South Bay Extended Study Series

We are excited to bring you the 2024-2025 South Bay/PINC Extended Study Series, “Rethinking Thinking: A Psychoanalytic Examination of Truthfulness and Distortion in the Interpersonal Realm.”

Wednesdays by zoom from 11:00 – 12:30 p.m. PST.
September 11 – April 16

Early registration discount until 9/4.

As clinicians in a worldwide community, we grapple with the twin forces of disinformation and misinformation. Our upcoming extended series, ‘Rethinking Thinking,’ will delve into what lies underneath those forces and the essence of thought itself-through the psychoanalytic lens. Esteemed instructors will guide us through varied topics, such as Slochower’s re-examination of professional failures and non-sexual client relationships post-therapy. We will explore Bion’s ideas on the perversion of truth and the post-truth era, with Winters’ analysis of truth relativization in contemporary culture. Ashtor will present the concept of ‘Pseudo self’ and finding one’s authentic self. Eitan-Persico will challenge the conceptualization of the Oedipal experience in same-sex families, and Seidel will explore the ‘Queering of Psychoanalysis.’ Finally, Kirson-Trilling, Benioff, Nathans, and Friend will collectively offer new insights into the dynamics of couple’s relationships within the analytic space, drawing on theories from Winnicott, Freud, Bollas, and others. Join us for a profound exploration of thought and its implications in our complex world.

Faculty:

Nancy Winters, M.D. – September 11, 18, 25; October 9, 16
“‘A Home to the Lie’: The Contemporary Perversion of Truth”
Nancy C. Winters, MD, FIPA is a psychoanalyst in Portland OR and a Training/Supervising analyst of the Oregon Psychoanalytic Institute (OPI) and Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (NPSI). She is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Oregon Health and Science University, where she previously directed the child/adolescent psychiatry residency and published widely in children’s mental health. Currently she serves on editorial boards of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalytic Quarterly. Recent publications include co-editor and chapter author of the 2022 Gradiva award-winning Body as Psychoanalytic Object: Clinical Applications from Winnicott to Bion and Beyond (2021), “Autoimmunity and its Expression in the Analytic Situation: Contemporary Reflections on Our Inherent Self-Destructiveness” (Intl J Psychoanal, 2022), “‘A Home to the Lie’: The Contemporary (Per)version of Truth” (Am J Psychoanal, 2023), and upcoming: Winters, NC, Harrang, C, & Sedlacek, S. (in press) “Transformations in O Online: Group Process in the Virtual Realm”. Psychoanalytic Quarterly. 

Gila Ashtor, Ph.D. – October 23, 30; November 6, 13, 20; December 4, 11
“The Pseudo-Self: Dissociation, Affect, Sexuality”
Gila Ashtor, PhD, LP is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychoanalysis at Columbia University as well as a faculty member of the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. She is on the Faculty at New York University’s Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, and at IPTAR. She is the author of three books, Homo Psyche: On Queer Theory and Erotophobia (Fordham UP, 2021), Exigent Psychoanalysis: The Interventions of Jean Laplanche (Routledge, 2021) and Aural History (Punctum, 2020). Her primary areas of academic and clinical expertise include identity, trauma and sexuality. She is in private practice in New York City.

Julie Friend, LCSW – January 8, 2025
“Does Love Matter (in the Consulting Room)?”
Julie Friend LCSW, BCD is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice including professional consultation, individuals, and couples. She is a Board member, founding member, and faculty of Psychoanalytic Couple Psychotherapy Group, where from 2010 to 2022 she served as the Director of its three-year Intensive Study Program. She has completed the Tavistock Center for Couple Relations Advanced Training in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, and serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal Couple and Family Psychoanalysis. She is an Associate Member of SF-CP, an invited faculty member at William Alanson White’s CCTEP program, and has presented her work and teaches locally and internationally. Her publications include “Love as Creative Illusion and its Place in Psychoanalytic Couple Psychotherapy” (2013) and “Creative Illusion in couples: thoughts about the value of transitional experience for couple relationships” (2021).

Leora Benioff, Ph.D. – January 15
“Changes in theory, changes in practice: Applying some 21st century psychoanalytic theories to couple psychotherapy”
Leora Benioff, Ph.D., is a psychoanalyst and couple therapist who practices in Berkeley, California. She is the Dean, a supervising and training analyst and a faculty member at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. She is a founding member and faculty member of the Psychoanalytic Couple Psychotherapy Group. She is the North American Chair of the IPA Committee on Couple and Family Psychotherapy. She has numerous publications and given many presentations on psychoanalytic couple psychotherapy.

Shelley Nathans, Ph.D. – January 22
“Attachment: What's love got to do with it?”
Shelley Nathans, Ph.D. is on the faculties of The Psychoanalytic Couple Psychotherapy Group and The Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California. She is the director and producer of the film, Robert Wallerstein: 65 Years at the Center of Psychoanalysis. She is on the international advisory board of the journal, Couple and Family Psychoanalysis and is Past President of the Board for the Psychoanalytic Couple Psychotherapy Group. Her publications include “Oedipus for Everyone: Revitalizing the Model for LBGTQ Couples and Single Parent Families” (Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 2021); “45 Years” ( fort da, 2018); "Whose Disgust is it Anyway?: Projection and Projective Identification in the Couple Relationship, (Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 2016); and Infidelity as Manic Defence (Couple and Family Psychoanalysis, 2015). She is co-editor (with Milton Schaefer) of Couples on the Couch: Psychoanalytic Couple Psychotherapy and the Tavistock Model (Routledge, 2017) and the editor of More About Couples.

Ortal Kirson-Trilling, Psy.D. – January 29
“Lost to Self and Other in a World of Unseen Things: Reflections on Winnicott's Concept of the Mirror Role in Working with Narcissistic Couples”
Ortal Kirson-Trilling, Psy.D., is a psychologist and psychoanalyst trained at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California. Director of the Intensive Training Program at the Psychoanalytic Couple Psychotherapy Group, Dr. Kirson-Trilling has taught analytic couple theory and practice at PCPG, CPMC, PINC, SFCP, the International Psychotherapy Institute, and the Polish, Houston, and Appalachian Psychoanalytic Societies. She is on the boards of PCPG and PINC. Dr. Kirson-Trilling maintains a private practice in Oakland, California.

Joyce Slochower, Ph.D., ABPP – February 5, 12, 19
“The analytic ideal and analytic boundary violations”
Joyce Slochower Ph.D., ABPP, is Professor Emerita at CUNY; faculty, NYU Postdoc, Steven Mitchell Center, NTP, & Philadelphia Center for Relational Studies. She is the author of Holding and Psychoanalysis: A Relational Perspective (1996; & 2014) & Psychoanalytic Collisions (2006 & 2014), co-Editor (with Aron & Grand) of De-idealizing relational theory: a Critique from within & Decentering Relational Theory: a Comparative Critique plus a forthcoming book, Elephants Under the Couch: Psychoanalysis and the Unspoken. She is in private practice in NYC. 

Yifat Eitan-Persico, Ph.D. – March 5, 12, 19, 26
“Oedipal Experiences in Same-Sex Families”
Yifat Eitan-Persico (PhD) is a practicing clinical psychologist and a candidate in the Israel Psychoanalytic Society. She has translated and edited psychoanalytic writings. Her book “Oedipal experiences in same-sex families” was awarded the prestigious Bahat Prize for the best non-fiction book in Hebrew, 2021.

Emily Seidel, Psy.D. April 2, 9, 16
“Queering Psychoanalysis”
Emily Seidel, Psy.D. is a graduate member and on the faculty of PINC where she teaches Winnicott, serves on the Steering Committee of the Extracurricular Education Committee, Chairs the Symposium Committee, and runs an Early Career Case Conference. She is on the faculty of the Access Institute where she’s taught classes on Transference/Countertransference, Winnicott & the British Independent Tradition, Deepening the Treatment, and Psychic Mobility & Queer, Creative Possibility. She published an essay in fort da about Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir, Are You My Mother?, entitled Aggressively Alive: The Art of a Psychoanalytic Memoir and presented a slideshow/discussion of Bechdel’s work at PINC’s 2nd Fridays, entitled Outlining Alison Bechdel: Searching, Drawing, and Being Seen. She’s presented different versions of her paper Queering the Psychoanalytic Family at PINC, Division 39, and the IPA’s Committee on Couple and Family Psychoanalysis. She has a private practice in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, adult family therapy, and consultation in Oakland, CA.