Unconscious: Of Course! But Really?
Working Under Threat:
Another Look on Transference
Date
This meeting has taken place 20 - 22 May 2016
Location
Vienna. At the Vienna Psychoanalytic Academy (Salzgries 16/3).
Eligibility
Registration is open to members of the International Psychoanalytic Association and invited guests, who can include experienced candidates or psychoanalysts belonging to other organizations. Those interested should contact one of the CCM moderators to discuss.
Purpose
The meeting will consist of moderated small group clinical workshops. They will use the CCM method to discuss a presenter's work in a few sessions in depth. There will also be informal large-group presentations from the Moderators' group.
The CCM method, originally developed as part of the European Psychoanalytic Federation's Ten Year Scientific Initiative involves structuring discussion in steps - ordinary clinical discussion focused on the presenter's work in the sessions, close focus on the function of each of the presenter's interventions (Step 1) and construction of the presenter's working model of psychoanalysis (Step 2). These formulations are then further discussed in the moderators' group some months later and the overall thoughts fed back to the workshop group and the presenter.
The large group meetings provide the chance for the thinking that has taken place in the moderators' group since the last year to be shared and discussed.
Background Argument
The chosen title for 2016 aims to highlight some thoughts in the moderators group.
One impression we often have about the workshop or moderator discussions is that the unconscious can tend to be forgotten not only by the protagonists of a psychoanalytical treatment but also by everyone else, despite all our attachment to it as a principle belief. How does it happen sometimes so that the unconscious somehow ceases to be the focus of the analyst and the groups?
We have wondered whether when moments of apparent crisis are discussed in our workshops, such as the idea the patient will leave treatment or is unable to tolerate interpretation, what has actually happened is that the unconscious has imposed feelings and provoked some surprising ideas which no one has yet found digestible.
Sometimes at these points the question seems to be: will the protagonists in sessions or our groups feel able to work under the threat of rupture or decompensation or has the situation become unthinkable? Perhaps, since it is analysts who in sessions and in discussion groups appear to be forgetting or going round the nature and the presence of the unconscious, then the nature of the what is being transferred at that point might become the guide to understanding? Can such understanding help us in sessions and our groups to formulate useful ideas to the patient or perhaps just be held in the analysts’ mind to break the deadlock?
PRELIMINARY TIMETABLE 2016
This timetable is provisional although we do not expect timings to alter. It will be updated as we finalize arrangements.
Large Group Plenaries Friday and Saturday Afternoon, Sunday morning.
We will devote the first two hours to some discussion of the progress of the project - reflecting on the two step method, the role of the workshop groups, the work of the moderators and what we are finding out. The moderators meet to discuss the workshops and we have been mulling over the issues and experiences. It is is this that leads us to think it will be useful to discuss what we mean by working under unconscious threat and how it can be managed.
On Saturday afternoon we will elaborate our thinking and hope to facilitate discussion in the groups by feeding back some of the core issues raised by one of the workshops in Vienna in 2015, since discussed in the moderators group.
Sunday morning will provide an opportunity for evaluation and feedback.
Invitation to Participants to present in the Workshops.
If you would like to present an analytic case in the workshops or if you have suggestions about how you might like to participate in the project please contact o.bonard@gmail.com
If you want to present, it should be an ordinary analytic case progressing in an ordinary way.
Vienna
* Please note that Vienna is an easy city to visit. Our meeting place is at walking distance from:
CCM Workshops
The workshops will be moderated by one or two moderators who have experience of CCM groups and take part in the moderator groups.
The moderators and CCM members organizing the 2016 symposium are: