The Psychoanalytic Center of California

PCC Open House 2024
2024-03-17 11:00 - 14:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Hybrid – In-Person and Virtual, 3200 Motor Avenue, Los Angeles, 90034, United States
Join us for the PCC’s Annual Open House with with Featured Speaker Joseph Aguayo, Ph.D. Topic: Encountering the Primitive Mind: A Psychoanalytic Exploration of Our Beginning. Learn more

Meg Harris Williams presents "Aesthetic Conflict in Infant Observation: The Developing Baby and the Developing Observer"
2024-02-10 09:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom online
Join us for a conference with featured presenter Meg Harris Williams. In this program, Ms. Williams will focus on the use of the ideas and methods of W.R. Bion and Esther Bick as developed by Martha Harris in the training model she established for child psychotherapists at the Tavistock Clinic. Learn more.

Dr. Stefano Bolognini presents New Forms of Psychopathology in a Changing World: A Challenge for Psychoanalysis in the Twenty-First Century
2024-01-20 09:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom online
Join us for a conference with Dr. Stefano Bolognini. In this program, Dr. Stefano Bolognini will explore challenges to the practice of psychoanalysis today. Learn more.

Dr. Judith Mitrani Presents: Some Technical Extensions of the Work of Frances Tustin for the Analysis of Autistic States in Adults
2023-12-02 09:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom online
Join us as our PCC Member Emeritus, Judith Mitrani, PhD present her important paper on psychoanalytic technique, Trying to Enter the Long Black Branches: Some Technical Extensions of the Work of Frances Tustin for the Analysis of Autistic States in Adults (IJP, 2011).
In this paper, Dr. Mitrani suggests a number of technical extensions and clinical applications of Frances Tustin’s work with autistic children, which are applicable to the psychoanalysis of neurotic, borderline and psychotic adults. These are especially relevant to those individuals in whom early uncontained experiences have been silently encapsulated through the use of secretive auto-sensual maneuvers and bodily protections related to autistic objects and shapes. Learn more.

Autistic States of Mind and Body Across the Human Life Cycle
2023-10-07 07:30 - 2023-10-08 14:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
The Contemporary Freudian Society and The Psychoanalytic Center of California will co-sponsor a two-day zoom workshop with a focus on the clinical and theoretical aspects as well as the transference and counter-transference experience evoked in our work with the autistic state of mind. Ample time will be available for discussion among the presenters and with the audience.
Featuring presentations by:
Joshua Durban, Tel Aviv/Los Angeles
Maria Rhode, London
Shelley Rockwell, Washington, DC
Margaret Rustin, London
The fee for the weekend will be $200 and $100 for those clinicians
working in the public sector and for candidates/students.
Registration material are forthcoming.

Merav Roth In-Person: True Love as the Love of Truth
2023-07-15 08:30 - 15:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | New Center for Psychoanalysis, 2014 Sawtelle Blvd., Los Angeles, CA, 90025, United States
This will be a welcome first in-person event for PCC since the pandemic! Or you can join by Zoom!
Dr. Roth will present two papers. The first paper explores the phantasies concerning, on the one hand, ideal connection and complete satisfaction and on the other, the defenses against a bad and frustrating object. The struggle between these two attitudes is at the root of true love. The second paper engages with a specific kind of pathological identification which Roth calls ‘raw’ object identification. This form of identification manifests as concrete physical phenomena which attempt to evade meaning and integration, generating massive splitting. Certain properties of the object are experienced as foreign bodies in the subject and are defensively identified with, resulting in stubborn bodily symptoms. There will be an opportunity for audience participation after each paper. Learn more.

CE Conference with Avner Bergstein
2023-04-22 09:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom online
In this seminar, psychoanalyst Avner Bergstein will present a paper, “Buried in the future which has not happened: Non-linear time, ‘non-logic’ and the ultimate reality of the session.” In this paper, leaning on Bion’s writings, Bergstein emphasizes the close observation of the evolution of the emotional experience of the session as a way of approaching an infinitely complex and often unthinkable reality. This process extricates us from a hallucinatory grasp on the past and elaborates the capacity to tolerate the unknown and unknowable infinite stream towards the future. Hence, the work of analysis, as depicted in this paper, is not only revealing unconscious thoughts buried in the past, but also cultivating a psychically alive mind able to create and generate new thoughts, oriented toward the future and the unknown.
Learn more.

PCC Open House 2023
2023-04-02 11:00 - 14:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Hybrid – In-Person and Virtual, 3200 Motor Avenue, Los Angeles, 90034, United States
Join us for our 2023 Open House. A dialogue and conversation will be held with the audience, faculty members and candidates followed by presentations about our core training, psychoanalytic psychotherapy and child programs. You will have the opportunity to ask questions and explore our diverse and unique possibilities for training. We hope you will join us in learning and understanding more about the PCC. Learn more.

CE Conference with Dana Amir
2023-03-04 09:00 - 12:00 UTC | Zoom online
More details to follow.
Join us for a Continuing Education Conference titled, Psychoanalytic Explorations in Trauma Work: When Traumatic Lacuna Meets Language with Drs. Dana Amir and Eliane Hary. Learn more.

Infant Observation Conference with Dr. Persila Conversano
2023-02-11 09:00 - 12:00 UTC | Zoom online

CE Conference with Dr. Annie Reiner
2022-10-08 09:00 - 12:00 UTC | Zoom online
More details to follow.

CE Conference with Fakhry Davids
2022-09-17 09:00 - 12:00 UTC | Zoom online

Transforming Ghosts into Ancestors: Un-silencing the Psychological Case for Reparations to Descendants of American Slavery with Dr. Bryan Nichols and Dr. Medria Connolly
2022-06-11 09:00 - 12:00 UTC | Zoom online
Drs. Nichols and Connolly have been deeply involved with offering presentations about reparations from a psychological perspective for the past several years. Recently they have been tracking, and have presented in, California’s historic first ever state effort to offer reparations to African American residents for the state’s complicity and involvement in slavery, arguing in favor of the intensely contested idea of the legacies of slavery. “Eligibility” for reparations is a key theme in these discussions, as it has been since slavery ended in the United States. The core target is the moral injury which involves a call to action by institutions that should be able to use their theoretical expertise, including psychoanalysis, to understand and perhaps advocate for reparations, a suggestion for healing multigenerational harm. Learn more.

On the Nature of Transference Interpretation and Why only it Can Bring about Analytic Change: A Kleinian Perspective Grounded in Freud with Professor Rachel Blass and Dr. Jennifer Kunst
2022-05-14 09:00 - 12:00 UTC | Zoom online
Professor Rachel Blass has published seminal papers on Kleinian theory and practice. Aware of the concerns as well as interest around certain Kleinian ideas, she outlines and develops the meaning of such analytic inquiries as the meaning of the dream, the desire for knowledge, doubt and conviction, the role of repetition, psychoanalytic ethics and morality. She develops her ideas grounded in theory and with arguments for and against her thoughts presented clearly and poignantly. She has an active analytic practice as well as a long teaching career in universities and analytic societies.

During the first half of our program, Dr. Blass will read a paper titled “On the nature of transference interpretation and why only it can bring about analytic change: A Kleinian perspective grounded in Freud” During the second half of the program, PCC member Jennifer Kunst will interview Dr. Blass about an article she wrote titled “The teaching of Klein: some guidelines for opening students to the heart of Kleinian thinking and practice. Learn more.

Getting to Know Splitting as an Organizing Phantasy, Then and Today with Claudia Frank, MD and Deborah Bilder, Ph.D., Psy.D.
2022-04-30 09:00 - 12:00 UTC | Zoom online
During the first half of the program, Dr. Frank will present a clinical paper including a detailed analysis of some drawings of one of Klein’s little patients, Erna. From the beginning, Melanie Klein was interested in the unconscious phantasies underlying the child’s different activities. As her career developed, she began to grasp more basic structural unconscious phantasies governing the psychic functioning of her small patients. In her paper, Dr. Frank shows us how Klein’s struggle to understand Erna’s movements in the analytic situation led her to formulate “the fragmentation of the personality into two parts” and to describe the dynamics of splitting for the first time (in a manuscript not published by Klein). In today’s analytic work we can build on that understanding of splitting as an early defensive maneuver. We experience it in the transference-countertransference situation. In interpreting and working it through with the patient, we can enable a process of getting to know one’s organizing/structuring unconscious phantasy, thus having the chance to transform (parts of) it. Dr. Frank will present a few vignettes from the analysis of an adult patient with an obsessive-compulsive disorder. During the second half of the program, PCC member Deborah Bilder will interview Dr. Frank about her commitments on the international level regarding psychoanalytic training including supervision of candidates, infant observation, and the Eitingon model. Learn more.

Dialogue Across Difference: Sociocultural And Clinical Realms with Salman Akhtar, MD
2022-02-26 09:00 - 12:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom online
In this program, Dr. Salman Akhtar will discuss the Dialogue Across Difference: Sociocultural and Clinical Realms. Learn more.

Psychoanalytic Diagnostics and Treatment of Early Developmental Pathologies: Part 1
2022-01-30 09:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom online
The PCC Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program is pleased to announce a 20-week on-line course, Principles of Psychoanalytic Diagnostics and Treatment of Early Developmental Pathologies, featuring Joshua Durban of Israel. Part 1 begins on January 30, 2022 and concludes April 10, 2022 (no class on March 27, 2022). See the brochure and application here.

ICAPP Clinical Series w/Dr. Shirley Gooch
2022-01-25 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom online
“Face-to-Face with Primal States: The Non-verbal Becoming Verbal”

ICAPP Clinical Series w/Dr. Persila Conversano
2021-12-07 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom online
“Infant Observation: An Exploratory Critique on the Nature of Observation as a Psychoanalytic Method to Propagate Layers of the Mind”. Observation is a profound and fundamental skill. Dr. Conversano explains and presents a summary of a year-long infant observation.

The Claustro-Agoraphobic Dilemma: Between Intimacy and Separation in Interpersonal Relationships
2021-11-06 09:00 - 14:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom online
In this online continuing education conference, jointly sponsored by PCC and NCP, Dr. Weiss explores the space between closeness and abandonment— the claustro-agoraphobic dilemma of the patient who cannot escape from the position of feeling either trapped in intimate relationships or abandoned by them. He examines issues of how guilt and concrete thinking affect the analyst’s countertransference. Dr. Weiss illuminates how trauma is complicated with fear, shame, and rage, creating a tortuous path toward forgiveness and difficulty in easing a cruel superego.

ICAPP Clinical Series w/Dr. Patricia O'Brien
2021-11-02 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom online
Psychoanalysis of a 3-1/2 Year Old Child, Initial Assessment, and Transference-Countertransference Experiences

PCC Open House 2021
2021-03-21 11:00 - 14:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Please RSVP via email to: Office@p-c-c.org

PCC Holiday Party & Graduation Ceremony (PCC Members and Candidates only)
2019-12-14 18:30 - 21:30 (America/Los_Angeles)

PCC Saturday Cinema Phantom Thread
2019-05-18 10:00 - 13:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | PCC Office Classroom, 11500 W. Olympic Blvd., Suite 445, Los Angeles, CA, 90064, United States
Come join us Saturday, May 18, 2019 from 10:00 AM to 1:30 PM for a complete viewing of Phantom Thread. Hear Dr. Sandra E. Cohen’s psychoanalytic discussion as she explores the unconscious roots and meaning of Reynolds and Alma’s dangerous feeding game. The question is this: what does it have to do with the complex dynamics between obsessive control and dependency, love and loss.
Register online Here

Grotstein Memorial Lecture #3
2019-04-23 20:00 - 22:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | New Center for Psychoanalysis, 2014 Sawtelle Blvd., Los Angeles, CA, 90025, United States
This series of 3 presentations in Los Angeles, the James Grotstein Memorial Lectures, honors his work in comparative psychoanalytic theory and is sponsored by NCP, PCC and LAIPS. Stay tuned for more details!

Grostein Memorial Lecture #2
2019-04-18 20:00 - 22:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | New Center for Psychoanalysis, 2014 Sawtelle Blvd., Los Angeles, CA, 90025, United States

Spring Break (4/15-26/2019-
2019-04-15 08:00 - 2019-04-26 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles)

Grotstein Memorial Lecture #1
2019-03-28 20:00 - 21:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | New Center for Psychoanalysis, 2014 Sawtelle Blvd., Los Angeles, CA, 90025, United States

9th Annual Wilfred Bion Member Master Class (Members & Recent PCC Graduates only)
2019-03-24 10:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
The 9th Annual Wilfred Bion Member Master Class is open to PCC Members and recent graduates only!

9th Annual Wilfred Bion Conference with Dr. Civitarese
2019-03-23 09:00 - 15:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | New Center for Psychoanalysis, 2014 Sawtelle Blvd., Los Angeles, CA, 90025, United States
Join us for the 9th Annual Wilfred Bion Conference on Saturday, March 23, 2019 from 9:00am-3:15pm. Learn more.
Register here
