Next in our Harlem’s Psychoanalytic Renaissance series of Saturday talks: “Psychoanalysis at the Crossroads” with Dr. Harriet Wolfe, MD

Saturday Feb. 26 from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm ET

via Zoom

*Detail, Vincent Smith’s “The Movers and the Shakers*” mural at 125th St. 2-3 line subway stop, Harlem.

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On Saturday, February 26, our virtual Harlem’s Psychoanalytic Renaissance Saturday Talks series continues with the illustrious Dr. Harriet Wolfe, MD, President of the International Psychoanalytical Association, speaking on “Psychoanalysis at the Crossroads.”

In a time of growing awareness of social justice problems and structural racism, how can psychoanalysis take action as part of the solution?

The next few years will be especially important for psychoanalysis. As Fred Busch proposes in a book he is editing: It is a time to be thinking about Psychoanalysis at the Crossroads. The profession has an early and venerable history of commitment to social issues and social justice. In recent decades, it has engaged in a more limited focus on its functions and a preoccupation with internal controversies over training standards and theoretical differences.

The Harlem Psychoanalytic Renaissance offers a timely and deeply important opportunity to consider the possible role of psychoanalysis in moving members of the general public to recognize the impact of social inequity, economic need, cultural discrimination, prejudice, and environmental crisis on the development of individual and group minds. False beliefs are becoming so-called “facts.”

One role of psychoanalytic activism is the correction of false facts. False beliefs include the idea that therapists and people of color have equal access to mental health care, including psychoanalytic treatment and psychoanalytic training.

The Harlem Psychoanalytic Renaissance will be discussed as an example of the potential for a psychoanalytic commitment to social issues through treatment, community outreach, and training. Its growth will support psychoanalytic values important to society: truth, insight, freedom of thought, and justice for individuals and groups.

About Dr. Harriet Wolfe

Harriet Wolfe, M.D., is President of the International Psychoanalytical Association, Past President of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, and Training and Supervising Analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis.

Her scholarly interests include clinical applications of psychoanalytic research, organizational processes, female development, and therapeutic action. She has a longstanding commitment to psychoanalytic public health intervention. She has co-authored several guided-activity workbooks for children, parents and teachers to help children cope with natural and manmade disasters.

She teaches analysts-in-training, psychiatric residents, and junior faculty psychodynamic understandings of severely ill patients and the value of listening to listening in the clinical setting. She has a private practice of psychoanalysis, and individual and couple’s psychoanalytic psychotherapy in San Francisco.

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Registration

To support the Harlem Family Institute’s work, we are charging attendees $60 for this event. Registration takes place via Eventbrite and you will receive the Zoom link by email prior to the event.

Discounts are available for unlicensed candidates at psychoanalytic training institutes who can demonstrate this status and for whom this fee would be a hardship.

Click Here to register via Eventbrite

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CE Contact-Hour Credits & Certificates of Attendance

New York State Continuing Education Contact-Hour Credits will be available for New York State Licensed Psychoanalysts and Social Workers who attend the entirety of the presentation and remain on screen throughout. HFI Certificates of Attendance will also be available on the same basis. Please note that we can offer CE credits only to Licensed Psychoanalysts and Social Workers currently licensed in the State of New York.

Learning Objectives

Participants will be able to describe and trace the early evolution of a socially conscious and responsible psychoanalysis, exploring the conception and implementation of “free clinics” as pragmatic solutions to making treatment more accessible to all people.

Participants will be able to identify and describe the structural changes in psychoanalysis, from its varied location within Europe and the U.S., as an institution and culture, as an evolving profession with multiple theoretical perspectives and practices.

Participants will be able to describe the current arguments around whether “community psychoanalysis” or “applied psychoanalysis” is “pure gold” psychoanalytic work.

Participants will be able to identify at least two psychoanalysts whose historical or current role in social activism influenced the psychoanalytic focus on “the complexities of societal suffering.”
Participants will be able to link the mission / activism / practices of early psychoanalysts, addressing transgenerational trauma, social injustice and inequity, discrimination, marginalization, and stress-based human suffering, to current efforts to do the same by psychoanalysts engaged in “bridging psychoanalysis and the community.”

CE contact-hour credits will be granted only to participants with documented attendance of the entire program and completed online evaluation form who have registered for them. No partial credit will be offered. It is the responsibility of the participants seeking CE credits to comply with these requirements. Upon completion of this program and online evaluation form, participants will be granted2 hour Contact-Hour CE credits. Certificates of Attendance will be granted to participants with documented attendance of the entire program who have registered for them.

The Harlem Family Institute 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-0048. The Institute is recognized by the same Board as an approved provider of continuing education for Social Workers, #SW-0648.

Introducing the “Saturday Talks” Community Outreach Series

Saturday, January 22, 2022 marks the first in an ongoing series of conversations on Harlem’s Psychoanalytic Renaissance, featuring leaders on issues of diversity, discrimination, social justice, human rights and other global, community and individual needs.

“And How Are the Children?”

Intergenerational Trauma and the Development of Black Children in America

with Kirkland Vaughans, PhD

and Discussants

Paula Kliger, PhD, Sherwood McPhaul, LCSW-R, and Warren Spielberg, PhD

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~ Saturday January 22, 11:30 a.m. to 2 pm ET by Zoom ~

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Meet our panelists:

KIRKLAND VAUGHANS, PhD – the Harlem Family Institute’s Honorary Dean and former Board Chairman – is a clinical psychologist and Fellow/ training and supervising Analyst of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR) and at the Harlem Family Institute. He is Adjunct Professor in both the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and at the Mitchell Relational Study Center, as well as Clinical Director of the Derner/Hempstead Child Clinic and Senior Adjunct Professor at the Derner School of Psychology. He is the founding Editor of the Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy and co-edited the two-volume “The Psychology of Black Boys and Adolescents” and has published articles on generational trauma and the school-to-prison pipeline. In addition, he maintains a private practice in New York City with adolescents and adults.

PAULA CHRISTIAN-KLIGER, PhD, ABPP, is a board-certified psychologist and a psychoanalyst who founded Psychological Assets, PC and Kliger Consulting Group, LLC, more than 30 years ago. Having a broad professional practice, she works with children/adolescents and adults, with families, organizations, and communities, from diverse social, generational, and cultural backgrounds. She specializes in complex cases involving people who have suffered from multiple crises, disaster, and/or historical and transgenerational trauma and other stress-based adversities. She is a leadership and organizational consultant. Dr. Kliger was awarded a 2020 Next Generation Indie Book Finalist Award in Poetry and Illustrations for “Power Your Heart, You Power Your Mind: Self Study, Then Build a Bridge to Someone.” found on Amazon.

SHERWOOD McPHAUL, LCSW-R, is a graduate of New York University, Silver School of Social Work, and a graduate of the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis (MIP), where he is on faculty, a supervising psychoanalyst, and Director of the One-Year Program: Psychoanalysis in the Sociopolitical World. He is committee chair of the MIP Sexuality and Gender Initiative (SGI) and is an active member on the MIP Committee on Race & Ethnicity (CORE). Sherwood is an adjunct clinical professor at Hunter College, Silberman School of Social Work and is a private practicing psychoanalyst in New York City’s East Village/Union Square area working with adolescents and adults, specializing in the treatment of anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and complex/intergenerational trauma with a focus on interpersonal psychoanalytic theory, race & racism, sexuality & gender.

WARREN SPIELBERG, PhD, Fulbright Scholar, psychologist, psychoanalyst is an Associate Teaching Professor at the New School in New York. He is also visiting faculty at the William Alanson White Child and Adolescent Training Program and faculty at the Adelphi University Trauma Program. In addition he is visiting teaching fellow at the Child Institute at Al Quds University on the West Bank. He is Co-Editor of “The Psychology of Black Boys and Adolescents- Two Volumes,” Praeger 2015. He is also the co-author of the coming report “Making the Connections – Male Norms and Trauma” published by NGO PROMUNDO GLOBAL, an international NGO that works to promote gender equity and prevent violence by engaging men and boys in healthy practices in partnership with women and girls. He is the recipient of the Practitioner of the Year Award by the APA for his work with the FDNY after 9/11. His consultative work has included the U.N. Office of Migration, UNICEF, the NYC Mayor’s Young Men’s Initiative and the Obama Foundation.

Pay & Register Here

To support the Harlem Family Institute’s work, we are charging attendees $60 for this event. Registration is a two-step process. Breaks are available for unlicensed candidates at psychoanalytic training institutes who can demonstrate this status and for whom this fee would be a hardship.

1. Click here and pay $60 on the Donate button. State that the payment is for the Kirkland Vaughans presentation.

2. Register here for the event, providing information requested if you want CE credits or a Certificate of Attendance. Details below.

CE Contact-Hour Credits & Certificates of Attendance

NY State Continuing Education Contact-Hour Credits will be available for Licensed Psychoanalysts and Social Workers who attend the entirety of the presentation and remain on screen throughout. HFI Certificates of Attendance will also be available on the same basis.

The program offers 2.5 NY State continuing-education contact-hour credits for Licensed Psychoanalysts and Social Workers.
It also offers Certificates of Attendance. Details below.

Learning Objectives:

1. Participants will be able to identify how structural racism impedes the potential mentalization of Black children.

2. Participants will be able to describe two factors of the educational systems that contribute to and transmit inequality.

3. Participants will be able to appreciate that, of all the punishments leveled against those who were enslaved, the most hideous for them was “Loss”

4. Participants will be able to identify the historical basis for the “school to prison pipeline,” its profit motive, and its continued destructive nature on Black children and their families.

5. Participants will be able to identify at least two psychoanalysts whose role in social activism influenced the outcome.

Contact-hour CE credits will be granted only to participants with documented attendance of the entire program and completed online evaluation form who have registered for them. No partial credit will be offered. It is the responsibility of the participants seeking CE credits to comply with these requirements. Upon completion of this program and online evaluation form, participants will be granted 2.5 hour Contact-Hour CE credits. Certificates of Attendance will be granted to participants with documented attendance of the entire program who have registered for them.

New Guided-Activity Workbook Offers Mental Health First Aid to Children During Wildfires in California

Dr. Gil Kliman’s acclaimed series of interactive tools for promoting emotional processing and resilience after traumatic events has a new entry.

Help for children facing anxiety and trauma is an urgent issue. All around the world, the natural disasters of the past year and a half have had an immense impact on young people’s mental health.

HFI Chairman Dr. Gil Kliman has developed a series of Guided Activity Workbooks for young people in the wake of such disasters. In these books, children and adolescents find a safe space to work through their feelings, record their experiences, and begin to make sense of what has happened. The books can also serve as diagnostic tools for mental health professionals to identify signs of trauma that may need more intensive treatment. A recent edition deals with the Covid-19 pandemic.

The latest entry in the series focuses on the California wildfires, and is available HERE through the Children’s Psychological Health Center.

Based on Dr. Kliman’s own Reflective Network Therapy and backed up by decades of experience and evidence-based findings in disaster response, this workbook is for everyone grades K-12 and their families, educators, and caregivers. It encourages learning and healthy emotional expression, introduces young people to appropriate coping and recovery skills, and encourages scientific thinking.

July 16: HFI Presents “Spirituality, Social Justice and Psychoanalysis”

The Harlem Family (Psychoanalytic) Institute

presents

A Public Program Candidates Panel

Spirituality, Social Justice & Psychoanalysis

~ This Friday evening, July 16, at 7 pm ET free Zoom presentation ~

Please register here

The Institute, which trains tomorrow’s psychoanalysts in its small clinical sites in community centers, schools and houses of worship in Harlem and surrounding neighborhoods, knows the social-justice concerns of these diverse communities. The presentation will explore how training people concerned about such key issues, especially clergy, to become Licensed Psychoanalysts can help address them.

The Institute, with a very social-justice-concerned faculty, trains clergy and others fighting for social justice and is eager to train more. It sees training such people to become Licensed Psychoanalysts to be of paramount importance. The Institute welcomes applications from individuals with an advanced degree in any discipline. Graduates of its Licensure-Qualifying Program may sit the NY State psychoanalysis licensing exam.

Please join us for this July 16 Panel Presentation

Please register here

Discussant

Rev. Theodore “Ted” Kwaku Parker

Roman Catholic priest Rev. “Ted” Parker graduated from the Harlem Family Institute with a Certificate in Psychoanalysis in 1999. Born in Brooklyn, NY, he attended schools in Brooklyn, Indiana and Manhattan and was ordained a Catholic priest in May, 1972. He furthered his education with Master’s degrees in History and Anthropology. While a parish priest in Harlem in the late 1990s, his interest in cultural anthropology and African American studies led him to psychoanalysis and studies at the Harlem Family Institute.

Since moving in 2001 to Detroit, where he has pastored at St. Charles Lwanga Parish, he has been instrumental in establishing the first Street Court in Detroit with the help of Judge Cylenthia Miller (see www.streetdemocracy.org) designed for homeless men and women who have been involved with the justice system. From 2014 to 2016, he taught graduate courses in the Social Justice Program at Marygrove College in Detroit.

Discussant

Rev. Parthenia “Tina” Caesar

Rev. Parthenia Caesar, DMin, MDiv, MBA BCCC, BCPC, is a psychoanalytic candidate with the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis, New York, in the License in Psychoanalysis track, who has also studied at the Harem Family Institute. Founder of Beyond the Walls mentoring services, Westbury, NY, she is also the Pastor and founder of Beyond the Walls Christian Center. Parthenia received her Doctor of Ministry from New York Theological Seminary, her Master of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary and her Master of Business Administration from Dowling College. She is also the Operational Risk Officer for a large bank with over three decades of experience in Corporate America focusing on Risk Management and Compliance.

With

Clergy faculty and candidates of the Harlem Family Institute

Including

Muballigh Muhammad Al-Rahman, PhD, LMFT
Pastor Adrienne Croskey, MDiv, CASAC
Andrea Dixon, LCSW-R
Rev. Sheila Johnson, MPS
Rev. Christopher Jones, MDiv, MA
Rev. Vanesha Miller, MS
Rev. John Muniz, DMin, MDiv, MBA

Introduced by

Dr. Fanny Brewster, LP
HFI’s Director of Public Programs

Please register here

HFI’s 2021 Open House and Fall Training

Thank you to all who joined us at HFI’s OPEN HOUSE online on Saturday May 15, 2021, explaining HFI’s clinical training program for aspiring psychoanalysts and the clinical work we offer the community. If you would still like to apply for training starting this coming fall, please immediately contact Executive Director Michael Connolly (michael.connolly@harlemfamilyinstitute.org).

HFI 2021 Annual Open House set for May 15 on Zoom

Please join us for the Institute’s annual Open House on Saturday May 15 from 1-3 pm to learn about our clinical training programs in the community to become a psychoanalyst. Applicants need to hold at graduate degree in any discipline – allowing individuals from across the humanities, sciences and social sciences to enter the field. Training to become a Licensed or Certified Psychoanalyst usually takes 4-5 years part-time, though swifter advancement is possible.

To register for HFI’s Open House, Saturday May 15, please click on this Zoom link.

Since 1991 we have worked to train tomorrow’s diversity-sensitive psychoanalysts by taking training and treatment out to the community in small clinical sites that we operate in Harlem and Northern Manhattan, where our candidates provide free and ultra-low-fee clinical services to children, families, adolescents and adults through both psychotherapy and play therapy.

a man assisting a young child with play therapy

Through play therapy, we offer youngsters a safe space to express their feelings, to learn to use their strengths to manage the challenges they face every day, and to discover new ways to relate to the world.

We have served hundreds of parents and children through our school- and community-based playroom treatment centers, where we offer consistent, long-term therapy and play therapy. Clients meet with their therapist in a safe, pleasant space where they work together to address difficult issues through play or talk.

The candidates studying in our programs – many of African American or Latino heritage, including clergy, from Harlem and the city’s most diverse communities – are able to develop careers as advanced mental-health professionals. The Institute’s more than 90 faculty members come from many of the city’s and nation’s psychoanalytic institutes, drawn by its unique mission. The institute can admit suitable candidates, whether licensed or not, who hold a graduate degree in any discipline. Graduates of our Licensure-Qualifying Program may immediately sit the state exam to become Licensed Psychoanalysts.

Our founding Trustees included Dr. Margaret Morgan Lawrence, MD, the nation’s first African American woman pediatrician and first African American psychoanalyst, who died in December 2019 aged 105. Our leadership includes Board Chairman Dr. Gilbert W. Kliman, MD, Honorary Dean Dr. Kirkland C. Vaughans, PhD, Executive Director Michael Connolly, MPA, LP, Training Director Dr. David Abrams, PhD, Clinical Directors Jungian psychoanalyst Dr. Fanny Brewster, PhD, MFA, LP, and Ernest P. Smith, LCSW-R, and child & adult psychoanalyst Ann Marie Sacramone, MSEd, LP.

In addition to taking psychoanalytic training and treatment out to the community, the Institute aims to deepen an understanding of diversity and inclusiveness among tomorrow’s psychoanalysts. Created in 1991 to help children and families at a small independent elementary school in Harlem, HFI seeks to draw individuals of all cultures and backgrounds as it helps them develop psychoanalytic skills in working with children, parents, adolescents and other adults. It operates small neighborhood therapy sites in schools, community centers and houses of worship in Harlem and Upper Manhattan. It offers evening classes and supervision in faculty members’ offices. It also offers supervised clinical-experience programs for students in graduate programs in psychology, LMSWs and others. The Institute is currently working to develop a bigger Harlem clinical and child-development operation, where it hopes to offer not only individual psychoanalytic work and psychotherapy for adults, adolescents and children, but also group work for pregnant women, mothers & babies, parents & toddlers, Reflective-Network Therapy Nurseries for Preschoolers, and adolescent groups.

Ernest P. Smith, LCSW-R
Clinical Director

If you hold a graduate degree in any discipline and would like to become a psychoanalyst equipped to work with children, families, adolescents and adults in Harlem and nearby communities of New York’s great’s diversity, this event will help you get started by learning about the Institute and our training programs.

Ann Marie Sacramone, MSEd, LP
Senior Faculty Member

To register for HFI’s Open House, Saturday May 15, please click on this Zoom link.

HFI, which aims to take psychoanalytic training and treatment out into the community, grew out of a 1980s psychotherapy program created by psychoanalyst Stephen Kurtz, LCSW to help children at the Children’s Storefront School on East 129th St. In addition to Mr. Kurtz and Dr. Lawrence, founding Board members included Robert Coles, MD, the Harvard Medical School psychiatrist who devoted much of his career to researching and writing about the moral and spiritual life of children, including the book “Children of Crisis,” George Getzel, CSW, Tamar Turin Opler, LCSW-R, poet Ned O’Gorman, who founded the Children’s Storefront School, and attorney Elisabeth Radow, the Institute’s first chair, who did a mountain of pro bono legal work to set up the Institute and win its needed New York State approvals.

HFI Founder Stephen Kurtz, LCSW, with Founding Trustees Margaret Morgan Lawrence, MD, and Robert Coles, MD

HFI’s current Board Chairman Dr. Gilbert Kliman, MD, was the 2020 recipient of the American Psychoanalytic Association President’s humanitarian award for “his lifetime psychoanalytic leadership in treating and advocating for underserved and traumatized children worldwide,” and the 2020 Rieger Award of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry for his Reflective Network Therapy in the Preschool classroom, which shows significant and regular IQ gains in the children who have participated in the treatment. Dr. Kliman has also created a series of guided-activity workbooks for children, including most recently, “My Pandemic Story” (see below), which has been translated into 13 languages. Dr. Kliman also provides expert-witness testimony to help victims of abuse and trauma pursue actions against their abusers. Intended recipients of such work in future include victims of police and vigilante violence and their families.

Leading psychoanalyst and HFI Honorary Dean, Dr. Kirkland Vaughans, has drawn wide attention for co-editing with Warren Spielberg, PhD, the seminal, 2014, two-volume book “The Psychology of Black Boys & Adolescents.”

To register for HFI’s Open House, Saturday May 15, please click on this Zoom link:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYqfu2sqjgqGNc0dym5zDcTLdPIlKXXxjvD

More information about the Institute and its psychoanalytic training programs is available in its 40-page Catalogue.

“My Pandemic Story” – Guided Activity Workbook for Children and Teens Now Available

The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted all of our lives. Children and teenagers are especially vulnerable to the mental and emotional stressors of the crisis: their world has been turned upside down just as they were beginning to discover their own place in it.

The new guided-activity workbook “MY PANDEMIC STORY,” by our own HFI Chairman, leading child psychiatrist Dr. Gilbert Kliman, was created to support young people and their families and educators during these troubled times. Based on Dr. Kliman’s own Reflective Network Therapy and backed up by the authors’ decades of experience and evidence-based findings in disaster response, this workbook is for everyone grades K-12 and their families, educators and caregivers. It encourages learning and healthy emotional expression, introduces young people to appropriate coping and recovery skills, and encourages scientific thinking.

The Harlem Family Institute is honored to offer this workbook, in cooperation with the Children’s Psychological Health Center, in electronic format for purchase on our website. Pricing starts at $3.99 for an individual copy, with major discounts available on bulk licenses for organizations and educational institutions. For more info and to purchase: https://harlemfamilyinstititue.dpdcart.com/product/205016

Continuing Education: An Afternoon with Dr. Fanny Brewster – “The Racial Complex: Race, Racism and Cultural Complexes” – Saturday, Feb. 13, 2021

Fanny Brewster, PhD (Psych.), MFA, LP

The Racial Complex: Race, Racism and Cultural Complexes

Saturday, Feb. 13, 2021, from 1:00-2:30 pm

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The Harlem Family Institute presents an afternoon with
Fanny Brewster, PhD, MFA, LP

Just as the colored man lives in your cities and even within your houses, so also he lives under your skin, subconsciously. Naturally it works both ways. Just as every Jew has a Christ complex, so every Negro has a white complex and every American (white) a Negro complex.

– C.G. Jung Collected Works, Vol. 10, para 963.

As we encounter the issue of race and therefore racism, witnessing the constellation of cultural complexes in actions of racial violence, marching protests and global engagement, it appears important to visit the Jungian concept of psychological complexes. Jung’s early work on the “color” complex, what I have named the racial complex, has with few exceptions, not been reviewed and investigated for almost one hundred years. Jung’s early attempt to define ethnicity and culture within the context of a racial complex, had the hallmark of 19th Century colonial-influenced thinking. As we work within a 21st century consciousness, we are required to deconstruct psychological theories that are relevant specifically to Jungian psychology and in general to the field of Psychoanalysis. This deconstruction allows us to question, inquire of and re-define both the interior unconscious space of complexes, and the exterior relationship with a differing cultural/ethnic “Other,” in deepening our understanding of racial relationships within the clinical setting.

The program offers 1.5 continuing education credits for Licensed Psychoanalysts.

Dr. Brewster is a Jungian analyst and Professor at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She is a graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute of New York and is a New York State Licensed Psychoanalyst and Certified School Psychologist. She is a senior faculty member at the Harlem Family (Psychoanalytic) Institute, where she is establishing the Institute’s new Public Programs. She is also the author of several recent books, including:

The Racial Complex: A Jungian Perspective on Culture and Race, 2019, nominated for the 2020 Gradiva Award;

Archetypal Grief: Slavery’s Legacy of Intergenerational Child Loss, 2018; and

African Americans and Jungian Psychology: Leaving the Shadows, 2017.

Objectives:

1. Learn C.G. Jung’s general theory of psychological complexes and its applicability to clinical practice in terms of the Transference relationship.

2. Learn two characteristics of C.G. Jung’s “color”/ racial complex, its theoretical history and contemporary influence on the development of cultural group process.

3. Define C.G. Jung’s perspective on the American collective societal issue of racism as described in his Collected Works writings from the 1930s.

Registration: $60
To register: Pay $60 here via the Donate button, and then register here.

To receive CE credits, participants must be visible at all times during the presentation.

Cancellations: Professionals who are unable to attend a course for which they have registered may obtain a 60% refund if they notify the Registrar (emily.forche@hfi.nyc) in writing, no later than 24 hours before the class. Less than one day, no tuition will be refunded.

BOOK LAUNCH: “White Privilege: Psychoanalytic Perspectives” by Dr. Neil Altman – Saturday, Dec. 12

Dr. Altman will discuss his new book over Zoom on Saturday, Dec. 12, 2020, at 11:30 AM EST, in conversation with integrative arts psychotherapist Eugene Ellis, MA, and child & adult psychoanalyst Ann Marie Sacramone, MSEd, LP.
The book launch will inaugurate the Institute’s new Public Programming, under the leadership of HFI senior Faculty member, Jungian psychoanalyst Dr. Fanny Brewster, PhD, MFA, LP.

In “White Privilege: Psychoanalytic Perspectives,” Dr. Altman examines the significant role race and the concept of unearned “white privilege” plays in society and in clinical practice, suggesting that there are hidden assumptions in the idea that perpetuate the very same prejudicial notions that are purportedly being dismantled.

This book examines in depth the polarized, black-and-white, socially constructed racial categories that rest on fallacious ideas of physical or psychological differences among peoples. Neil Altman also critically examines related concepts including privilege, guilt, and power. He suggests that the polarization of our political positions also contribute to stereotyping between people with different political leanings, foreclosing mutual respect, dialogue and understanding. Finally, Dr. Altman’s book explores in detail the implications for the theory and practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

Drawing on Neil Altman’s rich clinical experience and many years of engaging with racial and societal problems, the book offers a new agenda for understanding and offering analytic practice in contemporary society.

Admission cost: a donation of any amount to the nonprofit Harlem Family Institute

Click here to donate

Registration link

Dr. Neil Altman, PhD, is a member of the faculty at the William Alanson White institute in New York. He is Joint Editor Emeritus of “Psychoanalytic Dialogues: the International Journal of Relational Perspectives,” and a member of the editorial board at “Ricerca Psicoanalitica,” “The Journal of Child Psychotherapy,” “The Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy” and “The International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies.” He is a member of the Harlem Family (Psychoanalytic) Institute’s Advisory Council.

He is author of “The Analyst in the Inner City: Race, Class, and Culture through a Psychoanalytic Lens” (Routledge, 2010) and “Psychoanalysis in Times of Accelerating Cultural Change: Spiritual Globalization” (Routledge, 2015). He has written numerous articles on clinical work with underserved and marginalized people, as well as his new “White Privilege: Psychoanalytic Perspectives” (Routledge, 2020).

Eugene Ellis, MA, Dip. PSA accredited, is an integrative arts psychotherapist practicing in the U.K. He has worked for many years with severely traumatized children and their families in the field of adoption and fostering, as well as in private practice. He has a special interest in body-orientated therapies and is also the founder of the Black, African and Asian Therapy Network.

His coming book “The Race Conversation: An essential guide to creating life-changing dialogue,” explores not just the cognitive and historical development of the race construct but also focuses specifically on the nonverbal communication of race, both as a means of social control and as an essential part of navigating oppressive patterns.

He is the author of many articles, including Silenced: the Black Student Experience, Towards a Rainbow-Coloured Therapeutic Community, Updating Psychotherapy training: equality and diversity issues in psychotherapy training and Why strong black people do go counselling (Voice newspaper).

Ann Marie Sacramone, MSEd, LP, is Chair of the Schools committee at the American Psychoanalytic Association, and Co-Chair of the Child, Adolescent and Parent Committee at the International Association for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. She is also a senior faculty member at the Harlem Family (Psychoanalytic) Institute

The basis of Ms. Sacramone’s approach to fostering change with clients is based on the developmental processes that we understand through neuroscience, video microanalysis and attachment research. We influence and respond to each other when we interact with each other. Over time, those interactions can change how we think, feel, work, play and have relationships.

In her practice, Ms. Sacramone views that influence, response and change as a therapeutic process. She practices that process in ways that lead to the vital growth of the client. Part of that vital growth is the development of rich and fulfilling relationships in love and work. Ms. Sacramone treats adults and children. In addition to her private practice, she has designed innovative models for school and community interventions that help both children and adults.

She has published and presented widely on psychoanalytic perspectives and applications in large social groups.A selected list can be found here.

Dr. Fanny Brewster, PhD, MFA, LP, is a Jungian analyst in private practice in Philadelphia. She holds a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute, is a graduate of the C.G. Jung Institute of New York and is a New York State Licensed Psychoanalyst and Certified SchoolPsychologist. She is a senior faculty member at the Harlem Family (Psychoanalytic) Institute, where she is establishing the Institute’s new Public Programs.

She is the author of several recent books, including “The Racial Complex: A Jungian Perspective on Culture and Race,” 2019; “Archetypal Grief: Slavery’s Legacy of Intergenerational Child Loss,” 2018; and “African Americans and Jungian Psychology: Leaving the Shadows,” 2017.

The Harlem Family Institute Stands in Solidarity With Victims of Police Abuse in France

PRESS STATEMENT FROM THE HARLEM FAMILY INSTITUTE

by Dr. Gilbert W. Kliman, MD, Chairperson

At The Harlem Family Institute, we hold in our hearts and minds that all of us in the world must unite against systemic racism. We are in solidarity with victims of abuse as we recognize the social responsibility of all people of all races for the behavior of their police officers. We help psychoanalysts rise above being bystanders. We recognize that all persons are the aggressors, bystanders and ultimately the police of a complexly interactive world. As psychoanalysts of many colors at this unique place called The Harlem Family Institute, we have a special mission: It is to deepen and extend conscious responsibility to as many citizens of the planet as possible.

As Chairperson of The Harlem Family Institute, a New York psychoanalytic training institute, I know that at this Institute we have great knowledge about the great social damage done by lynching, beating and killing of black persons. These seemingly old abuses still occur, conspicuously by wrongful police action. But here at The Harlem Family Institute we know these abuses are also widely present in other societal forms. They greatly affect children directly and indirectly for generations to come. The ways of affecting children are often unconscious. We want to raise consciousness of the complex processes, to combat the abuse of human beings by human beings.

Our unique psychoanalytic institute is established to train people of all ethnicities, people of all colors and diversity more generally to become psychoanalysts. We train as well as treat oppressed people. We offer forensic expert training in our acquired knowledge about the effects and actions of racism in this continuing crisis. In our forensic and other community-oriented psychoanalytic trainings, we use our specially acquired knowledge. We often benefit from our clients’ gifts of their voices. Thus, we use recorded evidence of wrongdoings against children of color and those in poverty, not just adults. We teach about the way the evil playbooks of racism travel through time, across generations.

We support those who take leadership in expressing the ultimate consciousness of responsibility borne by all citizens of France and, by extension, the world.

Gilbert W. Kliman, MD

Chairperson

The Harlem Family Institute

New York