Houston Psychoanalytic Society

Conference

Vitality in Human Development

and Vitalization in Psychoanalytic Treatment


Stephen Seligman, DMH, Anne Alvarez, PhD, M.A.C.P.

& Christopher Bonovitz, PsyD

Saturday, September 14, 2024

10:00 AM - 2:30 PM Central Time


4 CME/CE/CEUs


Live via Zoom

This event will not be recorded


Registration Fees

HPS Active Member: $120

HPS Student Member: $60

Non-Member: $140


Instructional Level: Beginner - Advanced

REGISTER

Vitality might be considered the essence of aliveness. Louis Sander and Daniel Stern drew our attention to vitality as a core component of human development and psychotherapeutic treatment. They were the most visionary of the first group of infant observation researchers, along with Colwyn Trevarthen. Both were inspired by deep experiences beyond the usual psychoanalytic preoccupations: Sander by spiritual faith, sustained in his passion for the essential principles of living systems; Stern by a lifelong commitment to aesthetics and the arts, especially dance, reflected in his extraordinary eye for the choreography of infant-parent interaction and psychotherapy process. Both were also exceptional researchers and creative, integrative scientists. From these platforms, Sander and Stern broke through crusts that had restrained both developmental psychology and psychoanalysis, reaching toward the sources of human vitality throughout the life cycle. Conference presenter Stephen Seligman will discuss Sander and Stern's foundational findings about the origins, development, and manifestations of vitality, as well as the implications for treatment.


While classical psychoanalysis has taught us much about the passions, less explored are the passionless, often mindless and empty states presented by certain passive patients. In some instances, according to presenter Anne Alvarez, these states may not be the result not of a defensive or aggressive retreat, but of having given up in despair or boredom. Such patients do not seem to be hiding, but lost; not withdrawn, but undrawn. Their internal objects seem to be unvalued rather than devalued and nothing much matters. This may affect curiosity and desire, even the desire to follow a train of thought. Alvarez discusses what might be missing or underdeveloped and ways in which analytic technique may try to address these issues via processes of vitalization.


There also is a relationship between human vitality and sense of time. Presenter Christopher Bonovitz uses Loewald's concept of time in examining the temporal dimension of self states and enactments that emerge in the psychoanalytic situation. This includes looking at the relationship between time and vitality, fragmented and unitary time, and the role of imagination in developing the dyadic capacity to contain linkages between the past, present and future.


AGENDA

10:00am-10:15am Welcome, upcoming programs, conference logistics, introduction of speakers

10:15am-11:15am Presentation & discussion with Stephen Seligman

Relationships, Emotions, and the Spirit of Living Systems: Aesthetics and Spirituality in the Work of Louis Sander and Daniel Stern

11:15am-12:15pm Presentation & discussion with Anne Alvarez

The Problem of Empty States of Mind, the Uninteresting Internal Object, and Processes of Vitalization

12:15pm-12:45pm BREAK

12:45pm-1:30pm Presentation and discussion with Christopher Bonovitz

When Time Flies: Loewald’s Concept of Time and the Temporal Dimension of Enactment

1:30pm-2:00pm Discussion between speakers

2:00pm-2:30pm Q&A with audience

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After attending the program in its entirety, attendees will be able to:

  1. Describe what might be missing or underdeveloped in some passive patients with passionless or empty psychic states.
  2. Give examples of how infant-parent interactions have influenced their psychotherapeutic interventions in two cases.
  3. Describe two ways that patients' vitality has been enhanced through psychotherapeutic interventions.
  4. Describe various ways to conceptualize psychic time in relation to specific types of enactments.

Presenters

Stephen Seligman, DMH is Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco and at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis;Training and Supervising Analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California; and Editor Emeritus of Psychoanalytic Dialogues. He is the author of Relationships in Development: Infancy, Intersubjectivity, Attachment (Routledge, 2018), which has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Korean and Ukrainian (delayed), and co-edited the American Psychiatric Press’ Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health: Core Concepts and Clinical Practice. He has also worked for over four decades in the development and dissemination of the original “Fraiberg model” of infant-psychotherapy. He has published nearly 100 articles, chapters and reviews, many of which take up the intersection of infancy research, child development and psychoanalysis. An experienced child psychotherapist, Dr. Seligman teaches internationally and throughout the US, with study groups including members from California, New York and Europe.


Audrey Anne Alvarez, PhD , MACP trained as a clinical psychologist in the 1950s in Canada and the USA. While working in England, attempting to ascertain the differences in personality, rather than symptoms, between depressive and paranoid psychiatric patients, she was drawn to the writings of Melanie Klein. Dr. Alvarez subsequently trained as a Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist at Tavistock Clinic, London. She is a Member of the Association of Child Psychotherapists in the UK and the Association for Child Psychoanalysis, Boston, USA. She is an Honorary member of AIPPI (Italian Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy for Children), the French Child Psychoanalytic Association, and the Psychoanalytic Center of California in Los Angeles. She is a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist (and retired Co-Convener of the Autism Service, Child and Family Department, Tavistock Clinic. She is author of Live Company: Psychotherapy with Autistic, Borderline, Deprived and Abused Children and co-edited with Susan Reid, Autism and Personality: Findings from the Tavistock Autism Workshop. Both books have been translated into many languages. Anne Alvarez in Sao Paulo: Clinical Seminars was published in Brazil in 1999 after lectures and seminars to the Sao Paulo Psychoanalytic Society. A book in her honor, edited by Judith Edwards, entitled Being Alive: Building on the Work of Anne Alvarez was published in 2002. Dr. Alvarez was Visiting Professor at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Society in November 2005, where she continues to lecture regularly by videoconference. Her latest book, The Thinking Heart: Three Levels of Psychoanalytic Therapy with Disturbed Children, was published in April 2012 by Routledge. Dr. Alvarez has given many honorary lectures in the USA and Europe. A book – an introduction to her work- is in progress for a series of influential thinkers, which will be published by Routledge.


Christopher Bonovitz, PsyD is a Training and Supervising Analyst at William Alanson White Institute in New York, and Adjunct Professor and Clinical Consultant, NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis; and Associate Editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and Contemporary Psychoanalysis. He coauthored a book with Andrew Harlem, Developmental Perspectives in Child Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, published in 2018 as part of the Relational Book Series. In addition, Dr. Bonovitz has authored numerous book chapters and journal articles. His chapter titled, "What Makes Time Fly? Loewald's Concept of Time and the Resuscitation of Vitality", was published in Vitalization in Psychoanalysis, edited by Amy Schwartz Cooney and Rachel Sopher (Routledge, 2021).


Moderator Cynthia Mulder, LCSW is an assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine and a faculty member at the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies in Houston, Texas. She is co-facilitating a study group for HPS on vitality/vitalization.


REFERENCES (partial list)

Harrison, A. M. & Beebe, B. (2018). Rhythms of dialogue in infant research and child analysis: Implicit and explicit forms of therapeutic action. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 35: 367-381.


Seligman, S. (2018). Forms of vitality and other integrations: Daniel Stern’s contributions to the psychoanalytic core. Relationships in development: Infancy, intersubjectivity, and attachment.  New York: Routledge, pp. 240-248.


Trevarthen, C. (2019). Sander’s life work on mother-infant vitality and the emerging person. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 39: 22-35.


IMAGES of infant-parent and patient-therapist interactions from Can Stock.

Disclosures

ACCME Accreditation Statement

This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of American Psychoanalytic Association and Houston Psychoanalytic Society. The American Psychoanalytic Association is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.


AMA Credit Designation Statement

The American Psychoanalytic Association designates this Live Activity for a maximum of 4 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.


Disclosure Statement

The APsA CE Committee has reviewed the materials for accredited continuing education and has determined that this activity is not related to the product line of ineligible companies and therefore, the activity meets the exception outlined in Standard 3: ACCME's identification, mitigation and disclosure of relevant financial relationship. This activity does not have any known commercial support. 

APA Accreditation Statement
Houston Psychoanalytic Society is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Houston Psychoanalytic Society maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

HPS, through co-sponsorship with the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies, also offers approved CEUs for Texas state-approved social workers, licensed professional counselors, and marriage and family therapists.
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