Foundations of Relational Thought

Victoria Demos, Ph.D.
Saturday, September 21 & 28, 2024
11a - 1:15pm USA EST

This course will focus on tracing several early and seminal ideas in the canon of Relational Psychoanalysis. The readings and discussion will include both theoretical and clinical material. In specific, students will have the opportunity to trace the seminal ideas of dissociation, self-states, surrender, and recognition, as well as the connection of these concepts to early attachment patterns.

Related to this, we will examine how these states emerge in the intersubjective space between analyst and patient. Clinical material both from the readings as well as our own cases will be discussed in order to demonstrate and illustrate both how to identify, and work with these various intersubjective states. As we read from several authors including Jessica Benjamin, Steve Mitchell and Philip Bromberg, we will discuss how their concepts emerge within the therapeutic dyad. We will look at how to identify and recognize different self-states and dissociation and how to work with them.

Victoria Demos, Ph.D. is a supervisor at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy (ICP), the National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP), and the Westchester Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (WCSPP). Dr. Demos is faculty at NIP, William Alanson White, WCSPP and the Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center. Dr. Demos has presented and published in the areas of boundary violations and intergenerational transmission of trauma. She most recently published with Adrienne Harris as co-editor, The Collected Papers of Emmanuel Ghent: Heart Melts Forward. Her clinical and supervisory practice is virtual as well as in New York City and Fairfield, Connecticut.

Psychoanalysis as Play and the Play of Psychoanalysis: Developments in Contemporary Independent Tradition and Relational Thinking

Steven Cooper, Ph.D.
Tuesday, November 12 & 19, 2024
7 - 9:15pm USA EST

When Winnicott redefined psychoanalysis and the analytic situation as a play setting, he created a seismic shift in clinical and theoretical psychoanalysis. He was developing a revolutionary understanding of intersubjectivity and inventing, along with Bion in parallel fashion regarding dreaming, the ontological strain in psychoanalysis. Winnicott's concept of play grew out of a cluster of ideas associated with the Independent Tradition, the latter of which has important overlap and difference with contemporary developments in interpersonal and relational theory. We are still mining Winnicott's insights regarding the analytic setting as a form of playing. Simply put, this is the purpose of this seminar.

Here, we will explore playing as a process out of which the patient's experience of being and becoming is hopefully developed. In understanding both Winnicott's theory of play and the contemporary evolution of his theory within the Independent sand Relational traditions, a question I will try to foreground is how we are able to maintain the mystery and magic of play as well as the ambiguity of inside and outside that are inherent to it. In three books (2023), Playing and Becoming, Beyond Playing and Dreaming (2025) and Psychoanalysis in Play, (2025) I have tried to bring together my thoughts on these matters.

I will try to help you think about and find your own version of play in your work, borrowing and discarding from these traditions. Hopefully, the seminar will stimulate your thinking about new elements of play that you have not considered such as the interdependence and paradox of mourning and playing, as well as questions regarding an ethic of playing. The clinical examples that I will present and that I hope that you will present are often puzzling, paradoxical, and enigmatic in capturing places of play within the intersubjective setting of analytic work. Understanding the patient's and analyst's resistance to play is some of the hard work and fun. These forms of resistance include the analyst's relationship to the patient's and their own internal objects. In general, patients have to find an analyst who is ready to play and this may involve a tremendous amount of countertransference activity on the part of the analyst.

We will begin by reading a few key Winnicott papers that are the basis of understanding his contribution to play. Then we will read from a several authors whom I regard as contributing to contemporary versions of the Independent Tradition (loosely defined) including Parsons, Ogden and some of my own recent writing. Finally, we will think about Winnicott and contemporary Independent tradition writers in relation to Relational thinking about play, including Benjamin, Ringstrom, Corbett and Cooper.

Steven Cooper, PhD is a training and supervising analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and The Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. He is also a Clinical Professor in Psychiatry at the Columbia Psychiatry Department and the NYU Postdoctoral Program. He has authored or edited seven books in psychoanalysis, three of which related to the matter of psychoanalysis as a form of play. He is the former Joint Editor-in-Chief of Psychoanalytic Dialogues. He has a practice in New York.

Dissociation and the State(s) of the Self - The Bromberg Variations

Velleda Ceccoli, Ph.D.
Saturday, December 7, 2024
10am - 12:15pm & 1 - 3:15pm USA EST

Philip Bromberg's interest in relational trauma led him to develop his ideas about dissociation, the fluidity of the mind and the notion that the self is comprised of multiple self-states. This workshop will familiarize participants with Bromberg's contribution to psychoanalysis starting with his expansion of Sullivan's Interpersonal theory, to his relationship with Stephen Mitchell and what grew into the paradigmatic shift known as the Relational turn. We will then address his interest in trauma, the neurobiological structure underlying it and the impact of affect regulation in clinical work.

Dr. Velleda C. Ceccoli, is in private practice in New York. She is on the faculties of the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, The Stephen Mitchell Center, the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and the Institute for Relational and Self Psychologies in Milan, Italy. Dr. Ceccoli is on the editorial boards of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and Studies in Gender and Sexuality. She has published a number of journal articles on language, trauma, dissociation, sexuality, gender and erotic experience. She also writes the ongoing psychoanalytic blog Out of My Mind.

Transgenerational Transmission: Perpetrator Fragments and Totalitarian Objects

Sue Grand, Ph.D.
Wednesday, December 11 & 18, 2024
6:45 - 9p USA EST

The wounds of generations past are written on our bodies, our psyches, and our culture. We are living in times of escalating violence, precarity, and fear. As clinicians and as citizens, we are increasingly concerned with how that past is living us. How can we mourn, and master, the past so that we don't continue to repeat it? Most of our clinical work focuses on our inherited wounds. This seminar argues that this focus is insufficient to our psychic troubles and to these times. This seminar asks how we inherit perpetrator fragments and totalitarian objects. These internalized objects are the most invisible aspect of our transgenerational legacy: they are dissociated in families, cultures, and politics. Without excavating this self state, we will continue to recycle destructiveness, in intimate relations and in our politics. In this seminar, we will illuminate this self state in both clinical and cultural processes. Where do we store our forebears' hatred and and lust for vengeance? Why and how are these parts so split off from familial and collective consciousness? Will our sense of human goodness rupture if we reclaim these parts? What happens when the dyad's totalitarian objects collide in the consulting room? Is this transgenerational lens useful in understanding the neo-fascist turn? These questions will be explored through a psychoanalytic and historical lens. Readings will be assigned, and clinical discussions will be welcomed.

Sue Grand, Ph.D., is a faculty and supervisor at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy; faculty, the Mitchell Center for Relational Psychoanalysis; faculty, National Institute for the Psychotherapies; visiting scholar at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis; visiting scholar at the Psychoanalytic Society of Northern California, and a fellow at the Institute for the Psychology and the Other. She is on the boards of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. She is the author of The Reproduction of Evil: A Clinical and Cultural Perspective and The Hero in the Mirror: From Fear to Fortitude. She is the co-editor of two books on relational theory and two books on the trans-generational transmission of trauma. With Jill Salberg, she co-authored Transgenerational Transmission: A Contemporary Introduction, published by Routledge in 2024. She is in private practice in NYC and Teaneck New Jersey.

Masculinity at the Crossroads: A series of psychoanalytic workshops on the changing landscapes of treating boys and men.

Warren Spielberg, Ph.D.
Monday, March 3, 10 & 17, 2025
7 - 8:30pm USA EST

This course will focus on the treatment of boys and men in the current cultural and political setting. We will begin by surveying the psychoanalytic writings on male development. These will include articles by Diamond, Corbett Greenspan, Pollack and those of the presenter. We will then discuss various cultural and political readings that can illuminate the current psychological landscape for boys and men. We will consider how masculinity intersects with various other identities: racial, sexual, class and political ideology including authoritarian movements. Moving forward we will discuss the ubiquity of trauma and violence among boys and men as an overarching presence which emerges as a stimulus for enactment and treatment impasse. In this regard I will present case material from my treatments of adolescents and men from various racial, class and sexual backgrounds. I will also ask the class to bring in clinical vignettes and to share their experiences and perspectives on treating boys and men.

Warren Spielberg, PhD, Fulbright Scholar, is a psychologist, psychoanalyst and an Associate Teaching Professor at the New School in New York. He is a clinical supervisor at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in psychoanalysis, and faculty at the Adelphi University Postdoctoral Trauma program. He is Co-Editor of the book, The Psychology of Black Boys and Adolescents- Two Volumes (Praeger Publishers) and consults regularly on issues of race and dialogue to schools and organizations (WarrenKirklandconsulting.com). He is an acknowledged authority on the problems of boys and men and is former member of the American Psychological Association (APA) Task Force on Guidelines for the Treatment of Boys and Men. He is also the recipient of the APA Practitioner of the Year Award for his work with the FDNY post 9/11. He is a Senior Fellow at the Equimundo Center for Masculinities and Social Justice where he has recently. He co-authored the report Masculinities and Male Trauma. His consultative work has included UNICEF, the NYC Mayor's Young Men's Initiative and the Obama Foundation My Brother's Keeper Program. He currently consults with and lectures at Al Quds University, West Bank. He maintains a private practice in Brooklyn, NY where he treats children, adults, and families.

This Love Business: Bringing in relational thinking, the body and our own messy countertransference when working with couples

Stacy Malin, Ph.D.
Wednesday, April 16, 23, & 30, 2024
7:30p - 9p USA EST

In homage to Stephen Mitchell's final work, Can Love Last?, this seminar with revisit romantic coupling from the perspective of a relational and somatically-trained couples therapist. While the field of couples therapy has exploded both in the media and in the wide range of professional trainings offered, this seminar will take a very particular focus: the non-verbal, non-conscious, highly patterned psychobiological system that is co-created between long-term romantic partners. We will consider the various factors that help shape these systems (eg, attachment needs, neurobiology, culture, etc.) and explore how to use body-based interventions and "improvisational moments" (Ringstrom) to challenge implicit patterns and creatively facilitate the development of new relational exchanges. Readings and ideas from PACT (a Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy), Shimmerlik, Fishbane, Maltas, Fisher, Beebe (infant development), Morgan, and others may be integrated.

Alongside our work with couples, we will delve into the subjectivity of the couples therapist as they sit with couples' heated, aching, flat or passionate interactions. We will consider the therapist's function as both participant and observer, or insider and outsider, in the couple's interpersonal sphere and explore the ways in which the therapist's own romantic/relational history and unconscious beliefs about being a couple might influence their subjectivity. We will also examine the risk of "secondary traumatization" (Goldner) to the therapist, the possibility of vicarious joy as partners expand their romantic connection, and even the opportunity for the couple to serve as a kind of couples therapist to their own therapist.

Numerous clinical examples will be offered and participants will be encouraged to present their own cases and share in a lively discussion.

Stacy Malin, PhD: is a psychologist and graduate of the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis as well as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP). A passionate couples therapist, she has been trained in a wide range of approaches, including EFT and PACT. She is on the faculty of both the Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center and the Couples Therapy Training and Program at the William Alanson White Institute and serves as clinical consultant to the Philadelphia Couples Therapy (PCT) program. She maintains a private practice in NYC, where she works with both individuals and couples and runs supervision groups.

Nothing is Hidden: A Comparative Exploration of Zen and Relational Psychoanalysis

Barry Magid, MD
Wednesday, May 7, 14 & 21, 2025
8 - 9:30pm USA EST

This course will look at our assumptions about what is transformative in analysis by contrasting those assumptions with their counterparts in Zen Buddhist practice. This will entail exploring our psychoanalytic theories of the self along side Buddhist concepts of no self, emptiness and interdependence. We will also look at ways in which meditation practice can go awry, colluding with our "curative fantasies" in ways that exacerbate dissociation, masochism, and the avoidance of intimacy and dependence and how these tendencies need to be recognized and dealt with when meditators seek therapy.

Barry Magid, MD is a psychoanalyst and Zen teacher, having received Dharma Transmission from Charlotte Joko Beck. He has taught Zen for 30 years at the Ordinary Mind Zendo in New York City. He is the author of three books on the intersection of Zen and psychoanalysis: Ordinary Mind: Exploring the Common Ground of Zen and Psychoanalysis (2002), Ending the Pursuit of Happiness, (2008) and Nothing is Hidden: The Psychology of Zen Koans (2013). He is the author of numerous papers on Relational Self Psychology and was the editor of Freud's Case Studies: Self Psychological Perspectives (1993).

The Therapy Relationship: Impasse, Growth and Change

Anthony Bass, Ph.D.
Friday, May 23 & 30, 2025
3 - 5:15pm USA EST

In this workshop we will explore the nature of the psychotherapy relationship, emphasizing unconscious relations between therapist and patient. We will deepen our grasp of unconscious dimensions of therapeutic relating through our engagement with difficult treatment moments.

Along with Dr. Bass, participants in the workshop may present material themselves or work with others' clinical vignettes. They will gain experience using emotional responses to patients to identify and work through enactments, impasses and other challenging countertransference obstacles at the heart of psychotherapy. Implications for how we make use of ourselves, the way we respond to our patients, and how this contributes to our therapeutic intentions and sense of 'technique' will be explored.

We will focus on patients with whom we have felt especially emotionally affected, i.e., those who have evoked intense, disturbing or arousing reactions: patients about whom one dreams at night, or becomes preoccupied by day, or who evoke anxious or counter-resistive responses, such as fighting sleep, or falling asleep or becoming bored; patients who arouse us to anger, disgust, shame, or sexual or other body experiences.

Such experiences, often at the heart of enactments in psychotherapy, provide special opportunities for gaining access to the ways in which the unconscious life of patient and therapist emerge and interact, creating special challenges and special opportunities for deepening and furthering the work.

Please come prepared to share some clinical moments if possible.

Tony Bass, Ph.D., is a founder and president of Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center. He is an adjunct associate professor and clinical consultant at the New York University Postdoctoral Program, as well as a training and supervising analyst at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. He is a founding editor and editor emeritus of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and the International Journal of Relational Perspectives.

Writing, Process, Psychoanalysis

Kim Bernstein, Ph.D.
Thursday, June 12, 19 & 26, 2025
1 - 2:30pm USA EST

In this course, we will explore writing in the context of clinical psychoanalysis and the literature of the field. I specify "clinical psychoanalysis" because so much of what constitutes psychoanalytic writing in the broader world is neither about nor informed by contemporary therapeutic work with patients. By contrast, we will focus specifically on writing that includes case material, an important, highly complex, and consequential part of the psychoanalytic literature that remains unique within the arts and sciences. Relatedly, we will consider the analyst's subjectivity in the context of such writing, as well as desire at the intersection of clinical work and authorship. While this course is not a writing workshop per se, its focus should prove useful for those who want to write in the field.

Kim Bernstein, Ph.D., LP, NCPsyA, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York. She is faculty and supervisor at the Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center and the National Institute for the Psychotherapies, where she heads the writing component of the National Training Program. Prior to becoming a psychoanalyst, she worked as a professional editor for over 15 years in academic and commercial publishing; she is currently on the Editorial Board of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association.

-The Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0261.
The Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychoanalysts #P-0055.
The Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center, LLC is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0152.
Total available credits earned per seminar is 4.5. Full attendance is required for CE credit. Certificates will be sent by email within 2 weeks of conclusion of the program.