Contemporary Dream Theory and Technique
Date: February 24, 2023
Times: 8:30 am to 3:45 pm (Mountain Time)
Meetings will be held online (over Zoom)
CE Credits: 6
Fee: $150
Register HERE
Description: Although all contemporary psychoanalytic approaches to dreaming in the clinical situation follow Freud’s work on the unconscious mind and unconscious communication, it is generally assumed today that there are several different dream models in use among clinicians. IPISLC’s seminar, Contemporary Dream Theory and Technique, will present a survey of the major dream models developed by Freud and by the theorists who came after him, including Wilfred Bion, Thomas Ogden, Antonio Ferro, and Giuseppe Civitarese. All of these writers have developed the idea, first advanced by Bion, that the therapy session is a form of a “waking dream” in which ordinary therapeutic conversation can be profitably regarded as an intersubjective dream constructed between therapist and patient (Ogden’s concept of “talking as dreaming” is an example of this approach).
The dream models of these theorists facilitate a clinical process that provides a “path to dreaming” for the many patients who do not dream, or who suffer from nightmares, or who are frightened or skeptical of, rather than interested in, the processes and products of their unconscious minds.
The seminar will include a clinical dream vignette workshop in which participants will work together, as a group, not only toward understanding and working with patients’ daydreams and night dreams, nightmares and “talking as dreaming,” but also toward developing the therapist’s own capacity for dreaming with the patient in the session.
Schedule:
Session I: The Beginnings: From Freud to Bion
8:30-9:15 Sigmund Freud Stephen Morris
9:15-10:00 Wilfred Bion Charles Ashbach
10:00-10:15 Break
Session II: Beyond Bion: Ferro and Ogden
10:15-11:00 Antonino Ferro Karen Fraley
11:00-11:45 Thomas Ogden Jim Poulton
11:45-12:30 Lunch Break
Session III: Civitarese and the Therapist’s Mental Workshop
12:30-1:15 Giuseppe Civitarese Sheila Hill
1:15-2:00 Principles of Interpretation Jim Poulton
2:00-2:15 Break
Session IV: Who Knows What Dreams May Come?
2:15-3:45 Dream Vignette Workshop Sheila Hill
Bios of Faculty:
Charles Ashbach, PhD, is a clinical psychologist practicing in the Philadelphia area. He is a founding faculty member of IPI and is chair of the IPI Philadelphia affiliate: PPSC: Philadelphia Psychotherapy Study Center. He is co-author of Object relations, the Self and the Group as well as co-author of Suffering and Sacrifice in the Clinical Encounter. He is interested in the problems of resistance; the dynamics of War and is working on a book on narcissism.
Karen Fraley, LCSW, BCD, is in private practice in Exton, PA, providing psychoanalytic psychotherapy for individuals and couples, and consultation for clinicians. She holds a certification In Object Relations Therapy from the International Psychotherapy Institute. She is an active faculty member of IPI, and a founding member of the Philadelphia Psychotherapy Study Center.
Sheila Hill, MSW, LCSW-C is a clinical social worker in practice in Knoxville, TN. A long-time member of the IPI national faculty, she is past chair of the Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Program.
Stephen B. Morris, PhD, is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychiatry in the University of Utah School of Medicine. He is a member of the national faculty of the International Psychotherapy Institute where he serves on the Board of Directors, the Steering Committee, and chairs the international Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Program. He is a member of the IPI Salt Lake Affiliate faculty and its former chair. He is the author of research articles and a book chapter on the topics of psychotherapy process and outcome. He has served on many boards and committees, including a term as president of the Utah Psychological Association.
James Poulton, Ph.D., is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in Salt Lake City, Utah, an Adjunct Assistant Professor in Psychology at the University of Utah, and an Emeritus national faculty member of the International Psychotherapy Institute (IPI). He is the co-founder of IPI’s Salt Lake City Chapter, and he currently serves as the chair of IPI’s Faculty Development Committee and as a member of the Steering Committee of IPI's Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program. He is also one of three Editors-in-Chief of the journal, Couple and Family Psychoanalysis. He has written numerous articles and chapters on psychological treatment and theory, and is the author of Object Relations and Relationality in Couple Therapy: Exploring the Middle Ground (2012) and co-author of Suffering and Sacrifice in the Clinical Encounter (2020) and Internalization: The Origin and Construction of Internal Reality (2001).