Seminar: Ghosts in the Consulting Room: Building on Loewald (Margery Kalb, PsyD)

Margery Kalb, PsyD

Ghosts in the Consulting Room: Building on Loewald

   May 22-23, 2027

 1132 S. Wabash, Suite 502, Chicago / ZOOM

&

May 28, 2027 by Zoom Only

Ghosts are internalizations gone awry. They arise unbidden, haunting patient and analyst alike, in the form of repetitive, painful (re)enactments. In this way, ghosts of the past take possession of the present, resisting being “laid to rest as ancestors” (Loewald, 1960). 

In this seminar, we will explore underinternalized ghostly phenomena that manifest as the compulsion to repeat, attachment to pain, underrepresented states, and dissociated self-states. Using Loewald as touchstone, we will consider the developmental-theoretical origins of these absent presences, as well as their emergence in the therapeutic relationship. On the clinical level, transforming “ghosts” into “ancestors” is more difficult than was made explicit in Loewald’s (1960) theoretical framework. Ghosts live a shadow life in the unconscious and preconscious, taking up residence within and between analyst and patient — surprising and unsettling both members of the dyad; inviting disturbing and uncanny (re)enactments; threatening impasse. 

Integration of these ghosts requires welcoming, or at least tolerating, their deeply unnerving presence — containing and witnessing at intrapsychic, interpersonal, and “interpsychic” (Loewald, 1979) levels — and living through the profound and painful mourning process required to develop fuller integration and internalization. We will trace the nonlinear pathways of “creative repetition” and “new discovery” that can help facilitate “laying ghosts to [relative] rest as ancestors” — endowing a legacy of access to infantile wellsprings of creativity and vitality that underlies a capacity to thrive more fully. 

Ten Learning Objectives:

1. Participants will have gained knowledge of psychoanalytic theories on psychic ghostly phenomena.
2. Participants will be able to define the clinical and theoretical meaning and utility of the term ghosts.
3. Participants will be able to recognize and discuss ways that psychic ghosts manifest in the clinical setting.
4. Participants will be aware of ways to intervene clinically when ghosts are prominent in the consulting room. 
5. Participants will be able to explain how ghostly phenomena emerge in the sociocultural sphere. 
6. Participants will gain an enhanced understanding and facility in the use of transference-countertransference.  
7. Participants will be able to define and build on internalization from Loewald's perspective. 
8. Participants will be able to identify ghostly phenomena in interactions. 
9. Participants will be able to explain interpsychic interaction. 
10. Participants will be able to make clinical use of interpsychic interactions. 

Readings:

Required Readings - attached to this email: 

Loewald, H.W. (1960). On the Therapeutic Action of Psycho-Analysis. In Papers on Psychoanalysis. Hagerstown, MD: University Publishing Group (2000), 221-256.

**Read section IV, pp. 244-255. The earlier sections of the paper are optional reading.**

Kalb, M. (2015). Ghosts in the Consulting Room: Reluctant Ancestors. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 51(1):74-106. 

Optional Recommended Readings: 

Balsam, R.H., Brett, E.A., and Levenson, L. (2024). The Legacy and Promise of Hans Loewald. London: Routledge. 

Balsam, R.H., Brett, E.A., and Levenson, L. (2024). The Emerging Tradition of Hans Loewald. London: Routledge.

Bolognini, S. (2011). The Intrapsychic and the Interpsychic. In: Secret Passages: The Theory and Technique of Interpsychic Relations. Great Britain: Routledge. (Chapter 4, pp. 57-80).

Freud, S. (1914). Remembering, Repeating, and Working-Through (Further Recommendations on the Technique of Psychoanalysis III). SE, XII, 145-156.

Freud, S. (1929). Letter from Sigmund Freud to Ludwig Binswanger, 4/11/1929. In: The Letters of Sigmund Freud, Ed. E.L. Freud. NY: Basic Books, 1960 (p.386). 

Harris, A., Kalb, M., Klebanoff, S. (2016). Ghosts in the consulting room: Echoes of trauma in psychoanalysis.London, UK: Routledge.

Harris, A., Kalb, M., Klebanoff, S. (2016). Demons in the consulting room: Echoes of genocide, slavery and extreme trauma in psychoanalytic practice. London, UK: Routledge.

Holmes, D. E. (2021). "I do not have a racist bone in my body": Psychoanalytic perspectives on what is lost and not mourned in our culture's persistent racism. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 69(2): 237-25. 

Loewald, H. (1979). Reflections on the Psychoanalytic Process and its Therapeutic Potential. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 34: 155-167.  (pp. 155-160).

Loewald, H. (1979). The Waning of the Oedipus Complex. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 27: 751-775.