Saturday, March 29: 9 AM - 1 PM, Pacific Time

Sunday, March 30: 9 AM - 1:30 PM, Pacific Time

Registration closes at 4:30 PM the day before the event starts. Late registrations cannot be accommodated. Please refer our Policies page for more information.

PLEASE MAKE NOTE OF THIS IMPORTANT INFORMATION:

• This is a two-day program which is being presented on Zoom only. 
• Pre-registration is required. You will receive confirmation and details by email. 
• 8 CE/CME credits are offered for this program. Attendance both days is required for credit. Signature is required (in the meeting Chat) for credit.
• Contact Byrd at byrdb@n-c-p.org if you have questions.

 

NCP PRESENTS:

The Never-Ending Challenge of Reinventing Psychoanalysis for the Unknown

“Psychoanalysis goes far deeper than any other form of communication in a relationship that anybody knows so far. But... especially if we are going to have to deal with patients which are not really like the sort of patient which is spoken of in classical psychoanalysis, then not only are we to treat these patients, but we have to invent the methods by which we are going to treat them.”  (Bion, Los Angeles, 1967/2013)

During this two-day conference, Ofra Eshel will present two works, which will be evaluated and discussed by contemporaries Charles Levin, Aner Govrin, and Mary Tennes, as well as a clinical case presentation by Margaret Rubin. The works focus on recognition of the paradox of learning uncertainty and multiplicity of knowledge as well as helping clinicians withstand the Unknown while building capacity to contain psychodynamic dislocation. The discussions of Dr. Eshel’s papers will focus on the brilliantly creative and fundamental quality of her psychoanalytic work, which draws deeply on the analytic tradition, particularly Winnicott and Bion; but also on how she helps us to think beyond them. 

The Leonard J. Comess Israel Teaching Fund has underwritten this program.

If you cannot attend the live session but want to receive a recording, please register. An event recording will be emailed to you. The case presentation will not be recorded. Please allow up to one week for NPC to email the recorded material.

 

Conference Schedule: 

Saturday – March 29, 2025 - Reinventing psychoanalysis for the great unknown

9:00 - 9:15 | Welcome and opening remarks: Dahlia Nissan Russ, Psy.D., LCSW, Conference Coordinator  

9:15 – 10:30 | Being Totally in the dark: On working analytically within the depths of the great unknown of psychic catastrophe: Ofra Eshel, PsyD 

10:30 – 10:45 | Break

10:45 - 11:30 | Discussion I: How Ofra Eshel helps to guide us into the theoretical wilderness, where psychanalysis needs to go: Charles Levin, PhD 

11:30 – 12:20 | Discussion II: Enchanted and troubled in contemporary psychoanalysis: Ofra Eshel’s extension of the Bion-Winnicott framework for working with severe trauma: Prof. Aner Govrin, PhD

12:20 – 1:00 | Q & A

Sunday – March 30, 2025 - The Enigma of telepathic dream

9:00 – 10:00 | Where are you, my beloved? On absence, loss and the enigma of telepathic dreams: Ofra Eshel, PsyD

10:00 – 10:45 | Discussion III: To approach what is radically Other: Mary Tennes, PhD

10:45 – 11:00 | Break

Reinvention psychanalysis for severe perversion

11:00 AM – 12:00 | Clinical Case: Calamities and secrets, the power of the fetish: Margaret Rubin PhD

12:00 – 1:00 | The never-ending challenge of reinventing psychanalysis for severe perversion Discussion: Ofra Eshel PsyD

1:00 – 1:30 | Q & A

Learning Objectives:

As a result of attending this program, participants will be able to:

• Re-think and discuss the essence of the unknown in different areas in psychoanalysis: massively traumatic states, patients’ telepathic dreams, and sudden death.
• Assess clinically the meaning of the ontological-experiential shift in psychoanalysis - from epistemological (knowing) exploration and interpretation to being and becoming in the experience.
• Explain how the development of the analyst’s imagination and experience allows the analyst to reinvent ways of working within the patient-analyst “withnessing,” while transcending subjective boundaries in order to establish a new analytic experience and understanding. 
• Demonstrate increased capacity and willingness to work within the darkest abysmal traumatic depths of unrepressed and unrepresented unconscious states.
• Identify new essentials of analytic work emerging from the spectrum of analytic oneness, and apply the understanding of Winnicott-Bion-Eshel spectrum to their analytic work with difficult patient and difficult analytic situation.
• Describe the meaning of the patient’s experiencing and living through “for the first time” the hitherto unexperienced and unrepresented breakdown in treatment (Winnicott).
• Explain the difference between projective/introjective identification and the process of at-one-ment (late Bion). 
• Examine how Eshel deepens the late Bion-Winnicott ontological approach and points the way beyond the psychoanalytic canon, particularly through her concepts of "the spectrum of analytic oneness," "projective realization," and "vicarious self-state dissociation, " in work with severely traumatized patients.
• Evaluate how the “enchanted-troubled position” can lead to meaningful theoretical and technical developments in psychoanalysis while maintaining connection to established frameworks. 
• Re-think and discuss the years-long enigma of telepathic dreams.
• Compare and clarify the links between Eshel’s psychoanalytic model of analytic oneness, the emergence of telepathic experiences within psychoanalysis, and the pressing need to attend, at this moment in time, to collective global catastrophes. 
• Discuss the reliving of the early breakdown and catastrophic loneliness in the treatment experience with the analyst as described in Rubin’s analysis of a severely fetishistic patient.
• Summarize the spectrum of analytic oneness and how to apply it to analytic work.
• Demonstrate increased capacity to work with unrepressed and unrepresented unconscious states.

Program Coordinator: Dahlia Nissan Russ, PsyD, LCSW

Committee: Dahlia Nissan Russ, PsyD, LCSW, Tom Brod, MD, Meiram Bendat, JD, PhD, and Peter Loewenberg, PhD

Presenter:

Ofra Eshel, PsyD, is a training and supervising analyst and senior faculty member of the Israel Psychoanalytic Society and Institute; fellow, the International psychoanalytic Association (IPA); Honorary Member of the New Center for Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles, and former vice-president of the International Winnicott Association (IWA).  Founder and head of the post-graduate program “Winnicott, Bion, and Independent Psychoanalysis: Radical Breakthroughs” at the advanced studies of the Program of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University. Founder (in 2024) of the advanced program “Radical Breakthroughs in Contemporary Psychoanalysis” at Deepsprings, Beijing, China. A prolific writer, her papers have been published in psychoanalytic journals and book chapters, translated into ten languages, and presented at national and international conferences across four continents.  She has been the recipient of several honors and awards, most recently the 2022 Leonard Comess Award. In 2023 she was ranked as the first of the top 10 authors writing on Winnicott between 1978-2023. Author of The Emergence of Analytic Oneness: Into the Heart of Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2019), with translations into Chinese (2024) and Brazilian-Portuguese (2025).  She is in private practice in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Discussants:

Charles Levin, PhD, FIPA, is a training and supervising analyst in private practice in Montreal. He has served over many years in a variety of capacities at the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, including director of training and editor-in-chief of the Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis. In addition to clinical psychoanalysis, his work focuses on issues related to culture, aesthetics, and psychoanalytic ethics. His publications include: The mind as an internal object, Psychoanalytic Quarterly (2010), Art in the offertorium: Narcissism, psychoanalysis and cultural metaphysics (Rodopi, 2012), and the edited volume Social aspects of sexual boundary trouble in psychoanalysis (Routledge), which received an award from the APA Division 39 in 2021. He is currently completing a book-length study of Bion.

Professor Aner Govrin, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, philosopher, and psychoanalyst in private practice in Tel Aviv. He serves as director of the Psychoanalysis Hermeneutics doctoral program at Bar Ilan University’s Program for Hermeneutics and Culture. A training analyst at the Tel Aviv Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis (TAICP), he co-founded the School of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy at the Tel Aviv Institute and was its first director. He is the editor of the Routledge Introductions to Contemporary Psychoanalysis book series. His recent book, How Philosophy Changed Psychoanalysis: From Naïve Realism to Postmodernism (Routledge, 2024), explores the intersection of philosophical thought and psychoanalytic theory. His forthcoming work, The Craft of Psychodynamic Case Study: Practical Guide, will also be published by Routledge.

Mary Tennes, PhD, is a Training and Supervising analyst at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, where she is also faculty and the head of Faculty Development.  In the last several decades, she has written and presented extensively on the intersection of psychoanalysis and the mystical, the telepathic and the uncanny. Her most recent article, Tell all the truth but tell it slant: Psychoanalysis and the uncanny is about to be published in Contemporary Psychoanalysis.  She is in private practice in Oakland, CA.

Clinical Presentation:

Margaret Rubin, PhD, is a member and senior faculty at the New Center for Psychoanalysis (NCP). She graduated from Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute and Society in 2000 and was awarded Thesis of the Year. Additionally, she has twice been awarded Faculty of the Year at NCP for teaching Relational Theory to the psychoanalytic candidates in the training program. She has also taught in NCP’s psychotherapy program. Dr. Rubin has been published in Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Dialogues. Her paper Calamities and Secrets, The Power of the Fetish is being published in the upcoming March/April Symposium Issue in Psychoanalytic Dialogues. She practices in Santa Monica, CA.

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Target Audience: This program meets the needs of mental health professionals, including psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and marriage and family therapists.

Fees - With Credit: NCP Member Registration $140 | General Registration $175 | Student Registration $90

Fee - Without Credit: International Registration $50

Program Format: This program will be held virtually and recorded. The recording will be shared with participants who have registered for the event. The video may also be used for educational purposes. If you do not wish to be recorded, please turn your camera off. By registering for this event, you grant permission to THE NEW CENTER FOR PSYCHOANALYSIS to the rights of your images, in video or still, and of the likeness and sound of your voice as recorded on audio or video.

CE/CME Credits: 8 credits 

 

CONTINUING EDUCATION CREDIT 

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 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 a maximum of 8 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

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. 

PSYCHOLOGISTS: The New Center for Psychoanalysis is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists.  The New Center for Psychoanalysis maintains responsibility for this program and its content. Psychologists must report CE credits directly to MCEP using this document to verify attendance. Please note that a psychologist must attend the CE program in its entirety in order to receive credit.  

SOCIAL WORKERS, MARRIAGE and FAMILY THERAPISTS (LCSW, LMFT, ASW, IMF, LEP, LPCC, PCCI): The New Center for Psychoanalysis offers continuing education via the organizations listed above whose requirements meet the course content requirements set by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences (see 16 CCR section 1887.4.0 for General CE Course Content Requirements). Acceptance of the CE credits for this activity is at the discretion of the licensing board.

 

Please complete all registration pages until you come to the final "Receipt" page. This will ensure the confirmation email with the meeting details is sent to you. Contact Byrdb@n-c-p.org if you have trouble registering.