“Inter-subjective Vulnerability: Wound of Existence” with Darren Thompson MD (SPSI Scientific Session)

Psychoanalysis is, above all, a venture that involves an unusually high degree of exposure to another human being. In this talk, Dr. Thompson will focus on “inter-subjective vulnerability”, a form of exposure involving co-belonging or ‘communion’ with the other. He will assert that what is unconsciously common or shared is what bears a key stamp of psychoanalysis’ uniqueness, and where we can re-valorize the unconscious as the seat of maximal psychoanalytic effect in the here-and-now of clinical experience.

Click here to read the paper. This link will be active for one week after the presentation.

Darren Thompson, MD is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in private practice in Vancouver, BC. He is a faculty member of the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (SPSI), and a member and past president of the Western Branch of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society (WBCPS). He is also a clinical assistant professor at the University of British Columbia, a fellow of the American Board of Psychoanalysis, and member of the IPA committee on Psychoanalytic Assistance in Crises and Emergencies (PACE).

“A Relational Encounter with Post-Bionian Field Theory”
Discussant: John Cardinali, PsyD, ABPP

John Cardinali, PsyD, ABPP, is a psychoanalyst in practice in Seattle.  He is a member of the faculty at SPSI where he presently serves as Faculty Chair.  He has also been a Clinical Instructor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington and a member of the Faculty at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles.

Learning Objectives

After attending this presentation, participants should:

1. gain a specific definition of the term ‘inter-subjective’ that is in line with the development – begun by Husserl and furthered by other philosophers and psychoanalysts – that brings to the fore our shared/common unconscious experience.
2. be able to evaluate how inter-subjective experience is a form of non-volitional exposure, and how this exposure may strike with surprise, creating an ongoing and emerging sense of vulnerability.
3. appreciate how analyst vulnerability, in this line of thinking, is an essential aspect of psychoanalytic vitality.
4. know how unconscious inter-subjective experience can be performative and used as a tool in analytic transformation.

SPSI Scientific Sessions are free to attendees.

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