The Unique Self, Phantasy and the issue of Authenticity in Art and Life:
A challenge to relationships?

Workshop: Training Institute for Mental Health in Collaboration with Section I, Division of Psychoanalysis, APA
Friday, October 13, 2017
6:15 PM – 9:00 PM
115 West 27th Street, 4th Fl. New York, NY 10001
*Refreshments will be served.*

How do we develop a personal sense of authenticity and capacity for discovering an “other’s” uniqueness instead of unconsciously searching for a lost love? Via the screening of Certified Copy, we will address the impact on relationships organized by the search for a lost ego ideal, and the hope of re-finding a lost phantasy person via attempts to mold and create a partner via projective identification and transference. The importance of distinguishing between identification, introjection, incorporation as processes influencing the development of false and true selves in couple relationships will also be discussed.

3 CEU'S for Social Workers

Participants will be able to:

1. Discriminate between projective identification and transference as they manifest in relationships.
2. Distinguish between couples organized by internalized phantasy wishes from those organized by a capacity to discover and develop each other and the relationship.
3. Understand differences between incorporation, introjection, and identification as they manifest in couple relationships.
4. Learn one aspect of how psychoanalytic couple therapy can ameliorate attachment and self-reflective problems which damage involvement and intimacy.

Presenters/ Discussants:

Albert Brok, PhD, CGP: Chair:  Dr. Brok is the Director of Group and Couple Therapy training at TIMH and is on the Board of the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association and Past President of Section I and Chair Film and International Committee  Dr Brok has co-authored four books and published numerous articles.  His most recent publication is on Psychodynamic Couple Counseling in Reiter and Chanile (eds), Behavioral, Humanistic-Existential, and Psychodynamic Approaches to Couples Counseling, Routledge, 2017 .  He is a member of CineaAnalises committee and the Committee, for the studyon the effects of technology on personality, Argentine Psychoanalytic Association, Buenos Aires.

Ellen Gussaroff, PhD, LCSW: Dr Gussaroff is Co-Director, Couple Training Program TIMH, and former Adjunct Professor of Social Work at Fordham University.  She has presented internationally in Norway, Madrid, Prague and Buenos Aires. She is a member of Section I, International Committee, Division of Psychoanalysis, American Psychological Association. Her most recent work has been On “the Silent Mother”, IPA, Prague, Czech Republic, 2013 and on the implications for intimacy in modern technological times, exemplified by the Film “HER” which she presented at the IPA, Boston, Ma. 2015.

William Fried, PhD, FIPA; William Fried is a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, photographer, educator, author, and editor. He practices in New York City. Until 2000, he was the associate director of psychiatry residency training and the director of training and education at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY. In 2000 the Association for Academic Psychiatry named him Teacher of the Year. He has been president of  Section I (Psychoanalyst Practitioners) of the Division of Psychoanalysis, American Psychological Association and is a contributing editor of the DIVISION|Review, responsible for the Reminiscence feature.  His new book, Critical Flicker Fusion: Psychoanalysis at the Movies, is published by Karnac. (2017)

Program is in Collaboration with Section I, Division of Psychoanalysis, APA. For information, contact Albert Brok, PhD, Program Chair at drajbrok@gmail.com or (212) 580-3086