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The Institute for Expressive Analysis
Reading Course in Bion: “After the Caesura”
September 17, 2022
September 24, 2022
October 1, 2022
October 8, 2022
October 15, 2022
October 22, 2022
Virtual Via Zoom
10:00AM to 12:00PM Eastern
Cost: $275
The Institute for Expressive Analysis Course Offering: Open to the Psychoanalytic Community
This course will offer a close reading of Bion’s Attention and Interpretation with direct implications for his radical approach to clinical technique and will be supplemented with additional writings from this later period described by the European psychoanalyst Rudi Vermote as “After the Caesura.”
About the Presenter
Paul C. Cooper, LP, Ph.D.
Paul Cooper is a licensed and nationally certified psychoanalyst; Founder, Realizational Practice Studies Group; Former Dean of Training, National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis; Faculty, training analyst, supervisor: Institute for Expressive Analysis, Metropolitan Institute; Editorial Board: Psychoanalytic Review; Award-winning author: Zen Insight, Psychoanalytic Action: Two Arrows Meeting (2019), The Zen Impulse and the Psychoanalytic Encounter (2010). Dr. Cooper maintains a private psychoanalytic psychotherapy and supervision practice in Montpelier, Vermont. He has presented his work internationally.
To Register: Email education@ieanyc.org
CE Units Available for LP, LCSW, and LCAST Licenses
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Psychoanalysis & Zen Buddhism: A Realizational Perspective
Saturday, May 14, 2022
Capitol Plaza Hotel | Montpelier, Vermont
9:00AM to 5:00PM
The British psychoanalyst, Wilfred Bion (1897-1979) and the Soto Zen master, Eihei Dōgen (1200-1253), were both highly creative and brilliant writers and thinkers whose works, while distinct, share many areas of overlap. They both exerted a radical impact on their respective disciplines. However, despite the highly regarded philosophical and theoretical complexity of their teachings, they both shared the agenda of strengthening and deepening experiential realizational practice with an insistent emphasis on the present moment. They both strived for authenticity. The direct experience of practice animates their teachings and brings them to fruition for both psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapists and contemporary Zen practitioners.
In this conference, presenters Paul Cooper and Karen Morris, both psychoanalysts and authorized Zen teachers, will invite you to participate in a didactic, dialogical and experiential exploration into the ideas of these great thinkers and their direct clinical relevance. The presenters will explicate key concepts in the work of Bion and Dogen and explore important areas of convergence. Experiential dimensions of the day will include an introduction to the Social Dreaming Matrix, that demonstrates many key themes in the work of Bion and Dogen. The Matrix as the space in which dreams are shared acts as the container for what Bion describes as “dream-work-alpha,” or “alpha functioning.” He writes, ” . . . man has to “dream” a current emotional experience whether it occurs in sleep or in waking life” (1962, p.17). Similarly, Dogen notes, in “Muchu-Setsumu, Expounding a Dream within a Dream,” “Both the dream state and the waking state are originally the one real nature . . . Therefore, the Buddha-way of transforming this earthly world is intrinsically none other than “dream-making.” (Trans.: H. Kim 1985, p. 284). In addition, they will explore connections between psychoanalytic listening and meditative practice. A case presentation will illustrate the clinical work from the realizational perspective.
About the Presenters
Seiso Paul C. Cooper, Sensei, Ph.D., LP.
Seiso Paul Cooper is a licensed and nationally certified psychoanalyst; Ordained Soto Zen Priest & transmitted teacher in the Soto Zen lineage of Shunryu Suzuki and Dainin Katagiri; He is a member of the Soto Zen Buddhist Association and the American Zen Teacher’s Association. He is the Co-founder and Guiding Teacher: Two Rivers Zen Community in Narrowsburg, N.Y.; Founder, Realizational Practice Studies Group; Former Dean of Training, National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis; Faculty, training analyst, supervisor: Institute for Expressive Analysis, Metropolitan Institute; Editorial Board: Psychoanalytic Review; Award-winning author: Zen Insight, Psychoanalytic Action: Two Arrows Meeting (2019), The Zen Impulse and the Psychoanalytic Encounter (2010).
Seiso recently opened a private psychoanalytic psychotherapy and supervision practice in Montpelier. He has presented his work on Buddhism & Psychoanalysis internationally. He currently organizes, facilitates, and leads silent retreats in the formal Soto Zen style especially tailored for mental health professionals both at retreat centers and online.
Karen Morris, LP, NCPsyA
Karen Morris is a nationally certified and licensed psychoanalyst in private practice in Montpelier, VT. She is on the faculty of the Institute for Expressive Analysis, Harlem Family Institute, and the Realizational Practice Studies Group. She is a transmitted lay teacher in the Soto Zen Buddhist lineage of Shunryu Suzuki and Dainin Katagiri, and co-founder of the Two Rivers Zen Community. She has facilitated Social Dreaming Matrixes in conference, workshop, and retreat space throughout the country and maintains a Social Dreaming study group. She is an award-winning author and poet (NAAP, Gradiva Awards, 2010, 2015) and volunteer Ambassador of Hope for Shared Hope International, whose mission is the eradication of sex trafficking of domestic minors through public education. She speaks and has published widely on the role of the commercial sex industry in global sex trafficking.
Dreams, Meaning, and Emotions: Perspectives from Neuroscience and Psychoanalysis
Saturday, April 6th, 2019
The University of Vermont Medical Center | Burlington, Vermont
Davis Auditorium
9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Recent advances in neuroscience now make it possible to study the dynamic nature of the mind through brain research – a possibility that Freud predicted nearly 100 years ago. This emerging body of brain research supports many basic assumptions of psychanalysis, making the dialogue between psychoanalysis and neuroscience especially relevant to clinicians. In this conference, internationally renowned psychoanalyst and neuropsychologist, Mark Solms, will review some of his pioneering neuroscientific research that supports many ideas and methods foundational in psychoanalytic theory and therapy.
In his morning presentation, Solms will discuss the initial debunking of Freudian dream theory from the 1950s – 1970s, and then describe how subsequent research from the 1990s till today has led to the opposite conclusion: almost all the basic assumptions that psychoanalysts and therapists hold about dreaming are now confirmed by brain research. In the afternoon, Solms will focus on the rediscovery of the unconscious in cognitive neuroscience in the late 20th century, which led to the question being seriously asked: if so much of our cognition goes on unconsciously, why are we conscious at all? The emerging answer is good news for psychoanalysts and therapists: it seems that emotional feeling is the core function of consciousness. Through the day, we will explore the emerging conversation between psychoanalysis and neuroscience and consider how it may inform and support our work as clinicians.
About the Presenter
Mark Solms is best known for his discovery of the forebrain mechanisms of dreaming, and for his integration of psychoanalytic theories and methods with those of modern neuroscience. He holds the Chair of Neuropsychology at the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital (Departments of Psychology and Neurology) and is President of the South African Psychoanalytical Association. He is also currently Research Chair of the International Psychoanalytical Association. He founded the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society in 2000 and was Founding Editor of the journal Neuropsychoanalysis. He has published more than 250 articles and book chapters, and 5 books. He is the authorised editor and translator of the forthcoming Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (24 vols), and the Complete Neuroscientific Works of Sigmund Freud (4 vols).