Chicago Psychoanalytic Society

Tuesday, May 28, 2019 – 7:00-9:00 PM 

Location: Robert Morris University, 401 St. State, 8th floor auditorium (Take elevator to 8thfloor and look for Room 803)

Presented in collaboration with the Institute for Clinical Social Work (ICSW)

Trump Cards and Klein Bottles: On the Collective of the Individual

Presenter: Francisco J. Gonzalez, MD

Discussant: Christine Kieffer, PhD

In recent years, psychoanalysts have increasingly turned their gaze to the social surround. Whether in our consulting rooms or in the world at large, turbulent socio-political change presses in upon us and cannot be ignored. Using an extended clinical example, Dr. González will explore the collective dimension of the individual patient’s mind, with a particular emphasis on aspects of the socio-political in therapeutic work. In doing so, he aims to open up an under-explored area of psychoanalytic thinking — those relations which are not one-to-one, but one-to-many. Socio-political material can become a portal to a deep investigation of psyche, which has a double provenance, connected as it is to both the body and the group.

Francisco J. González, MD, is a Personal and Supervising Analyst and on faculty at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, where he is also co-chair of the Community Psychoanalysis Committee.  This committee’s work won the 2017 Division 39/APF grant for innovation in psychoanalytic education. He is on the editorial boards of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and Studies in Gender and Sexuality. His writing has been a recipient of the Symmonds prize and Ralph Roughton award; it focuses on the articulation of the social within psychic life in its various iterations, including the domains of gender, sexuality, immigration, film, and groups.

Christine Kieffer, PhD, ABPP, a member of the Chicago Psychoanalytic Society and a Faculty Member at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute and at Rush University, is a child/adolescent and adult psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist. She also has a specialization in group and organizational treatment. Dr. Kieffer is author of Mutuality, Recognition and the Self (2014) as well as a forthcoming book on adolescence. She is the author of many papers published in psychoanalytic journals as well as co-editor of three books. She is in private practice in Chicago and Winnetka.

Learning Objectives:  After the presentation the participant, will be able to

A. Employ, more effectively, the affective bond in therapy and to help the patient emotionally experience being part of an “us”;

B. Describe how the collective identifications one develops are enormously conditioned by history writ large. 

Admission is free. CEs are available only to Society members. Interested in becoming a member? Click here.