Mitchell Hochberg Memorial Public Education Event: Marco Iacoboni, MD, PhD will discuss, "Like a Thought That is Also a Feeling: The Betweenness of Empathy."
Conference Opening Plenary Address: Allan Schore, PhD will kick-off the Conference in this opening address, "Forging Connections in Group Psychotherapy Through Right Brain to Right Emotional Communications."
Annual Anne and Ramon Alonso Plenary Address: Joyce Slochower, PhD, ABPP will deliver her address, "Trying Not to Look Ahead."
Louis R. Ormont Lecture: Karen J. Maroda, PhD, ABPP will speak about, "Reparative Countertransference: The Therapist’s Need to Repeat the Past."
Wednesday, February 27
6:30 – 7:45 P.M.
Mitchell Hochberg Memorial Public Education Event
Supported by contributions to the Group Foundation for Advancing Mental Health
Like a Thought That is Also a Feeling: The Betweenness of Empathy
Featured Speaker: Marco Iacoboni, MD, PhD
Mirror neurons have a problem: they need to be controlled, otherwise we would be parroting each other endlessly and dysfunctionally. In my twenty years of research on mirror neurons, I spent approximately the first decade studying the system itself, and the next ten years or so studying control of mirroring. What I am doing now is to figure out how to go beyond the dichotomy of mirroring and its control, and to understand how tightly integrated mirroring and its control are, forming continuous interactions between a bottom up processing stream (mirroring) and a top down processing stream (control). In my talk I will explore this concept describing recent studies from my lab.
Learning Objectives:
The attendee will be able to:
1. Describe neural systems for empathy in humans.
2. Describe functional mechanisms for empathy in humans.
3. Describe mechanisms and systems of control of empathy in humans.
Dr. Marco Iacoboni studied medicine, neurology and neuroscience at the University “La Sapienza” of Rome, Italy. He joined the faculty of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA in 1999. He is now Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and Director of the Neuromodulation Lab at the Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center. Dr. Iacoboni has a longstanding interest in the role of the body in human cognition and sociality, in health and disease, that he investigates with brain imaging and brain stimulation. Marco Iacoboni’s general reader book on mirror neurons, entitled Mirroring People, has been published by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux (hard cover) and Picador (paperback).
Thursday, February 28
8:30 – 9:45 A.M.
Conference Opening Plenary Address
Forging Connections in Group Psychotherapy Through Right Brain to Right Emotional Communications
Featured Speaker: Allan Schore, PhD
In this lecture Dr. Schore will draw on his last book The Science and the Art of Psychotherapy and on one of his next two volumes Right Brain Psychotherapy to apply Regulation Theory to the change processes of group psychotherapy. He will discuss how right brain communications of conscious and especially unconscious affects occur beneath the words of the group member’s narratives, and how this system of nonverbal communication is implicitly embedded in group processes.
Learning Objectives:
The attendee will be able to:
1. Describe right brain-to-right brain emotional communications in group psychotherapy.
2. Discuss working with defenses of dissociation and repression.
3. Utilize interpersonal neurobiology to offer a model of the change processes in group psychotherapy.
Dr. Allan Schore is on the clinical faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. He is author of four seminal volumes, Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self, Affect Dysregulation and Disorders of the Self, Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self, and The Science of the Art of Psychotherapy, as well as two new books, Right Brain Psychotherapy and The Development of the Unconscious Mind. His Regulation Theory, grounded in developmental neuroscience and developmental psychoanalysis, focuses on the origin, psychopathogenesis, and psychotherapeutic treatment of the early forming subjective self. His articles and chapters appear in multiple disciplines, including developmental neuroscience, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, developmental psychology, attachment theory, trauma studies, behavioral biology, clinical psychology, and clinical social work. He has received numerous honors, including an Award for Outstanding Contributions to Practice in Trauma Psychology from the Division of Trauma Psychology and the Scientific Award from the Division of Psychoanalysis of the American Psychological Association. Dr. Schore has practiced psychotherapy for over five decades.
Friday, March 1
8:30 – 9:45 A.M.
Anne and Ramon Alonso Plenary Address
Supported by contributions to the Group Foundation for Advancing Mental Health
Featured Speaker: Joyce Slochower, PhD, ABPP
We therapists think a great deal about the impact of early loss, trauma, and conflict on patient and analyst's experience in the present. We’re accustomed to making these links and helping people unpack and move beyond their personal ghosts. But there’s a future ghost that most of us evade. It’s the ghost of who we will become—of our own aging and the changes it portends. How will we manage the impending diminishment of capacity that comes with aging? How will we help our patients confront it in us and in themselves?
Dr. Joyce Slochower is Professor Emerita of Psychology at Hunter College & the Graduate Center, CUNY. Dr. Slochower is faculty and supervisor at the NYU Postdoctoral Program, Steven Mitchell Center, National Training Program of NIP (all in New York), Philadelphia Center for Relational Studies in Philadelphia and the PINC in San Francisco. She is on the Editorial Boards of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Ricerca Psicoanalitica and Perspectives in Psychoanalysis and is on the Board of the IARPP. Dr. Slochower has published over 80 articles on various aspects of psychoanalytic theory and technique. Second Editions of her two books, Holding and Psychoanalysis: A Relational Perspective (1996) and Psychoanalytic Collisions (2006), were released in 2014 by Routledge. She is the author of Holding and Psychoanalysis: A Relational Perspective (1996; & 2014) and Psychoanalytic Collisions (2006 & 2014) and co-Editor, with Lew Aron and Sue Grand, of “De-idealizing Relational Theory: a Critique from Within” and “Decentering Relational Theory: a Comparative Critique” (2017) She is in private practice in New York City where she sees individuals and couples, runs supervision and study groups.
Saturday, March 2
9:00 – 11:30 A.M.
Louis R. Ormont Lecture
Reparative Countertransference: The Therapist’s Need to Repeat the Past
Featured Speaker: Karen Maroda, PhD, ABPP
This presentation bridges the gap between individual and group therapy, with a focus on Ormont’s seminal contributions. His ideas about the observing ego, subjective countertransference, and generative communication will be revisited in light of current notions of affective communication, use of self-disclosure and enactment.
Dr. Karen Maroda is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Medical College of Wisconsin and in private practice in Milwaukee, WI. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis. The author of three books, The Power of Countertransference, Seduction, Surrender and Transformation, and Psychodynamic Techniques, as well as numerous journal articles and book reviews, she is currently working on a new book to be published by Routledge in 2019.
Learning Objectives:
The attendee will be able to:
1. Illustrate how Ormont’s ideas are both congruent and incongruent with current psychoanalytic theory and practice, particularly his ideas about the observing ego.
2. Identify the distinction between Ormont”s “subjective” and “objective” countertransference versus the “totalist” position more commonly used today.
3. Delineate how Ormont’s conception of “generative communication” overlaps considerably with and pre-dates the idea of “generative enactment.”