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San Antonio Group Psychotherapy Society

REGISTRATION OPEN 

2024 Fall Workshop 
The Complexities of Managing Emotional Regulation in Group Therapy

Friday, November 8, 2024
9AM - 4:30PM 
Lunch Included
Location: Woodlawn Pointe Community Center
702 Donaldson Avenue | San Antonio 78228

Description
In today’s fast-paced, stressful, and often isolating world, the capacity for emotional regulation is essential. Traditionally viewed as an internal or intrapsychic process within the individual, emotional regulation is increasingly recognized as an interpersonal process, especially within group therapy settings. Group therapy uniquely allows for coregulation—where emotional states are managed between group members and between group members and the facilitator—helping individuals develop the capacity for more effective self-regulation over time. 

This presentation will explore emotional regulation through the lens of three major therapeutic approaches: behavioral, psychoanalytic/attachment-focused, and neurobiological perspectives. Attention will be given to the neurobiological mechanisms involved in emotional regulation, including the roles of brain regions such as the prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and hippocampus. Additionally, we will discuss the role of psychopharmacology in supporting emotional regulation, exploring how medications can assist in stabilizing mood and emotional reactivity.

A distinguished panel of experts will present on these varying approaches, followed by two live demonstration groups: Susan Mengden will lead a Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) demonstration group, and Jake Pickard will facilitate a modern analytic process group. These demonstrations will allow participants to directly experience how these therapeutic models operate in fostering emotional regulation. The session will conclude with a large-group discussion aimed at comparing and synthesizing these different approaches.

Presenters
Dr. Victor M. Gonzalez Jr.

 Dr. Victor M. Gonzalez Jr. is a double-boarded adult and geriatric psychiatrist with extensive experience in both clinical practice and academic leadership. He holds an M.D. from the University of Wisconsin and completed his psychiatry residency at the University of Texas Dell Medical School, followed by a geriatric psychiatry fellowship at UT Health San Antonio. Dr. Gonzalez is the owner of Nexus Psychiatry in San Antonio, serves as a psychiatrist at Televero Health, and is a past president of the Bexar County Psychiatric Society. He is passionate about medical education and actively contributes to psychiatric residency training and mentorship.

Susan Mengden, PhD, CGP, CEDS-C

Susan C. Mengden, PhD, Certified Eating Disorder Specialist-iaedp Approved Consultant, and Certified Group Psychotherapist is the Founder and Executive Director of Esperanza Eating Disorders Center in San Antonio, Texas. Mengden has 35 years of clinical experience specializing in eating disorder treatment. She is intensively trained in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Family-Based Treatment (FBT), and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MSBR). 

Jake Pickard, Ph.D.

Jake Pickard is a licensed psychologist and certified group psychotherapist in private practice, working with individuals, couples, and groups.  He is a graduate of the Center for Group Studies in New York City, which teaches the modern analytic approach to group therapy.  He runs an ongoing modern analytic process group in his private practice.  In addition to his private practice, he is an assistant professor within the UIW / TIGMER psychiatry residency, where he is chief of psychotherapy training.  He is the current president of SAGPS.  

Objectives
By the end of this presentation, participants will be able to:

1. Identify Core Strategies for Emotional Regulation: Understand and identify several key strategies within behavioral, psychoanalytic/attachment-focused, and neurobiological approaches that facilitate emotional regulation in group therapy.

2. Explore the Neurobiological Basis of Emotional Regulation: Gain insight into the various brain regions involved in emotional regulation, such as the prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and hippocampus, and understand how these regions interact to modulate emotional responses.

3. Examine Psychopharmacology Options: Review common psychopharmacological treatments that can support emotional regulation, understanding their mechanisms of action and how they complement therapeutic interventions.

4. Differentiate Group Therapy Modalities: Clearly articulate the differences between DBT and modern analytic group therapy, highlighting how each modality approaches emotional regulation, group dynamics, and therapeutic goals.

5. Experience Emotional Regulation in Practice: Participate in live demonstration groups to appreciate both the similarities and differences between DBT and modern analytic approaches in real-time, providing experiential insight into how each model facilitates emotional regulation.

6. Enhance Therapeutic Practice: Apply concepts of emotional regulation from the behavioral, psychoanalytic, and neurobiological frameworks to clinical practice, integrating psychopharmacology as needed to support individual and group treatment outcomes.

7. Engage in Reflective Group Learning: Collaborate in a large-group discussion to synthesize the information presented and reflect on how these varied approaches can be used to enhance emotional regulation and group dynamics in clinical practice.

San Antonio Group Psychotherapy Society
7272 Wurzbach Rd, Ste 1504
San Antonio, Texas 78240
United States

Houston Psychoanalytic Society

Online Conference

Imagination, Interpretation, and the Analytic Field

Donnel B. Stern, PhD

with discussion by Jon G. Allen, PhD

Saturday, November 2, 2024

10:00 AM - 2:30 PM Central Time

4 CME/CE/CEUs

Live via Zoom

*Pre-Registration required for Zoom invitation

This event will not be recorded

Registration Fees

HPS Active Member: $120

HPS Student Member: $60

Non-Member: $140

Instructional Level: Beginner - Advanced

In my first model of unformulated experience (Stern, 1983, 1997), my intention was to study our capacity to reflect on our own experience; and that meant that the boundary between formulated and unformulated experience needed to be defined by verbal language: My first model held that if you can think or speak about a meaning in the reflective terms of verbal language, the meaning is formulated; if you cannot reflect on the meaning in verbal language, the meaning remains unformulated. Now, though, I think of the boundary between formulated and unformulated experience differently. Now I think of it in terms of the degree of personal meaningfulness of unformulated experience: Formulation is a matter of becoming someone for whom the experience in question is meaningful. One crosses the threshold into explicitly meaningful experience when one can accept the meaning in question. If one can accept it, one can use it in the construction of spontaneous, creative living. The formulation of experience is therefore the imaginative transformation of not-me into feels-like-me. The crucial point is not that particular, new experiences are given shape, but that one becomes the new and slightly different person who can shape experience in that new way.

AGENDA

10:00am-10:10am Welcome, upcoming programs, conference logistics, introduction of speakers

10:10am-12:00pm Presentation (Stern)

12:00pm-12:30pm BREAK

12:30pm-1:45pm Presentation (Stern)

1:45pm-2:00pm Discussion (Allen)

2:00pm-2:30pm Q&A with audience, conference evaluation

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After attending the program in its entirety, attendees will be able to:

1. Assess the interpersonal field in their own clinical work to make judgments about their own participation in unconscious enactments.
2. Describe their clinical interventions as expressions of the interpersonal field.
3. Describe the clinical process they construct with their patients as expressions of the interpersonal field.
4. Analyze their clinical interpretations as mutually constructed by themselves and the patient.

Presenter

Donnel B. Stern, Ph.D. is Training and Supervising Analyst at the William Alanson White Institute in New York City; and Clinical Professor of Psychology and Clinical Consultant at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. He is the Founder and Editor of a book series at Routledge, "Psychoanalysis in a New Key,” which has over 80 books in print. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of the journal Contemporary Psychoanalysis. He has published articles and book chapters for over 40 years, and has co-edited four books and authored four others, the most recent of which is The Infinity of the Unsaid: Unformulated Experience, Language, and the Nonverbal (Routledge, 2019). He is in private practice in New York City, where he sees adults and adolescents and leads private study groups.

Discussant

Jon G. Allen, Ph.D., is Clinical Professor on the Voluntary Faculty, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas; an honorary faculty member of the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies; and adjunct faculty of the Institute for Spirituality and Health, Texas Medical Center. He spent 40 years in clinical practice at Menninger Clinic, where he helped to develop an intensive inpatient treatment program for trauma, and created what became a hospital-wide psychoeducational program on recovering from trauma. Now retired from clinical practice, he continues to teach, write, and consult with psychotherapists. He has authored 7 books and numerous journal articles, coauthored 3 books, and co-edited 3 books, focused primarily on trauma, mentalizing, and the patient-therapist relationship. In recent years, Dr. Allen has become interested in relational psychoanalytic concepts and integrated these ideas into his writing, including Stern's model of unformulated experience. Dr. Allen's forthcoming book is Bringing Psychotherapy Back to Life.

REFERENCES

Stern, D.B. (2023). Distance and relation: Emerging from embeddedness in the other. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 71: 641-668. 

Stern, D.B. (2022). Feels like me: Formulating the embodied mind. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 42: 232-243.

Stern, D.B. (2022). On coming into possession of oneself: Witnessing and the formulation of experience. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 91:4: 639-667. 

Houston Psychoanalytic Society

Online Conference

Vitality as a Theoretical and Technical Parameter in Psychoanalysis

Giuseppe Civitarese, MD, PhD

with discussion by Joseph Aguayo, PhD

Saturday, October 19, 2024

10:00 AM - 1:15 PM Central Time

3 CME/CE/CEUs

Live via Zoom

This event will not be recorded

Registration Fees

HPS Active Member: $120

HPS Student Member: $60

Non-Member: $140

Instructional Level: Intermediate - Advanced

Terms such as vitality and authenticity are difficult to define. Moreover, they are not truly psychoanalytic concepts. However, when psychoanalysis attempts to theorize the non-specific aspects of treatment, such as those related to the person of the analyst, it becomes inevitable to refer to them. The thesis of this article is that vitality should be taken out of its vagueness and transformed as much as possible into a precise psychoanalytic concept. This can be done by discussing it in the light of Bion's concept of negative capability and the post-Bionian theory of the analytic field. Every time the analyst rediscovers to her surprise the dreamlike dimension of the session, she becomes more vital and reinvests in the patient, the analysis and the psychoanalytic method. Then, she realizes that she is always a character in the narratives of the analytic conversation and has the chance to try to guess what is happening by relying on her intensified physical or emotional reaction.

AGENDA

10:00am-10:10am Welcome, upcoming programs, conference logistics, introduction of speakers

10:10am-11:20am Presentation (Civitarese)

11:20am-11:30am Discussion (Aguayo)

11:30am-11:45am BREAK

11:45am-12:45pm Presentation (Civitarese)

12:45pm-12:55pm Discussion (Aguayo)

12:55pm-1:15pm Q&A with audience, conference evaluation 

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After attending the program in its entirety, attendees will be able to:

1. Describe the use of the term "vitality" in psychoanalytic theory and explore its therapeutic role in treatment.
2. Explain the relationship between "vitality" and Bion's "negative capability".
3. Explain the relationship between "vitality" and the concept of “character” in post-Bionian analytic theory.

Presenter

Giuseppe Civitarese, MD, PhD, is a psychiatrist and Training and Supervising Analyst of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society (SPI), and a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsA) and of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA). He lives and has a private practice in Pavia, Italy. Among his books are: The Intimate Room: Theory and Technique of the Analytic Field(Routledge, 2010); The Violence of Emotions: Bion and Post-Bionian Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2012); The Necessary Dream: New Theories and Techniques of Interpretation in Psychoanalysis(Routledge, 2014); Losing Your Head: Abjection, Aesthetic Conflict and Psychoanalytic Criticism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015); The Analytic Field and its Transformations (with A. Ferro, Routledge, 2015; Truth and the Unconscious ( Routledge, 2016); An Apocriphal Dictionary of Psychoanalysis ( Routledge, 2019); A Short Introduction to Psychoanalysis (with A. Ferro, Routledge, 2018); Sublime Subjects: Aesthetic Experience and Intersubjectivity in Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2018); Vitality and Play in Psychoanalysis (with A. Ferro, Routledge, 2022); Psychoanalytic Field Theory: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, 2022); The Hour of Birth: Psychoanalysis of the Sublime and Contemporary Art (Routledge, in press); and On Arrogance: A Psychoanalytic Essay (Routledge, 2023). Dr. Civitarese has also co-edited L’ipocondria e il dubbio: L’approccio psicoanalitico [Hypochondria and Dubt: The Psychoanalytic Approach], Milano 2011; Le parole e i sogni [Words and Dreams], Rome 2015; The W. R. Bion Tradition: Lines of Development—Evolution of Theory and Practice over the Decades (Routledge, 2015); and Advances in Psychoanalytic Field Theory: Concept and Future Development (Routledge, 2016). He edited Bion and Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Reading A Memoir of the Future (Routledge, 2018. In 2022, Dr. Civitarese received the Sigourney Award for outstanding psychoanalytic achievement.

Discussant

Joseph Aguayo, PhD is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of California in West Los Angeles, USA. He is a Guest Member of the British Psychoanalytical Society in London. He holds doctorates from the University of California, Los Angeles in clinical psychology and modern European history. Dr. Aguayo has authored one book and co-edited three others about Bion: Wilfred Bion: Los Angeles Seminars and Supervision (with Malin, 2013), Bion in Buenos Aires: Seminars, Case Presentation and Supervision (with de Cortinas and Regeczkey, 2017), Introducing the Clinical Work of Wilfred Bion (2023), and Bion in the Consulting Room: An Implicit Method of Clinical Inquiry (with Hinshelwood, Dermen, and Abel-Hirsch, 2024). Dr. Aguayo’s papers about Bion’s ideas have been published in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Quarterly.

REFERENCES

Civitarese, G. (2017). Sublime subjects: Aesthetic experience and intersubjectivity in psychoanalysis. London: Routledge.

Civitarese, G. (2018). Vitality as a theoretical and technical parameter in psychoanalysis. Romanian Journal of Psychoanalysis, 11: 121-138.

Civitarese, G. (2019). On Bion's concepts of negative capability and faith. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 88:

751-783.

Houston Psychoanalytic Society

Online Book Discussion

Coming to Life in the Consulting Room: Toward a New Analytic Sensibility

by Thomas H. Ogden, MD (2020, Routledge)

A Book Review and Discussion with

JoAnn Ponder, PhD 

“What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?”

Thursday, October 3, 2024

7:00PM – 8:30PM Central Time

Live via Zoom

This event will not be recorded

1.5 CEU/CE Credits

Registration Fees

HPS Full Members: $30

HPS Student Members: $15

Non-Members: $40

Instructional Level: Beginning-Advanced

What do you want to be when you grow up? This provocative question is the title of one chapter as well as the theme woven throughout Thomas Ogden’s book, Coming to Life in the Consulting Room: Toward a New Analytic Sensibility. While the question seemingly refers to occupational goals, Ogden clarifies that he really means what kind of person/analyst do you want to be now, and what kind of person/analyst do you want to become? Ogden differentiates two general kinds of stances in psychoanalytic thinking and practice: (1) epistemological, which focuses on knowing and understanding, and (2) ontological, focused on being and becoming. As introduced and developed by Freud, Klein, and Fairbairn, epistemological psychoanalysis views the mind as an “apparatus for thinking” and privileges the clinical intervention of transference interpretation to promote insight. Over the past 70 years, there has been a shift in emphasis to ontological psychoanalysis, which is rooted in concepts pioneered by Winnicott (i.e., “going on being” and transitional space/phenomena) and Bion (i.e., reverie and “without memory or desire"). Ontological psychoanalysis conceives of the mind as a living process located in the act of experiencing. The analyst is present with the patient in the act of experiencing, more likely describing what the analyst senses is occurring rather than explaining. The goal is to facilitate the patient’s experience of creatively discovering for themselves, to foster their becoming more fully alive.

Though psychoanalytic interventions inevitably involve intertwined epistemological and ontological aspects, one aspect or the other tends to predominate. Ogden described his own personal journey from an internal object relations orientation, which is an epistemic approach, to a more ontological stance. However, he emphasized that ontological and epistemological psychoanalysis refer to sensibilities and attitudes, not separate schools of psychoanalytic thought or technique. He provides numerous clinical vignettes throughout the book, but does not prescribe specific interventions. He instead suggests that each practitioner must develop their own analytic style and essentially “invent psychoanalysis” for each patient. His book is a collection of previously published papers, which describe and exemplify an ontological stance, and delve into its foundational roots. After summarizing Ogden’s concept and practice of ontological psychoanalysis with online attendees, discussant JoAnn Ponder would like to explore with them why, or why not, this might constitutes wild analysis. So how do we safeguard against a wild analysis? If there is time, Ponder also plans to talk with attendees about the applicability of Ogden's ideas to psychoanalytic supervision.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After attending the program in its entirety, attendees will be able to:

1. Define and differentiate epistemological and ontological psychoanalysis.
2. Describe 3 foundational Winnicottian and/or Bionian concepts rooted in ontological psychoanalysis.
3. Give an example of an ontological intervention from their own clinical practice.

Words to Live by: Personal and Cultural Origins of Imagination and Self in Language

Jeanine Vivona, PhD

Thursday, September 5, 2024

7:30PM – 9:00PM Central Time

Live via Zoom

*Pre-Registration required for Zoom invitation

This event will not be recorded

Registration Fees

HPS Active Member: Free

HPS Student Member: Free

Non-Member: $30

1.5 CME/CEU/CE Credits

Instructional Level: Intermediate - Advanced