Professional Development

Narrative: What is the source of our patients’ suffering? How can we most effectively address it? There are as many psychoanalytic answers to these questions as there are psychoanalytic theories. From the perspective of intersubjectivity theory, many of the issues our patients struggle with—poor decision-making, difficulties establishing trusting relationships, addictions and other self-destructive behaviors, and more—…

Narrative: This workshop will highlight the various ways that play therapy can decrease the family’s ambivalence about participating in therapy, as well as the ways that play therapy can engage families in positive and energetic interactions that can shift perspectives and increase connection so that family members can see each other as resources. Family play…

Narrative: Many patients now state that they spend hours each day paying attention to screens rather than to real people around them. We’ll explore how cyberspace becomes an alternate container for many clients in distress. We will examine what this means for the psyche in terms of relationships and fantasies, especially apocalyptic fantasies of destruction.…

The events of the past year—the global pandemic, the continuing battles against racism and white supremacy, the California wildfires—have left many people feeling increasingly hopeless about their lives.  Many of these people are our patients.  How do we help them to regain a sense of possibility in these difficult times?  This issue is complicated by…