Object Relation Institute’s Winter 2023 Open House

When: January 8, 2023 – from 1:00pm to 3:30pm EST
Where: Virtual

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

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

Object Relation Institute’s Summer 2022 Open House

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

For more information about this open house and the virtual participation – please contact ORI’s administrator at .
This Open House will feature the Interactive Lecture and the Experiential Role Play on

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

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.

Summer 2020 Open House
FOUR OBJECT RELATIONS PERSPECTIVES on the INTERNAL PERSECUTORY OBJECT at the TIME of COVID-19

When: Saturday, 7/11/20 (1:00 – 3:30 pm)
Where: Virtual participation will be available via gotomeeting platform (with minimal technical requirements)

Everyone is welcome! No fee, but RSVP is required!
For more information about this open house and the virtual participation – please contact ORI’s administrator at 646-522-1056 or by email to .

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.

Fall 2019 Open House

When: Saturday, 9/21/19 (1:00 – 3:00 pm)
Where: In-Person location: 115 East 9th street, 12P, NYC, 10003 Virtual participation will be available via gotomeeting platform (with minimal technical requirements)

Everyone is welcome! No fee, but RSVP is required!
For more information about this open house and the virtual participation – please contact ORI’s administrator at 646-522-1056 or by email to .

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

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. 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.

Fall 2018 Open House

When: Saturday, 9/22/18 (1:00 – 4:00 pm)
Where: In-Person location: 115 East 9th street, 12P, NYC, 10003 Virtual participation will be available via gotomeeting platform (with minimal technical requirements)

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/

 Spring 2018 Open House

When: Sunday, 4/29/18 (1:00 – 4:00 pm)
Where: In-Person location: 115 East 9th street, 12P, NYC, 10003 Virtual participation will be available via gotomeeting platform (with minimal technical requirements)

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).

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)?

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.

Spring 2017 Open House

When: Sunday, 4/23/17 (1:00 – 4:00 pm).
Where: In-Person location: 115 East 9th street, 12P, NYC, 10003 Virtual participation will be available via gotomeeting platform (with minimal technical requirements)

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

Fall 2016 Open House

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.

Spring 2016 Open House

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 (https://orinyc.org/you.html), to watch the video (part 13) on Eating Disorders: The Object Relations View.

Fall 2015 Open House

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 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.

• 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.