
Joyce Slochower, PhD
March 4-5, 2023
JCFS/216 W. Jackson/Suite #700
&
ZOOM
Joyce Slochower Ph.D., ABPP, is Professor Emerita of Psychology at Hunter College & the Graduate Center, CUNY. Joyce is faculty and supervisor at the NYU Postdoctoral Program, the Steven Mitchell Center, the National Training Program of NIP (all in New York), Philadelphia Center for Relational Studies in Philadelphia and the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California in San Francisco. She is on the Editorial Boards of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Ricerca Psicoanalitica and Psychoanalytic Perspectives and is on the Board of the IARPP. Joyce has published over 100 articles on various aspects of psychoanalytic theory and technique. Second Editions of her two books, Holding and Psychoanalysis: A Relational Perspective (1996) and Psychoanalytic Collisions (2006), were released in 2014 by Routledge. She is co-Editor, with Lew Aron and Sue Grand, of “De-idealizing relational theory: a Critique from within” and “Decentering Relational Theory: A Comparative Critique (2018, Routledge). She is in private practice in New York City where she sees individuals and couples, runs supervision and study groups.
Seminar Title: Winnicott and a Relational Holding Model
Seminar Description : This seminar will review Winnicott ’s contributions as they first altered our understanding of clinical work and ultimately informed the relational turn. I then offer an expanded understanding of what holding can look like in the consulting room. Arguing both for and against the clinical power of holding, I unpack her own understanding of its varied clinical impact in different kinds of therapeutic “knots.” If we have time, I hope to also address the underbelly of our analytic ideal and what I ’ve called relational excess.
Selected Readings:
There is far more relevant reading than we can cover in a weeklong seminar; I’m including a list of recommended readings for those who are interested. The Winnicott readings are background, but if you haven’t read them already, please try to familiarize yourselves with these three:
Winnicott
The aims of psychoanalytical treatment (Maturational Processes, 166-170)
Dependence in infant care, in childcare, and in the psychoanalytic setting
(Maturational processes, 249-260)
The use of an object and relating through identifications (Playing and Reality 8694)
Relational perspectives on clinical work
Slochower, J. (2014) Holding and Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge. Chapters 3,5,6
Slochower, J. (2014) Psychoanalytic Collisions. London: Routledge. Chapters 4, 9, 10
Going too far: relational heroines and relational excess. In De-idealizing Relational Theory: A Critique from Within. L. Aron, S. Grand & J. Slochower (eds). London: Routledge, pp.8-34.
Recommended readings
Winnicott, D.W.
The observation of infants in a set situation (Through Pediatrics, 52-69)
Hate in the Countertransference (Through Pediatrics, 194-203)
1989 Psychoanalytic Explorations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press:
The motherinfant experience of mutuality (pp. 251260)
Fear of breakdown (8795)
Winnicott, D.W. (1965) The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment.
Ego distortions in terms of true and false self (Maturational Processes, 140-152)
A personal view of the Kleinian contribution (pp.171178)
The development of the capacity for concern (pp. 7382)
Winnicott, D.W. (1975) Through Pediatrics to Psychoanalysis.
The antisocial tendency (pp.306315)
Winnicott, D.W. (1975) Through Pediatrics to Psychoanalysis.
Transitional objects & transitional phenomena (pp.229-242)
Slochower, J. (2006) Chapter 3: Creating inner space: the psychoanalytic writer. In
Psychoanalytic Collisions, Hillsdale, N.J. pp. 43-64.
Winnicott, D.W. (1989) Psychoanalytic Explorations.
Fear of breakdown (pp. 8795)
Interpretation in psychoanalysis (pp. 207212)
Bollas, C. (1987) The Shadow of the Object.
Ordinary regression to dependence. (pp. 256274).
Slochower, J. (1996). Holding and the fate of the analyst’s subjectivity. Psychoanal. Dial., 6:323-353.
Slochower, J. (2013). Psychoanalytic mommies and psychoanalytic babies: a long view. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 49:606-628.