The Unobtrusive Relational Analyst and Psychoanalytic Companioning

National Institute for the Psychotherapies
250 West 57th Street, Suite 501
Conference Room
New York, NY 10107

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With increasing frequency we find ourselves working with patients and states that are not amenable to verbal and dialogic engagement. Such patients are challenging for psychoanalytic work that assumes some verbal expressiveness and reflective function in the patient. Both the classical stance of neutrality and abstinence and a contemporary relational approach that works with mutuality and intersubjectivity can ask too much of these patients. I suggest that the companioning register of the unobtrusive relational analyst offers a new and dynamic way of creating the transformational space that such patients can utilize. For the unobtrusive relational analyst the world of the patient becomes the signature and defining sculptor of the clinical interaction and process. Rather than seeking to bring patients into a more dialogic and related engagement, the analyst companions patients in the flow of enactive engagement into the damaged and constrained landscapes of their inner worlds. Being known and companioned in these areas of deep pain and shame is the foundation on which psychoanalytic transformation and healing rests.

Learning Objectives:

1. Describe the unobtrusive relational analyst position and distinguish this from classical analytic neutrality and abstinence.
2. Recognize the flow of enactment in their practice and be unobtrusive to this process
3. Discern patients and states that require a companioning register of engagement as opposed to leaning on interpretive and reflective modes of treatment. 

Robert Grossmark, PhD teaches and supervises at NIP, the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis, The Eastern Group Psychotherapy Society, the clinical psychology doctoral program at CUNY and the Minnesota Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis. He co-edited The One & The Many: Relational Approaches to Group Psychotherapy and Heterosexual Masculinities: Contemporary Perspectives from Psychoanalytic Gender Theory, both published by Routledge, and has published numerous psychoanalytic articles.

Continuing Education

This event is approved for 4.0 CE contact hours for psychologists, social workers,  and licensed psychoanalysts:

The National Institute for the Psychotherapies is approved by the American Psychological Association to offer continuing education credits for psychologists. The National Institute for the Psychotherapies maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

The National Institute for the Psychotherapies is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0018.

Personalized CE certificates will be distributed at the end of this event. Due to New York State requirements, persons arriving more than 15 minutes late or leaving more than 15 minutes early will not receive a CE certificate.

Fees

Early Registration (ends October 13, 2017)

• $100 general public
• $85 NIPPA members
• $65 candidates & students

General Registration (begins September 16, 2017)

• $125 general public
• $110 NIPPA members
• $90 candidates & students

Refunds, & Cancellation Policy
Cancellation requests made more than a week prior to the event will be given a full refund of registration fees. Refunds will not be granted for cancellation requests made within a week of the event or for no-shows on the day of the event.