2-Year Certificate Program (2YCP), Cohort 1 (The Emotional Textures)
2024-25, 1st Term — Mondays, 6:30-7:45pm
Karen Weisbard, PsyD
Amanda Seely, MD
Table of Contents
Introduction
Welcome to Groups and Identity I. In this class, we will explore what it means to form a psychoanalytic learning group and how group identifications inform our work with patients.
This is the beginning of two years of learning together. By May, 2026, you will have completed this program, and have a new facet of your identity, as a therapist with a certificate in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. You will also have a sense of what it means to have been and to be a part of this learning group. The group itself, and your sense of yourself in this group, will be a part of your identity. Right now, the meaning of this group to your sense of self is nascent. But there are other groups that you are a part of that have shaped how you come to this group today. These include your family, your cultural group, your gender group, your training group, and many others.
As you read this list of possible group identifications, you may begin to consider that the groups you identify with are defined both by whom they include and whom they exclude. You may also have experienced a sense of having parts of yourself feeling included or excluded in the process of becoming a group member. What has that meant to you and how you bring yourself into this group? These questions call for our increased reflection on a bourgeoning area of psychoanalytic theory and practice. This class is intended to help us get more comfortably uncomfortable as we learn together what this means for our professional and personal lives.
The way our group identifications impact our psychic lives is part of what is termed our “social unconscious”. As defined by the psychoanalyst Earl Hopper, the social unconscious refers to “the existence and constraints of social, cultural and communicational arrangements of which people are unaware; unaware, in so far as these arrangements are not perceived (not known), and if perceived not acknowledged (denied), and if acknowledged, not taken as problematic (“given”), and if taken as problematic, not considered with an optimal degree of detachment and objectivity. (The Social Unconscious: Selected Papers. London: Jessica Kingsley, 2003. p.126).
These unconscious arrangements are used to support social hierarchies and the power structures they uphold, which reinforce these arrangements and the urge to keep them unconscious.
When we meet with patients, the pull of these group identifications moves through the room. Sometimes we feel a comfortable sense of joining, of feeling included in a way that bolsters our own sense of self. Other times we may feel disrupted by these currents, as we try to manage our identity by excluding parts of ourselves and our patients. How do we monitor and respond to the social unconscious in our work with patients? How does this social unconscious inflect our minds and our work? In this course we will begin to explore these questions.
In this class we will be reading papers on aspects of the social unconscious. They engage with current events and with contested social and theoretical ground. They are likely to raise more questions than answers.
At the end of your two-year series, you will have a second Identity and Groups course. By the time you take that course, you will almost be finished with your 2-year certificate program. You will have encountered a great deal of psychoanalytic theory along the way. In that course, you will delve deeper into the theory that has been and is being developed. All along the two years we hope that every class will challenge you to think about the social unconscious and how we incorporate these ideas into broader psychoanalytic theory.
Learning Objectives
- At the end of the first three classes students will be able to describe how the individual and group relate/shape one another, and how group identifications transmit social hierarchical forces into our clinical work
- At the end of the 4th and 5th class, students will have a greater understanding of how our social system, including our economic and political system, engage with our social unconscious, and how social norms interact with our psyches.
- At the end of the 6th and 7th class, students will have a greater understanding of how psychoanalysis itself has been influenced by hierarchical social structures. Students will increase their reflective capacities for the meaning that theory and practice have to them as well as the ability to continue questioning what might be inaccurate or distorting, sometimes in harmful ways.
- At the end of the term, students will understand the various meanings of location when we consider the social unconscious, and will be able to reflect on what that means for our practice or psychoanalysis.
September 9, 2024
Prior to class, consider what groups you feel you belong to, that are significant to your identity. These can include a wide variety of groups including gender, socio-cultural group, profession, family role (e.g. sisters), hobby (e.g. skateboarders), life experiences (survivors of loss), etc.
Consider which groups offer you the most coherence, and which groups cause you distress or conflict. Consider why that is so. Is that due to parts of yourself included or excluded by that group?
In class we will discuss our experience of doing this exercise and share responses.
There are no readings for this class.
September 16, 2024
[32 pages]“The individual and the group have a co-determining relationship…human subjectivity is what happens at their crossroads…. In its function as a theoretical hinge, the concept of identity marks an identification not with a particular person but with a social location, a social location that is itself a function of groups.”
What comes to mind about your own experience of belonging to and being “subject” to groups? What do you take from his assertion “to claim that one is fully conscious of the structuring power of these identifications is at best naïve and at worse, violent”? How do group identifications transmit social hierarchical forces into our clinical work?
González, F. (2023) On Identity and the Political in Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Quarterly 92:567-598
We will spend two classes discussing this paper. We will use this same structure for the first three sets of papers we discuss. In the first class, we will explore the ideas that the author, in this case González, is presenting. We will try to come to a common understanding of the concepts he refers to. Please ask about anything you do not understand, that will be useful for everyone.
In the second class, we will dig deeper into the questions these ideas bring up, including how we use these ideas to understand ourselves and our interactions with patients.
September 23, 2024
[32 pages]“The individual and the group have a co-determining relationship…human subjectivity is what happens at their crossroads…. In its function as a theoretical hinge, the concept of identity marks an identification not with a particular person but with a social location, a social location that is itself a function of groups.”
What comes to mind about your own experience of belonging to and being “subject” to groups? What do you take from his assertion “to claim that one is fully conscious of the structuring power of these identifications is at best naïve and at worse, violent”? How do group identifications transmit social hierarchical forces into our clinical work?
González, F. (2023) On Identity and the Political in Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Quarterly 92:567-598
We will spend two classes discussing this paper. We will use this same structure for the first three sets of papers we discuss. In the first class, we will explore the ideas that the author, in this case González, is presenting. We will try to come to a common understanding of the concepts he refers to. Please ask about anything you do not understand, that will be useful for everyone.
In the second class, we will dig deeper into the questions these ideas bring up, including how we use these ideas to understand ourselves and our interactions with patients.
September 30, 2024
[50 pages]Rozmarin “suggests that social and historical forces play an unconscious yet decisive role in our lives.” How do shared narratives that manage intergenerational trauma both create coherence and areas of “hushed secrets”? Are there shared narratives you identify with that come to mind?
How can concepts of the social unconscious as developed by group analytic theorists Hopper and Weinberg help us think about what Gonzalez called “the collective of the individual.”
Rozmarin, E. (2009) “I Am Yourself: Subjectivity and the Collective”, Psychoanalytic Dialogues 19:604-616.
Everett, P. (2024) James: A Novel, NY: Doubleday, pp21-23.
This novel is a reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told from the character Jim’s point of view.
Hopper, E. & Weinberg, H. (2011) “Introduction” in The Social Unconscious in Person, Groups, and Societies, Volume 1: Mainly Theory (Earl Hopper and Haim Weinberg, Eds.), pp. xxiii-lvi.
October 7, 2024
[50 pages]Rozmarin “suggests that social and historical forces play an unconscious yet decisive role in our lives.” How do shared narratives that manage intergenerational trauma both create coherence and areas of “hushed secrets”? Are there shared narratives you identify with that come to mind?
How can concepts of the social unconscious as developed by group analytic theorists Hopper and Weinberg help us think about what Gonzalez called “the collective of the individual.”
Rozmarin, E. (2009) “I Am Yourself: Subjectivity and the Collective”, Psychoanalytic Dialogues 19:604-616.
Everett, P. (2024) James: A Novel, NY: Doubleday, pp21-23.
This novel is a reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told from the character Jim’s point of view.
Hopper, E. & Weinberg, H. (2011) “Introduction” in The Social Unconscious in Person, Groups, and Societies, Volume 1: Mainly Theory (Earl Hopper and Haim Weinberg, Eds.), pp. xxiii-lvi.
October 21, 2024
[34 pages]How has psychoanalysis itself been influenced by hierarchical social structures? What will it mean for you to learn theory and practice and at the same time keep questioning what might be inaccurate or distorting, sometimes in harmful ways? What do you think would be challenging about achieving what Hart calls “radical openness”?
Tummala-Narra, P. (2022) Can We Decolonize Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice?. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 32:217-234
Hart, A. (2017). From multicultural competence to radical openness: A psychoanalytic engagement of otherness. In The American Psychoanalyst, 51(1), pp.12-27.
October 28, 2024
[34 pages]How has psychoanalysis itself been influenced by hierarchical social structures? What will it mean for you to learn theory and practice and at the same time keep questioning what might be inaccurate or distorting, sometimes in harmful ways? What do you think would be challenging about achieving what Hart calls “radical openness”?
Tummala-Narra, P. (2022) Can We Decolonize Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice?. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 32:217-234
Hart, A. (2017). From multicultural competence to radical openness: A psychoanalytic engagement of otherness. In The American Psychoanalyst, 51(1), pp.12-27.
November 4, 2024
[16 pages]This paper both provides wonderful case material illustrating the emergence of a conflict of group allegiance in a treatment and the navigation of this engagement in treatment as well as introduces some theoretical concepts for imagining how what Gonzalez describes as the “double provenance” of psychic life.
How does the case material Gonzalez provide illustrate the challenges of maintaining “radical openness”? Gonzalez writes “A group is at its most generative when it contains the greatest diversity among its members while sharing the most unity of purpose.” What can you imagine about the tensions that arise between these attributes?
González, F.J. (2020). Trump Cards and Klein Bottles: On the Collective of the Individual. Psychoanal. Dial., 30(4):383-398.