Practitioners and General Public: $40  |  Students: Free

The presentation will begin with the question “What is Psychosis?” and examine ways it is defined from medical and psychiatric perspectives.  Then various psychoanalytic perspectives on psychosis and paranoia will be considered, including Freudian, contemporary Kleinian, and interpersonal-relational.  The contributions of several key theorists will be reviewed, including Winnicott (British Object Relations & Independent Group), Searles (interpersonal), Benedetti (existential), Rosenfeld and Lucas (contemporary Kleinian), Spotnitz (modern), Davoine and Gaudillière (contemporary Lacanian), and Bromberg (relational).  Areas of focus will be dissociative processes and the therapist’s countertransference, including dissociative processes in the analyst.  The neuroscience and embodied self-states of the analyst in countertransference enactments will also be briefly discussed.

Brian Koehler, PhD, is an Adjunct Associate Professor at New York University, CUNY and Columbia University, teaching in the Social Work, Clinical Psychology, and Neuroscience Departments.  He is a supervisor and faculty member in the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, from with he has a certificate in psychoanalytic supervision, and has been on the faculty of several psychoanalytic institutes in New York City, teaching psychoanalytic approaches to distressing psychotic states.  He is an Assistant Editor of the journal Psychosis: Psychological, Social and Integrative Approaches.  He has published many papers and presented at institutions of higher learning around the world.  He is past president and executive board member of ISPS-US and ISPS, an affiliate group with the World Psychiatric Association.  He is in private practice in New York.