“The Subjective Experience of Time: Trauma,

Non-responsive Parenting and the Vacuity of the Future”

Presenter: Stephen Seligman, D.M.H.

Discussant: Frank Summers, Ph.D.

This paper discusses the subjective sense of time. From this perspective, analytic work rescues the present and future, from the unremembered past. The author explores implications for our work with patients, including a fresh perspective on termination.

Stephen Seligman, D.M.H., is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, where he has worked for nearly three decades in the ongoing development of the original model of infant-parent psychotherapy proposed by Selma Fraiberg. He is Joint-Editor in Chief of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, Associate Editor of Studies in Gender and Sexuality, and a founding Editor of the Journal of Infant, Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy. He is also a Training and Supervising Analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, and on the faculty of these institutes along with several others, including the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, where he is an Associate Clinical Professor. He has published over 50 papers, chapters and other publications, and is currently at work on Life Over Time: Attachment, Intersubjectivity and Developmental Psychoanalysis, to be published by Routledge.

Frank Summers, Ph.D., ABPP, is President, Division of Psychoanalysis, American Psychological Association and Past-President of Psychoanalysis and Social Responsibility. He is Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences of Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University and supervising and training analyst at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis and The Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis. Winner of several local and national awards including The Hans Strupp Award for Contributions to Psychoanalysis, and The Distinguished Educator Award of the International Forum of Psychoanalytic Education, Dr. Summers is associate editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and a member of the editorial boards of Psychoanalytic Psychology and The Annual of Psychoanalysis. He is author of numerous journal articles and presentations at national and local meetings as well three books on object relations theories. His newest book, published this year, is called The Psychoanalytic Vision: The Experiencing Subject, Transcendence, and the Therapeutic Process. Dr. Summers is in the private practice of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy in Chicago.

Educational Objectives: At the conclusion of the program: 1) Participants will become more able to observe patients’ subjective experience of time and to factor this into clinical interactions and therapeutic interventions; 2) Participants will more readily recognize the links between unresponsive interactions between young children and the inner sense of futility in some adult patients; and 3) Participants will become able to develop interventions based on these concepts.

Target Audience: Psychoanalysts, other interested mental health professionals, and members of the community.