Spring Educational Intensive: Clinical and Theoretical Considerations in work with LGBTQ Individuals

Program Description:

Five clinicians who are at the forefront of developing guidelines for psychotherapy with LGBTQ individuals from a contemporary Interpersonal/Relational perspective, will utilize live supervision to illustrate the essential clinical considerations in working with this population. During this week-long program, participants will have the opportunity to spend three hours each morning learning from each of the clinicians and watching them work with a student participating in the Intensive. Lunch will be provided to all participants on the first day of the program. Afternoons will be free for students to explore the riches of New York City or to return to their work settings.

Monday, May 4, 2015
Deborah Glazer, Ph.D.
Working with LGBTQ Families and Couples

This seminar will explore the special topics that may arise when working with LGBTQ couples and families.  We will discuss how developmental issues experienced in the formation of an LGBTQ identity affect an individual's relationship to parenting.  We will look at how couples decide to parent, and to navigate non traditional parenting roles.  We will consider the intrapsychic implications of reproductive technologies.  We will also explore how children may experience their LGBTQ families, including fantasies about conception and the child's need to come out.

Tuesday, May 5, 2015
Mark Blechner, Ph.D.
Guidelines for Working with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Adolescents and Children

The guidelines for best practice in psychotherapy of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) patients have changed dramatically in the last 50 years. This seminar will first review some of the errors that were made in the past, with the hope of gaining insight into how similar errors may be avoided when working with LGBT individuals. Next, we will seek to formulate general guidelines for clinicians working with LGBT youth and adolescents, enabling clinicians to work most effectively and sensitively with this vulnerable population now and in the future.

Wednesday, May 6, 2015
Alan Schwartz, M.D.
Processing Transference/ Countertransference and the Use of Self-Disclosure with LGBT Individuals

This class will use clinical material to engage students in a thoughtful discussion of the use of transference and countertransference in working with LGBT individuals. The class will also explore whether and in what situations the therapist may productively use self-disclosure to advance treatment with LGBT individuals.

Thursday, May 7, 2015
Melissa Ritter, Ph.D.
Overlap, Divergence and the Other: The Therapist's Sexual Orientation and Gender Identification Presentation

The therapist's sexual orientation and gender identification/presentation are salient in any treatment and, unfortunately, are often not sufficiently considered by the clinician. Work with LGBTQ identified clients requires the therapist to actively examine and articulate for themself the contours of their identity in these domains, including that which is felt as shameful. This is foundational. Organizing ideas about how to consider and address these issues as they emerge in the clinical encounter will be discussed using case material provided by both instructor and participants.

Friday, May 8, 2015
Jack Drescher, M.D.
From Bisexuality to Intersexuality: Rethinking Gender Categories

The study of human sexual identities is changing in ways that oblige analysts to think about sexualities in ways never envisioned by their psychoanalytic forbears. This class begins with a definition of terms related to modern conceptions of sexuality and sexual identities. It is followed by a review of historical assumptions underlying the theory of bisexuality. The presentation goes on to discuss categories and hierarchies in general, and to the clinical meaning of sexual hierarchies in particular as well as the meanings and uses of the term "natural" in discussions of human sexuality. The formal presentation will be followed by discussion of some clinical material


Faculty:

Mark J. Blechner, Ph.D., is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the William Alanson White Institute, and faculty and supervisor at the New York University Post-Doctoral Program in Psychoanalysis.   He has published three books: Sex Changes: Transformations in Society and Psychoanalysis (2009), The Dream Frontier (2001), and Hope and Mortality: Psychodynamic Approaches to AIDS and HIV (1997).  As Founder and Director of the White Institute's HIV Clinical Service, he led the first psychoanalytic clinic devoted to working with people with AIDS, their relatives, and caregivers. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Contributing Editor to Studies in Gender and Sexuality, and on the Editorial Board of Journal of Gay and Lesbian Mental Health.

Jack Drescher, M.D., is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. He is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the White Institute, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at New York Medical College, and Adjunct Professor at New York University's Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. He served as a member of APA's DSM-5 Workgroup on Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders and is a member of the World Health Organization's ICD-11 Working Group on the Classification of Sexual Disorders and Sexual Health. He is author of Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Gay Man (Routledge) and Emeritus Editor of the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Mental Health. He has edited and co-edited more than a score of books dealing with gender, sexuality and the health and mental health of LGBT communities, most recently The LGBT Casebook (2012, American Psychiatric Publishing) and Treating Transgender Children and Adolescents (2013, Routledge).

Deborah Glazer, Ph.D. is faculty, Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Training Program at the William Alanson White Institute and the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy, and is supervisor and faculty member at The Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center.  Dr. Glazer is a psychologist/psychoanalyst in private practice in the Chelsea section of NYC.  She has numerous publications and presentations on working with  LGBTQ families and is co-editor of Gay & Lesbian Parenting (Haworth Press, 2001).

Melissa Ritter, Ph.D., is a Supervisor of Psychotherapy and Faculty at the William Alanson White Institute, Founder and Co-chair of the White Institute LGBT Study Group, Faculty for White Institute LGBT Certificate Program, and Co-Editor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Action, a blog under the auspices of Psychology Today and Contemporary Psychoanalysis. She is also Clinical Adjunct Faculty at City College and Adelphi University, as well as in private practice in Manhattan.

Alan Schwartz, M.D. is a graduate of University of Pennsylvania's Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital, and has also completed a Post Doctoral Fellowship at New York Hospital/Cornell Medical Center in HIV Psychiatry as well as his Psychoanalytic Training at the William Alanson White Institute where he is now a Supervisor of Psychotherapy.  A Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Schwartz also heads the LGBT Committee at the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry and is formerly the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Mental Health where he remains a Consulting Editor.

Registration:
For interested professionals: U.S.$500 before April 1st; U.S.$550 after. 
For documented students/candidates: U.S. $250 before April 1st; U.S.$300 after.
Qualified professionals may accrue 15 Continuing Education Credits. Registrants will receive a statement of the Intensive's goals and objectives, and must complete a questionnaire at the course's end.There are no partial or one day registrations

Register Online Now

Location:
William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry,
Psychoanalysis & Psychology
20 West 74th Street
New York, NY 10023

Questions:
Contact Diane Amato at:
d.amato@wawhite.org
212-873-0725, ext. 20