Presenter: Marcia D-S. Dobson, PhD, PhD is an award-winning Professor of Classics at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, where she has taught ancient Greek language, history, religion, myth, and literature for over 40 years.  She received a PhD in Classical Philology from Harvard University. In mid-life she received a second PhD in Clinical Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute, and she is now a practicing, psychoanalytically oriented self-psychologist in Colorado Springs. Marcia has published numerous articles in addition to her recent book, Metamorphoses of Psyche in Psychoanalysis and Ancient Greek Thought (Routledge).  Marcia, along with her husband John Riker and George Hagman, has recently been appointed an editor in chief of the journal Psychoanalysis, Self, and Context.  

Talk Description: In this presentation I will elucidate how intersubjective ways of relating can evoke extra-ordinary experiences that extend beyond ordinary interchanges in the consulting room.  Such experiences in the therapeutic process open us to a way of being and listening that can create heightened moments of shared substance in which we feel ourselves to be permeable with each other.  In the language of intersubjectivity, such moments occur when the forward edges of both analyst and patient are mutually attuned.  They are experienced as spontaneous moments of energy that draw us together into heightened affective states.  They tend to occur in moments of deep empathic resonance with patients whom we perceive to be felt presences in our lives and can lead to profound healing. My goal is to increase our flexibility and sensitivity as therapists and psychoanalysts to various experiences in which the inexplicable occurs.  Focusing on parts of my recent book, Metamorphoses of Psyche in Psychoanalysis and Ancient Greek Thought, I explore these liminal states through my own early autobiography and my later therapeutic experiences with patients.

After attending this session, participants should be able to:

1. articulate the nature of extra-ordinary experiences in the therapeutic dyad as an interpsychic dimension of intersubjectivity;
2. describe how engaging with highly creative patients in interpsychic spaces leads to growth and healing.

Admission is free. Continuing Education Credits (for non-physicians) are offered exclusively to Society members in all membership categories and those intending to join.

The presenter, Marcia Dobson, PhD, PhD, and the organizer, James W. Anderson, PhD, have no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies to report.

Accreditation Information for Professionals Other Than Physicians.  The Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute maintains responsibility for this program and its content, in relation to accreditation for CE credits for non-physicians.  CPI is licensed by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation to sponsor continuing education credits for (license numbers in parentheses): Social Workers (159.000122), Professional Counselors (197.000202), Marriage and Family Therapy Therapists (168.00204), and Clinical Psychologists (268.000091). 

Eligible professionals will receive 2.0 continuing education credits for attending the entire program. To receive these credits an evaluation form must be completed online. Learners must claim the amount of time spent in the educational activity and that will be the amount of credit they will earn. 

CME credits for physicians are not available for this program.  The Chicago Psychoanalytic Society has obtained approval to provide CME credit for the next two programs after this one.