CMPS Annual Conference: Dreaming the Session

5 CE credits for Licensed Psychoanalysts and Social Workers

Keynote Speaker: Giuseppe Civitarese

Featured Speakers: Lawrence Brown, Barbara D’Amato

Dreaming the Session: Field Theory Perspectives On Hallucinosis, Dreaming, and Reverie In Daily Clinical Work

The theory of dreams has changed fundamentally since Freud's time, when their primary function was seen as protecting sleep by distorting and hiding repressed material from consciousness. Many contemporary psychoanalysts emphasize the transformative function of dreams, to create sense and meaning for lived experience. Consequently, the way we use dreams in our daily clinical work has changed radically. The dream is no longer viewed as belonging exclusively to the analysand: We listen to virtually any verbal and nonverbal communication as a joint dream of the analytic couple, dreamed in the here and now. This paradigm shift will be discussed in light of analytic field theory and the phenomena of hallucinosis, dreaming, and reverie, both visual and somatic. Rich clinical examples will illustrate the theory and the application of this approach.

Giovanni Civitarese will present his paper “Are Dreams Still Central to Psychoanalysis?”

Lawrence J. Brown will present “Three Unconscious Pathways to Representing the Analyst’s Experience: Reverie, Countertransference Dreams, and Joke-work.”

Barbara D’Amato will present “Don’t Wake Me Up.” The papers will be followed by a clinical case presentation and audience questions.

9:30 -

Giuseppe Civitarese, MD, PhD, is a training and supervising analyst in the Italian Psychoanalytic Society (SPI), and a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) and the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA). He is in private practice in Pavia, Italy. He lectures internationally and publishes widely on various subjects, including the theory of the analytic field, Bion, and post-Bionian psychoanalysis. His books include The Violence of Emotions: Bion and Post-Bionian Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2012), The Intimate Room: Theory and Technique of the Analytic Field (Routledge, 2011), The Necessary Dream: New Theories and Techniques of Interpretation in Psychoanalysis (2014), Losing Your Head: Abjection, Aesthetic Conflict, and Psychoanalytic Criticism (2015), The Analytic Field and its Transformations (with A. Ferro, 2015), Truth and the Unconscious (2016), An Apocryphal Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (2019), A Short Introduction to Psychoanalysis (with A. Ferro, 2018), Sublime Subjects: Aesthetic Experience and Intersubjectivity in Psychoanalysis (2018). He edited Bion and Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Reading A Memoir of the Future (2018) and co-edited The W.R. Bion Tradition: Lines of Development—Evolution of Theory and Practice over the Decades (2015). He is the past editor-inchief of the Rivista di Psicoanalisi, the journal of the Italian Psychoanalytic Society.

Lawrence J. Brown, PhD, is a graduate of the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute (BPSI) in both child and adult psychoanalysis and a supervising analyst and co-chair of the child analysis program at BPSI. He is on the editorial board of the Psychoanalytic Quarterly and is president of the Boston Group for Psychoanalytic Studies. He is the author of Intersubjective Processes and the Unconscious: An Integration of Freudian, Kleinian and Bionian Perspectives (Routledge, 2011) and Transformational Processes in Clinical Psychoanalysis: Dreaming, Emotions and the Present Moment (Routledge, 2018). He co-edited (with Howard Levine) Growth and Turbulence in the Container/Contained: Bion’s Continuing Legacy (Routledge, 2013) and (with Gabriela Legorreta) On Freud’s ‘Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning’ (Karnac, 2016), and is currently editing a book of essays on Freud’s Moses and Monotheism (Routledge, forthcoming). He has written extensively on various topics, including the Oedipus complex, trauma, countertransference dreams, the analytic setting, aspects of Bion’s work, autistic spectrum disorders in children, and psychoanalytic field theory.

Barbara D’Amato, PsyaD, LP, is on the faculties of the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies (CMPS) and the New York Graduate School of Psychoanalysis (NYGSP). She is Director of the CMPS Distance Learning Program. She has had an interest in dreams and dreaming for many years and has written extensively on literary authors and their dreams, the function of aggression in dreams, and the modern psychoanalytic approach to working with dreams. She has presented internationally on dream topics and research. Her forthcoming paper, “A Waking Dream: Condensation and Symbolism in Bob Dylan’s ‘Murder Most Foul’,” addresses the Bionian topic of continuous dream states as well as Freud’s most important dream formulations. She is in private practice in Bay Ridge and Union Square.

Richard J. Sacks, MA, LP, Conference Chair, is on the faculty of the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies, where he also serves as Director of Professional Events. He has a special interest in gender identity theory. He maintains a private practice in psychoanalysis in New York City.