Programs, Seminars & Lectures
CULTIVATING ALIVE MOMENTS
March -- June, 2025
- Co-sponsored by the Pennsylvania Society for Clinical Social Work and the Philadelphia Psychotherapy Study Center, an affiliate chapter of the International Psychotherapy Institute, Washington, DC
- 8 meetings, 20 CE hours
March - June, 2025 - Cost: $450
For PSCSW members the cost is: $405
CE certificate from PSCSW costs $20
- Wednesday: The Wednesday seminar will be led by Paul Koehler, LCSW, and will meet at the office of Pat Duffy, LCSW, 8200 Flourtown Ave., Suite 1-A, Wyndmoor, PA, 19038, from 9:15 – 11:45 on the following Wednesday mornings:
March 5 & 19
April 2, 16 & 30
May 14 & 28
June 11
- Fridays: The Friday seminar will be led by Karen Fraley, LCSW, and Paul Koehler, LCSW, and will meet via Zoom from 9:15 – 11:45 on the following Friday mornings:
March 7, 14 & 28
April 11 & 25
May 9 & 30
June 6
This seminar will be structured around the careful reading and study of Countertransference and Alive Moments: Help or Hindrance, by R. D. Hinshelwood. This book delineates ways in which, by way of our understanding of projective and introjective identification, the psychodynamic psychotherapist can contain and make use of his countertransference feelings and reactions to more fully understand his patients and subsequently to facilitate "alive" moments of emotional contact in which the patient's dynamics and dilemmas are more fully available in the here and now of the clinical encounter .
In addition to lecture and discussion of the readings, participants will be invited to share relevant case material .
COURSE SYLLABUS AND OBJECTIVES:
-
1)
Chapter 1 - Shame amongst friends: What could Freud say?
Chapter 2 - Distantiation: What could they all do?
Chapter 3 - Wanted dead or alive: What are live moments?
-
1. Participants will identify and analyze the initial cautions
about countertransference in the early development of psychoanalytic
technique
.
2. Participants will describe and elaborate how the perceived dangers of countertransference were defended against by distance and remoteness on the part of the analyst .
2)
Chapter 4 - Ferenczi and British psychoanalysis: What put British psychoanalysis ahead?
Chapter 5 - Unconscious-to-unconscious: How do they communicate?
- 1. Participants will describe and critique Ferenczi's
experiments with technique expanding the understanding of the
potential uses of countertransference.
3)
Chapter 6 - Debate: Klein/Heimann
Chapter 7 - Co-constructed intersubjectivity: Where did ego psychology go?
- 1. Participants will describe Paula Heimann's
innovation of considering countertransference as a means to understand
the patient and give 1 clinical example
.
2. Participants will compare and contrast the object relations/intrapsychic and the co-constructionist/intersubjective understandings of countertransference .
4)
Chapter 8 - Debate: How do the trends compare?
Chapter 9 - The unconscious in Freud
- 1. Participants will compare and contrast interventions informed
by the two understandings of countertransference.
2. Participants will describe the presence of countertransference in two of Freud's famous cases.
5)
Chapter 10 - Enactment: What's happening?
Chapter 11 - The reflective analyst: What was that?
- 1. Participants will apply the distinctions between content (what is said) and process (what is happening) through 1 clinical example.
2. Participants will demonstrate Brenman Pick's concept of working through in the countertransference.
6)
Chapter 12 - And the reflective analyst, also: What does he see?
Chapter 13 - Resisting the death instinct: What's the difference?
- 1. Participants will explain the ways in which
the patient attunes to the countertransference of the analyst and may
attempt to exploit it defensively.
2. Participants will predict the how dead moments and/or impasse are likely signs of inevitable enactments through 1 clinical example.
7)
Chapter 14 - Morals and ethics: Who has the authority?
Chapter 15 - Research data: How "true" is countertransference?
- 1. Participants will describe1clinical example of
a patient's tendency to projectively identify their capacity for self-care
and judgement into the therapist.
2. Participants will explain the dangers of overly identifying with the patient's evacuated sense of responsibility for himself.
8) Chapter 16 - Conclusion: Now about the question...
- 1. Participants will demonstrate 2 ways the therapist's subjectivity is an inevitable and necessary element in the clinical encounter.
2. Participants will describe 2 clinical examples of utilizing the countertransference as to further psychotherapeutic change in clinical practice.
SEMINAR LEADERS:
-
Karen Fraley, LCSW, BCD, is in private practice in Exton, PA, providing psychoanalytic psychotherapy for individuals and couples. She holds a certification in Object Relations Therapy from the International Psychotherapy Institute. She is an active faculty member of IPI and a Fellow member of PSCSW.
Paul Koehler, LCSW, is a Fellow of PSCSW. He is a graduate of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapies and of the Washington School of Psychiatry's Object Relations Training Program. Paul is a faculty member of the Greater Kansas City Psychoanalytic Institute. He is in private practice in Doylestown, PA.
CONTINUING EDUCATION CREDITS:
For Pennsylvania Social Workers, Marriage and Family Therapists, and Professional Counselors, this program is approved for 20 CE credits for professional workshops sponsored by the Pennsylvania Society for Clinical Social Work, a state affiliate of the Clinical Social Work Association listed in Section 47.36 of Title 49, Chapter 47 of the PA Code, State Board of Social Work Examiners. This program is also approved for CE credits for professional workshops for marriage & family therapists (Section 48.36) and professional counselors (Section 49.36).
New Jersey: This program is approved for 20 credits. Attendance at programs or courses given at state and national social work association conferences, where the criteria for membership is an academic degree in social work, are a valid source of continuing education credit (N.J.A.C. 13:44G- 6.4(c)(6)).
For psychologists Friday seminar only): the International Psychotherapy Institute is approved by the American Psychological Association to offer continuing education credit for psychologists. IPI maintains responsibility for this program.
For further information and/or to enroll please contact us:
Paul Koehler: pmkmsw@gmail.com
Karen Fraley: kfraley55@icloud.com
The Wizard of Oz Teaches Object Relations Theory
- Date: TBA
- Time: TBA
- Fee: TBA
- Location: TBA
- Instructor: Charles Ashbach, Ph.D.
This program is a 2 session seminar using the film of The Wizard of Oz to present the essential elements of an object relations understanding of the psyche. Contents include a detailed discussion of psychic structure, from a Kleinian perspective, as well as the problems of innocence, guilt, Oedipal conflict and trauma. The group will utilize clinical case material to exemplify the application of object relations theory.
Oedipus
- Date: TBA
- Time: TBA
- Fee: TBA
- Location: TBA
- Instructor: Charles Ashbach, Ph.D.
This is a 3 seminar program involving the reading of Sophocles' drama: Oedipus Rex. The goal is to understand the relational context that gives rise to the conflicts between the generations and the sexes. We will explore the "back-story" of the myth, and the role of parental aggression and its link to the impulses and fantasies of the child.
The Oedipus complex occupies a central place in psychoanalytic thought and we'll contemplate the complexities of the story, and point to the issues that arise in the clinical encounter. Clinical case material will be utilized from the members to demonstrate therapeutic implications.
Suffering, Sacrifice and Psychotherapy
- Date: TBA
- Time: TBA
- Fee: TBA
- Location: TBA
- Instructor:Charles Ashbach, Karen Fraley, and Paul Koehler
A 6-part seminar series that explores linkages between the practice of psychotherapy and the multiple burdens of suffering, sacrifice, and masochism that constitute much of the profession. The connection between the Greek concept "Therapon" meaning servant or slave, and the role of the therapist will be explored in depth.
Clinical concepts of holding and containment; of counter-transference and acting-in will all be explored through in-depth clinical examples.
Seminars
Foundations of Western Literature
- Date: Begining January 2011
- Time: Sunday evenings 7-9pm (monthly)
- Fee: $450
- Location: Chestnut Hill, PA
- Instructors: Charles Ashbach, Karen Fraley, and Paul Koehler
This will be an on-going seminar which will meet monthly to discuss and study the great works of Western literature. The seminar will meet on Sunday nights, 10 meetings per year, beginning in September, 2010.
Goals of this seminar include:
- To gain an understanding of unconscious process and how they relate to the study of these enduring works.
- To appreciate the elegance and wisdom in these works of literature -- and explore the possibilities, parameters, and paradoxes as they relate to the human condition.
- We will begin with the Epic of Gilgamesh, and will next move on to the study and reading of the Iliad and the Odyssey. These reading choices will likely be enough to occupy us for the first year of our study.
We anticipate that we will continue the following years to come by reading:
- The major plays of Sophocles
- The Aeneid of Virgil
- Beowulf
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- Dante's Divine Comedy
- Milton's Paradise Lost
- The major plays of Shakespeare
- Goethe's Faust
We will go on to read works by Melville, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, and Camus.
