A Day with Anthony Bass, Ph.D.

About the Presentation

Morning Session: Unconscious Communication between Therapist and Patient: The Ordinary Uncanniness of Everyday Psychoanalytic Life-- Back to the Future of Psychoanalysis

Tony Bass will consider the ways that bi-directional unconscious communication (the dialogue of unconsciouses that constitutes psychoanalytic work) is a central feature of our daily life with our patients and our therapists, and the root of the sense of the uncanniness of human relations that are integral to the sense of what it is like to be in an analytic relationship. The absence of such feelings may constitute an impasse, or obstacle, or sense of deadness in the transference/countertransference field. We will consider how therapist and patient can find their way back to life by making use of their imaginations, their curiosity and other forms of access to the life of the unconscious.

Afternoon Session: Psychotherapeutic Change and the Changing Therapist

Tony Bass will focus on therapeutic change and the changing therapist, as it is integral to complementary dimensions of psychotherapeutic co-participation, that take place in a shared field of one of a kind experience. Each therapeutic project is as unique as the two individuals participating in it, creating specific conditions for change that draw on the psychic resources of patient and therapist and how they are able to mobilize them and make use of them with one another. This is an inherently creative process, in which, as Loewald put it, analyst and patient are both artist and medium for one another.

He will explore the ways in which the therapeutic action of analytic work is relative to and makes use of the unique qualities of the dyad and must be discovered and worked out anew in each therapy relationship lest a procrustean bed of therapeutic principles leave parts of our patients with a place to hide but no place to be found, and so no place to heal. This working through process is inevitably a complementary and mutual one, however asymmetrical it may be in a given case in which one participant’s ability to make use of the process for change is linked to the others’.

About the Presenter

Anthony Bass, Ph.D. is an associate professor and a clinical consultant at the NYU Postdoctoral Program for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, and a training and supervising analyst at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. He was a founding editor of Psychoanalytic Dialogues, served 12 years as joint editor in chief, and is now editor emeritus. He was also a founding director of IARPP and the Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Studies, where he is president. He leads clinical study groups and workshops centered on the therapy relationship, unconscious communication, and the work of Sandor Ferenczi, in North America, Europe and Israel. He is on the board of directors of the Sandor Ferenczi Center at the New School for Social Research in New York City, where he is in private practice for psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, couples work and supervisory consultation.

Learning Objectives:

At the conclusion of the  morning presentation, participants will be able to:

1. Participants will be able to describe the concept of the uncanny as Freud studied the phenomenon.

2. Participants will understand the origin of the ‘dialogue of unconsciouses’ that constitute psychoanalytic work, as first described by Sandor Ferenczi.

At the conclusion of the afternoon presentation, participants will be able to:

1. Participants will better understand the ways in which the patient’s change in therapy is linked to that of the patient.

2. Participants will be able to describe the ways in which an interlocking of transference and countertransference, and a mutual freeing of such interlocks, is fundamental to the change process in therapy.

Earlybird pricing shown.  Prices will increase Oct 1, 2024