Centre For Advanced Studies in Psychothearpy & Couselling presents a one day workshop

This workshop will explore the question of affective exchanges between analysand and analyst. For the psychoanalyst, these exchanges potentially represent a crucial tool in understanding the analysand’s communication of her/his experience and assist in elucidating the clinical process, especially the transference and countertransference encounter. Pam Shein and Louise Gyler, who are post-Kleinian analysts, will present clinically-based papers to illustrate their way of working psychoanalytically and engage participants in a dialogue about the nature of clinical practice and the conceptualizations that they use to make sense of it. For example, what ideas and experiences are given significance; what is the common ground across different psychoanalytic schools; what are our differences, when do they nudge the ‘narcissism of small differences’ and when do they fundamentally reflect different practice methodologies, conceptual ideas and values.

In the afternoon session these differences will be explored in the lived reality of a group process that will flow from a case study presented by Elana Leigh, an integrative therapist with a relational psychoanalytic background. The group’s own thoughts in relation to this material will be explored, guided by Louise Gyler. Pam Shein will later comment on the group process.

Dr Louise Gyler’s paper Violent acts and catastrophic anxieties: thinking the transference and countertransference encounter from “feeling for”…to transformations discusses her work with a very small child and a woman who self-harmed to illustrate elements of the analyst’s participation. The elements considered include: feeling (countertransference); Bion’s concept of ‘dreaming’ (transference); and speaking (verbal representation and interpretation).

Pam Shein’s paper Touching the Void uses clinical material to illustrate the different levels of transference and countertransference experienced by analysand and analyst. Each level produces an alteration in the analyst which assists in the working towards a transformation of the emotional experience.

Louise Gyler, Ph.D. is a child and adult psychoanalyst in private practice and a training analyst of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society. She is author of The Gendered Unconscious: Can gender discourses subvert psychoanalysis? (2010) and won an International Psychoanalytic Association award for her paper Who are you? Action, play and ‘working through’ in the analysis of a young child in 2007.

Pam Shein (M.Psych.) is an adult psychoanalyst in private practice in Sydney. She is an associate member of the Australian Psychoanalytic Society and is currently completing the child and adolescent training of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society.

Elana Leigh (MSc. Integrative Psychotherapy) is a Certified Transactional Analyst and Training and Supervising Transactional Analyst (ITAA) with a background in relational psychoanalysis. Elana has trained and supervised nationally and internationally across a range of cultures for the past 26 years. Having trained as an integrative psychotherapist, her passion lies in integration and diversity in both theory and application. Elana is actively involved both nationally and internationally on bodies which maintain and advance training standards in the field of psychotherapy. She currently works as a private psychotherapist, supervisor and trainer in Sydney.