Events

Lectures at the ORI’s Open House Events

ENVY, “BITING THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU,” and SOME COMMENTS ON JEALOUSY

(An Interactive Lecture During Live ORI’s Open House)

When: September 29th, 2024, Sunday, 12pm – 2:30pm EDT
Where: VIRTUAL LIVE
with Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler, ORI’s Co-founder and Executive Director

Fears of Envy can be conscious or unconscious. Envious impulses can also be projected out when unconscious, creating a state of inhibition, or of personal paralysis. Unconscious envy can be destructive to the other, or if projected, can be destructive and depriving of the Self, as in “biting the hand that feeds you.” Allowing the intense pain of envy to gradually become conscious is often a critical clinical process within psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Profound feelings of primal deprivation can emerge into consciousness when Envy is dealt with. Related to developmental progress in treatment, and in life: consciousness of envy can allow for the transformation of Envy into admiration, which can become healthy personal strivings for one’s own success and accomplishment. One only wants to destroy what the other has when one feels there is no hope to have what the other has, such as wanting to destroy the capacity to love or create in the other, or the capacity to empathize, when those capacities have never developed or have been aborted in the Self. The narcissistic character illustrates all of these. They are more extreme in the malignant narcissist. There are also normal conscious feelings of envy that can be contained, tolerated, and transformed.

Narcissistic defenses, such as contempt for the other, and devaluation of the other, and more extreme total spoiling of any value in the other — all can be perpetual defenses to protect the Self from feeling one’s own lack. Contempt is often a sign of envy. However, there are healthy feelings of envy when barriers have been put up against one’s own strivings in life.

Dr. Kavaler-Adler has written about the self-soothing of envy in Leonard Bernstein’s wife, in the biographic film “Maestro” and of the painful coming to awareness of Envy in the 18^th century composer Salieri in relation to Amadeus Mozart (pre-publication with Clio’s Psyche). She has also written about themes and cases of Jealousy in her chapter on “The Treatment of Jealous Patients” in Salman Akhtar’s book on Jealousy: Developmental, Cultural and Clinical Realms (Routledge, 2018).

All roads of discussion about themes of Envy and Jealousy lead back to Melanie Klein’s 1957 article, “Envy and Gratitude,” which has been expanded into many writings on the subject. The distinction between Envy and Jealousy is critical in realizing what level of development, and what level of psychic conflict is being dealt with. Klein distinguished and defined the differences, and Thomas Ogden (Matrix of the Mind, 1986) has further defined these distinctions.

Dr. Kavaler-Adler will talk about these themes and will answer questions. She will also conduct an experiential meditative visualization, to illustrate the theme of envy being played out in one’s internal world.

Bio of the Open House Presenter:

Susan Kavaler-Adler (Ph.D., ABPP, D.Litt., NCPsyA) is the founder and executive director of the Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, where she also serves as a training analyst, senior supervisor, and active faculty. She is a fellow of the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis and is a registered psychoanalyst with the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis.

Dr. Kavaler-Adler is also a prolific author, with 7 published books, and over 70 articles. She has 16 awards for her writing, including having won the Gradiva® Award from NAAP in 2004 for her 2003 Routledge book Mourning, Spirituality, and Psychic Change: A New Object Relations View of Psychoanalysis. Five of her six other books are: The Compulsion to Create: Women Writers and Their Demon Lovers (Routledge 1993, ORI Academic Press 2013); The Creative Mystique: From Red Shoes Frenzy to Love and Creativity (Routledge 1996, ORI Academic Press 2014); The Anatomy of Regret: From Death Instinct to Reparation and Symbolization in Vivid Case Studies (Karnac/Routledge 2013); The Klein-Winnicott Dialectic: Transformative New Metapsychology and Interactive Clinical Theory (Karnac/Routledge 2014); Developmental Mourning, Erotic Transference, and Object Relations Psychoanalysis (IPBooks, 2022).

Dr. Kavaler-Adler is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, who has been in private practice for 49 years. Besides individual and couples’ treatment, she has three monthly groups. She has an experiential role-play supervision group, a writing and creative process group, and a Mourning, Therapy, and Support Group, where she employs a process of meditative psychic visualization, and the sharing of visualizations.

Dr. Kavaler-Adler is also an advanced Argentine tango dancer, who has published a book on Argentine Tango in New York City, entitled Saturday Nights at Lafayette Grill: True Tales and Gossips of the New York City Argentine Tango Community (Mindmend Publishing, 2016). She has published articles on the nature of time, as well as on other topics, where she writes of analogies between Argentine tango and Psychoanalysis.

For more information, please visit www.orinyc.org or/and write to the Institute’s Programs Director to adminorinyc@gmail.com

In the meantime, please do not hesitate to email to:

Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, Institute’s Co-founder and Executive Director
at drkavaleradler@gmail.com and/or
Inna Rozentsvit, M.D., PhD, MBA, MSciEd, Administrator and Programs Director
at admin@ORINYC.org or adminorinyc@gmail.com.

ORI Community also enjoys the benefits of:

• Sliding scale fee therapy Referral Service for individuals, couples, adolescents, and children
• Professional networking and practice development
• Professional publishing and preparation for publishing
• Building the Cause (originally, it was #361700 Cause on Facebook), Support Mental Health Education, to support the students and the low income mental health professionals with scholarships
• Free educational mini video series “Object Relations View” – at our YouTube Channel, “ObjectRelations2009”(also available on the Educational Videos section of this website)

Developmental Mourning:
Transformation from Developmental Arrest in Character Disorders
vs. Mournful Developmental Evolution in Neurotic Psychic Structures

(An Interactive Lecture During Live ORI’s Open House)

When: June 30th, 2024, 12pm – 2:30pm EDT
Where: VIRTUAL LIVE
with Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler, ORI’s Co-founder and Executive Director

Primal trauma creates developmental arrest during the first three years of life when the Self is first forming. The healing and transformation of the stunted character disorder psyche requires the tolerance for excruciating affect states in a therapeutic holding environment, but also requires the eventual understanding, through interpretation, of the primitive psychic structures that have operated in a closed system as transformation to new psychic structure formations unfolds.

James Masterson has written about “abandonment depression,” which overlaps with the early stages of the developmental mourning process as it is described in vivid and detailed case write-ups in the books and articles of Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler, who will be offering this lecture, with its developmental focus. Many other Object Relations theorists have contributed to the understanding of the treatment of primal trauma, such as Melanie Klein, D. W. Winnicott, Ronald Fairbairn, Hanna Segal, Betty Joseph, Wilfred Bion, Michael Balint, Sandor Ferenczi, John Bowlby, Jeffrey Seinfeld, Althea Horner, Otto Kernberg, Thomas Ogden, David Celani, Frank Summers, Joyce McDougall, Candice Orcutt, Michael Eigen, Jeffrey Rubin, and many others.

The affect experience of developmental mourning allows for the natural evolution of the under-developed ego. Ego capacities evolve organically along with the psychic penetration of healing mournful affect, and accompanying psychic insight. This natural evolution contrasts with any ego psychological approach that would artificially focus on functioning. When the closed systems gradually opens, with much defense interpretation, psychic space allows for both the experience of the psychoanalyst as a transitional object and as an internalized new good-enough whole object, creating new psychic structure.

In those with neurotic psychic structures, who have developmentally made it to the whole object, and whole subjective self, oedipal stage, Developmental Mourning becomes an affect journey that deepens the character of the person through heightened levels of conscious awareness and psychic experiencing. The neurotic defenses, which are based on repression, as opposed to the dissociation, and splitting of those with “character disorders,” yield to modification, and superego softening.

Mourning of all of life’s losses is part of this gradual process, and increasing levels of self-integration can allow for constant dialectical communication between different parts of the Self and psyche.

Following the lecture, Dr. Kavaler-Adler will demonstrate some of these concepts in an “in vivo” role-play with Dr. Loray Daws. Dr. Daws will play one of his anonymous patients, and Dr. Kavaler-Adler will play the role of the psychotherapist. Group discussion and questions will follow. Also questions about the courses and programs offered by the Object relations Institute will be entertained.

The Scapegoat Complex:
Psychodynamics of Pre-oedipal Developmental Arrest

(An Interactive Lecture During Live ORI’s Open House)

When: July 16th, 2023, 1pm – 3:30pm EDT
Where: Virtual
with Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler, ORI’s Co-founder and Executive Director

Theme for lecture with Dr. Kavaler-Adler and role-play with Dr. Kavaler-Adler and Dr. Loray Daws: An Object Relations view of the “Scapegoat Complex,” Psychodynamics (and some Jungian dynamics) of Pre-oedipal Developmental Arrest.

The “scapegoat persecutor” is inside the “scapegoat victim,” when there is a developmental arrest, with unresolved fusion, and a lack of separation-individuation, self, and self-agency development. Also, there is a lack of self-integration of the split-off dissociated psychic parts in the Internal World.

The “scapegoat victim” is also within the psyche of the “scapegoat persecutor.” Primal sado-masochistic fusion is based on continual projective-identification and introjective identification. Perpetual persecutory terror can mask itself as guilt, virtue, or innocence, with an unconscious vindictive agenda against the other half that is projected outside the self.

The “scapegoat complex” can also be looked at through a Jungian lens as circulating around a “scapegoat archetype,” just as Susan Kavaler-Adler writes about in her articles and books on the “demon lover complex,” which also interacts with a Jungian “demon lover” archetype.

First, the scapegoat complex is incorporated from the primitive functioning of a family system. This incorporated system gets externalized in clinical treatment. However, ultimately the “scapegoat” must own the sadomasochistic scapegoat enactment within the Internal World as it emerges from a dissociated state in treatment, which later may be transformed through the higher level of defensive unconscious repression.

The self-righteous scapegoat oppressor has the shadow of the spurious guilt-ridden “scapegoat” (secretly hidden within the persecutory terror of retaliation and annihilation). This is not existential (heartfelt) guilt as Melanie Klein speaks about in the depressive position. It is the self-blame and self-devaluation from the introjection of the persecutor scapegoat’s unconscious agenda. It is the spurious guilt of Ronald Fairbairn’s (1952) “moral defense,” to hold onto a primitive merger with the incorporated other, who one has been totally dependent on. The patient who identifies as a “scapegoat” is generally in the paranoid-schizoid position, encountering Melanie Klein’s (1940; 1957) persecutory anxiety on a perpetual basis. Consequently, no reparation can be made until the “shadow” (Jungian term), or the split-off sadistic other of the sadomasochistic fusion, can be owned, meaning the affects must be consciously felt. The affects can enter the conscious self through a “developmental mourning process,” as spoken of in the theory of Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler, also processing through the affects of what Dr. James Masterson has called “the abandonment depression.”

Dr. Kavaler-Adler, who will be lecturing during this Open House, has conducted the workshop in the past, on “The Addiction to Self-Righteousness,” which is also part of the “scapegoat complex.” Her latest book illustrates the healing process, in 22 cases of transformation, entitled “Developmental Mourning, Erotic Transference, and Object Relations Psychoanalysis” (IPBooks 2022).

Dr. Kavaler-Adler’s talk, and the accompanying role-play demonstration of the clinical engagement with the “scapegoat complex,” will also teach that external transitional space (Winnicott), and internal psychic space, need to develop through the containing therapeutic relationship and its holding environment (Modell, 1976). Separation-individuation, and the integration of split-off parts, proceeds as the persecutory other in the “scapegoat” is owned and consciously processed. Nevertheless, the trauma of the “scapegoat” must be felt and remembered consciously for such re-owning of the Internal World split-off persecutor to proceed.

The “scapegoat” must also face the identification with the persecutor that can be expressed in the re-enactment of moralistic and self-righteous attack. This identification with the aggressor can also become a manic and grandiose defense against owning the helplessness of the rejected and devalued child self within the Internal World. Owning the devastated internal child self can also be part of the developmental mourning process.

In the family of the “scapegoat,” someone always had to be blamed, someone always had to be bad. Nobody could be good without the other being the bad one (primal splitting). The family’s “scapegoat” becomes the “black sheep,” and internalizes the judgments that have promoted this role – a role which becomes airtight in a totally closed psychic system. Only by working with the Object Relations dynamics of this closed system can progress towards individuation and self-agency be made.

Developmental Trauma, Psychic Structure,
and Clinical Engagement with Those with Primal Vulnerabilities

(An Interactive Lecture During Live ORI’s Open House)

When: January 8, 2023 – from 1:00pm to 3:30pm EST
Where: Virtual Live
with Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler, ORI’s Co-founder and Executive Director

Object Relations theory has been particularly useful to understand patients and clients with personality disorders, which form mostly due to early developmental arrest within their first three years of life, when the basic core self structure is forming.

At this Open House, Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler will address the phenomena of Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid conditions in developmental object relations terms. She will speak about the different psychic structure character formations, and how they require different psychotherapeutic approaches. She will also speak about self-integration, psychic structure internalization, and separation-individuation – in relation to the psychoanalytic psychotherapist’s capacities to process dissociated trauma, since this dissociated trauma impacts the therapist as “objective countertransference” (Donald Winnicott) and as “projective-identification” (Melanie Klein, Heinrich Racker, Wilfred Bion, and Paula Heimann).

Dr. Kavaler-Adler will illustrate how every psychotherapist can be helped with the difficult task of processing projective identification and “objective” or induced countertransference through an object relations model of supervision. This supervision involves “in vivo” clinical experience in the form of “role-plays,” as well as in the form of “meditative visualization.” As primal trauma and its sadomasochistic enactments are understood, rather than reacted to in a retaliatory manner, each therapist in this supervision learns about the clinical technique spoken about by D. W. Winnicott as “object survival.”

Dr. Kavaler-Adler will also illustrate how through “survival” of primitive aggressive reenactments, patients can begin to tolerate containing their own experience (as in Wilfred Bion’s “container” and the “contained”). Only then, the therapist can begin to interpret the compulsive primitive enactments that were formerly too traumatically overwhelming to discuss. Once the patient/client/analyzand comes to contain their inner compulsive reenactments, rather than to act them out in a dissociated way, they move from more primitive psychic state of being (Melanie Klein’s “paranoid-schizoid position”) to a more advanced one (Melanie Klein’s “depressive position”).

Then, symbolization develops naturally, along with all the organically evolving ego functions; and internal psychic space and transitional space (Donald Winnicott) allow the person to become an “interpreting subject” (Thomas Ogden), as well as to receive new “internalizations.” Then, the patient begins to receive interpretations, rather than experience them as an invasive persecutory assault. At the same time, the therapist interprets how persecutory they are perceived, when making interpretations. Can they then interpret being a Kleinian “toilet breast,” as well as a persecutory “bad object” (as the Kleinians do)?

Through all this, the therapist learns how to be there with a patient, who (by developmental necessity) must mourn the loss of an early symbiotic object (prior to the developmental trauma). Developmental mourning (Susan Kavaler-Adler) precedes, from the core self and object loss to later losses. This understanding of mourning overlaps with James Masterson’s “abandonment depression.” Without the working through of the “abandonment depression,” the patient seeks addictive highs that regressively return them to the “reunion fantasy” (James Masterson and Margaret Mahler) of being one again with the symbiotic mother (fused together with the mother in a split-off “grandiose self” structure in the narcissistic character pathology).

The role-play will be used to demonstrate how the therapist responds, moment to moment, to the patient’s developmental trauma enactment, and intervenes with empathic attunement, within the “in vivo” clinical process. One of the Open House participants will have the opportunity to volunteer and play the role of his/ her patient, to get inside of their patient’s internal experience, with Dr. Kavaler-Adler who will role-play the object relations psychoanalyst.

Then will be the time for all questions about the Object Relations Institute’s One-, Two-, and Four- year Certificate Training Programs, as well as the Supervisory Mentorship and Parent-Child Development Programs. Questions about the rich curriculum and high level faculty will be answered, along with questions about requirements for full psychoanalytic certificate training, and about requirements for one or two year educational certificates, which can be stepping stones to the full psychoanalytic training @ORI.

All our programs are offered in a hybrid mode (in-person and virtual) since the 2014-2015 academic year. Due to COVID restrictions, we are still in virtual mode (from 2020-2021 academic year). Our Virtual programs are offered via audio/video platforms (with minimal requirements).

Open House participants will learn about special scholarships at the ORI! The ORI has established Dr. Jeffrey Seinfeld Scholarship Fund, and since the 2013-2014 academic year, we are offering scholarships to the social workers, mental health counselors, and other mental health professionals in the US and overseas who are interested in object relations psychoanalytic training.

The first part of the Open House will consist of a lecture given by Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler, the ORI Executive Director, on her clinical experience working with those who have developmental arrest due to traumatic disruption in the primal bonding with the mother. Distinctions between different character disorder types will be discussed, as well as commonalities.

Commonalities include the prevalence of dissociative defense mechanisms as opposed to the employment of neurotic defenses that are based on repression. The absence of the psychic containment of repression will be discussed. The consequent defensive reactivity that is evident “in the moment” will be contrasted with the self-reflection that can manifest when psychic and transitional space have developmentally evolved through adequate infant/mother bonding and adequate separation-individuation.

Distinctions between the types of psychic structures that develop, with different maternal (and paternal) character types will be discussed. The common terms for such character distinctions are known as the Schizoid, Borderline, and Narcissistic conditions.

Psychic structure distinctions relate to the different defense styles of the different conditions, and these different defense styles inform us about different clinical approaches. For example, mirroring vulnerability in the Narcissist contrasts with questioning self-destructive behavior in the Borderline, or direct interpretation of Internal World fantasy with the Schizoid character.

Since the major eating disorders are also linked with such character pathology, anorexic behavior in the schizoid and narcissistic personalities can be compared with the bulimic behavior in the borderline.

Following the lecture, Dr. Kavaler-Adler will demonstrate some of these concepts in an “in vivo” role-play with Dr. Loray Daws Dr. Daws will play one of his anonymous patients, and Dr. Kavaler-Adler will play the role of the psychotherapist. Group discussion and questions will follow. Also questions about the courses and programs offered by the Object relations Institute will be entertained.

For more information, please visit www.orinyc.org or/and write to the Institute’s Programs Director to adminorinyc@gmail.com

Working with Personality Disorders in Psychoanalytic Supervision:
The Object Relations View

(An Interactive Lecture During Live ORI’s Open House)

When: Sunday, 7/10/22 (1:00pm – 3:30pm)
Where: Virtual participation will be available via zoom

with Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler, ORI’s Co-founder and Executive Director

FOUR OBJECT RELATIONS PERSPECTIVES on the INTERNAL PERSECUTORY OBJECT at the TIME of COVID-19

(An Interactive Lecture During Live ORI’s Open House)

When: Saturday, 7/11/20 (1:00 – 3:30 pm)
Where: Virtual
with Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler, ORI’s Co-founder and Executive Director

This Open House will feature the Interactive Lecture and the Experiential Role Play on FOUR OBJECT RELATIONS PERSPECTIVES on the INTERNAL PERSECUTORY OBJECT at the TIME of COVID-19

At this July 2020 Virtual Open House for the Object Relations Institute (ORI), Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler, the Founder and Executive Director of ORI, will offer a free lecture on four theoretical perspectives on the Internal Persecutory Object. The four perspectives will reflect the theories of Melanie Klein, Ronald Fairbairn, D. W. Winnicott, and Susan Kavaler-Adler. This lecture and the discussion following it will focus on innate psychic fantasy, primal preoedipal trauma, developmental disruption, and eroticized bad object addiction (as in Kavaler-Adler’s “demon lover complex”).

The topic will be extended to projections of internal life onto the current Corona virus threat. Feel free to read the essay by Dr. Kavaler-Adler on COVID-19 and the Internal Persecutory Object here: https://mindconsiliums.org/media/S.-Kavaler-Adler-1-COVID-19-AND-THE-INTERNAL-PERSECUTORY-OBJECT-4-14-20-MindConsiliums.pdf, and watch a short video on this topic at the following link: https://youtu.be/7yfrMp1jeNw

The second part of the Open House will be an “in vivo” role-play, in which Dr. Kavaler-Adler will play the role of the Object Relations psychoanalytic psychotherapist, while the volunteer who presents a client will play the role of that client. The spontaneous clinical process, with highlighted clinical moments, will emerge forth for engaging discussion.

Working with Personality Disorders in Psychoanalytic Supervision: The Object Relations View

(An Interactive Lecture During Live ORI’s Open House)

When: Saturday, 9/21/19 (1:00 – 3:00 pm)
Where: In-Person and Virtual participation
with Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler, ORI’s Co-founder and Executive Director

This Open House will feature the Interactive Lecture and the Experiential Role Play on

Object Relations theory has been particularly necessary to understand those who have early developmental arrest within their first three years of life, when the basic core self structure is forming. At this Fall 2019 Open House, Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler will address the phenomena of Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid conditions in developmental object relations terms. She will speak about the different psychic structure character formations, and how they require different psychotherapeutic approaches. She will also speak about self-integration, psychic structure internalization, and separation-individuation – in relation to the psychoanalytic psychotherapist’s capacities to process dissociated trauma, since this dissociated trauma impacts the therapist as “objective countertransference” (Donald Winnicott) and as “projective-identification” (Melanie Klein, Heinz Racker, Wilfred Bion, and Paula Heimann).

Dr. Kavaler-Adler will speak about how every psychotherapist can be helped with the difficult task of processing projective identification and “objective” or induced countertransference through an object relations mode of supervision. This supervision involves “in vivo” clinical experience in the form of “role-plays” as well as in the form of “meditative visualization.” As primal trauma and its sadomasochistic enactments are understood, rather than reacted to in a retaliatory manner, each therapist in this supervision learns about the clinical technique spoken about by D. W. Winnicott as “object survival.”

Through survival of primitive aggressive reenactments, patients can begin to tolerate containing their own experience (read Wilfred Bion on the “container” and the “contained”). Then, the therapist can begin to interpret the compulsive primitive enactments that were formerly too traumatically overwhelming to discuss. Once the patient/client/analysand comes to contain their inner compulsive reenactments, rather than to act them out in a dissociated way, they move from more primitive psychic state of being (Melanie Klein’s “paranoid-schizoid position”) to a more advanced one (Klein’s “depressive position”). Then, symbolization develops naturally, along with all the organically evolving ego functions; and internal psychic space and transitional space (Winnicott) allow the person to become an “interpreting subject” (Thomas Ogden), as well as to receive new “internalizations.” The patient begins to receive interpretations, rather than experience them as an invasive persecutory assault. At the same time, the therapist interprets how persecutory they are perceived, when making interpretations. Can they then interpret being a Kleinian “toilet breast,” as well as a persecutory “bad object” (as the Kleinians do)?

The role-play will be used to demonstrate how the therapist responds, moment to moment, to the patient’s developmental trauma enactment, and intervenes with empathic attunement, within the “in vivo” clinical process. One of the Open House participants will have the opportunity to volunteer and play the role of his/ her patient, to get inside of their patient’s internal experience, with Dr. Kavaler-Adler who will role-play the object relations psychoanalyst.

Then will be the time for all questions about the Object Relations Institute’s One-, Two-, and Four- year Certificate Training Programs. Questions about the rich curriculum and high level faculty will be answered, along with questions about requirements for full psychoanalytic certificate training, and about requirements for one or two year educational certificates, which can be stepping stones to the full psychoanalytic training @ORI. Discussion about our multiple and re-structured traditional and virtual training programs will be complemented by examples of therapeutic role-play with implementation of the object relations clinical technique.

BLOCKS TO SELF-EXPRESSION

(An Interactive Lecture During Live ORI’s Open House)

When: Saturday, 9/22/18 (1:00 – 4:00 pm)
Where: In-Person and Virtual participation
with Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler, ORI’s Co-founder and Executive Director

This Open House featured the Interactive Lecture and the Experiential Role Play on BLOCKS TO SELF-EXPRESSION, with Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler

Dr. Kavaler-Adler, the co-founder and the executive director of the Object Relations Institute, gave a brief lecture on blocks to self expression, in terms of one’s writing, speaking, and authentic communication. She referenced Freud, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Klein, and her own work, explaining the nature of blocks to “finding and sustaining one’s true self voice, and opening paths to success.” Using her 41 years expertise in the creative process, working with writers and psychological blocks to their writing, and working with the developmental mourning process, Dr. Kavaler-Adler spoke about the psychodynamics of obstacles to writing, success, and communication that are so clearly understood in object relations terms. She also spoke of the unconscious fantasies that block someone from finding their own voice, such as the fantasies of a male muse in female writers, which is so different from the female muse in male writers. The renowned Dr. Martin Bergmann noted Dr. Kavaler-Adler’s original ideas on this topic in his foreword to one of Dr. Kavaler-Adler’s books, “The Creative Mystique: From Red Shoes Frenzy to Love and Creativity” (Routledge, 1996; ORI Academic Press, 2014). Another unconscious fantasy was discussed – about the idea that the terror of losing one’s Constitutional rights relates to the blocked internal voice of the individual.

Following the lecture and discussion, there was a role-play demonstration of clinical object relations work. The person volunteering to play her/his patient learned about their patient from the inside out; and interventions of the object relations clinician illustrated by Dr. Kavaler-Adler.

After the lecture and the role-play demonstration, there was the time for all questions about the Object Relations Institute’s training programs. Questions about the rich curriculum and high level faculty were answered, along with questions about requirements for full psychoanalytic certificate training, and about requirements for One Year or Two Year Training certificates, which can be used as stepping stones to the full psychoanalytic training at ORI.

If you are interested in the topic of blocks to creativity, feel free to listen to Dr. Kavaler-Adler’s interview podcast on the New Books Network @ https://newbooksnetwork.com/susan-kavaler-adler-the-compulsion-to-create-women-writers-and-their-demon-lovers-ori-academic-2013/

Working with Personality Disorders in Psychoanalytic Supervision: The Object Relations View

(An Interactive Lecture During Live ORI’s Open House)

When: Sunday, 4/29/18 (1:00 – 4:00 pm)
Where: In-Person and Virtual participation
with Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler, ORI’s Co-founder and Executive Director

This Open House featured the interactive lecture on Working with Personality Disorders in Psychoanalytic Supervision: The Object Relations View, with Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler

Object Relations theory has been particularly necessary to understand those who have early developmental arrest within their first three years of life, when the basic core self structure is forming. At this Spring 2018 Open House, Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler will address the phenomena of Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid conditions in developmental object relations terms. She will speak about the different psychic structure character formations, and how they require different psychotherapeutic approaches. She will also speak about self-integration, psychic structure internalization, and separation-individuation – in relation to the psychoanalytic psychotherapist’s capacities to process dissociated trauma, since this dissociated trauma impacts the therapist as “objective countertransference” (Donald Winnicott) and as “projective-identification” (Melanie Klein, Heinz Racker, Wilfred Bion, and Paula Heimann).

The Subjective Experience of Time: Time as Persecutory, Frozen, or Holding: An Object Relations Perspective for Clinicians

(An Interactive Lecture During Live ORI’s Open House)

When: Sunday, 4/23/17 (1:00 – 4:00 pm).
Where: In-Person and Virtual participation
with Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler, ORI’s Co-founder and Executive Director

Interactive Lecture on The Subjective Experience of Time: Time as Persecutory, Frozen, or Holding: An Object Relations Perspective for Clinicians by Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, D.Litt., NCPsyA, ORI’s Executive Director

We can experience all our primal affect states in relation to TIME. Clocks may register an objective aspect of time, but internally, we are all living with the subjectivity of time. During the analytic session, time manifests for our patients as a transference object, along with other objects, such as their parents, siblings, etc. Some patients want to suspend the intrusion of objective time, and luxuriate in its holding qualities on the couch, allowing the unconscious to emerge. They may like the lights dim and the blinds drawn. Some are terrified of time as the intrusive persecutor, with its impossible demands, and its unrelenting mortality. Those are the ones with the big watches and the ocular search for the clocks in your consulting room. And then there are those who block their thoughts and feelings, and feel like time is a frozen ice breast that refuses to melt. Internal objects, which are persecutory, holding, or frozen, are projected into our fantasy images of the persona of time. What happens when time as an internal object becomes time as a transitional object? Can we play with time? Can time, when holding, suspend our subordination to our mortality?

Befriending time, rather than to be persecuted by it, can evolve into the “eternal now” moment that challenges the linear time construction of our mortality. It can become a clinical moment or an Argentine tango moment. This is Winnicott’s “creativity of everyday life,” and we can only get there through Klein’s depressive position journey, through the healthy mourning of life’s “necessary losses.”

Come join us to play with all these questions, cultivating the Winnicottian capacity to play and the Bionian moment “without memory or desire.” Dip into the internal world with us, and then travel to the transitional world through the open house experience of an in the moment clinical role-play, in which one of you will get inside the skin of one of your patients, will experience the patient’s being from the inside/out, and will dialogue with Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler, who will play the part of the analyst in the role-play.

Reference to read before or after the Open House:

Kavaler-Adler, S. (2014). Dialectics of mortality and immortality: Time as an internal and transitional object experience and time as a persecutory vs. a holding object. Issues in Psychoanalytic Psychology, 35(1), 37-61. (can be found at

http://www.mindconsiliums.org/publications/2013/12/2013-12-Kavaler-Adler-dialectics-of-mortality-and-immortality-time.pdf

Nature of Blocks to Self-Expression related to writing, speaking, and authentic communicating

(An Interactive Lecture During Live ORI’s Open House)

When: 10/08/2016
Where: In-Person and Virtual participation
with Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler, ORI’s Co-founder and Executive Director

The Open House on 10/08/2016 featured the brief lecture of the Nature of Blocks to Self-Expression related to writing, speaking, and authentic communicating – by ORI’s Executive Director and Founder, Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler, who is also a prolific author and the object relations theorist. Dr. Kavaler-Adler will reference Freud, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Klein, and her own work, in terms of explaining the nature of blocks to “finding and sustaining one’s true self voice, and opening paths to success.” Using her 40 years expertise in working analytically with writers and psychological blocks to their writing, as well as working with the developmental mourning process, Dr. Kavaler-Adler will speak about the psychodynamics of obstacles to writing, success, and communication that are so clearly understood in object relations terms. She will also speak of the unconscious fantasies that block someone from finding their own voice, such as the fantasies of a male muse in female writers, which is so different from the female muse in male writers. You can hear more of this in Dr. Kavaler-Adler’s 2nd podcast interview on “New Books in Psychoanalysis” on “The Compulsion to Create: Women Writers and Their Demon Lovers” (Routledge, 1993; ORI Academic Press, 2013).

Follow the link here: http://newbooksnetwork.com/susan-kavaler-adler-the-compulsion-to-create-women-writers-and-their-demon-lovers-ori-academic-2013/

The renowned Dr. Martin Bergmann noted Dr. Kavaler-Adler’s original ideas on this in his Foreword to one of her other books related to creative process, “The Creative Mystique: From Red Shoes Frenzy to Love and Creativity” (Routledge, 1996; ORI Academic Press, 2014). Another unconscious fantasy to be discussed is that behind the terror of losing 2nd Amendment rights in this country, and how this may relate to the blocked internal voice of the individual.

Envy, Hunger and Desire In Eating Disorders: Anorexia and Bulimia From Psychoanalytic Object Relations Perspective

(An Interactive Lecture During Live ORI’s Open House)

When: 6/26/16
Where: In-Person and Virtual participation
with Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler, ORI’s Co-founder and Executive Director

The Open House on 6/26/16 featured the interactive lecture on Envy, Hunger and Desire In Eating Disorders: Anorexia and Bulimia From Psychoanalytic Object Relations Perspective

This workshop had a precise clinical focus. Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler will present cases of anorexia and bulimia, which are current or/and which were described as case studies in her earlier clinical writings. The workshop participants were getting the understanding about eating disorders being directly related to an internal world where an envious, hungry Mother resides. This kind of Internal Mother has disrupted and arrested the person’s self-integration and separation-individuation processes.

The resolution of developmental trauma, which involves a “developmental mourning process” in treatment, and a clear look at the “demon lover complex,” within the internal world, as well as the blocked erotic desires that are part and parcel of arrested “developmental mourning” and the “demon lover complex”- will be illustrated and discussed.

The role of symptomatic compulsive spending, in the case of the bulimic, will be seen as transitional stage phenomena in the resolution of physical bulimia, and in the emergence of psychic bulimia in the transference. The role of self-righteousness and contempt will be seen as manic defenses in the case of the anorexic.

To read more about the workshop, follow the link HERE. For a taste of the topic, please visit The Object Relations View mini-video series on YouTube (http://youtu.be/XDSVKLJAAh0) and on ORI’s web site (http://orinyc.org/you.html), to watch the video (part 13) on Eating Disorders: The Object Relations View.

Working with Personality Disorders in Psychoanalytic Supervision: The Object Relations View

(An Interactive Lecture During Live ORI’s Open House)

When: 9/20/15
Where: In-Person and Virtual participation
with Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler, ORI’s Co-founder and Executive Director

The Open House on 9/20/15 featured the interactive lecture on Working with Personality Disorders in Psychoanalytic Supervision: The Object Relations View , with Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler

Object Relations theory has been particularly necessary to understand those who have early developmental arrest within their first three years of life, when the basic core self structure is forming.

At this Fall 2015 Open House, Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler will address the phenomena of Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid conditions in developmental object relations terms. She will speak about the different psychic structure character formations, and how they require different psychotherapeutic approaches. She will also speak about self-integration, psychic structure internalization, and separation-individuation – in relation to the psychoanalytic psychotherapist’s capacities to process dissociated trauma, since this dissociated trauma impacts the therapist as “objective countertransference” (Donald Winnicott) and as “projective-identification” (Melanie Klein, Heinz Racker, Wilfred Bion, and Paula Heimann). She will speak about how every psychotherapist can be helped with the difficult task of processing projective identification and “objective” or induced countertransference through an object relations mode of supervision. This supervision involves “in vivo” clinical experience in the form of “role-plays” as well as in the form of “meditative visualization.”

As primal trauma and its sadomasochistic enactments are understood, rather than reacted to in a retaliatory manner, each therapist in this supervision learns about the clinical technique spoken about by D. W. Winnicott as “object survival.” Through survival of primitive aggressive reenactments, patients can begin to tolerate containing their own experience (Wilfred Bion on the “container” and the “contained”). Then the therapist can begin to interpret the compulsive primitive enactments that were formerly too traumatically overwhelming to discuss.

Once the patient/client/analysand comes to contain their inner compulsive reenactments, rather than to act them out in a dissociated way, they move from more primitive psychic state of being (Melanie Klein’s “paranoid-schizoid position”) to a more advanced one (Klein’s “depressive position”). Then, symbolization naturally develops along with all the organically evolving ego functions, and internal psychic space and transitional space (Winnicott) allow the person to become an “interpreting subject” (Thomas Ogden), as well as to receive new “internalizations.” The patient begins to receive interpretations, rather than experience them as an invasive persecutory assault. At the same time, the therapist interprets how persecutory they are perceived when making interpretations.

Can they then interpret being a Kleinian “toilet breast” as well as a persecutory “bad object” (as the Kleinians do)? Through all this, the therapist learns how to be there with a patient, who by developmental necessity must mourn the loss of an early symbiotic object (prior to the developmental trauma). Developmental mourning (Susan Kavaler-Adler) precedes, from the core self and object loss to later losses. This understanding of mourning overlaps with James Masterson’s “abandonment depression.” Without the working through of the “abandonment depression,” the patient seeks addictive highs that regressively return them to the “reunion fantasy” (James Masterson and Margaret Mahler) of being one again with the symbiotic mother (fused together with the mother in a split off “grandiose self” structure in the narcissistic character pathology).

The Open House on 7/19/15 featured the Interactive Lecture on Fear of Intimacy, with Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler.
The Open House on 3/15/15 featured the interactive lecture on Addiction to Bad Objects and “Nightmares and Object Relations Theories.”
The Open House on 6/20/14 featured the workshop on In Session: Crying, Breathing, and Sleeping, with Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler.
The Open House on 3/9/14 featured the workshop on Envy, Hunger and Desire in Eating Disorders: Anorexia and Bulimia from Psychoanalytic Object Relations Perspective
The Open House on 9/22/13 featured the workshop on Character Disorders: Narcissistic, Borderline, and Schizoid, with Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler.

ENVY, “BITING THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU,” and SOME COMMENTS ON JEALOUSY

Developmental Mourning: Transformation from Developmental Arrest in Character Disorders vs. Mournful Developmental Evolution in Neurotic Psychic Structures

The Scapegoat Complex: Psychodynamics of Pre-oedipal Developmental Arrest

Developmental Trauma, Psychic Structure, and Clinical Engagement with Those with Primal Vulnerabilities

Working with Personality Disorders in Psychoanalytic Supervision: The Object Relations View

FOUR OBJECT RELATIONS PERSPECTIVES on the INTERNAL PERSECUTORY OBJECT at the TIME of COVID-19

Working with Personality Disorders in Psychoanalytic Supervision: The Object Relations View

BLOCKS TO SELF-EXPRESSION

Working with Personality Disorders in Psychoanalytic Supervision: The Object Relations View

The Subjective Experience of Time: Time as Persecutory, Frozen, or Holding: An Object Relations Perspective for Clinicians

Nature of Blocks to Self-Expression related to writing, speaking, and authentic communicating

Envy, Hunger and Desire In Eating Disorders: Anorexia and Bulimia From Psychoanalytic Object Relations Perspective

Working with Personality Disorders in Psychoanalytic Supervision: The Object Relations View

Books by Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler

Developmental Mourning:
Transformation from Developmental Arrest in Character Disorders
vs. Mournful Developmental Evolution in Neurotic Psychic Structures

The Scapegoat Complex:
Psychodynamics of Pre-oedipal Developmental Arrest

Developmental Trauma, Psychic Structure,
and Clinical Engagement with Those with Primal Vulnerabilities

Working with Personality Disorders in Psychoanalytic Supervision:
The Object Relations View