March 5-6
Sublimation and Artistic Expression | Download Brochure
Richard Simons, MD, psychoanalyst
“Sublimation as a Concept in Psychoanalytic Theory”
Barbara Simons, music teacher, pianist
“Sublimation in Bach’s Music”
Nancy Baker, artist
The Artist’s Perspective: An Exhibition of Works
Thomas Sayre, sculptor
The Artist’s Perspective: An Exhibition of Works
March 5-6
Images in Art and Life : Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspectives
A conference exploring creativity in work, art and dreams
“The images with which people express themselves in art, work and dreams fuse meaning and emotion into forms that revitalize the human spirit. How does this happen? What determines the form used by an individual artist or the ways a single work of art can affect different audiences? What converts an occupation or community need into a life’s calling? Why do dreams continually surprise and convince us? The speakers will discuss these and other aspects of creativity from a variety of perspectives.”
Ellen Handler Spitz, PhD
“Tension and Intention in the Artistic Image”
Gilbert J. Rose, MD
“From Image to Affect: Charting the Emotional Response to Art”
Morton F. Reiser, MD
“Musical Embodiment of Meaning: Wagner’s Use of the Leitmotif”
George E. Valliant, MD
“Florence Nightingale: A Model for the Roots of Creativity
March 4-5
Worlds Unsuspected : Photography & Psychoanalysis
“Both photography and psychoanalysis focus the lens of awareness. Photography preserves external images and uses sight to trigger memories of people and places lost to the past. Psychoanalysis retrieves internal images and allows the conversion of unconscious to conscious that we call insight. Our speakers will address the significance of sight and insight as they pertain to artistic creativity and personal growth.”
Lucy Daniels Inman, PhD
“Through the Eyes of the Beholder”
Gilbert Rose, MD
“Through the Looking Glass: Paul Gauguin”
“From Dreaming to Creative Vision, Toward Forms and ‘Feeling”
Barbara Young, MD
“Living a Creative Life as Psychoanalyst and Photographer”
Alex Harris, Photographer
“A World Unsuspected: Photography and the Mystery of Memory”
March 16-17
Inspiration and Inhibition: The Dynamics of Self in Performing
“All creativity involves use and exhibition of the self. But the pathway from inspiration to successful expression is not always easy. And for performing artists, whose creating involves immediate contact with the audience, failures of self can be especially painful. Our speakers will address the artistic self in public—including the challenges, rewards and inhibitions inherent in such personal exposure.”
Lucy Daniels Inman, PhD
“Whose Dance Is It?” An Overview
Jack Novick, PhD, psychoanalyst
Kerry Kelly Novick, psychoanalyst
“I Won’t Dance”: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Interferences with Performance
Perspective
Part I – Omnipotence in Infancy and Childhood
Part II – Omnipotence in Adolescence and Adulthood
Part III – A Painter, a Poet, a Dancer, a Musician and an Architect –
Performance Conflicts and resolutions
Billy Stewart, classical guitarist, composer
Performance
Rebecca Amis Lawson, dancer, choreographer
Performance
Robert W. Lawson, PhD
Remarks
Walking with Words: Creativity in Literature and Psychoanalysis
Lucy Daniels Inman, PhD
An Overview
Cynthia MacDonald, PhD
“The April Case: the Detective Professions of Psychoanalysis and Creative Writing”
“Clinical Work with Patients Suffering from Writing Blocks”
Paul Schwaber, MD
“Huston’s and Joyce’s ‘The Dead’”
“The Vitality of Molly Bloom”
March 20-22
Echoes of Trauma: Psychic Injury and Creativity
“None of us is immune from adversity. But what are the lasting traces of abuse, disease, violence or devastation loss? And what is the connection between psychic trauma and putting something new into the world? Do such blows halt, enhance, or alter creativity? And if so, how and why? Is the creative individual especially vulnerable to psychic pain? Does talent make even the most brutal injuries less catastrophic? Our speakers will address these and other issues as we explore the tangled and haunting relationship of trauma and creativity.”
Lucy Daniels Inman, PhD
Leonard Shengold, MD
“Child Abuse and Deprivation as Revealed in Metaphor in the Work of Elizabeth Bishop: Moths and Mothers”
“Soul Murder and Creativity”
“Mockery that Restrains Tears: The Art of Rene Magritte”
“Don’t Cry: Young Children and Representations of Death”
Harold Kudler, MD
“Psychological Trauma and Creativity: Tracing the Developmental Connection”
Mary Felstiner, PhD
“To Paint Her Life: Charlotte Salomon in the Nazi Era”
Dori Laub, MD
“Coming Close: From Traumatic Absence to Creative Presences”
March 13-14
Potential Space: Psychoanalysis and Creativity in the Winnicottian Spirit | Download Brochure
“Potential Space” is the cradle of creation. Its discoverer, psychoanalyst and pediatrician D. W. Winnicott, defined this as an intermediate area between -psychic reality and “actual” or external reality. The safety and trust provided in this area allow illusion and paradox to flourish. Playing, mothering, creating, psychotherapy, and cultural experience all happen here. This conference, like our others, aims to create “Potential Space” where our speakers’ presentations and our audience’s questions and comments will be mutually enhancing.”
Lucy Daniels Inman, PhD
Robert Rodman, MD
“Winnicott’s Odyssey”
“Language and Gesture”
W. G. Clark, AIA
“Inside/Outside”
Donald Kuspit, PhD
“Art Solves Nothing and Everything: Winnicott’s Use of Art and Ambivalence Toward the Artist”
Tom Mann, composer
“Sound, Improvisation, and Freedom to Create”
Screen Spectaculars: Creativity in Dreams and Movies
“Dreams and Movies both involve sensual representation of psychological experience. Movies projected onto theater screens allow audiences to share a director’s creation. Dreams projected onto the internal screen allow the dreamer to put unconscious feelings and beliefs into images so that they can be thought about. Celebrating the centennial of Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, this conference uses a psychoanalytic lens to focus on the psychological meaning of dreams and cinema.”
Lucy Daniels, PhD
An Overview
Glen O. Gabbard, MD
“Wayward Women Analysts of Celluloid: Psychoanalysis and Cinematic Mythology”
“The Mind-Brain Interface”
James L. Fosshage, PhD
“The Organizing Function of Dreams”
“The Case of Samantha: rams within an Analytic Process”
Landrum S. Tucker, Jr., MD
“Dream and Film as Doubles to the Self”
November 2-4
Me and My Baby: Identity and Creativity | Download Brochure
“Identity and Creativity are as intrinsically bound together as sexual partners or babies and their caregivers. Who we are inevitably affects what we create, just as the new things we put into the world – whether music or sculpture or scientific discoveries – alter our lives forever. And since both identity and creativity evolve from the very center of ourselves, our speakers will address the particular dynamics of this collocation in their experience. As usual, we expect the multiple perspectives of artists, clinicians, and other conference participants to enrich our time together.”
Joyce McDougall, D.Ed.
“The Artist and the Outer World”
“Gender Identity and Creativity”
Nancy Grossman, artist
“The Artist’s Search for Identity: A conversation with Carol Cole Levin”
Lucy Daniels, PhD
An Overview
Vamik Volkan, MD
“One Refugee Family’s Story: Mourning and Creativity”
“Ethnic Identity and the creation of ‘Hot Places’”
Arlene Raven, PhD
“Embracing the Shadow: Identity and Creative Freedom in the Art of Nancy Grossman”
Zelda Fichandler, acting teacher
“Teatron: A Place for Seeing”
April 27 – New York City
The Artist as Child: Roots of Human Creativity | Download Brochure
“The conference seeks to illuminate the profound influence childhood experience has on the work of artists and other creative individuals— experience that provides inspiration and subject matter and shapes the capacity for creative expression.”
Oliver Sacks, MD
Louise Gluck, author
Lynn Reiser, MD
Gilbert Rose, MD
Ellen Handler Spitz, PhD
Donald Rosenblitt,