinion: April 25, 2024

Rank, O. (1929). The Trauma of Birth. Harcourt, Trench, Trubner & Co., LTD. 

Rank, O. (2012). The Letters of Sigmund Freud & Otto Rank: Inside Psychoanalysis. (ed. E. James Lieberman and Robert Kramer) Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Sloterdijk, P. (2009) Terror From the Air. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).

Winnicott, D. W. (1975)  "Chapter XIV. Birth Memories, Birth Trauma, and Anxiety." The International Psycho-Analytical Library, vol. 100, pp. 174-193.

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Lynne Zeavin, PhD, 

January   17-19, 2025

Seminar Title: Melanie Klein:  A Theory of Mind

Saturday Morning: Part One:  Melanie Klein, an overview covering Klein’s model of the infantile mind and the positions, introjection and projection, projective identification; the concept of the internal object, and the inner world.  The early infant: Part objects, Omnipotence and the Manic Defense.  

Saturday afternoon: Part Two: Omnipotence through Mourning focusing on the role of mourning in development.

Sunday morning: Envy and Gratitude.

Dr. Lynne Zeavin is a Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalyst in full time practice in New York City.  She is a training and supervising analyst at the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute, where she chairs the Curriculum.   An Associate Editor at JAPA, she is the author of papers that have explored idealization, the status of the object, neutrality,interpretation and the various aspects of Kleinian theory.  Dr. Zeavin supervises widely from a contemporary Kleinian perspective.  She is  co-founder of the Rita Frankiel Memorial Fellowship funded by the Melanie Klein Trust and a founder of Second Story, a non-institutional psychoanalytic space in New York City.The co-editor, with Donald Moss, of Hating, Abhoring and Wishing to Destroy: Psychoanalytic Essays on the Contemporary Moment, Dr. Zeavin is currently working on a co-edited book, with Sally Weintrobe, on Clinical Conversations surrounding the Climate Emergency.

Readings:

Klein, M. (1948). A Contribution to the Theory of Anxiety and Guilt. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 29:114-123.

Klein, M. (1975). Some Theoretical Conclusions Regarding the Emotional Life of the Infant In: Envy and Gratitude and other works: The Writings of Melanie Klein, Vol. III, 61-93. New York: Delacorte.

Klein, M. (1957) “Envy and Gratitude” in Envy and Gratitude and Other Works, 1946-1963, The Free Press, pp. 176-204

Klein, M. (1946). Notes on some Schizoid Mechanisms. In Envy and Gratitude and Other Works, 1946-1963, The Free Press, pp. 1-24.

Klein, M. (1940). Mourning and its Relation to Manic-Depressive States. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 21:125-153.

Caper, R. (1997). A Mind Of One’s Own. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 78:265-278.

Joseph, B. (1966). Persecutory Anxiety in a Four–year–old Boy. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 47:184-188.

Joseph, B. (1978). Different Types of Anxiety and their Handling in the Analytic Situation. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 59:223-228.

Joseph, B. (1985). Transference: The Total Situation. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 66:447-454.

Joseph, B.   On Understanding and Not Understanding

Joseph, B. (1986). Envy in Everyday Life. Psychoanal. Psychother., 2:13-22.

Feldman, M. (1997). Projective identification: The analyst’s involvement. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 78: 227-241.

Feldman, M. (1993). The Dynamics of Reassurance. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 74:275-285.

Feldman, M. (1989). The Oedipus Complex: Manifestations in the Inner World and the Therapeutic Situation. The Oedipus Complex Today: Clinical Implications, 54:103-128.

O’Shaughnessy, E. (2008). On Gratitude. In P. Roth and A. Lemma (Eds.), Envy and Gratitude Revisited (pp. 79-91). London: IPA Books.

O’Shaughnessy, E. (2018). Reparation: Waiting for a Concept. In P. Garvey and K. Long (Eds.), The Klein Tradition (1st ed., pp. 199-203). London: Routledge.

O’Shaughnessy, E. (1999). Relating to the Superego. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 80:861-870.

O’Shaughnessy, E. (1992). Enclaves and Excursions. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 73: 603-611.

Roth, P. (1999). Absolute Zero: A Man Who Doubts His Own Love. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 80:661-670.

Roth, P. (2001). Mapping The Landscape: Levels of Transference Interpretation. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 82(3):533-543.

Rusbridger, R. (2004). Elements of the Oedipus complex: A Kleinian account. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 85(3):731-747.

Segal, H. (1988). Manic Reparation. In: The Work of Hanna Segal. London: Karnac, pp. 82-91.

Sodré, I. (2004). Who’s who? Notes on pathological identifications. In E. Hargreaves and A. Varchevker (Eds.), In Pursuit of Psychic Change (1st ed., pp.). London: Routledge.

Sodré, I. (1994). Obsessional Certainty Versus Obsessional Doubt: From Two to Three. Psychoanal. Inq., 14:379-392.

Sodre, I. (2015). Non-Vixit. In: Imaginary Existences, New York: Routledge, pp. 24-40.

1963, The Free Press, pp 300-313.

Spillius, E. B. (2001). Freud and Klein on the Concept of Phantasy. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 82:361-373.

Steiner, J. (1992). The Equilibrium Between the Paranoid-Schizoid and the Depressive Positions. New Library of Psychoanalysis, 14:46-58.

Zeavin, L. (2019). The Elusive Good Object. Psychoanal Q., 88(1):75-93.

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Alan levy, PhD

February 7-9, 2025

Alan J. Levy, Ph.D. is the Past President of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy.  He is a certified psychoanalyst, having trained at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies in New York. Dr. Levy was on staff in the Departments of Psychiatry of Tufts and Columbia Universities. He has held faculty positions at Columbia, the University of Southern California (USC), Loyola University Chicago, and the University of Chicago.  Dr. Levy was elected as a Distinguished Scholar and Fellow of the National Academies of Practice.  He was awarded the Distinguished Career Award from Simmons University, received the Educator’s Award from the National Institute for the Psychotherapies and was the winner of the Edith Sabshin Award for outstanding teaching given by the American Psychoanalytic Association.  Dr. Levy maintains a private practice in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in Northfield, Illinois.

Seminar Title: Complexity and Retreat 

Additional information coming soon

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Howard Levine, M.D

March 7-9, 2025 

Dr.Howard B. Levine, is a member of APSA, PINE, the Contemporary Freudian Society and Pulsion, on the faculty of NYU Post-Doc’s Contemporary Freudian Track, on the Editorial Board of the IJP and Psychoanalytic Inquiry, editor-in-chief of the Routledge Wilfred Bion Studies Book Series and in private practice in Brookline, Massachusetts. He is the author of Transformations de l’Irreprésentable (Ithaque 2019) and Affect, Representation and Language: Between the Silence and the Cry (Routledge 2022) and editor of The Post-Bionian Field Theory of Antonino Ferro (Routledge 2022), The Freudian Matrix of Andre Green. Towards A Psychoanalysis For The 21^st Century by André Green (Routledge/IPA 2023) and Andre Green’s On The Destruction and Death Drives (Phoenix/Karnac 2023). His co-edited books include Unrepresented States and the Construction of Meaning (Karnac 2013); On Freud’s Screen Memories (Karnac 2014); The Wilfred Bion Tradition (Karnac 2016); Bion in Brazil. (Karnac 2017); The Clinical Thinking of W.R. Bion in Brazil (Routledge 2024); Andre Green Revisited: Representation and the Work of the Negative (Karnac 2018); Covidian Life (2021 Phoenix); Psychoanalysis of the Psychoanalytic Frame Revisited: A New Look at Bleger’s Classical Work (Routledge/IPA, 2022); and Autistic Phenomena and Unrepresented States: Explorations in the Emergence of Self (Phoenix 2023).

Seminar Title: Beyond Neurosis 

Freud’s Theory of Representation and the Expansion of Psychoanalytic Technique

Seminar Description: Current analytic practice presents clinicians with aspects of their work for which the answers provided by an analytic theory centered exclusively on representation and neurotic organization proves insufficient. We are daily forced to encounter the problems of borderline organizations and ‘limit cases’ in which annihilation anxiety and survival and maintenance of identity and a sense of self is at stake. In order to better understand and address these problems, a psychoanalytic theory and conception of analytic functioning that goes beyond that of neurosis is required. Such a theory is indicated, but not yet fully developed, especially in Freud’s later writings beginning with Beyond the Pleasure Principle, The Ego and the Id, Negation and On Construction. The outlines of such a theoretical expansion have been further explicated by post-Freudian authors such as Bion, Winnicott, Andre Green, the Botellas and members of the Paris Psychosomatics School. This seminar will elaborate upon the concept of figurability, exploring the question and problems of ideational representation and transformation of unrepresented - i.e., non-ideationally represented - states and will address the implications of this proposed theoretical expansion for analytic technique.

1.  Towards a two-track model of psychoanalysis

• Levine, H.B. (2014). Towards a two-track model for psychoanalysis. Revista Portuguesa de Psicanálise 34 [1]: 7-14.

2. Freud’s theory of representation and the expansion of psychoanalytic technique

• Levine, HB (2022). Affect, Representation and Language. Between the Silence and the Cry. London and New York: Routledge/IPA.

3. Clinical Implications of unrepresented states

• Case example (pp. 28-35) in Levine, H.B. (2022) Affect, Representation and Language. Between the Silence and the Cry. London and New York: Routledge/IPA.
• Clinical implications of unrepresented states (pp. 36-48) in Levine, H.B. (2022) Affect, Representation and Language. Between the Silence and the Cry. London and New York: Routledge/IPA.
•   Introduction (pp. 1-5) and Chapter 2 (pp. 19-28)

4. Trauma, Process and Representation

• Trauma, process and representation (pp. 91-105) in Levine, H.B. (2022) Affect, Representation and Language. Between the Silence and the Cry. London and New York: Routledge/IPA.

5. Autism, ASD and Representation 

    - Making the unthinkable thinkable (pp. 106-121) in Levine, H.B. (2022) Affect,    Representation and Language.  Between the Silence and the Cry. London and    New York: Routledge/IPA.

6. Psychosomatics and Unrepresented States

- Word, body, thing – (pp. 122-131) in Levine, H.B. (2022) Affect, Representation and Language. Between the Silence and the Cry.

• - Psychosomatics and unrepresented states – (132-142) in Levine, H.B. (2022) Affect, Representation and  Language. Between the Silence and the Cry. London and New York: Routledge/IPA.

References

Levine, H.B. (2022) Affect, Representation and Language. Between the Silence and the Cry.London and New York: IPA/Routledge.

Levine, H.B. (2010). Creating analysts, creating analytic patients. IJPA 91:1385-140Levine, H.B. (2012). The colourless canvas: Representation, therapeutic action and the creation of mind. IJPA 93: 607-629.

Levine, H.B. (2021). Trauma, process and representation. IJPA 102: 794-807.

Levine, H.B. (2023). On Looking Into The Ego and the Id 100 Years After Its Publica  tion. IJPA 104: 1054-1062.

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Don Carveth, Ph.D

April 4-6,  2025

Dr. Donald Carveth is emeritus professor of sociology and social and political thought at York University in Toronto.  He is a training and supervising analyst in the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis; a past Director of the Toronto Institute; a past editor in chief of the Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis.  He is the author of The Still Small Voice: Psychoanalytic Reflections of Guilt and Consciousness (Karnac, 2013); Psychoanalytic Thinking: a Dialectical Critique of Contemporary Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2018); and Guilt: A Contemporary Introduction (Routhledge 2023). Many of his publications are available on his York website ( york.ca/dcarveth) and his current website (doncarveth.com); his video lectures are available on his YouTube channel (YouTube.com/doncarveth). He is in private psychoanalytic practice in Toronto. 

Seminar Title: Guilt: A Contemporary Introduction.

Seminar description:  Employing my recent book by the same title as the main reading, we will cover: the nature and types of guilt; the nature and origin of conscience; the distinction between conscience and the superego Conflicts between conscience and superego; the invasion of guilt in psychoanalysis and society; working with guilt, super ego, and conscience in the clinic; the nature of the psychoanalytic cure.

Reading: 

Carveth, D. (2013). “The Still Small  Voice: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Guilt and Conscience,” London: Karnac.

Carveth, D. (2023). “Guilt: A Contemporary Introduction.” London: Routledge. 

Carveth, D. (2023). Marching under the Banner of the Superego: Notes on the Mania for Reproaching. Paper presented as part of “The Political Mind” program of the British Psychoanalytic Society, May 30, 2023.  Online here: https://www.doncarveth.com/_files/ugd/8ad211_dd32806eb3bc4e2ea8866bfd08e0cee9.pdf

Frattaroli, E. (2013). Reflections on the absence of morality in psychoanalytic theory and practice. In S. Akhtar (Ed.), Guilt: Origins, Manifestations, and Management (pp. 83–110). New York: Jason Aronson.

Freud, S. (1916). Some character-types met with in psycho-analytic work.. S.E., 14: 311–333. 

Plus the Friday evening paper which he will supply directly to the candidates.

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Annie Reiner, Ph.D., Psy.D., LCSW

May 23-25 , 2025

Dr. Annie Reiner is a senior faculty member and training analyst at The Psychoanalytic Center of California (PCC) in Los Angeles. Her work was greatly influenced by Wilfred Bion, with whom she studied in the 1970's.  She lectures throughout the world, is published in numerous journals and anthologies, and is the author of four psychoanalytic books, including—The Quest for Conscience & The Birth of the Mind (Karnac 2009), Bion and Being: Passion and the Creative Mind (Karnac 2012), Of Things Invisible to Mortal Sight: Celebrating The Work of James S. Grotstein (Karnac, 2017, and most recently, W.R. Bion’s Theories of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, 2022). Based on these writings, Dr. James Grotstein ranked her “...high among Bion scholars.”  Her latest book, The Poetry, Art, and Science of Psychoanalysis in Bion’s O (Routledge, projected publication date, January 2025).

Dr. Reiner is also a poet, painter, and a singer, and in addition to her psychoanalytic writings, she is the author of a book of short stories, four books of poems, and six children’s books which she also illustrated. She supervises and maintains a psychoanalytic practice in Beverly Hills, California. 

Seminar title : Meeting Bion’s Challenge: Daring To Imagine

Bion’s ideas presented psychoanalysts with many challenges, the most mysterious of which is his concept of  “O.” In this lecture, Dr. Reiner examines Bion’s association of O with the mystic, a word he used interchangeably with “genius” and “exceptional person.”  In doing so, Bion broadens the idea of O to include the creative or free thinker in any field, rather than the implicit connection only to traditionally religious ideas of the term mystic. Bion’s perspective is a kind of “secular mysticism,” reflecting a deeply intuitive state that is as likely to be used in science and art, as in religion. One challenge it presents to the psychoanalyst is to how to develop toward this kind of intuition. It brings with it further challenges of suspending ego functions of memory, desire, and understanding in order to facilitate access to an ontological level of truth not previously addressed in psychoanalysis. Dr. Reiner will examine to what extent we have met these challenges, and to what extent the mystery, confusion, and controversies surrounding O obstruct our capacities to do so.

The Selected Fact: A Clinical Case Study

The "selected fact,” introduced in Friday’s lecture, is one of Bion's (1962a) will be further examined here through a detailed clinical example of several consecutive sessions.  This clinical tool addresses the analyst’s daily challenge of how to find the relevant fact in the often overwhelming stimuli of the patient’s words, feelings, associations, dreams, etc. It implies the existence of a hidden but fundamental order that, once discovered, acts as a sort of key that helps to unlock the  meaning of the session.  Bion borrowed the term, “selected fact” from French mathematician, Poincaré (1914), who described a harmonizing principle that unites seemingly scattered and foreign elements, that helps in creating new mathematical formulae. Similarly, the psychoanalyst faced with a flood of scattered and seemingly foreign elements, must winnow out the relevant idea that gives coherence to the session.  Dr Reiner relates the capacity to intuit the selective fact to the waking dream state of Bion’s concept of O.  The clinical study demonstrates how the selected fact introduces the necessary focus to reveal the salient point in the session, in an effort to create more cogent interpretations.

Reading:

Bion, W. R. (1962). Learning From Experience. New York: Basic Books.

Bion, W. R. (1970).  Attention and Interpretation. London, Karnac

Bion, W. R. (1974). Bion’s Brazilian Lectures I. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Imago Editora Ltda.

Reiner, A. (2022). W.R. Bion’s Theories of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction, London: Routledge 

Reiner, A. (2022). Limitations of Language in the Psychic Realm. In W.R. Bion’s Theories of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction (Chapter I, pp. 1-3), London: Routledge, 2022.

Reiner, A. (2022). The Selected Fact. In W.R. Bion’s Theories of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction (Chapter 3, pp. 28-39), London: Routledge, 2022.

“What language are we speaking?: Bion and early emotional development. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 81(1) 6-26 (March 2021). 

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Alan Bass,Ph.D

June 21-23, 2025

Alan Bass, PhD is a practicing analyst in New York City.  He is a training analyst and faculty member at IPTAR, and is also on the graduate philosophy faculty of The New School for Social Research.  He is the author of three books (Difference and Disavowal: The Trauma of Eros; Interpretation and Difference: The Strangeness of Care; and Fetishism, Philosophy, and Psychoanalysis: The Iridescent Thing)  and the translator of four books by Jacque Derrida.  He is one of the joint recipients of the JAPA 2021 best paper award for "Murderous Racism as Normal Psychosis: The Case of Dylann Roof), and is one of the internationally recognized Freud scholars invited to participate in a special issue of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis in honor of the publication of the Revised Standard Edition.

Seminar Title :Freud on Hatred, Aggression, Sadism, and Violence

Seminar Description:  The seminar will trace Freud's thinking on aggression, sadism, and violence.  It will show how understanding these issues in terms of individual psychodynamics leads to a psychoanalytic social theory, relevant to today's world conflicts.

Readings:  

Totem and Taboo, Chap. 4, SE 13.

"Instincts and Their Vicissitudes," SE 14.

"Thoughts for the Times on War and Death," SE 14.

 Beyond the Pleasure Principle, SE 18.

 Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, SE 18.

 The Ego and the Id, Chaps. 3,4,5. SE

 Civilization and its Discontents, SE 21.

 Why War? SE 22.