Presented by the International Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology (IAPSP)

Self Psychology in a Multidisciplinary World:
Expansiveness and Constraints

October 2015

Omni Hotel at California Plaza
Los Angeles, California, USA

The 38th Annual IAPSP International Conference: “Self Psychology in a Multidisciplinary World:
Expansiveness and Constraints” will be held in Los Angeles, CA, USA from Thursday, October 15 – Sunday,
October 18, 2015. We cordially invite you to join us for a conference that will explore ways in which Self Psychology is augmented by insights drawn from other disciplines to meet challenges and maximize benefits in our current psychoanalytic milieu. To do justice to this variety, we have opted to present a number of shorter panels, each followed by a panel discussion organized by contemporary self psychology leaders to which attendees will “belong” throughout.

The conference begins with a Keynote by Robert Stolorow, titled “A Phenomenological-contextual, Existential and Ethical Perspective on Emotional Trauma”.

Panel One, titled “We’ll Improvise”, presents current ideas regarding the spontaneous generation of “improvisational moments” in
treatment, demonstrating how the complexity of the field momentarily shifts from the more ordinary, asymmetrical relationship into a
more symmetrical relationship in which both participants co-create a critical narrative that neither could have created alone.

Panel Two, titled “History Flows Through Us”, exploring history’s role in psychological experience, and offers two presentations, one
focused on how history impacts our understanding of ourselves, our perception of others, and our choice of theory, and the other focused
on the impact of the Holocaust on our theories, particularly on how Heinz Kohut’s struggle with his own Holocaust trauma may
influence self psychology today.

Panel Three, titled “Sexuality within the Clinical Relationship,” explores how in the clinical process patient and analyst must answer the
question that emerges implicitly or explicitly, “Why can’t we be lovers?”

Panel Four, titled “Making Ourselves Up”, examines the stories created in the clinical setting. The process of making stories is inherent
in living in the world, in creating relationships, and in practicing psychoanalysis, and these stories are inevitably fictional.

Panel Five, titled “On MindBrainBody”, explores the necessary interdigitation of mindbrainbody in more fully understanding the therapeutic
dyad in interaction. While one presentation will focus on brain, and the other on body, it is the whole of mindbrainbody that is
at the center of psychoanalytic concern.

Panel Six, titled “Multidisciplinary Knowing: Commensurability and Incommensurabilty Among Theories and Persons”, explores
important questions raised by self psychology’s inquiry into other disciplines interested in human subjectivity as sources of distinct
and useful knowledge. Panelists ask, among other questions, is commensurability necessary for integration? Is incommensurability a
constraint?

Tessa Phillips is the Kohut Memorial Lecturer, and the title of her paper is “Race, Place and Self”. The conference will end directly
after the closing Panel, with a conversation with Donna Orange and the audience on the clinical and philosophical implications of the
Conference as a whole.

2015 Conference Co-Chairs:
Estelle Shane, PhD and Joye Weisel-Barth, PhD, PsyD

2015 Program Committee:
Amy Eldridge, MSW, PhD; Peter Maduro, JD, PsyD; Gabriela Mann, PhD; Carol Mayhew, PhD; Judith Pickles, PhD; Ilene Philipson, PhD, PhD; Philip Ringstrom, PhD, PsyD; and Judith Teicholz, EdD