Exploring Opportunities in Melanie Klein Scholarship

Introduction

Melanie Klein was a pioneering psychoanalyst whose work profoundly shaped our understanding of early development, emotions, and unconscious processes. Her theories continue to be influential in contemporary psychoanalytic thought and practice. This article aims to provide an overview of various scholarship opportunities and educational resources related to Kleinian psychoanalysis.

Advanced Kleinian Studies

Advanced Klein (Clinical Klein) Course

The six-week course, the second in the “An Introduction to Melanie Klein” series, helps to deepen the understanding of contemporary Kleinian theory and technique by closely studying two clinically oriented papers. During the first three weeks of the course, there is studying of a paper showing an example of clinical work with a child. In the second half of the course, there is discussion of a paper that focuses on clinical work with an adult patient. As we study the clinical material in these two papers, we will consider how the therapist listens to the patient’s material, making sense of the transference, counter-transference, and unconscious phantasies. We will use the clinical material in the two case examples to consider the relationship between theory and technique.

This course is a follow-up to the previous Klein course held in the spring. However, this course is also open to all interested. Margo Chapin, MFT, a faculty member and a supervising and training analyst at SFCP, leads several ongoing study groups for clinicians in the Bay Area. This course is for clinicians with some previous exposure to Klein’s theories and/or who are intermediate to advanced experience in clinical work with a background in psychoanalytic principles. Enrollees who cancel at least SEVEN DAYS prior to the event date will receive a refund minus a $35 administrative charge. No refunds will be allowed after this time.

PINE Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Fellowship Program

Cultivating a Psychoanalytic Community

The PINE Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Fellowship Program is dedicated to cultivating a community of curiosity, reflection, and dialogue grounded in the spirit of psychoanalysis. It believes that psychoanalytic thinking offers not only a clinical framework but also a way of living and being-one that invites wonder, deepens our capacity to listen, and softens the edges of defensiveness and resistance. The program is committed to creating an open and inclusive space where diversity of background, identity, and thought enriches our collective learning.

Curriculum Overview

PINE is offering an elective second year in its Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Fellowship Program to students who have completed an initial year in the first-year program or in equivalent programs elsewhere during which they have had an introduction to key psychoanalytic concepts which are the basis for psychodynamic psychotherapy. PINE is well known for its small class size, collegial approach to learning, and the individual attention paid to each clinician’s interests and professional development. All of these classes are based on the educational philosophy of mutual learning and teaching. The initial 20 weeks consist of a survey of psychoanalytic theories, including Freud, Ferenczi, Anna Freud and Melanie Klein, Winnicott, ego psychology, self psychology, Bion, Lacan, interpersonal/relational, neuropsychoanalysis, intersectional and other newly emerging theoretical developments in the field. In the final four weeks participants will discuss the use of theory and technique as they appear in clinical work. Fellows will present cases and process to discover the way in which each clinician makes use of various models of the mind.

Mental health clinicians from all disciplines are encouraged to apply. The PINE Psychoanalytic Society does not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, gender, sexual orientation, age, national origin, or disability in the administration of its programs and activities. Tuition for the second-year program is $1300. To ensure a fellowship space, a $50 deposit is due with the application. The deposit will be refunded if the applicant is not accepted or withdraws. The remaining tuition is due by August 1st, although plans can be made to pay in installments. Up to 52 CME/CE credits are available for participants. Applications are being accepted through July 15, interviews will be scheduled upon receipt of an application, and final selections will be announced on a rolling basis. Detailed educational objectives will be based on each instructor’s syllabus and focus.

Accreditation

This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through joint providership of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the PINE Psychoanalytic Society of New England. The American Psychoanalytic Association is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians. The American Psychoanalytic Association designates this Live Activity for a maximum of 52 hours AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s) TM . Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity. The APsA CE Committee has reviewed the materials for accredited continuing education and has determined that this activity is not related to the product line of ineligible companies and therefore, the activity meets the exception outlined in Standard 3: ACCME’s identification, mitigation and disclosure of relevant financial relationship.

Past Courses

Envy in Theory & Clinical Practice

Melanie Klein was a pioneering psychoanalyst whose work profoundly shaped our understanding of early development, emotions, and unconscious processes. One of her most influential concepts is envy, which she explored in depth to explain what she described as an innate destructive tendency in the mind, which she observed in both children and adults. This short course introduces Klein’s theory of envy and its implications for psychoanalytic work.

Envy is never about material things, but rather about capacities and is often unconscious. In Klein’s psychoanalytic framework, envy is defined as a feeling that arises when a person perceives another as possessing something desirable-love, beauty, or happiness-and experiences pain or resentment because of their own perceived lack. Unlike jealousy, which involves the fear of losing something to someone else, envy is directed at the person who has what one desires. In this course the theory of envy as written by Melanie Klein in Envy and Gratitude along with the contemporary Kleinian elaborations of this concept particularly as it manifests in the therapeutic situation is explored. Along with our explorations of envy we will also look at the concept of gratitude, which Klein believed was crucial to overcoming an envious disposition, and crucial for healthy development.

Lynne Zeavin is a training and supervising analyst at the NYPSI. She teaches and supervises widely from within the contemporary Kleinian tradition. She is on the board of the Psychosocial Foundation and an associate editor of The Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. She is in full time private practice in New York City.

On Listening

Psychoanalysis is premised on how listening can be revelatory and transformative. It is a talking cure yes, but equally a being listened to, and learning to listen cure. In this short course, psychoanalytic discussions of what it means to listen and how to do it are paired with histories and practices of radical listening drawn from music and activism. Together we will explore what it means to listen more expansively, and why it can feel immensely difficult, even excruciating, to listen. Alongside discussions of set texts, each session will also include a guided listening exercise and time for discussion and reflection.

Akshi Singh is an Associate Editor at Parapraxis and Deputy Editor at Critical Quarterly. In Defence of Leisure, a memoir about reading the work of the writer, artist and psychoanalyst Marion Milner is out with Vintage Books. She is a Lacanian analyst in formation. Francis Gooding is a writer and Contributing Editor at the London Review of Books, a regular columnist for The Wire, and Contributing Editor at Critical Quarterly. He has written widely on music, ecology, anthropology, colonial film, and art.

Zionism as an Antisemitism

Zionism is an antisemitism. Zionism is not an antisemitism in the sense of “hatred of Jews”-though to be sure it has also incorporated this hatred into its identity-because antisemitism is more than just the hatred of Jews. It is a personal and social pathology, a manner of thinking, a form of reactionary modernity-one distinct from other forms of racism or xenophobia, though they share a family likeness. Zionism is an antisemitism, first and foremost, because it internalizes and recapitulates the very same European antisemitism that sought the extermination of the Jews in the Shoah. It is not only the pathology transposed into a new context, but the continuation of its tactics as well. Because antisemitism is a mode of thought, however, it does not necessarily have a fixed target. The group which occupies the hated position is mutable. As Adorno and Horkheimer write, “depending on the constellation, the victims are interchangeable . . . so each of them can replace the murderer, in the same blind lust for killing, as soon as he feels the power of representing the norm.” Since the Nakba, it is the Zionist who represents the norm; the Palestinian has now taken their place as victim-the constellation has changed. In order to understand Zionism and its effort to exterminate Palestinian life, one must understand its relation to, and as, antisemitism. Unpacking the internal dynamics of Zionism that continue to deepen the catastrophe at every turn can help us to make sense of a present that seems increasingly moved by madness alone. In this course we will seek to understand Zionism as both ideology and exterminationist regime by reference to critical theory on Naziism, fascism, antisemitism, and colonialism-and, in so doing, place Zionism within the continuum of antisemitic and/or exterminationist regimes past while also seeking out what is novel, and thus perhaps more pressing or frightening, in the ideology in its current manifestation. We will explore issues related to paranoia and false-projection, persecution mania, the logic of dehumanization and racial thinking, and other themes as they arise through the course of our conversation. More broadly, the goal of this course is to think our way into history as it is occurring, to reject thought which reifies history as a pre-given parcel of time or mere chronology in order to capture the still unfolding totality of the contemporary Zionist death-machine. The ideology is at its exterminationist zenith-though even this might be wishful thinking; history contains no guarantees. Theoretical intervention is necessary now-there may not be an after.

Jake Romm is a New York City based writer, the associate editor for Protean Magazine, and the US Representative of the Hind Rajab Foundation.

Rebirth: Endings and new beginnings in psychoanalytic and Buddhist thought

The fantasy of change, becoming someone or something new, rendering ourselves altogether different, animates our lives and choices. We move cities, get new friends, start new careers or take up studies, refiguring ourselves. We can choose new names, change our bodies, move on from the old. These processes of change are intrinsic to life, and yet their exact mechanics and logics are mysterious. How new is the new, how novel is difference, and where does the past go? When we seek rebirth, what are we seeking, and what are the consequences?

Read also: Opportunities at Calvin Klein

Some psychoanalytic traditions offer the possibility of a self so analyzed it is disintegrated, reintegrated, or otherwise born anew. Most Buddhist thought proposes rebirth as the very ground of existence, the cycle we are in until we break free from it. In both ways of thinking, the case is made that life itself is a series of repetitions we play out until we don’t. In this course we will explore the idea of rebirth through psychoanalytic and Buddhist lenses, drawing on interdisciplinary texts, clinical and spiritual discourses, and the lived experience of those who attend. We will engage with theories of karma, the unconscious, reincarnation, repetition, regression, and transformation.

Cyrus Dunham is the author of a memoir, A Year Without a Name. He is in training to become a Buddhist chaplain under Lama Justin Von Bujdoss, and is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing & Literature at USC. hannah baer is a writer and clinical psychologist based in New York. She is the the author of the memoir trans girl suicide museum and the forthcoming nonfiction book Life of the Party. She is a psychoanalytic candidate and a contributing editor to Parapraxis.

Psychodynamics: Psychoanalysis in a Melancholic Mode

While psychodynamics is a foundational concept in psychoanalytic theory and practice, it is also a term that currently circulates in the mainstream as the opposite of behaviorism. In the contemporary landscape of American psychotherapy, where behaviorism is favored by hegemony, psychodynamics is used to reinforce a binary and becomes disoriented from its psychoanalytic meanings. This course addresses the question of whether psychodynamics has come to signify a melancholic mode of psychoanalysis in the Freudian sense of melancholia as a thwarted mourning process. Psychoanalysts may evade mourning the loss of cultural dominance by disavowing collective power; behaviorists may evade mourning the loss of psychoanalytic meaning in mental healthcare by disavowing the power of the unconscious. Tense areas in clinical practice where behaviorist/psychodynamic binaries undermine complex therapeutic work will be explored, including: money/fee, breakdown/analyzability, interiority/politics. And these questions will be considered: How has the changing landscape of American mental healthcare impacted the practice of psychoanalysis over time? How does psychodynamics, a term with such thick sequelae, thin out over time? How can psychoanalytic meanings be restored to psychodynamics?

This course is for practitioners of the mind and body. The course material is psychoanalytic in method and scope, but open to all practitioners that consider the unconscious a meaningful guide for transformations of mind and body. We welcome psychoanalysts, social workers, mental health counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, somatic and body practitioners, spiritual counselors, holistic healers, peer counselors, and anyone else that has substantial training and experience working with individuals and/or groups.

Daniel Polyak completed psychoanalytic training at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR), and will begin supervising at the IPTAR Clinical Center. He is a lecturer in the Women and Gender Studies program at Hunter College. Toni Hellmann, LCSW practices psychoanalysis in Philadelphia and New York City. She completed psychoanalytic training at the William Alanson White Institute, where she co-founded the Study Group on Race and Psychoanalysis. She is a Supervisor of Psychotherapy at the William Alanson White Institute, a Case Consultant for the Manhattan Institute's One Year Program in Psychoanalysis and the Sociopolitical World, and an Associate Editor of the journal Contemporary Psychoanalysis.

Encountering Representations of Evil and Sadism

Any encounter with representations of evil and of sadism provokes both identificatory and disidentificatory impulses. We might see ourselves as we are; we might see ourselves as we must never be. The mix can be disturbing, disorienting and confusing. Theoretical considerations can help us keep our balance. But these same considerations can strip the encounter of its reality and therefore of its force. In this four-session sequence, some exemplary representations of evil and sadism are studied and considered from both theoretical and visceral points of view. Our aim will be to bring those points of view into generative interaction with each other.

Donald Moss has been a psychoanalyst in New York for 40 years and was most recently the recipient of the Haskell Norman Prize for excellence in psychoanalysis (2020). He is part of the College Executive of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, a member of the Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in the American Psychoanalytic Association, on the Editorial Board of Parapraxis, and is the author of several books, most recently Psychoanalysis in a Plague Year and At War with the Obvious: Disruptive Thinking in Psychoanalysis.

Echolocation and Opacity: Practicing Psychoanalysis With/out the Internal World

What if the internal world is what Lara Sheehi calls a settler colonial outpost? What becomes possible when we practice psychoanalysis “with/out” (Denise Ferreira da Silva) the internal world? In the clinical events with queer and trans femmes we’ll read aloud, paraontological practices like echolocation (Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Anne Alvarez), “not the same as mind-reading” (Gumbs), respect and love opacity. Édouard Glissant insisted “opacity would not establish autism; it would be the real foundation of Relation,” but, as for Ferreira da Silva and Moten, there is no such thing as relation in the nonlocal universe, as there is no such thing as separability. Neurodiversity refuses the executive function that values separability (Erin Manning). If anything’s internal, it’s earth, and it’s not a thing. An internal earth of gut feeling, interoception, pulse. The birth of a place for these takes contact. Reading Schedule includes papers by Kelly Merklin, Enid Balint, Anonymous, Dana Birksted-Breen, and Kathleen Del Mar Miller.

Eri Linsker practices psychoanalytic psychotherapy with children, adolescents, adults, and couples in New York City. They are the author of two books of poems, A Crisis Came Into Me and La Far, and are a contributing editor at Parapraxis, where their piece "Neurodiverse Economies: Bef…

Child Psychotherapy and Child Analysis

This course, taught by IPI supervising faculty of the Child Analytic and Child Psychotherapy Combined Program, invites you to join in an overview of five major psychoanalytic theorists of relevance to child therapists: Bowlby, Fairbairn, Klein, Winnicott, and Bick.The innovative thinking of these five analysts provides the foundation for our psychoanalytic object relations approach to psychodynamic formulation, assessment and treatment of children. We apply ideas on attachment and early parent-infant experience to the building of internal psychic structure. We show how aggression and love in balance are essential to a child’s relationship to parents. Associate and Full Members also receive discounted registration fees for most of IPI’s events, a subscription to PEP Web, the online psychoanalytic library, and other benefits depending on membership level.

HIPAA compliant Zoom video accounts are an optional add on for all IPI memberships. IPI has a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement with Zoom, which provides a HIPAA compliant platform for our accounts. HIPPA compliance is strongly recommended for all internet-mediated clinical work and clinical teaching. The “+ Zoom Pro” add-on to the IPI membership gives the user the ability to host online meetings with multiple people at the same time. IPI maintains responsibility for the program and its content. The International Psychotherapy Institute has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 6017. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. The International Psychotherapy Institute is responsible for all aspects of the programs. The International Psychotherapy Institute is an approved sponsor of the Maryland Board of Social Work Examiners for continuing education credits for licensed social workers in Maryland. The International Psychotherapy Institute is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0299. Participants are responsible for verifying that IPI CE credit is accepted by the licensing boards in their own states.

Theories of American Object Relations

This course studies the human psyche striving for connection, by looking at the profound pathological factors that undermine and subvert such a striving - through the lens of the Object Relations theories. Readings from nine American Object Relations theorists illustrate the clinical applications of Object Relations theories that we can trace back to Fairbairn, D. W. We will look at some of the clinical theories of Elizabeth Howell, Otto Kernberg, David Celani, and Jeffrey Seinfeld. We specifically look at the treatment of the Borderline condition, with related primitive defense operations of splitting and projective-identification. Also, with Jeffrey Seinfeld, we look at how the Negative Therapeutic Reaction makes it so difficult to establish a holding environment for the gradual and eventual internalization of a “good object,” as we must be pressured into the projections and enactments of bad object addiction. Like Masterson, Althea Horner’s books emphasize the external dynamics of Margaret Mahler and the internal psychic manifestations of the disruption of these healthy developmental dynamics. Horner’s last book also informs us of how a developmental perspective allows us to view resistance as the external enactment of a core relationship problem housed within the internal world. When we arrive at Robert Grossmark’s insights, we see how Michael Balint’s work on “Basic Fault” is carried forward, helping us engage with pre-symbolic patients as an “Unobtrusive Relational Analyst” (Robert Grossmark). With Frank Summers, we come to the focus of subjectivity in the analyst through “psychoanalytic vision,” which also overlaps with Thomas Ogden’s view of the development of subjectivity within the “Depressive Position.” In looking at the theoretical contributions of Susan Kavaler-Adler, we will read some of her in-depth case studies that reflect the integration of Melanie Klein, Ronald Fairbairn, D. W.

Susan Kavaler-Adler, Ph.D., ABPP, D.Litt., NCPsyA is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, who has been in practice in Manhattan for 45 years. She is a Fellow of the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis, and is the Founder and Executive Director of the Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. Dr. Kavaler-Adler has an honorary doctorate in literature, and she is a prolific author, with published six books and over 70 articles and book chapters in the field of object relations psychoanalytic theory. Dr. Kavaler-Adler received 16 awards for her psychoanalytic writing. She is also on the editorial board of the International Journal of Controversial Conversations (IJCC). In addition, Dr. Kavaler-Adler conducts ongoing groups in her practice, such as a monthly writing group, a monthly online experiential supervision group, and a monthly “Mourning, Therapy, and Support Group” with guided visualization.

In support of improving patient care, this activity has been planned and implemented by Amedco LLC and Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis (ORIPP). Amedco LLC is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), to provide continuing education for the healthcare team. This course is co-sponsored by Amedco and Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis. Amedco is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Amedco maintains responsibility for this program and its content. Amedco SW CPE is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #0115. Amedco is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0031.

To receive CE certificates for the actual hours attended - please request them at the time of registration or any time prior to beginning of the conference. CE certificate fee: $25 (in addition to the registration fees).

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