The Wounds of History: Repair and Resilience in the Trans-Generational Transmission of Trauma

March 1, 2 and 3, 2013

NYU Kimmel Center
60 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012

Sponsored by:
NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, The Psychoanalytic Society of the Postdoctoral Program, and the NYU-GSAS Trauma and Violence Transdisciplinary Studies Program.

This weekend conference will address how the traumatic legacies of our forbearers haunt our psyches, our relationships, our cultural collectives and shape our lives. Bedrock to this inquiry is the understanding that traumatic legacies are transmitted across multiple generations and therefore will inevitably return and disrupt human bonds. Invited speakers and faculty of the NYU Postdoctoral Program will present films, papers and engage in conversations that focus on healing and resilience in the face of trans-generational transmission of trauma. Through first person testimony, open discussions, film clips, shared meals and optional process group experience, attendees will participate in this repair.

Co-chairs:
Sue Grand, PhD and Jill Salberg, PhD

Conference Committee:
Judie Alpert, PhD, Melinda Gellman, PhD, Elizabeth Goren, PhD, Debbie Liner, PhD, Jan Lobel, PhD, Lu Steinberg, PsyD, Isaac Tylim, PhD, Barbara Waxenberg, PhD, Debbie Waxenberg, PhD

Registration and information

The New Directions Program of the Washington Center for Psychoanalysis

Are you interested in writing?
If you are interested in writing, either personal or professional, non-fiction, fiction or poetry, please take a look at New Directions, a three-year program that combines writing and psychoanalytic thinking. Sponsored by the Washington Center for Psychoanalysis, New Directions consists of three weekend conferences a year, each focused on a different psychoanalytic theme, with a variety of writing groups, workshops and retreats. We are beginning our 16th year and have a wonderful community, made up of people from around the U.S., Canada and Europe, who are committed to writing and psychoanalytic thought.

For more information and a link to our 2012-2013 brochure, please visit our website. Or get in touch with us directly - Sharon Alperovitz, Catherine Anderson, Don Chiapinelli, Bob Winer, Kerry Malawista and Mary Carpenter, all program co-chairs.

And here's a bit more detail:
In seasonal weekend conferences and optional six-day summer and four-day winter retreats, our community of students, alumni, teachers, and guest faculty come together to explore selected aspects of the psychoanalytic domain. Upcoming conference topics are: queering the couch, the mind of the child in the adult, home, surface to depth, the writing alliance, love and hate in the kitchen, mid-life and beyond, the writer's voice, and betrayal. Recent guest faculty have included Patrick Casement, Ethel Person, Jay Greenberg, Daniel Schacter, Warren Poland, Christine Courtois, Jessica Benjamin, Philip Ringstrom, Darlene Ehrenberg, Theodore Jacobs, Salman Akhtar and Regina Pally, among others.

A special focus of the program is writing. While some of our students are extensively published and others are inexperienced, they are all invested in developing their authorial skills. Although the majority of them are pursuing professional writing, several are interested in the crafting of essay, memoir, fiction, and poetry. A variety of program components support this effort. We use groups that review brief assignments written for each conference, craft-oriented writing workshops, forums for critical review of published writing, and collaborations that facilitate ongoing writing projects. We have recruited a cadre of English teachers from area universities who are paired with our psychoanalyst faculty as writing group leaders. 

Many of our graduates continue to participate in the program because they find New Directions a supportive professional community in which they can continue to develop. Our students range in age from their thirties to their eighties, they come with a variety of perspectives, and, given the program's design, they are able to come from all over the continent and even from overseas.

Weekends run from 9 am Friday morning to 12:45 p.m. Sunday afternoon, including one evening session. The format includes both large group lectures and discussions and small group meetings, the latter primarily focusing on the participants' writing. Each weekend offers approximately eighteen hours of continuing education credit.

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