The 2019 James Grotstein Memorial Lectures in Comparative Psychoanalysis is presented by the International Psychoanalytic Association’s Three Affiliated Institutes in Los Angeles:   

New Center for Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies, and Psychoanalytic Center of California

In honor of James Grotstein’s work in comparative psychoanalytic theory, there will be a set of three meetings in Los Angeles, to be held on two Thursday evenings, March 28 and April 18, and one Tuesday evening, April 23, 2019, at the New Center for Psychoanalysis. Throughout the international community, there was no more passionate analyst than James Grotstein in terms of his advocacy of learning from the various analytic traditions populating the analytic universe. These meetings are geared primarily towards the analytic/mental health community, so practitioners from diverse clinical backgrounds are cordially invited. There will be a link to the video that will be made available to attendees a few days after the program. 

Part 1: Thursday, March 28, 8:00 to 10:00 PM

Howard Bacal’s Child Analytic Case Presentation to D.W. Winnicott at the Pre-Congress London Meeting of the IPA in 1967

In this audio and PowerPoint presentation, we listen to (and read via PowerPoint) D.W. Winnicott’s mode of clinical intervention as well as Howard Bacal’s reflections on Winnicott’s style 50 years on.  We have Howard Bacal as guest commentator and Van DeGolia serving as the program moderator for the evening. 

Howard Bacal, MD, is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the New Center for Psychoanalysis and the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis. He is in private practice in Los Angeles. He qualified in adult and child psychoanalysis at the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London, where he was supervised by Michael Balint, Wilfred Bion, Betty Joseph, Marion Milner, and Donald Winnicott, and subsequently studied for several years with Heinz Kohut and his colleagues in Chicago. Against the backdrop of these influences, he formulated a relational self psychology, and developed specificity theory, a process-based approach to psychoanalytic treatment and supervision. Howard has authored numerous papers on psychoanalytic theory and practice.  He is also co-author, with Kenneth Newman, of Theories of Object-Relations: Bridges to Self Psychology (Columbia University Press, 1990); Ed., Optimal Responsiveness: How Therapists Heal their Patients (Jason Aronson, 1998), and The Power of Specificity in Psychotherapy: When Therapy Works – And When It Doesn’t (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011).

Van Dyke DeGolia, MD, is a child, adolescent, and adult psychoanalyst and psychiatrist in private practice in West Los Angeles. He is a graduate of the adult psychoanalytic training program at the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Institute and Society, a graduate of the child and adolescent analytic program, a senior faculty member, and a Training and Supervising Analyst at the New Center for Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. He is also an Assistant Clinical Professor in Psychiatry at the UCLA Geffen School of Medicine, where he supervises Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellows and co-teaches a course on Psychodynamic Psychotherapy in the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship Program. In addition, he is the Co-Dean of Training at the New Center for Psychoanalysis, where he teaches courses on Winnicott’s Developmental Theory and Advanced Relational Psychoanalysis.

Learning Objectives 

As a result of attending this session, participants should be able to:  

• Discuss Winnicott’s clinically drawing upon the patient’s ‘real’ mother as an object of the analyst’s understanding  
• Identify the component aspects of a complete analytic interpretation    
• Describe how the analyst carries a maternal holding function for the infantile aspects of the patient    

Part 2:  Thursday, April 18, 8:00 to 10:00 PM   

Reconsidering Bion’s Method of Clinical Inquiry and Intervention—the Clinical Seminars of the California Period

This presentation by Joseph Aguayo takes up Bion’s way of conceptualizing the clinical situation, drawing from examples of both his clinical and supervision work after he relocated to Los Angeles in 1968. The clinical implications of intuition and ‘abandoning memory and desire’ are taken up in the context of how the analyst draws out the patient’s intrapsychic condition while he considers his own internal subjectivity as a mediating factor in the analytic situation. Clinical examples will be drawn from the Los Angeles Seminars and Supervision (1967), the Buenos Aires Seminars (1968), as well as other late Bion clinical seminars. Aguayo’s presentation is also a chapter from a forthcoming publication, Clinical Bion, Then and Now, co-authored with Robert Hinshelwood, Sira Dermen and Barnet Malin, that will appear in the Routledge Bion Series under the General Editorship of Howard Levine. John Lundgren serves as program moderator.

Joseph Aguayo, PhD, is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of California, an Associate Member of the New Center for Psychoanalysis, and in private practice in West Los Angeles. He is also a Guest Member of the British Psychoanalytical Society in London. He merges his clinical and research interests by publications in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis on the clinical history of Kleinian, Bionian and Winnicottian psychoanalysis. Recent publications: ‘D.W. Winnicott, Melanie Klein and W.R. Bion: The Controversy over the Nature of the External Object—Holding and Container/Contained (1951-1967),’ Psychoanalytic Quarterly (October 2018). His most recent book is a co-edited project with Lia Pistiner de Cortinas and Agnes Regeczkey, Bion in Buenos Aires: Seminars, Case Presentation and Supervision (Karnac Books, 2017). In February 2019, he presents on ‘Winnicott in America’ at the Winter Meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and on Clinical Bion at the IPA Congress in London (July 2019).      

John Lundgren, MD, is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of California and an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine. He formerly served as Co-Director of the Group Relations Training course at UCLA Department of Psychiatry. He is a member of the A.K. Rice Institute for the Study of Social Systems and its West Coast affiliate, GREX. He serves as a consultant to Tavistock group relations conferences. Through publications and workshops, he is presently exploring the integration of this training model and psychoanalytic training. He is in private practice of psychoanalysis in Beverly Hills. 

Learning Objectives 

As a result of attending this session, participants should be able to:  

• Describe Bion’s clinical mode of inquiry when dealing with transference
• Describe Bion’s mode of clinical inquiry vis-à-vis the countertransference      
• Explain how Bion deploys clinical intuition via a clinical stance of ‘without memory or desire’ with his patients    

Part 3:  Tuesday, April 23, 8:00 to 10:00 PM

Bion and Winnicott—A Clinical Dialogue

In this Tuesday night meeting, Nicola Abel-Hirsch and Sira Dermen dialogue on key differences and similarities between these two pioneers on the ‘difficult-to-treat’ patient. What are the points of actual clinical controversy between these two analytic pioneers? How do we begin to integrate their divergent views on these problematic patients that populate our practices? Drawing from a few pre-set questions that key in on controversies between Bion and Winnicott, key clinical differences, such as the difference between ‘container/contained’ and ‘holding’ will be highlighted. Implications for analytic treatment will also be taken up. Joseph Aguayo serves as program moderator.

Nicola Abel-Hirsch is a Training and Supervising Analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society and works in private practice in London. She has given clinical and theoretical papers and seminars on Bion in the UK, Taiwan (annually 2005-2012), the USA, and Europe. From 2013–2015 she was the visiting professor at the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex. Her publications include Eros (2001); ’The Life Instinct’  Int. J. Psycho-Anal. (2010); ‘A Note and a Short Story’ in The Bion Tradition (2015); ‘Bion, Alpha-Function and the Unconscious Mind,’  Brit. J. Psychother. (2016); ‘The Devil is in the Detail’ in The Melanie Klein Tradition (2017); and ‘How Bion’s work on thinking throws light on the development of sexuality,’ Psychoanalytic Inquiry (2018). She is the editor of Hanna Segal’s last book Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (2007). Nicola's book, Bion: 365 Quotes, is in publication with Routledge.

Sira Dermen is a Training and Supervising Analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society. She originally trained as a child psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic. She is an Honorary Senior Consultant at the Portman Clinic, London, a public-sector outpatient clinic specializing in the psychoanalytic treatment of patients suffering from perversion and violence, where she worked for 20 years. She has lectured and published on violence and perversion. ‘Endings and Beginnings’ was published in 2010 in Psychoanalytic Quarterly (79: 665-685). She is co-editor, along with Paul Williams and John Keane, of Independent Psychoanalysis Today, (Karnac, 2012). She is in full-time private practice. 

Learning Objectives

As a result of attending this session, participants should be able to:  

• Compare the key differences between Bion’s container/contained concept and Winnicott’s concept of container/contained and holding
• Discuss some of the differences between Bion and Winnicott’s ideas about the patient’s experience of the external object                                                
• Discuss how it is that a public dialogue of the insights of Bion and Winnicott is relevant today

IMPORTANT:

• *6 CE credits offered (2 CE credits for each lecture) 
• $225 is the flat fee for this package of three presentations. Individual tickets are $125 per event. $75 student rate (for each of first two lectures).
• Pre-registration is required. Registration is on a first come, first served basis because of limited seating.   
• Location: NCP Auditorium, 2014 Sawtelle Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90025 

How to obtain lecture papers: 

Once registrants are officially enrolled with NCP, they can email Joseph Aguayo, PhD, at joseph.aguayo@gmail.com and request a copy of his Bion clinical paper. This is the only paper that will be emailed for this series of presentations and will be available after April 14, 2019.  

CONTINUING EDUCATION CREDIT 

IMPORTANT DISCLOSURE INFORMATION FOR ALL LEARNERS: None of the planners and presenters of these CME/CE programs have any relevant financial relationships to disclose. 

PHYSICIANS: 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 the American Psychoanalytic Association and the New Center for Psychoanalysis. The American Psychoanalytic Association is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians. 

The American Psychoanalytic Association designates this Live Activity for the maximum number of 6 hours of AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.  

PSYCHOLOGISTS: The New Center for Psychoanalysis is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. New Center for Psychoanalysis maintains responsibility for this program and its content. Full attendance is required for psychologists to receive credit; partial credit may not be awarded based on APA guidelines. For the psychologists’ records, certificates of attendance are provided at the completion of the course.  

SOCIAL WORKERS, MARRIAGE and FAMILY THERAPISTS (LCSW, LMFT, ASW, IMF, LEP, LPCC, PCCI) 

The New Center for Psychoanalysis is a continuing education provider that has been approved by the American Psychological Association, a California Board of Behavioral Sciences recognized approval agency. 

REGISTERED NURSES: The New Center for Psychoanalysis is an accredited provider approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing (Provider #CEP1112). Registered Nurses may claim only the actual number of hours spent in the educational activity for credit.