May 2018
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ICP+P Connections
               
  
A monthly e-newsletter from the Institute of Contemporary 
Psychotherapy + Psychoanalysis   
In This Issue
Upcoming Conferences
2018 Annual Conference:
First Meetings in Therapy: Poetics and Pragmatics

Saturday, May 5, 2018 
9:00 am-4:30 pm
Sponsored by I CP+P's Psychoanalytic Training Program

Featuring 
Eric Mendelsohn, PhD
6 CEs

Georgetown University Conference Center
3800 Reservoir Rd, NW
Washington, DC
Online Registration thru May 2nd. Walk-ins on Saturday also welcome!

Save these dates for
Fall 2018

Saturday, September 22 
Suzanne Iasenza, PhD
Close Encounters: When sex therapy & psychodynamic therapy meet in couples treatment 

Sunday, December 2
Rosemary Segalla, PhD
Contextualized Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis: Creative Input from Groups, 
Large and Small
and
80th Birthday Celebration for Rosemary Segalla

Jen Sermoneta
The Glorious Complexity
Jen Sermoneta and DIG
Sexual orientation, gender identity, skin color, physical ability, neurodiversity, ethnicity, culture, national origin, religion, age, native language, family language, intimate relationship models, socioeconomic status and background, and the multiplicity or intersectionality of any of those factors...
 
How do you think about identity factors when you work? How do such factors affect the patient's personal history, worldview, beliefs, and the meanings their experiences have for them? And how do they affect yours?  How do identity factors affect the relationship and the intersubjective experience you have with each patient? 
 
Those are the kinds of ideas we discuss in the Diversity Interest Group (DIG). The DIG meets monthly and, ultimately, its purpose is to provide expertise, consultation, and resources on diversity-related topics. At each meeting we consider a relevant paper or personal story of identity and observe and explore our reactions during the process.
 
Why are DIG members taking on this venture? Members identify motivations like these: To explore and better understand ourselves, our patients, and our colleagues. To help our community, and all of our educational activities, embrace diversity in all its glorious complexity. To understand sources of tremendous shame and privilege, and explore our own various identities, blind spots, insensitivities, and privileges, in a group where we feel safe. To understand identity and identity expression as important sources of both intra- and interpersonal conflict.

Our personal sharing experiences have been powerful and unifying. Taking a growth mentality, we've had opportunities to learn about being open and vulnerable together while confronting difficult and painful identity-related content. Our group is practicing. We're practicing our ability to speak these things with each other. Practicing to serve as a resource for others. Practicing considering questions like these:
  • When speaking to colleagues, do you feel pressure to position yourself, i.e., disclose whether you're an ally or a member of the identity group you're discussing?
  • What is it like to not disclose openly what your identity is? With colleagues, when speaking publicly, with patients, or personally?
  • How can we understand the intra- and interpersonal conflicts created by desires for family cohesion (allegiance) and desires to acculturate or assimilate to dominant cultural norms?
  • How are assumptions about normative development culture bound - such as independence from parents, or when and how people begin dating?  
We had a rich discussion with Janna Sandmeyer and her discussant from IAPSP, Chuck Finlon, about her 2017 paper, "Combating Homophobia and Heterosexism in a Seminal Article in the Self Psychology Canon: Rethinking Jule Miller's 'How Kohut Actually Worked.'"  Another paper we enjoyed was Lillian Comas-Diaz' (2010), "On Being a Latina Healer."
 
In addition to having great discussions, the DIG is working on some exciting and practical projects. These include an online Annotated Reading List that will help our members identify useful dynamically-oriented diversity articles. We hope that members will contribute to creating a list that ICP+P and community can use to get acquainted with more diverse authors, enhance syllabi, and add diverse perspectives to ongoing conversations. We are also planning on including media recommendations in the newsletter, on the listerv, and in other publications as a way to share the wealth. We hope you'll contribute once the online forms are ready!
 
We are also developing recommendations that support the diversity requirements of the APA, centered on the question of how we can include considerations of diverse identities in our educational and supervisory encounters.
 
In addition to diversity work going on inside DIG, it's also exciting to mention diversity-related work happening throughout the organization. Some items of interest include Shoba Nayar's excellent recent faculty training on supervision and otherness, and two new study groups being offered by Virginia Voigt and Gwen Pla that will focus on diversity and on the works of Toni Morrison, respectively. These concrete, visible, actions are exciting and satisfying. It feels like everyday conversations throughout the organization are including more attention, both implicit and explicit, to different facets of diversity. And that feels big.
Results of the Recent Board of Directors Election
Congratulations!
The results are in and thank you to all members who took the time to vote for the Board positions. Here are ICP+P's incoming Board members:

Director: Eleanor Howe
Associate Director of Administration: Lauren Brandt
Associate Director of Conferences: Jen Bissell
Associate Director of Outreach and Publicity: Jen Sermoneta
Associate Director of Training: Noella Driscoll
Treasurer: Erin Gelzer
General Board Representatives: Cornelia Tietke and Virginia Voigt

Your new Board members will begin their terms in May after they have had a meeting with the existing Board to facilitate a smooth transition. Our elections committee has reached out to new members and members who have been with the organization for many years to create an energetic and inspired Board to lead our organization for the next two years. If you are interested in joining the Board in the future please consider next year's elections when the positions of Secretary, Coordinator of Study Groups, and Associate Director of Membership will be open.

Welcome all new Board members and for those Board Members leaving, Janet Dante, Kathy Beck, Sarah Pillsbury, Jonathan Lebolt, Raquel Willerman, Aaron Bourne and Leslie Kent we truly appreciate all the work you have done for ICP+P. Lastly, I want to thank my fellow elections committee members for their time and effort. I couldn't have done this without you. It has been a pleasure working with Kathy Beck, Alexandra Kaghan and Nancy Wachtenheim.

Elections Committee Chair
Dawn Taylor

ICP+P Annual Conference on May 5, 2018

First Meetings in Analytic Therapy: Poetics and Pragmatics
Featuring 
Eric Mendelsohn, PhD

Sponsored by ICP+P's Psychoanalytic Training Program
with 
Dane Frost, PhD, Case Presenter and Sandra Hershberg, MD, Discussant

Online Registration Closes on May 2nd

You can also walk in and register on May 5th
Saturday, May 5, 2018 
Registration at 8:30 am
Program from 9:00 am-4:30 pm
Georgetown University Conference Center
3800 Reservoir Rd, NW
Washington, DC

Eric Mendelsohn will illuminate the power of first meetings by describing the emerging themes, experiential elements, and pragmatics of beginning treatment. He will examine how patients and psychoanalytic therapists think and feel about beginning therapy, focusing on the hopes and dreads of each, and will explore how these are reflected in the exchanges that mark the start of psychoanalytic therapy. Dr. Mendelsohn will articulate the relational practices that hold and shape the ensuing work -- such as how to structure first meetings to facilitate the start of a collaborative process.
 
The presentation will include ideas and propositions regarding first meetings coming from a number of psychoanalytic pioneers and contemporary thinkers. Dr. Mendelsohn will go on to demonstrate how first meetings can launch a collaborative therapeutic process by sharing an extended case illustration.
 
In the second part of the morning, Dane Frost will provide a clinical presentation of an early phase of a psychoanalytic treatment. Sandra Hershberg and Eric Mendelsohn will each provide a discussion of the case and dialogue together.
 
During the afternoon small group discussions, participants will reflect upon their own experiences in beginning treatment and on the proposed pragmatics of starting therapy. In plenary and small group sessions, participants will have an opportunity to discuss the case presentations.

At the conclusion of the program participants will be able to:
  1. Describe the central psychological tasks of the patient and therapist preceding and during first meetings.
  2. Describe the tensions between the willingness to explore and challenge and the need for safety and pacing that first emerge at the start of therapy.
  3. Contrast and critically analyze the approaches to first meetings of several influential psychoanalytic writers.
  4. Design a procedural approach to first meetings and their aftermath.
  5. Develop familiarity and tolerance for the inevitable ambivalent feelings that emerge at the start of analytic therapy.
  6. Identify procedural precedents that can be established in first meetings that can facilitate a collaborative analytic process.
This conference is appropriate for clinicians at all levels of experience and
offers 6 CEs.

Continuing education credit:  6 CE credits available for full attendance. The Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis (ICP+P) is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. ICP+P maintains responsibility for this program and its content.  ICP+P is approved by the Maryland Board of Social Work Examiners to offer Category I continuing education credit. Because ICP+P has approval from the Maryland Board, CE credits hours awarded by ICP+P may also be claimed by social workers licensed in Virginia and the District of Columbia. These continuing education credits meet the ANCC standards for nurses. Because these credits are approved by the American Psychological Association, marriage and family therapists licensed in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia will receive continuing education credit. (Marriage and family therapists in other jurisdictions and licensed counselors should inquire with their local Boards regarding continuing education credit.) Attendees from the above professional groups will earn 6 CE credits for attending the conference. Full attendance is required to receive the designated CE credit. ICP+P is accredited by MedChi, the Maryland State Medical Society to provide continuing medical education for physicians.   ICP+P designates this educational activity for a maximum of 6 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)â„¢. Physicians should only claim credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

Welcome New Member, Wendy Miller
Interview by Nancy Wachtenheim
Although Wendy Miller has not formally been a member of ICP+P, she is not unknown to the ICP+P community. She has many friends that are members, and she has been asked to present on creativity and aging to several of our study groups.

Wendy is both an artist and an art therapist. She "grew up professionally" in San Francisco where she was very involved in the women's art movement and became an art therapist before she moved to Washington in 1987. Wendy joined the teaching staff at George Washington University in art therapy. Her personal and professional life were significantly impacted when she was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Artistically, it was hard to continue working with clay in the same ways as she had in the past, and clinically, as her interest in the mind-body relationship grew, it led her to work with other medically ill clients to support the accompanying identity issues. Her desire to study immunology and mind-body health led her to pursue her doctorate and she received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 1992.

She also pursued training with the Imagery Training Institute, and she incorporates imagery and art therapy into her quest to understand others' experiences.

Wendy describes her clinical life as divided in two eras: "before her husband Gene died, and after Gene died." Gene Cohen, a Geriatric Psychiatrist, was a renowned Research Scientist in the field of aging and he and Wendy worked together. After Gene's death, Wendy finished the book that they had begun writing together, each chapter being a dialogue between Artist and Scientist, aka a husband and wife exchange. This book, entitled "Sky Above Clouds: Finding our way through creativity, aging, and illness," was published with Oxford Publishing in 2016. Wendy has spent the last two years on book tour speaking to a variety of audiences.

In my conversation with Wendy, it was apparent how intertwined her's and Gene's lives were, both professionally and personally, and how the loss prompted a process of self-evaluation and accommodation to an uncharted world.

Wendy spends her spare time with friends, participates in yoga, enjoys walking, reading and making art. She is both spiritual and passionate. She co-facilitates a group "healing circle" at the Smith Center in Washington, D.C. for widows and widowers, with the focus on "being present with each other". Wendy is also involved with the Kehila Jewish community.

Wendy comes from a small town in Maine. She has a daughter, stepson, and four grandchildren. Wendy lives and works in Kensington where her art studio is on the first floor and her art therapy office on the second floor. Currently she sees a variety of clients of all ages. She is drawn to adolescents with developmental identity issues, adults dealing with adjustments to medical diagnoses, families, and those whose lives are touched by adoption. From Wendy's perspective, these can each be viewed within the context of existential and identity issues.

Please join us in welcoming Wendy Miller to the ICP+P community. We look forward to having you Wendy.

Wendy can be reached at wendmiller1@gmail.com and www.sky-above-clouds.com.
2018 Graduation is May 20, 2018

graduation-cartoon-header.gif

Congratulations To Our Graduates!

The Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy + Psychoanalysis is proud to invite all ICP+P Members and family and friends of the graduates to the graduation ceremony for the Contemporary Approaches to Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Training Program Class of 2018! This year's graduates include:
Schwanna Cockerham-Qualls, LPC
Heather Leigh Gary, LICSW
Marya A. Myslinski, PsyD
Julia Rosenfield, MSW, LICSW
Campbell States, LICSW
Raquel Willerman, PhD, LCSW
Sunday, May 20, 2018 beginning at 10:00 am
at
Maggiano's Little Italy
Chevy Chase
5333 Wisconsin Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20015



Save the Date! 
ICP+P's Annual Pot Luck and Fall Kick-off

Potluck
September 16, 2018, 1:30 pm-4:30 pm
Jane E. Lawton Community Recreation Center (New venue)
4301 Willow Lane, Chevy Chase, MD

We hope that you will plan to join us on Sunday, September 16, 2018, 1:30 pm-4:30 pm for the fall pot luck and town hall meeting. This kick-off event gives us a chance to come together as a community to renew ongoing relationships as well as to welcome new members. Members-in-training and individuals who have joined ICP+P during the last year will be introduced. In addition, we are planning to have a town hall meeting, in which members can be a part of an open discussion about ICP+P, including the year's upcoming programs, planning for future programs and other areas of interest or concern to the ICP+P community. The pot luck has always been an informal, lively, and fun event with lots of great food! Please mark your calendars!
Fellowship Program is Accepting Applications for 2018-2019
Monica Meerbaum and Linda Kanefield
Welcome to the 2018-2019 Fellowship Program!

ICP+P's Psychoanalytic Training Program welcomes applications for the 2018-2019 class of its Fellowship Program in Contemporary Forms of Psychoanalysis. The Fellowship Program introduces participants to the ways psychoanalysis has evolved as a relevant clinical practice for the 21st century.

The program is designed for practicing clinicians, residents, interns, and advanced graduate students from mental health fields including psychology, psychiatry, social work, counseling, and nursing.  The Fellowship gives participants a feel for the types of learning experiences available in ICP+P's training programs and professional community.

To learn more about the topics, benefits, CEs, when and where the meetings are held, click here to go to our website .

Applications are being accepted now with a deadline of July 15th.
Couples Therapy Training Program 
Beginning Fall of 2018
Many experienced therapists feel energized to engage in couples therapy. Yet as time passes, they often feel overwhelmed or "stuck." Those trained and familiar with couples' work know this phenomenon all too well. As the couple's issues around communication, sex, trauma, affairs, rage and hopelessness unfold in the therapist's office, the work can feel taxing and overwhelming, often de-skilling the most seasoned therapist.

ICP+P's Couples Therapy Training Program focuses on integrating psychodynamic theory and specific clinical skills, so that clinicians can feel effective in therapeutically addressing the challenges of this work. The program consists of weekly three-hour meetings, divided between didactic learning and group supervision on active couples cases.

The program focuses on:
  1. Contemporary Psychodynamic Theories as they apply to Couples Therapy.
  2. Addressing specific challenges for couples, including sexual impasses, high conflict, distant and cut-off forms of relating.
  3. The challenges inherent in collaborative work between couples and individual therapists.
  4. The exploration of countertransference reactions as a tool for effective intervention.
  5. Incorporating the contributions of neuroscience and control-mastery into a psychodynamically oriented approach.
  6. Specific interventional techniques that facilitate growth and effective couples treatment.
Many graduates of the program continue to collaborate and work together on clinical cases long after the program is completed. The program also offers graduates many ongoing professional and social events, and the opportunity to belong to a warm professional community.

The program is for licensed therapists from all disciplines, and runs from September-May. Classes are held each Wednesday from 11:30 am-2:30 pm. To request more information or set up an informational meeting, please contact Dr. Michael Wannon at (301) 951-9488.

Contemporary Approaches to Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (CAPP)
Study Group 
for Prospective Members-in-Training
Gail Winston and Jen Bissell

CAPP's Final Study Group is on May 17th - Come Join Us!

ICP+P's CAPP Program is offering a monthly study group which began in January, 2018 for clinicians interested in pursuing the training program. You can join the group any month.  There will be readings in self and relational psychotherapy as well as the opportunity to get a better sense of the CAPP program, which will welcome a new class in September 2018. The group will meet on the 3rd Thursday of the month through May, 2018 in Washington.

Click here to learn more...


Psychoanalytic Training Program is Accepting Applications for Fall 2018
ICP+P's Psychoanalytic Training Program has been thoughtfully designed to communicate a sense of the excitement, creativity, and diversity that exists within contemporary psychoanalysis. Through intensive study, immersion in analytic clinical work, and a personal analysis, we facilitate a process of discovery as candidates forge their analytic identities. We create an educational milieu that encourages self-reflection, critical thinking and scholarship through writing.
 
For further information about applying, please contact Elizabeth Carr, Chair of Admissions, at 202-822-8371 or elizabethmcarr.msn@gmail.com.

News + Notes
Jamie Keaton Jones's paper, "A Phenomenological Study of the Office Environments of Clinical Social Workers," was published in the Health Environments Research and Design Journal. (Note: this study is separate from her current DC area office study.) If you would like a reprint, please contact Jamie at jjones32@fordham.edu.
Shoshana Ringel just moved to Columbia from Baltimore. She has openings for adult individuals and couples, and takes BC/BS and Hopkins insurance. Her areas of specialty are relationship issues, trauma and PTSD, and grief and loss. She is trained in EMDR, mindfulness practice, and of course psychoanalytic treatment. She utilizes her training on the Adult Attachment Interview to work with developmental attachment issues. She has extensive experience with both individuals and couples. She can be reached at  SRINGEL@ssw.umaryland.edu .
Upcoming Events
  • Saturday, May 5, 2018, 9:00 am-4:00 pm, 
    2018 Annual Conference: 
    First Meetings in Therapy: Poetics and Pragmatics
    , spon
    sored by the ICP+P's Psychoanalytic Training Program and featuring Eric Mendelsohn. Six (6) CEs. Georgetown University Conference Center, 3800 Reservoir Rd, NW, Washington, DC. Click here for more information. Register here.
  • Sunday, May 20, 2018, 10:00 am-1:00 pm, 2018 Graduation Ceremony. Maggiano's (Chevy Chase),5333 Wisconsin Ave NW, Washington, DC 20015. All ICP+P Members are invited, but must RSVP!
  • Saturday, September 22, 2018, 9:00 am-12:30 pm, Conference featuring Suzanne Iasenza, Silver Spring Civic Building. Three (3) CEs. More details coming soon...
  • Friday, October 19, 2018, 12:30-3:45 pm, Short Course - Integrating Couples Therapy and Sex therapy with Deborah Fox, ICP+P Office, Washington, DC. Three (3) CEs. More details coming soon...
  • Sunday, December 2, 2018, 12:30 to 7:00 pm, 
    Contextualized Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis: Creative Input from Groups, Large and Small and the 
    80th Birthday Celebration for Rosemary Segalla 
    , Georgetown University Conference Center. More details coming soon...
  • Friday, February 8, 2019, 12:30 pm-3:45 pm, Short Course - Group Psychotherapy with Rob Williams, ICP+P Office, Washington, DC. Three (3) CEs. More details coming soon...
Bulletin Board

ICP+P members want to share the following information. ICP+P is not explicitly endorsing these listings:

  • Mary Dluhy has openings in her Group Therapy Consultation Group. It meets weekly on Tuesdays from 12:15-1:30 pm in Upper NW, Washington DC. Contact Mary for more information, 202-363-9400 or marydgroup@aol.com
  • "When LGBTQ+ Folks "Cured" Psychiatry: The DSM History You Never Knew! will be the topic of the 7th Annual Alice Kassabian Memorial Conference given by the Greater Washington Society for Clinical Social Work. William Meyer, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Ob/Gyn, Duke University Medical Center, will present. The conference is on Saturday, November 3, 2018, 9AM-12:30 pm. Contact Audrey Thayer Walker for questions, audreythayerwalker@gmail.com.
  •   Bethesda Office space A great single sunny office with its own waiting room and ample free parking is available for share or sublet starting in March 2018. The building is well maintained and includes free use of conference room, internet fax and copier. Very reasonable price.  If interested please contact Daniela Wolf at 301-922-9484, dwarttherapy@msn.com.
  • Training & Psychotherapy Groups co-facilitated by Trish Cleary and Ginger Sullivan:
Supervision/Case-Consultation Group
This open/ongoing case-focused group is for mental health providers and meets one Saturday a month from 2 to 4 pm. Read more...

Process Group for Therapists
Meets one Saturday a month from 10:30 am-12:30 pm. This experiential process group requires a year commitment. Read more...

Couples Therapy Groups
Client and self-referrals are welcome. Saturday's Couples Group meets once a month from 10:30 am-12:30 pm. Sunday's Couples Group meets once a month from 11:00 am-1:00 pm. Read more...
  • Opening in an Ongoing Supervision/Study Group - This group provides an opportunity to play with theoretical ideas and to apply them directly to clinical material in a supportive, engaging environment, as well as to promote deeper understanding of self as clinician. The emphasis is on exploring psychoanalytic theory as well as clinical casework, with a focus on Relational Theory, Intersubjectivity, and Self Psychology. Readings are assigned as they pertain to specific cases and theoretical interest, with input from the group. Participants have basic familiarity with psychoanalytic theory. This is an ongoing group, open to all allied mental health professionals, with a maximum of five members. The group meets biweekly on Mondays from 2-3:15 pm in Chevy Chase, MD. Please call Janna Sandmeyer at 202.306.6500 or email at JannaSandmeyer@me.com for fee information and any other inquiries.   
  • Supervision Group for Early Career Professionals - Roger Segalla , the Director Emeritus of the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis (ICP+P), has two openings in his supervision group specifically designed for early career professionals. This interactive weekly supervision group will utilize a relational psychodynamic perspective, that includes self psychology and intersubjectivity theory, to assist group members in conceptualizing and treating individuals, couples, and families. This group will also offer assistance in professional practice issues like setting practice policies, fee structures and practice development issues. If you are interested in learning more about this group please contact Roger at (301) 652-1707 or you can email him at: rsegalla@verizon.net .
  • Countertransference-Focused Consultation Group Opening - Roger Segalla, Director Emeritus of the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis (ICP+P), currently has an opening in his Friday, 12:30 pm to 1:45 pm, supervision group. This weekly consultation group, for mid to late career professionals, utilizes the critical data contained in countertransference feelings, reactions and enactments to guide a psychodynamic process.  A relational perspective, that includes self psychology and intersubjectivity theory, is used to assist group members in conceptualizing and treating individuals, couples, and families. If you are interested in learning more about this group please contact Dr. Segalla at (301) 652-1707 or you can email him at: rsegalla@verizon.net.

ICP+P Connections  is the e-Newsletter of the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, issued at the beginning of each month. 

Please e-mail articles, announcements, artwork, etc. to  Nancy Der, ICP+P Administrator, at administrator@icpeast.org by the 23rd of the previous month.