Creativity and Early Loss (with Chester Smith, MEd)

This course will explore a variety of areas related to artist’s and their art through a psychoanalytic lens. Creativity and creative inhibition will be examined in relation to the early experiences that promote and inhibit creativity. Attention will be given to the complex relationship between the artist, the artist’s work, and the viewer . We will summarize the findings from the field of neuroaesthetics regarding how both creating art and experiencing it can influence the physiology of the brain. We will also examine how issues of separation/individuation can influence the artist’s work as well as conceptualizing art as a transitional object. We will look at the role of repetition compulsion and mastery in the creation of art. Loss and trauma in general have long been understood to play a role in the creative process for many famous artists. Using the early histories of Munch, Van Gogh, and Picasso we will look at the role of loss as a contributor to their art.

Fee:                                                              Credit Hours:

$155                                                             5.0

Class Level:                                                Class Format:

Intermediate                                             Hybrid

Dates:

April 1, 8, 15 & 22 | 7 p.m.

Writing and Psychoanalysis: An Annual Retreat (with Nikki Karalekas, PhD, LCSW & Harold Braswell PhD, MSW)

This course will explore the relationship between writing and psychoanalysis through a group workshop process. We will begin by holding two courses exploring the connection between psychoanalysis and writing: How do psychoanalysts work with difficulties that can arise during the creative process? How do we support our patients’ creativity and our own? How might we give peers psychoanalytically- minded feedback on their writing? We will then spend a day together reading and providing feedback on each others’ writing. Prior writing experience is not required.

Fee:                                                              Credit Hours:

$276                                                             9.5

Class Level:                                                Class Format:

Beginner                                                     One class is in-person only. See below.

Dates:

April 2 | 7:30-8:45 p.m. (Hybrid)

April 16 | 7:30-8:45 p.m. (Hybrid)

May 4 | 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. (In-person only)

What Words Can’t Say. The Talking Cure and the Limits of Language (with Howard Levine, MD)

Psychoanalysis is ‘the talking cure,’ but the problems raised by language are complex, paradoxical and perhaps unsolvable. At their most effective, words play a vital role in psychic homeostatic regulation and the psychoanalytic process that is analogous to the architecturally structural role played by the keystone of an arch. The problem, however, is that words can be used to reveal or conceal, to convey meaning or obscure, distort, hide, fragment or evacuate meaning. And sometimes the very nature of language falls short of being able to capture and adequately communicate the psychic dimensions of our emotional lives. This paper explores the limitations and possibilities of words and language in psychoanalysis from the perspective of the work of Freud, Bion and Green and ends with a coda from the writings of an analysand.

Fee:                                                              Credit Hours:

$47 without credits                                 1.5

$72 with credits

Class Level:                                                Class Format:

Intermediate                                             Virtual

Dates:

March 28 | 7:30 p.m.