October 2000

OCTOBER MEETING PREVIEW

Freud for the Twenty-first Century:
A Modern Freudian's view of Hope and Despair

Malcolm Bonnheim, Ph.D. and Scott Nelson

In October, Malcolm Bonnheim, Ph.D., also a past president and founding member of DSPP, will focus on the feasibility of maintaining an analytic practice in today's professional climate, embedded as it is in a context of frequent declarations in the media that Freud and the psychoanalytic enterprise are really dead this time, diminished representation of analytic thinking in graduate programs, struggles with managed care, and internal disputes about paradigms. What is the analytic professional to do? Dr. Bonnheim will offer his quite hopeful view of the future of analytic practice in this context; he has written and published on the topic. Scott Nelson, a recent member of DSPP and a Ph.D. candidate in clinical psychology, will join Dr. Bonnheim in the presentation, offering a student's perspective on hope for incorporating analytic work in the practice of the future.

FALL WORKSHOP PREVIEW

Steven Cooper, Ph.D.
Objects of Hope:
Exploring Possibility and Limit in Psychoanalysis
Afternoon Case Discussion:
Karen Strupp, Ph.D.

Saturday November 4, 2000
8:30 AM to 3 PM

City Place Conference Center
2711 N. Haskell at Central Expressway

Despite the importance of the concept of hope in human affairs, psychoanalysts have had little to say about the therapeutic role of hope in general and the manner in which interpretive orientations and explanations express hopes for patients in particular. In Objects of Hope, Dr. Steven Cooper provides a comparative analysis of contemporary psychoanalytic models with respect to issues of hope and hopelessness.
The most hopeful aspects of human growth also entail acceptance of destructive elements. Objects of hope, after all, may also be objects of disappointment, danger, competition, and envy. The analysis of hope then, involves a central dialectic tension between psychic possibility and psychic limit. Cooper argues that analysts have difficulty integrating the concept of limit into a treatment so dedicated to the augmentation of psychic possibility. He demonstrates how each psychoanalyst theory provides its own logic of hope with a distinctive sense of what the analyst may hope for the patient, and what the patient is encouraged to hope for himself or herself. He also discusses a variety of clinical strategies for dealing with entrenched hopelessness such as ironic interpretations, humor, perverse support, etc.
Cooper brings scholarship and candor to the knotty issues of what can and cannot be achieved in psychoanalytic therapy. It is a thoughtful, original effort to place the vital issue of hope at the center of clinical concern and this fall workshop.

Workshop Leader

Dr. Cooper, a psychologist in private practice, is a training and supervising analyst at Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis. He serves on several journal editorial boards. He is a clinical assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. His book, Objects of Hope: Exploring Possibility and Limits in Psychoanalysis, was published in September 2000 by the Analytic Press.

Case Presenter

Dr. Karen Strupp is a psychologist in private practice in Houston since 1985. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Strupp is an advanced analytic candidate in adult and child psychoanalysis at the Houston-Galveston Psychoanalytic Institute.

Note: Dr. Cooper’s book, Objects of Hope: Exploring Possibility and Limits in Psychoanalysis, may be purchased through the DSPP web site and will be available at the workshop.

Workshop location map, directions, schedule, and registration form are also available on the DSPP web site.
www.dspp.com

SEPTEMBER MEETING REVIEW

Freud for the Twenty-first Century:
A Modern Freudian's view of Hope and Despair
Marc Rathbun, Ph.D.
Reviewed by Krista Jordan, Ph.D.

Dr. Rathbun began his presentation with a few cases that illustrated the struggles of hope and despair in analytic therapy. In each of these cases the material contained hopes masquerading as despair and despair masquerading as hopes, reminiscent of the wish/fear duality we so often see.

Dr. Rathbun illustrated how the material could be seen from both sides to more fully illuminate the core dilemmas for each patient. He described the business of analytic therapy as the therapist’s solicit[ing] and then jeapordiz[ing] the patients most cherished hopes and expos[ing] him to the despair over them.

Dr. Rathbun set the theoretical stage by reviewing Erik Erikson’s definition of hope (“expectant desire”) and Erikson’s idea that “hope is linked to the achievement of basic trust”. He then moved on to Roy Schafer, who links hope to the “comic and romantic visions of life where triumph is inevitable” (Schafer). Dr. Rathbun also included Harold Boris, who defines hope as a potential that “flourishes in change and uncertainty and flux”. Boris argues that the opposite of hope is not despair but desire.

Dr. Rathbun also reviewed Salman Akhtar’s ideas of “someday” and “if only” fantasies. The “someday” fantasy consists of hope that someday the patient’s problems will effortlessly vanish/be solved and prevents patient’s from facing the strain of actually taking steps to change. The “if only” fantasy consists of the idea that “if only” something had not happened everything would have been fine. Dr. Rathbun pointed out that this fantasy is linked to despair “since it appears to refer to the conviction that a calamity has occurred”. He further elaborated that there is an underlying hope in this despair—the hope that if the patient stays fixated in the past, that somehow the loss would be reversed.

Dr. Rathbun then drew on Ernest Kafka, who stated, “analysis presents patients with the agreeable idea that their childhood wishes can achieve symbolic, attenuated gratification. But it also presents a disagreeable confrontation that they will never be able to satisfy childhood wishes except symbolically, in attenuated ways. We are again back to Schafer’s tragic vision that we must accept the limitations of the human condition. Dr. Rathbun also notes that Boris and Akhtar warn us that the giving up of hope and illusion can lead to intense despair and even suicidal wishes, which can clearly be see in the consulting room.

Dr. Rathbun then explored the relationship between denial, hope and depression and noted that it is some form of hope that brings patients into therapy to begin with. He also argued that the loss of hope is a necessary part of the therapy process, for example giving up Oedipal strivings or the wish for omnipotence.

Looking further into despair, Dr. Rathbun described Phillip Rieff’s view of family life—“the child lives in a world of frustration, goaded by unappeasable desires and envies”, and Freud’s view that childhood neurosis is unavoidable due to the permanent crisis of the ego, which is forever besieged by the id, superego and reality.

Dr. Rathbun again turned to Roy Schafer for another view of Freud in Schafer’s article “The Analytic Vision of Reality”. In this article, Schafer states that although the comic, romantic, tragic and ironic perspectives are all necessary aspects of the theory, it is the tragic and ironic visions that are the focus of modern Freudian analysis. Dr. Rathbun quoted extensively from the article and summarized that the tragic vision at the very least can sound despairing. However he quickly pointed out that Schafer does not believe that it necessarily involves unhappiness and, in fact, “that Schafer views the tragic vision as an accomplishment”. Here again is the view that the patient must relinquish illusion and reliance on hope, giving way to acceptance of the reality that “it is in many respects an unprotected life"...and we must all move towards “doing the best [we] can with what [we have] despite, or indeed because of the ephemerality of not only life but also our adjustment to it”.

Finally, Dr. Rathbun turned his attention to the newest incarnation of psychoanalysis: co-construction of transference, inter-subjectivity and relational forms of analysis. Dr. Rathbun commented that this abolishing of hierarchies could be seen as regression to an anal level in that “all meanings [are] equivalent”, thereby escaping the reality (and despair) of the “painful independence of the world”. He also theorized that post-modernism is a “response to despair and disillusionment and a sense of betrayal with respect to ‘classical’ forms of psychoanalysis." He finished by commenting on the uncertainty in our ranks. Do we take a literal/orthodox view of Freud or are we “reformed” Freudians? And in either camp, have we somehow lost the faith? It seems, alas, that even psychologists are not immune to the epic struggles of hope and despair.

DSPP WELCOMES
NEW and RETURNING MEMBERS

Joyce Bader-Rogers, Ph.D.
Rebecca J. Bailey, Ph.D.
Bob Bennett, M.D.
Mark Biskamp, Ph.D.
David E. Faris, Ph.D.
Craig Field, Ph.D.
Juli Hobdy, Ph.D.
Andrezj Honory, M.D.
Judith P. Kane, M.D.
Linda Lee McCarley, LMSW-ACP
Annalisa M. Pask, Ph.D.
Risa Solomon, LMSW-ACP
A Vreeland, Ph.D.
Sandra Warshak, Ph.D.

We extend a warm welcome to the new members who have joined us this year. We want to make you feel comfortable in our organizational family, to entice you into participating fully in our broad range of activities, and to woo you into the working structure of DSPP. You represent a crucial part of our future.

Pat Wood, Ph.D.
DSPP President

DSPP/Fairhill Scholarship Competition

Two Cash Awards…

Undergraduate and Graduate Students

DSPP will offer cash awards of $1,000 each to an undergraduate and graduate student submitting the scholarly papers judged best by a panel of DSPP readers. Qualifying papers must be original works by students enrolled in accredited degree programs of area universities and colleges.

Papers should incorporate psychoanalytic theory and / or application as a major thematic component. Students from all academic disciplines are encouraged to enter.

Submission deadline is February 24, 2001.
Awards will be presented at the DSPP Spring Workshop, March 24, 2001.

For more information visit the DSPP web site
http://www.dspp.com
or contact
Cheryl Martin RN, LPC
DSPP Community Relations Chair
cam@dspp.com
214-384-2395

DSPP on the Web

The DSPP web site includes the program calendar, workshops, announcements, classes, online papers, and much more. A popular section has been the online version of the DSPP Membership Directory. Members who have submitted their e-mail addresses to DSPP also have the opportunity to receive additional announcements and exchange conversation with other DSPP members through our electronic mailing list. The e-mail list delivers announcements directly to your Internet mailbox. If you are not subscribed to the e-mail list and would like to be added you may contact Cheryl Martin at cam@dspp.com. The mailing list is open to registered DSPP members only, with more than 90% of the membership currently subscribed.

DSPP Distinguished Contributor Award

The first Distinguished Contributor Award of the Dallas Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology goes to the society's chief optimist and innovator. To the man who always says, "I think we can."

"I think we can establish a successful scholarship award to encourage psychoanalytic thought and scholarship in undergraduate and graduate students."

"I think we can establish a wonderful DSPP web site -- often imitated but rarely equaled in excellence."

"I think we can reach out into the community to promote psychoanalytic thinking with entertaining and thought-provoking programs for the public."

"I think we can produce persuasive brochures to promote the society to mental health professionals and psychoanalytic treatment to patients."

In another arena, he said, "I think we can create a race car for challenged students, use it to teach arts, sciences, and living and turn the students into winners."

And in another venue, he said, "I think we can build castles in the air, or is that Mexico?"

The first DSPP Distinguished Contributor Award goes to William K. Gordon, III, Ph.D.

Those were the words elegantly shared by Pat Wood, Ph.D. as she presented Dr. Gordon with the Distinguished Contributor Award of the Dallas Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology and a pyramid shaped etched glass paperweight from Tiffany's. The paperweight was inscribed with the words:

William K. Gordon III, Ph.D.
Distinguished Contributor
Dallas Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology
2000

ANNOUNCEMENTS

“MY LIFE AS A DOG”

Directed By: 
Anton Glazelious and Lasse Halstrom

"The film is tragic but rich with humor and hope"

Saturday, November 18, 2000
7:00pm

A DISCUSSION FOCUSED ON PSYCHOANALYTIC ISSUES 
ARISING FROM THE FILM WILL FOLLOW

Hosted By:
Judith Samson, Ph.D.

Open to DSPP Members and Invited Guests.
Please RSVP Your Attendance to the Host at (214) 750-7692.

Pot Luck Dinner at 7:00pm film at 7:30pm

Attention Early Career Therapists
Are you an early career therapist who is interested in practice development issues?
I'm interested in meeting regularly with other early career therapists (that is, those who have been licensed for up to 5 years) who want to share helpful information about the following topics: marketing a private practice, developing oneself professionally, juggling work and family, etc. If you fit this early career category, please contact Steve Patrick, PsyD at (972) 934-1485.

DSPP Bulletin Notice
Submissions to the Bulletin must be received by the 30th of each month in order to appear in the following month’s issue. Please e-mail your items to Cheryl Martin at cam@dspp.com or call 214-384-2395.

FOUNDERS DAY

The Dallas Psychoanalytic Society
The SMU Interdisciplinary Psychoanalytic Consortium and The Dallas Foundation for Psychoanalysis
Celebrate

The Dream 100 Years Later

Saturday, October 21
9am to 1pm

McCord Auditorium
Dallas Hall, SMU

John Herman, Ph.D.
Freud’s legacy and the neurobiology of dreaming

David Hershey, M.D.
The use of dreams from an ego-psychological perspective

Ronald Schenk, Ph.D.
How modern Jungian analysts view dreams

Barbara Anderson, Ph.D.
What the dreams of field workers reveal

Lynne Alvarez
The Place and Use of Dream Sequences in Theater

The public is invited.

There is no charge for this event, which is generously supported by a grant from Wyeth-Ayerst

SPRING PUBLIC FORUM
Preliminary Announcement

March 15, 2001

Peter Fonagy, Ph.D.
Stuart Twemlow, M.D.

The Community Relations Committee will be offering an evening public forum focused on youth violence featuring distinguished guest speakers Peter Fonagy, Ph.D. and Stuart Twemlow, M.D. Watch for fut

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