Our third report from IAPSP Institutional Members across the world comes from Israel.

The Israel Association for Self Psychology and the Study of Subjectivity

The Israel Association for Self Psychology and the Study of Subjectivity was established in 1999 in order to provide a professional and organizational entity for the development and transmission of Self Psychology. The Association is located at the Adam Campus in Lod, and this residence provides a home base for the offering of services to the town of Lod. The association has grown to around 200 members (many of whom are IAPSP members, who regularly attend its International Annual Conferences, present there, and also publish papers in the journal) and is enthusiastically involved in developing Self Psychology in Israel. Members of the Association are active participants in Universities and other academic institutions, at psychoanalytic institutes in Israel, in hospitals and public mental health clinics, contributing regularly to the dissemination of Self Psychology’s legacy and ethics to the professional community and the general public.

The various activities of the association include:

Self Psychology and the Therapeutic Action: a four-year training curriculum, for advanced therapists, graduates of basic psychotherapy programs. It takes place at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine’s Psychotherapy Program, Tel Aviv University. The eighth class has begun its term several months ago and we are proud that, thus far, almost 150 students have been trained in this unique curriculum of in-depth training in Self Psychology.

Training Program for the Study of Self Psychology: a three-year basic training program for beginning therapists, which takes place in the Lod campus. The new round of students is currently applying for the fifth class scheduled to begin next academic year. The current class of 27 therapists is receiving an in-depth exposure to Self Psychology early on in their careers.

Human Spirit Psychoanalytic-Buddhist Training Program: a unique seven-year psychoanalytic training program integrating psychoanalysis, Buddhism and the humanities and arts, which also takes place in the Lod campus. The first class is already conducting 30 four-times- a- week analysis for the citizens of the city of Lod. A second round of experienced therapists is currently applying to begin its training in the upcoming academic year.

Scientific Meetings: a series of monthly scientific meetings open to professionals as well as to the general public.

Beit Midrash- ‘Reading Kohut’: monthly gatherings, which over the past four years has been dedicated to the systematic reading of Kohut’s Chicago Institute Lectures.

Annual day-workshops exploring the relationship between Self Psychology and various areas of culture and arts.

Translation project of Kohut’s writings into Hebrew: Books that have already been translated: How Does Analysis Cure? Self Psychology and the Humanities, The Restoration of the Self. Translation of The Analysis of the Self is currently in progress, while the translation of Strozier’s Heinz Kohut, the Making of a Psychoanalyst, is now in the final stages of its publication.

Ktavim [‘Writings’]– The Israeli Contribution to Self Psychology: A publication project of seminal original works of the Association’s members throughout the last 25 years.

Thinking and Research groups: application of Self Psychology to the fields of child and adolescent treatment, couples therapy, education and the social sphere.

We are also looking forward to the possibility of cooperation and interchange with other Self Psychology groups in institutes worldwide. In 2013, members of our group have met in Austria for a weekend clinical seminar with the Vienna Circle for Psychoanalysis and Self Psychology, an initiative we hope to continue. We would also welcome similar initiatives with other groups around the world.

Over the years, as part of our tie with the international Self Psychology community, we have hosted prominent IAPSP members, such as Anna and Paul Ornstein, Donna Orange, Doris Brothers, Jaqueline Gotthold, Joe Lichtenberg, and Maxwell Sucharov.

Recently the Japanese Association for World Peace Bells has decided to donate the 24th bell throughout the world to Adam Campus in the city of Lod, and we are humbly grateful for this generous act and are hopeful that this will help us in our sincere efforts to contribute whatever we can for the creation of world peace, starting within us as individuals and as a community.

Updated information concerning all our activities are available at:

http://www.selfpsychology.org.il/
https://iapsp.org/eforum/16_voices_israel.php

Respectfully

Claudia Cogan, Chair
Aliza Dolev
Saray Ilan
Asher Epstein
Iris Levinson

SECOND COLUMN

Our second report from IAPSP Institutional Members across the world comes from Melbourne, Australia.

Getting to know us:
EMPATHINK ASSOCIATION OF PSYCHOANALYTIC SELF PSYCHOLOGY (EAPSP)
in Melbourne, Australia

by Margaret Lee

Ronald R Lee, our founding president

Born in Melbourne in 1930, Ron earned a B.A. Hons (history) at University of Melbourne (and Queen’s College), a M. Div. at Garrett Theological Seminary (U.S.), a Ph. D. (psychology) at Northwestern University, and he did a year’s Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas. Spending thirty-two years in the USA, he immersed himself in practicing psychotherapy using Kohut’ s Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, He first-authored Psychotherapy After Kohut (1991), Five Kohutian Postulates (2009), and he published Special Positive Experiences (2011) as a result of co-teaching an extension course for PLC students. He returned to Australia in 1994.

He is Founding President of the Empathink Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, an affiliate of the International Association. An Honorary Senior Fellow of the medical faculty at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, he supervises psychotherapy cases of psychiatric registrars at St. Vincent’s Hospital and has lectured on Kohut’s theory for 15 years in the MPM program. Since 2009, Ron has been Honorary Advisor of the Psychiatry Department at New Territories East Cluster, Hong Kong.

He has produced ten series of DVDs (10 power point presentations each) called, Advancing and Broadening Psychoanalytic Self Psychology. Ron still practices psychotherapy, supervises and teaches from his Gurdies home and the Gertrude Street Clinic. Ron’s personal website www.empathink.com.au features a number of papers he has written which are freely available as well as a list of his three book publications.

How we developed and activities we hold

EAPSP was officially incorporated in 2010. The founding of this association was spearheaded by Dr Ron Lee to further the affiliation and continuing professional education of self-psychologically oriented therapists in Australia. It was also in response to the growth of interest in Self Psychology since the first Empathink Workshop in 1999 and the first Summer School in 2004. The Empathink Summer Schools, founded and hosted by Dr Ron Lee, provided a generous sharing of knowledge of, and experience in, the postulates of Self Psychology. Providing a platform for presenting clinical cases, it fostered a culture of collegiate support, trust and learning, a culture which continues to characterize the annual EAPSP conference experience.

This approach was unique in the Australian psychological landscape and the high degree of clinical relevance it offered appealed to an increasing number of clinicians. EAPSP, a small but vibrant community based mainly in Melbourne, holds a yearly conference in March and invites international speakers to keynote the gathering.

Past invited speakers have included Dr. Marion Tolpin (2008), Dr. Neville Symington (2009), Professor Sid Bloch (2010), Dr. James Fosshage (2011), and Dr. Jo Beatson (2012), Dr. Shelley Doctors (2013), Dr George Atwood (2014) speaking via video conference from New York and Dr Ron Lee, Robert D Stolorow (2015) speaking via video conference from California, Dr Edwin Harari and Prof Sidney Bloch from Melbourne, and Dr David Terman (2017) from Chicago.

This year, our Annual Conference is being held in Melbourne from March 2nd- 4th beginning with an Advanced Course in Self Psychology by Ron Lee and Jeff Ward from Canberra.

Jeff Ward is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist in private practice in Canberra. For over ten years he was a full-time faculty member in the clinical psychology program at the Australian National University. He currently teaches the pre-conference Advanced Course for the annual EAPSP Conference and is also a faculty member of the Buddhism and Psychotherapy Professional Training Course of the Australian Association of Buddhist Counsellors and Psychotherapists.

Ron will be presenting two papers entitled “John Cade and Lithium” and “Bill Brand and Pathological Accommodation”. Jeff Ward’s two papers are: “Kohut with Merleau-Ponty and Walter Freeman: Neurointentionality and the Empathic Stance”, and “Psychotherapy in the Hall of Mirrors: Mirror Neurones, Mirror Transferences, and Mirroring Interventions”.

Our featured Guest Speaker this year is Ilene Philipson, psychoanalyst, who holds doctorates in both sociology and clinical psychology. She is a training and supervising analyst at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles, and has a private practice of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in Oakland, California. In addition to On The Shoulders of Women: The Feminisation of Psychotherapy (1993), her books include Married to The Job (2002); Ethel Rosenberg: Beyond the Myths (1993); and Women, Class, and the Feminist Imagination (ed. 1990). She has taught at UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, and New York University.

Her most recent writing includes: “I Should Like to Point Out That There’s an Air-Raid Going on Outside!” Psychoanalysis and the Denial of the Analyst’s Trauma, Psychoanalytic Perspectives, forthcoming, Fall 2017; “Fearing the Theoretical Other: The Legacy of Kohut’s Erasure of the Analyst’s Trauma,” Psychoanalysis, Self, and Context, 2017; and “The Last Public Psychoanalyst? Why Fromm Matters in the 21st Century,” Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 2017.

For further information about the 2018 Conference and Registration, please visit our website: www.eapsp.org.au

The EQ Seminar Series is an initiative of the Gertrude Street Clinic, Dr Josh White RANZCP and The Empathink Association of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology (EAPSP) aiming to bring together psychotherapy practitioners interested in contemporary perspectives from local and international speakers in the areas of psychoanalysis, trauma, and infant/child development. The first Seminar in this series was held in November 2017. The invited speaker via Skype was Peter N. Maduro, J.D., Psy.D., Psy.D. Dr Maduro is a clinical and forensic psychologist and psychoanalyst with a private practice in both Santa Monica and South Pasadena, CA. He is a Faculty Member and Training and Supervising Analyst at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in West Los Angeles.

Two papers were presented on “Intersubjective Vulnerability in Development and Transference” which were discussed by our speaker.

The HONG KONG group

Since 2007 Ron Lee has been teaching and supervising Psychiatrists in Hong Kong. He became an Honorary Advisor at the Department of Psychiatry, New Territories East Cluster, in Hong Kong in 2009.

A dedicated group was formed there and the Hong Kong group members are now teaching and supervising themselves. They had their inaugural two-day Conference in November 2016 with Ron Lee as their Guest Speaker. Six members of the Hong Kong Group presented case studies. In November 2017 a second Conference was held in Hong Kong and, in 2018, Ron has been invited again as a guest Speaker to what has become an annual event.

FIRST COLUMN

In an effort to connect more or less isolated groups of people interested in self psychology to the larger IAPSP community, I am very pleased to offer this eForum column featuring news from some of the IAPSP Institutional Members from around the world.

The Institutional Members have been a part of IAPSP since 2014. Any organization which has an interest in the promotion of Self Psychology is eligible. Over the past several years, the numbers of institutional members have increased substantially, especially since most of the former affiliate members recently became institutional members. The present IAPSP Institutional Members committee is chaired by George Hagman and he has recently announced that there are now 22 active institutional members located on every continent. This is a marked increase and indicates that Self Psychology is a vital and relevant psychoanalytic movement and that the community of Self Psychologists is expanding and diversifying.

The Institutional Members Committee met in a general meeting at the IAPSP conference in Chicago this October. The group was enthusiastic about working together to develop this committee into an active and useful community of Self Psychological Institutions. To this end we discussed some initiatives which we might begin developing with the support of the IAPSP. The meeting focused on various ways that we can create some infrastructure to improve communication, collaboration and access to resources, so that the far flung membership can feel more connected and mutually supportive.

This column is in line with the above objective and is dedicated to the goal of providing information about each institutional member’s particular history, culture and activities. I am please to begin with news from Spain and from the Instituto de Psicoterapia Relacional, as reported by Alejandro Ávila-Espada.

INSTITUTO DE PSICOTERAPIA RELACIONAL
(INSTITUTE OF RELATIONAL PSYCHOTHERAPY) by Alejandro Ávila-Espada

The Instituto de Psicoterapia Relacional (IPR) is a training and scientific-professional association, founded in 2006 in Spain which evolved from and transformed prior associations devoted to Interpersonal and Group Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from 1975 to 2005. We have been closely linked with IARPP since our foundation and some of our senior members are also IAPSP members.

IPR provides a forum for the ongoing discussion, study and elaboration of Contemporary Thinking and Practice of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (mainly Relational and Contemporary Self Psychology) to Spanish speaking professionals worldwide. Our association has currently more than 100 members, and our meetings attendance range from 120 to 300 people.

IPR’s main site is in Madrid (Spain) [Ágora Relacional: Alberto Aguilera, 10 28015-Madrid, Spain) and it has other Associate Centers in Barcelona, Sevilla, Cáceres, Salamanca, Pamplona, and Valencia where we are developing a variety of opportunities through training programs, lectures, case presentations, supervision and others.

Over the last ten years we have had regular seminars on Ferenczi’s, Winnicott’s, Mitchell’s and Kohut’s thinking and many other authors. Kohut’s work and thinking, and its development in Contemporary Self Psychology is one of our main themes. Seminars on Kohut’s work have been developed by Prof. Alejandro Ávila-Espada each year since 2006-2007 and, since 2016, we have an online training specifically devoted to an introduction on Kohut’s main contributions, also under Prof. Ávila-Espada.

Among our international guests for lectures and seminars, over the last years we have invited a number of distinguished professors, many of them relevant to Self Psychology, such as Robert D. Stolorow, Donna M. Orange, Joseph D. Lichtenberg, Rosemary Segalla, Frank L. Summers, James L. Fosshage, Howard Bacal, Shelley Doctors and many more. Our members gain access to these training activities on reduced fees.

IPR sponsors several publications:

• an open-access e-journal on psychotherapy and contemporary psychoanalytical thinking published in Spanish: CLINICA E INVESTIGACION RELACIONAL [CeIR] (www.ceir.org.es) now in their 11th year, CeIR is DOI referenced, included in Latindex and CCH-CSIC databases, between others
• A series of books on “Relational Thinking” now with 18 volumes, including Spanish authors and translations of main works from English. See the complete list at: www.psicoterapiarelacional.es/publicaciones.aspx

Since 2009 we met yearly or biannually in Conferences, in Spain’s main cities or historical sites. Here is an overview of these meetings:

• 2009 – Las Navas del Marqués (Ávila, Castilla y León), with Hazel Ipp and Joan Coderch
• 2010 – Barcelona, with Shelley Doctors
• 2012 – Sevilla, with Jessica Benjamin
• 2013 – Barcelona, with Susie Orbach and Karlen Lyons-Ruth
• 2014 – Cáceres, with Michael Eigen
• 2015 – Valencia, with Susanna Federici and Malcolm Slavin
• 2016 – Salamanca, with Peter Fonagy and Joan Coderch
• Next meeting: 2018 – La Granja de San Ildefonso (Segovia, Castilla y ón), with Andrew Samuels and Phil Ringstrom

A deeper and better knowledge of Heinz Kohut’s work is one of our main objective. Among the work our members have done on Kohut and Self Psychology, is a Monograph on Kohut, coordinated by Ramon Riera, which includes a new translation of “The two analysis of Mr Z” and other papers, followed by many chapters summarizing and reviewing Kohut’s work. Also, in the seminars conducted by Alejandro Avila, many of Kohut’s papers have been translated to Spanish or previous translations have been revised. A link with IAPSP web page on Kohut is included in our web resources.

We plan to attend IAPSP’s 2018 Vienna Conference and present some advances, contributions and perspective on Self Psychology and Kohut’s thinking from our country.

Updated information concerning all our activities can be available at:
www.psicoterapiarelacional.es/IPR.aspx
Contact: ipr-s@psicoterapiarelacional.com