1. The Good, The Bad and the Empty, Object Relations, Self Hate and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy,  Going in to Come Out, the Case of Ted. (Dr. Jack Schwartz)

In this discussion I follow the case of Ted, a depressed young man, living is a closed off world of internal persecutory objects, and sexual preoccupation.  Using an object relational paradigm, the case material tracks his journey from a self-hating, phobic, anti-social personality to a man engaged fully in the world, true to himself as a gay married man.

Jack Schwartz LCSW, PsyD, NCPsyA (Narrator and writer) is a nationally certified psychoanalyst and a faculty member, lecturer, and control analyst at the New Jersey Institute for Training in Psychoanalysis. While maintaining a full private practice in northern New Jersey, Dr. Schwartz is a regular contributor and writer for a variety of clinical journals and is the author of a psychoanalytic novel called Our Time is Up.  Dr. Schwartz has been a regular presenter for ORI, NJI and NAAP.  His recent published article on Freud’s “Irma Dream” lead to the creation of his new multi-media project designed to offer a unique learning experience about the origins of psychoanalysis.

2. Continuing Jeff Seinfeld’s Tradition of Examining Cultural Artifacts.  (Dr. Robinson Lilienthal)

Dr. Jeffrey Seinfeld was a great storyteller, an avid reader, and a lover of many works of literary art, but especially of Dostoyevsky and his The Brothers K. In the period before his passing, he and Robinson Lilienthal were working on the details of the conference on Dostoyevsky’s masterpiece. Great works of art, our cultural artifacts, change us as we encounter them; we gain new and deeper insights in ourselves and the world; we acquire compassion and empathy; our souls become brighter and calmer, and perhaps healed. From the agony of creation, comes a sweet balm for blindness, our melancholic despair and banality. It calls us out of our narcissistic solipsism into mature selfhood. Music, art, literature, and film are not only entertainment. They also stretch our imagination, our capacity for identification, our vision of the humanly possible; they lead to soul-making.

Robinson Lilienthal, PhD – professor emeritus of philosophy, world religions, and applied ethics (including environmental, engineering, biomedical, and business) for thirty years; twenty of them – at Rutgers University. He is the scholar of Nietzsche and the environmental public policy consultant. His paper "The Mother, the Mountain, and the Mature Self: Three Tests of Environmental and Engineering Ethics" was published in September 2013 issue of the MindConsiliums, an on-line peer-reviewed multi-disciplinary journal. Dr. Lilienthal studied philosophy, religion, psychology, and history at Reed College, the Hartford Seminary Foundation, and at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research. His Doctoral dissertation was on "Nietzsche's anatomy of nihilism:  The philosopher as physician of culture." Since 2009, Dr. Lilienthal is a scientific faculty member at ORI. His first contributions to the ORI community were the ones he did together with Dr. Jeffrey Seinfeld on the "Creative Use of Melancholia." He is currently working in the field of global cultural artifacts and their possible therapeutic application. 

3. Jeffrey Seinfeld and the Theoretical Concept of “Dialectic.” (Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler)

Jeffrey Seinfeld offered contributions to the theoretical concept of a “dialectic,” along with other current object relations theorists.  The subject of “dialectic” goes back to Melanie Klein’s view of “projective identification” and to Ronald Fairbairn’s view of the failed dialectic seen in the primal splitting situation, where self parts are merged with two bad object part objects.  Jeffrey Seinfeld spoke of a “dependent self” and an “anti-dependent self,” where Fairbairn spoke of a libidinal ego and an antilibidinal ego.  These split self/object parts do not have dialectic due to primal splitting, but rather a sadomasochistic relationship with one another.  Jeffrey Seinfeld followed Fairbairn in seeing the healing of trauma in the therapeutic situation as the route to forming a dialectic of self and other relations in the internal world (which becomes a closed system due to primal trauma), and consequently in the external world, as an internal closed system is opened up. 

Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, D. Litt., NCPsyA was a friend and a college of Dr. Seinfeld since early 1990s, when she had founded the Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and when she offered the ORI to be a second home for Dr. Seinfeld. Since 1991, she serves as the executive director, training and supervising analyst and senior faculty member, after teaching and supervising for many other institutes, including NIP. Dr. Kavaler-Adler is in private practice as a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst - with the object relations psychoanalytic approach - for almost 40 years. Dr. Kavaler-Adler utilizes unique techniques of meditative psychic visualization in her individual and group work. Dr. Kavaler-Adler is a prolific author, with five published books and 60 peer-reviewed psychoanalytic articles, with the main focus on character pathology, grief, mourning, developmental mourning, the demon-lover complex, creative blocks, psychic anorexia, self-sabotage, and relationship issues.

4. On Jeffrey Seinfeld's Legacy of Spirituality and Mindfulness in Life and Clinical Practice. (Dr. Inna Rozentsvit)

In this short section of the panel, we will honor the spirit of Jeffrey Seinfeld, professor, therapist, and scholar, who  looked honestly at the difficulties human beings confront, as he embodied an everyday spirituality, a passionate, authentic, and benevolent attitude in his life and work.

Inna Rozentsvit, M.D., PhD, MBA, MSciEd ia a neurologist and neurorehabilitation specialist, trained in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. She is the founder and the neuropsychoeducator at the Neurorecovery Solutions, Inc., a non-profit organization which serves neurologically challenged individuals and their families. Dr. Rozentsvit is an administrator, a community outreach organizer, and a scientific faculty member at the ORI, where she teaches classes on Introduction to Neurobiology for Psychotherapists and Psychoanalysts and Love Before First Sight: Neurobiology of the Parent-Child Bonds. She also had founded a psychoanalytic publishing company, the ORI Academic Press and the transdisciplinary journal, the MindConsiliums, both with one of the main aims of promotion of neuro-psychoanalytic education to professionals and to general public.

To watch the videos of this presentation, please follow the following links on YouTube:

Dr. Jeffrey Seinfeld Memorial Panel at 2015 IPA Conference, part 1