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Attachment and Sexuality [Archived]

Credits: [9 ]
Dates: Continuous

Cost: $105 SIGN-UP

PSYBC SUMMER TUITION SALE
Normally $177, currently $105.
Test still a separate fee, in testing center

This online conference will explore the interplay of two fundamental aspects of human relatedness�attachment and sexuality�from infancy to adulthood. Drawing on research, theory and case material from both attachment and psychoanalytic theoretical frameworks, the panelists will discuss how the attachment and sexual systems are woven together in increasingly complex ways from infancy to adulthood.

The discussion will take place over three weeks and use three articles as the basis for discussion. These articles are listed at the end of this description and come from two soon to be published books: Attachment and Sexuality, a collection of articles by leading thinkers in this area, edited by Diana Diamond, and Sensuality and Sexuality Across the Divide of Shame by Joseph Lichtenberg.

A unifying theme is how the experience of felt security (or lack or it) in relation to early attachment figures, may affect the experience and expression of sexuality; however, the panelists will also address the ways in which sexual maturation may disrupt or offer new opportunities to consolidate attachment bonds at different developmental points. The focus is on the bi-directional web of influences that weaves the attachment and sexual systems together in increasingly complex ways from infancy to adulthood.

The panelists will also address the ways in which the development of secure attachment is predicated, in part, on the development of the capacity for mentalization, or the ability to envision and interpret the behavior of oneself and others in terms of intentional mental states, including desires, feelings, beliefs, and motivations. The integration of attachment and sexuality is a developmental process that is influenced not only to the nature of early affectional bonds with attachment figures, but also by the capacity to integrate the disparate mental states involved in both attachment and sexual experiences.

The panelists have all made major contributions in the areas of attachment theory and research and psychoanalysis in theory and practice.

Educational Objectives:

The student in this course will understand infantile sexuality from the point of view of both attachment theory and psychoanalytic theory.

The student in this course will understand how the development of attachment bonds and sexual development are interrelated over the course of the life cycle.

The student in this course will understand how attachment security or lack of it may foster or curtail sexual and erotic experience.

The student in this course will understand the concept of behavioral systems as a motivational instinctual system and how this differs from the psychoanalytic concept of drive.

The student in this course will understand oedipal development through the lens of attachment theory.

The student in this course will understand how transference reflects the individual�s psychosexual and attachment history.

Schedule:

Week 1:
Discussion of �Attachment and Sexuality� by Morris Eagle
Leadoff discussants: Joe Lichtenberg and Lissa Weinstein

Week 2:
Discussion of �Sense and Sensuality: Hedonic Intersubjectivity and the Erotic Imagination� by Jeremy Holmes.
Leadoff discussants: Sidney Blatt and Lissa Weinstein

Week 3:
A chapter from Sensuality and Sexuality Across the Divide of Shame by Joseph Lichtenberg
Leadoff Discussant: Diana Diamond and Lissa Weinstein

Dates: January 28 -- February 17, 2008
CE Credits: 9

COST:
Registration Fee: $177 for non-PsyBC Members

Test for CE Credits: $45. (Free for PsyBC members.)

NOTE: Test is purchased separately in PsyBC Testing Center

Note: This conference is a �two-fer�. Registration also includes access to the �Attachment and Adult Psychotherapy� online conference. Two for the price of one.

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Faculty

Sidney Blatt

Sidney J. Blatt, Ph.D., Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at Yale University is also Chief of the Psychology Section, Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine. He is a graduate and a member of the faculty of the Western New England Psychoanalytic Institute. His primary interests are in the development of mental representation, their differential impairment in various forms of psychopathology (especially schizophrenia and depression), and their change in the therapeutic process. His most recent book, Experiences of Depression: Theoretical, Clinical, and Research Perspectives, was published in 2004 by the American Psychological Association Press.

Diana Diamond, PhD.

Diana Diamond, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the doctoral program in clinical psychology at the City University of New York, and an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Weill Medical Center of Cornell University, where she is also a senior fellow at the Personality Disorders Institute (PDI). She has published a number of articles in the areas of attachment theory and research, personality disorders, patient-therapist attachment and its impact on therapeutic process and outcome, mental representation, narcissism and its disorders, and film and psychoanalysis. She is on the editorial board of Psychoanalytic Inquiry and has co-edited (with Sidney Blatt and Joseph Lichtenberg) a three-volume monograph series on attachment theory and research and its implications for psychoanalytic theory and practice. She is a psychoanalytic candidate at the New York University postdoctoral program in psychoanalysis.

Morris Eagle, Ph.D.

Morris Eagle is Professor Emeritus, Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies, Adelphi University; ABPP (psychoanalysis). He is Former President of the Division of Psychoanalysis (39), American Psychological Association. He is the author of Recent developments in psychoanalysis: A critical evaluation, and Co-editor of Interface between psychoanalysis and psychology, and Co-author of Psychoanalysis as health care. He is co-editor of monograph on "Attachment: Current research, theory, and clinical practice," and the author and co-author of about 150 journal articles and about 100 chapters in edited books. He is in private practice; working on two books, one on critical evaluation of contemporary psychoanalysis and other on attachment and psychoanalysis.

Jeremy Holmes, MD, MRCP, FRCPsych

Jeremy Holmes MD, FRCPsych, is Professor of Psychotherapy at the University of Exeter UK and a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice. He is the author of 14 books and over 100 articles and chapters in the field of psychotherapy and attachment theory. He is currently co-lead of the psychodynamic stream of the Exeter Masters programme in psychological therapies. His interests include attachment theory, creativity in psychotherapy, and integrative approaches to individuals suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder. Recent books include The Search for the Secure Base (Routledge 2001) and Textbook of Psychotherapy (co-edited with G. Gabbard & J. Beck, Oxford University Press, 2005).

Joseph Lichtenberg, M.D.

Joseph Lichtenberg, M.D., is a practicing psychoanalyst in Washington, D.C. He has written numerous articles about psychoses, psychosomatic illnesses, literature and creativity, psychoanalytic theory, attachment theory and research, and the technique of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. He is the editor-in-chief of Psychoanalytic Inquiry and the Psychoanalytic Inquiry Book Series. He is also on the editorial boards of the Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. He is a founder and director emeritus of the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis (Washington, D.C.). He is the author of more than 10 books, including Psychoanalysis and Infant Research (1983), Psychoanalysis and Motivation (1989), and The Clinical Exchange: Techniques Derived from Self and Motivational Systems (1996). His most recent books are A Spirit of Inquiry: Communication and Psychoanalysis (2002) and Craft and Spirit: A Guide for the Exploratory Psychotherapies (2005) and the to be published Sensuality and Sexuality Across the Divide of Shame (2007).

Lissa Weinstein

Lissa Weinstein is an Associate Professor in the Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology at the City University of New York. She is a graduate of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute and is currently on the faculty of the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic research and Training as well as the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Along with Arnold Wilson, Ph.D, she was the winner of the Heinz Hartmann Award for outstanding publication in the theory or practice of psychoanalysis by a recent graduate. She is the author of Reading David: a Mother and son's Journey through the labyrinth of Dyslexia (Penguin, 2003) which won the Margot Marek Prize from the International dyslexia Association. She has published articles on the relevance of the work of Lev Vygotsky to psychoanalysis, Freud's theory of language and representation as well as clinical papers on child psychoanalysis and film.