Interactive Lecture and Meditative Visualization Workshop
with Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, D.Litt., NCPsyA
Sunday, MAY 19, 2024, 10 am to 4 pm EDT
Virtual participation only, via Zoom
Continuing Education: 5 CE hrs for Licensed Psychoanalysts and Social Workers
To Register for this workshop, please complete the Registration form
This workshop will differentiate the collapse of father idealization in those with pre-Oedipal mother deprivation from those who have internalized a sufficient nurturance and psychic structuralization in the preoedipal years, and consequently are able to emotionally process a gradual experience of father disillusionment.
The gaze of the father, as spoken of by the Jungian theorist Susan Schwartz (in her paper on “The Gaze of the Father”) and by Susan Kavaler-Adler, particularly in her study of Emily Dickinson, will be seen to provide a compensatory defensive operation for those with preoedipal psychic arrest. In contrast, those who have adequately navigated through separation-individuation, and have reached the oedipal stage, will be seen to undergo a later level separation-individuation process with the oedipal father that opens up the grief and mourning of father disillusionment.
Among the many clinical studies with this later developmental journey is Dr. Kavaler-Adler’s article “From Benign Mirror to Demon Lover: An Object Relations View of Compulsion Versus Desire” (in the American Journal of Psychoanalysis, which is now is a chapter in her book on Developmental Mourning, Erotic Transference, and Object Relations Psychoanalysis.
Other psychobiographical writings by Susan Kavaler-Adler, on this gradual process of father disillusionment, include her studies on Charlotte Bronte (in The Compulsion to Create: Women Writers and Their Demon Lovers) and on Suzanne Farrell (and her highly emotional platonic drama with George Ballanchine, in The Creative Mystique: From Red Shoes Frenzy to Love and Creativity).
In the chapter entitled “The Father’s Role in the Self Development of His Daughter” (in 1988 book by Offerman-Zuckerberg, Ed., Critical Psychophysical Passages in the Life of a Woman: A Psychodynamic Perspective), Dr. Kavaler-Adler opened the door to understanding how the father’s penetration into a daughter’s psychological development is profound throughout all the years of her child and adolescent development. Clinical work shows that those lacking the father’s support suffer different kinds of personality issues, depending on when the loss of the father takes place. So, even many female patients have had affectionate fathers, these fathers often deserted them when these women reached puberty, possibly because the growing daughters intimidated the fathers with their new female sex and gender attributes.
These themes will be discussed in the morning lecture part of this workshop.
In the afternoon, Dr. Kavaler-Adler will offer a guided psychic visualization, and the participants will be able to share their experiences of visualizations with their internal fathers during the group discussion.
10am to 12:30pm – INTERACTIVE LECTURE
1:30pm TO 4:00pm – EXPERIENTIAL WORKSHOP
At the end of this educational activity, its participants will be able to:
1) Compare and contrast father disillusionment in those with “developmental arrest” with those who have internalized a “good enough” mothering environment in the first 3 years of life.
2) Discuss and describe a father addiction, and a demon lover complex, which can appear in daughters who have suffered preoedipal mother trauma.
3) Analyze how developmental arrest comes about.
4) Contrast how gradual father disillusionment differs from extreme and acute devaluation of the internal father, in those who have suffered from disrupted development in the separation-individuation phase of development.
5) Discuss and analyze the phenomenon of tolerating the gradual father disillusionment, as in cases of Cassidy Hutchinson, Charlotte Bronte, and Suzanne Farrell.
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. She is a Training Analyst, Senior Supervisor and active faculty member at the Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, a NYS Board of Regents chartered psychoanalytic training institute.
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. Six of her seven published books are related to clinical Object Relations theories. They are: Developmental Mourning, Erotic Transference, and Object Relations Psychoanalysis (IPBooks, 2023); The Klein-Winnicott Dialectic: Transformative New Metapsychology and Interactive Clinical Theory (Karnac, 2014); The Anatomy of Regret: From Death Instinct to Reparation and Symbolization in Vivid Case Studies (Karnac, 2013); Mourning, Spirituality and Psychic Change: A New Object Relations View of Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2003; Gradiva® Award from NAAP, 2004); The Creative Mystique: From Red Shoes Frenzy to Love and Creativity (Routledge, 1996; ORI Academic Press 2014; Gradiva® Award nomination); The Compulsion to Create: Women Writers and Their Demon Lovers (Routledge, 1993; ORI Academic Press, 2013). 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. More information can be found at https://kavaleradler.com/.
5 CEs available for:
NY Psychoanalysts: National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (NAAP) is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an Approved Provider of continuing education for licensed psychoanalysts #P-0019.
NY Social Workers: National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (NAAP) 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-0168.
Regular registration (from April 29th – till May 18th, 2024 – before 6pm EDT)
$75 regular/ $55 grad students & candidates/ $30 undergrad students.
If CEs are requested — please use the “regular” registration (not a “student”) option. There is an additional CE Certificate fee of $25 (can be paid prior or on the day of the conference).
Registration ‘at the door’ (after 6pm EDT/NYC time on May 18th, 2024)
$90 regular/ $65 grad students & candidates/ $35 undergrad students.
Please Note: If CEs are requested — there is an additional fee of $25 (can be paid on the day of the conference or in advance).
SPECIAL SCHOLARSHIPS are available for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as for retired or disabled practitioners, or need-based or/and those who live outside of the USA.
