Courses for licensed Professionals

Manifest Mind
2019 Conference
Developing Psychotherapy Considerations for Clinical Work with Ketamine and Psychedelic Drugs
Saturday, October 26, 2019
Location:
New Center for Psychoanalysis
2014 Sawtelle Blvd
(Los Angeles)
Time:
9 am to 5 pm
Reception Follows
for Physicians and Licensed Psychotherapists
(by application only)
for more Conference information
visit

Overview & Background

The advent of the office-based psychotherapeutic use of psychedelic (“mind manifesting”) drugs dawned with the FDA approval this year of ketamine for treatment-resistant depression. Active research projects and intense clinical interest suggests that we have entered an era of “Disruptive Psychophamacology[1]” in which MDMA, psilocybin, and possibly others would be next in line for general clinical use in treatment-resisted depression, PTSD, OCD, Substance Use Disorders, Attachment Disorders, and end-of-life care. What special psychotherapy training might be indicated?

This six-hour Saturday conference offers an opportunity to develop training considerations for psychodynamic practitioners with these mind-manifesting substances, with particular emphasis on ketamine.

At present only ketamine has been approved for office-based practice. Professional literature offers sparse guidance for attendant psychotherapy. Ketamine’s atypical “dissociative” effect is reported to open the patient to unexpected and atypical thought streams and states of being. We will consider acute phase guidance and the integration work of post-sessions.

This program will offer an opportunity to learn from each other and experienced practitioners, as we consider practical suggestions for treatment/psychotherapy procedures with these “new” medications. Psychodynamic practitioners will present lessons from their experience with using ketamine as an adjunct to psychotherapy. A pre-recorded video presentation by Robin Carhart-Harris (London) will set the stage by teaching what is now known about brain mechanisms of action of psychedelic drugs. Psychiatrist Scott Shannon (see bio note below) will discuss the meaning of “manifest mind” in the context of the prior tension between Psychopharmacology and Psychotherapy (see his introductory statement below).

Large plenum and small clinically-oriented breakout groups will allow participants to interchange ideas and consider protocols while providing networking opportunities.

  1. Heifets BD, Malenka RC, “Disruptive Psychopharmacology”, JAMA Psychiatry 2019, 75:775-76

Learning Objectives

  • Participate in developing ethical standards for ketamine-assisted psychotherapy
  • Discuss the indications and contra-indictions for ketamine-assisted psychotherapy
  • Describe a psychodynamic framework for psychotherapeutic use of ketamine for treatment-resistant depression
  • List the conditions for which research suggests a potential use of psychedelic drugs combined with psychodynamic treatment.

Faculty

Raymond Bakaitis, Ph.D. – Discussion Leader. Psychologist in Independent Practice; President, Grex, the West Coast Affiliate of the A. K. Rice Institute for the Study of Social Systems; Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology (Retired), U.C.L.A. Department of Psychology; Past-President, Los Angeles County Psychological Association.

Thomas M Brod MD – Coordinator/Presenter. Dr. Brod is Sr. Faculty at New Center for Psychoanalysis and is in private practice in Los Angeles. He is Associate Clinical Professor, Psychiatry, Geffen UCLA School of Medicine and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He has been organizing conferences on Self-Regulation and Intensive Dynamic Psychotherapy since 1982; he also chaired the first modern Symposium on psyilocybin at the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting in 2006.

Lara Edinger, DO MS – Presenter is double-Board Certified as a neurologist and pain managemen t, specializing in the treatment of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS). She is a pioneer in the field of ketamine infusion for pain. Dr. Edinger served as chief resident at Drexel University College of Medicine under Dr. Robert Schwartzman, a pioneer in the use of ketamine for the treatment of chronic pain. As a fellow at UVA, she developed new ketamine protocols. She has partnered with psychiatrists for treatment of depression with ketamine. She is the owner and director of Edinger Pain Management . She is Assistant Clinical Professor of Neurology, Geffen UCLA School of Medicine.

Robin Carhart-Harris, PhD -Video presentation, from BTCI Conference May 16, 2019- Head, Centre for Psychedelic Research Imperial College, London. His PhD is in Psychopharmacology and he has a MA in Psychoanalysis. He has designed and/or carried out human brain imaging studies with a variety of psychedelic compounds, plus a clinical trial of psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression, and a current study comparing psilocybin with escitalopram for major depressive disorder.

David J Laramie, PhD -Discussion leader- is a health psychologist in private practice in Beverly Hills and at the Akasha Center in Santa Monica. In his work, he is particularly focused on integrative approaches to health and wellness.

Scott Shannon, MD – Faculty, Featured Speaker. Dr. Shannon founded Wholeness Center, in Fort Collins, in 2010. This innovative clinic provides cross-disciplinary evaluation and care for all mental health concerns. Scott serves as a site Principle Investigator and therapist for the Phase III trial of MDMA assisted psychotherapy for PTSD sponsored by Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). He has also published numerous articles about his research on cannabidiol (CBD) in mental health. Currently, Scott works extensively with ketamine-assisted-psychotherapy. He lectures all over the world to professional groups interested in a deeper look at mental health issues, safer tools and a paradigm shifting perspective about transformative care.

Scott has been a student of consciousness since his honor’s thesis on that topic at the University of Arizona in the 1970s under the tutelage of Andrew Weil. Following medical school, Scott studied Jungian therapy and acupuncture while working as a primary care physician in a rural area for four years. MDMA assisted psychotherapy became a facet of his practice before this medicine was scheduled in 1985. He then completed a Psychiatry residency at Columbia program in New York. Scott studied cross-cultural psychiatry and completed a child/adolescent psychiatry fellowship at the University of New Mexico.

Scott has published four books on holistic mental health including the first integrative psychiatry textbook for this field in 2001. His pediatric mental health textbook was published in 2014. Scott is a past President of the American Holistic Medical Association and a past President of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine.

Scott offers the following introduction to his thinking for this conference:

“What does it mean to manifest mind?

“Psychiatry may be witnessing the beginning of a true paradigm shift. Psychotherapy and psychopharmacology have battled for preeminence in the mental health sphere. Unfortunately, these two tools often function at odds with each other. Recently, we have witnessed a novel synergy between these two treatment approaches. MDMA, psilocybin and ketamine offer a dramatically new vision of what medication assisted psychotherapy may look like. Sophisticated neuroimaging has begun to offer a window into how these treatments alter brain function and thus conscious experience and the processing of the therapeutic encounter. Clinical research indicates that transformational change may be enhanced and long-term outcomes altered. For much of the past 70 years psychopharmacology has been in a suppressive mode trying to reduce and manage symptoms, but often at a cost of impaired awareness. In this new paradigm, psychiatry explores an evocative approach to the manifesting the mind. This presentation will briefly explore the research around medication assisted psychotherapy and use that as a jumping off point to explore consciousness, the therapeutic relationship and the nature of transformational change. “

Attendees Will Consider the Following Issues
  • Do we need a new model of the mind to be able to sit with and “listen” to patients who are under the influence of these medications
  • What are useful ways of organizing psychotherapy before, during, and following the drug experiences
  • Is the management of expectancy (mental set and physical setting) different with this form of drug-based psychotherapy compared to psychoanalytic psychotherapy
  • Is psychological treatment necessary to the successful clinical use of these drugs, and if so, at what point in the treatment are psychotherapies best employed
  • Is ketamine-assisted psychotherapy relevant to psychoanalytic and psychodynamic training
  • To what extent is a traditional psychodynamic mindset helpful in integrating such experiences into useful insights; to what extent might it interfere
  • Since repeated contemporary studies have demonstrated that “mystical” subjective experiences seem to be significantly correlated with clinical success of these drugs, what is the relation of the dynamic therapist to the exploration of such experiences
  • Is it possible to use these treatments with Attachment Trauma and severely depressed character disordered patients
  • What are the psychological risks of having ketamine, MDMA, and the classic psychedelic drugs available for wide-spread use
  • What are the appropriate ethical safeguards for this kind of drug-assisted psychodynamic treatment?
The Square:
Human Moments and Relational Aesthetics
a Special Program of the Film & Mind Committee
Saturday, January 12, 2019
1:00 – 5:00 PM
3.5 CE/CME Credits
Online registration is required for CE/CME Credits
$55 with CE Credits; $25 student rate
Note: This program will be held on a Saturday afternoon.
The Square, directed by Ruben Östlund, is a film set in a modern art museum about the aesthetics of relationships. Largely misunderstood by critics when it was released, The Square offers a series of human encounters that psychotherapists ponder long after viewing. “We are exposed to an aesthetics of shaming, laying bare the hypocrisy, the selfishness and the wishful thinking embedded in the deep structures of 21st-century metropolitan existence. That existence is a cornucopia of delights masquerading as miseries, or perhaps vice versa.” (NY Times)
The program features commentary and lectures before and after the screening, plus a facilitated audience discussion.
Learning Objectives
As a result of attending this course, participants should be able to:
  • Describe the invisible link (represented here as “the Square”) between boundary function and integrity of social fabric; consider the therapist’s role in promoting integrity and protecting therapeutic boundaries
  • Explain the relational aspect of Aesthetic Function of the mind
  • Apply the psychodynamic understanding of “symbolic articulation” (as in the function of a Museum) to clinical experience with clients/patients
  • Define “Losing face” in psychological terms; sensitively apply awareness of “losing face” in clinical practice with clients/patients
Jeffrey Prager, PhD, is a psychoanalyst and psychotherapist in private practice. He received his PhD in Psychoanalysis in 1983 from the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute, now the New Center of Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles, where he is now a Senior Faculty Member, and was formerly the Dean. He is also a Professor of Sociology at UCLA. He has published widely, both books and articles, on psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice, including his award-winning Presenting the Past, Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Misremembering (Harvard University Press).
Lynne Oliva, PsyD, is a Training and Supervising Analyst and Faculty member at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and a Faculty member at the New Center for Psychoanalysis. She has a private practice in Brentwood and specializes in working with artists and writers. She is working on a book about art, desire, and the unconscious.
Seth Alt is a PhD student in the Cultural Studies Department at Claremont Graduate University, and a member of the California Forum. Seth’s dissertation research is focused on the intersections of museums, digital technology, and Lacanian psychoanalysis.
Program Coordinators:
Thomas Brod, MD (Discussion Facilitator), Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the UCLA Geffen School of Medicine. He is a senior faculty member at NCP and co-coordinator of the Film and Mind Series. He is also on the faculty of the ISTDP Institute (Washington, D.C.).
Apurva Shah, MD, is a child and adolescent psychiatrist, and chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Kaiser Permanente in Palmdale. An Associate member of the New Center for Psychoanalysis, he is co-coordinator of theFilm and Mind Series. He is also the Founding Director and Faculty at the Antarnad Foundation, a not-for-profit psychoanalytic psychotherapy training program, in Ahmedabad, India. His primary interest, and the focus of most of his publications, is the interface of psychoanalysis and culture.
NCP’s Film and Mind Series allows clinicians to explore psychoanalytic concepts in an open and exciting discussion format. By analyzing the interpersonal dynamics between the film characters and treating the mise-en-scène (the sum total of the art and artifice in the movie) as a metaphor for the internal mental states of the characters, and by revealing the subtext of the story by highlighting the process of the plot, we can gain a better understanding of the dynamics of our patients and of the therapeutic process. Movies are geared to mental health professionals and general public who are interested in psychoanalytic ideas. Each evening starts with a brief introduction of the movies and the discussant(s). The movie (or excerpts thereof) are screened. The discussant(s) then present a brief analysis of the movie using the principles stated above and designed to stimulate a lively discussion among the participants.
310.478.6541 | 310.477.5968
info@n-c-p.org

Courses for Professionals

Psychodynamic Emotional Regulation:
A Day with ISTDP for Clinicians
Thomas Brod, MD
December 8, 2018
9:30 AM – 4:30 PM [1 hr. break for lunch]
6 CE/CME Credits*
$120 Pre-registration, $60 Student Rate
Note: This course is restricted to licensed clinicians only,
as it contains confidential video clinical material;
Unlicensed clinicians need advance permission from the instructor.
ISTDP is a systematic revision of psychoanalytic technique allowing practitioners to use emotional and attachment links to unlock a very wide range of psychopathology. Outcome studies of high quality have demonstrated the effectiveness of ISTDP in Personality Disorders, Anxiety Disorders, Mood Disorders including Bipolar Disorder and Treatment-resistant Depression, Medically Unexplained and Somatoform Disorders, Eating Disorders, and Substance Use Disorders. Across all psychopathology, ISTDP allows clinicians to assess anxiety with precision, working with patients at the point of maximal readiness for change.
This program defines how we put theory into practice. By viewing videotaped clinical cases, participants observe and consider key skills of attunement to develop and maintain an effective focus extending standard therapeutic techniques. In this presentation, we plan two video vignettes identifying two cases that presented with panic. In each case, the symptoms of panic disappeared after the initial consultation. That’s when the difficult and interesting work begins!
The format includes orienting PowerPoint lectures and moment-to-moment analysis of the clinical videotape illustrating decision points regarding increasing and decreasing pressure on whatever unconscious system happens to be at the forefront.
Learning Objectives
As a result of attending this course, participants should be able to:
  • Apply several forms of pressure and use patient’s level of anxiety to determine threshold of tolerable pressure
  • List the three primary discharge pathways of unconscious anxiety
  • Examine the unconscious guilty need for punishment and self-sabotage in patients/clients and help them free themselves from the resultant symptoms
  • Explain resistance to emotional closeness and its the relationship to primal attachment
  • Identify and deactivate the omnipotent transference; Identify “fragility of ego structure” and apply techniques to build (ego) structure
Thomas Brod, MD, Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the UCLA Geffen School of Medicine. He is a senior faculty member at NCP and the co-coordinator of the Film and Mind Series. He is also on the faculty of the ISTDP Institute (Washington, D.C.).t
Connect with us!

Summer School 2018 Pacific Northwest

panel

ISTDP for Professionals

Five Days of Intensive Psychotherapy Training and Immersion Experience

August 19-24, 2018

With Thomas M. Brod, MD, 

 Nat Kuhn, MD, and Angela Cooper, PhD

Captain Whidbey Inn

 Whidbey Island, Washington State

Whidbey ISTDP-Summer-School-2018-Brochure + Registration


EEG Harmonics

The Initial Psychodynamic Interview: 

Setting Up Accelerated Psychotherapy From the Start with ISTDP

With its emphasis on deepening affective experience in the context of the transference relationship, ISTDP is a unique form of psychoanalytic psychotherapy developed by Habib Davanloo MD.  This Saturday program will cone in on the initial interview in ISTDP and how treatment can be accelerated and rapidly deepened from the very start. Emphasis will be on 1) identifying therapeutic task; 2) observing defenses and resistances to emotional closeness; 3) highlighting and focusing the transference; 4) early structuring of the ego in more disturbed patients; 5) identifying unmet therapeutic needs for future therapy. Video anecdotes will be used to illustrate key points. 

 

 

date: May 7, 2016  9:30 am to 1:30 pm

location: New Center for Psychoanalysis

2014 Sawtelle Blvd, Los Angeles 90025

3.5 CME/Continuing Education Units 

Note this course is for licensed and registered psychotherapists only

At the conclusion of this program participants will
1. recognized the importance of immediately attending to defensive avoidance of their issues regarding emotional closeness
2. set up therapeutic task and focus
3. identify future needs to be addressed in psychotherapy