APSA_NY12-402

Scientific Paper 5: : The Dignity of the Thing: Lacan’s Ethics of Sublimation

Speakers: Author: Mari Ruti, PhD (Toronto, Canada)

This paper illustrates why Lacan’s theory of sublimation — of raising an ordinary object into “the dignity of the Thing” — introduces a code of ethics that enables the individual to resist dominant social norms. This alternative ethical code is not a matter of deliberating on the rightness or wrongness of actions, but rather of following the thread of one’s desire even when doing so proves socially inconvenient. Because it allows the individual to create space for desires, values, and patterns of appreciation that reach beyond the “reality principle” of the collectivity, it functions as an effective antidote to contemporary nihilism.

MP3

$10.00

$10.00

APSA_NY12-305

Scientific Paper 1: : 9/11And the India/Pakistan Partition: Trauma and Dissociation

Speakers: Alan Roland, PhD (New York, NY), Author

This paper adds new dimensions to the understanding of trauma and dissociation by exploring personal and patients’ reactions to the experience of 9/11, and by in-depth interviews with a Jain Indian family caught in a train massacre in 1947 during the India/Pakistan Partition. For the former, the emotional resonance of 9/11 feelings of catastrophe with a traumatic visual/emotional dissociated memory from 18 months old enabled it to surface; while for the latter, the train massacre and disappearance of the two youngest siblings has had ripple effects not only inter-generationally but throughout the family.

MP3

$10.00

$10.00

APSA_NY12-401

Neuroscience Symposium: Empirical Social Cognitive Neuroscience Research as a Basis for a Comprehensive Theory of Psychotherapeutic Change

Speakers: George G. Fishman, MD (Chestnut Hill, MA); Andrew J. Gerber, MD, PhD (New York, NY); Glen O. Gabbard, MD (Houston, TX)

This session proposes a theory of psychotherapeutic change composed of three components: (1) Exposure (aka making the unconscious conscious), (2) Restructuring of relationship representations (aka transference and interpersonal work), and (3) Co-construction of a coherent narrative (aka developing a secure attachment). Empirical data from contemporary social cognitive neuroscience, including Dr. Andrew Gerber’s data from an fMRI adaptation of Susan Andersen’s transference paradigm, are used to support this argument and to propose empirically testable hypotheses about therapeutic change and the appropriate tailoring of interventions to specific patients and situations. Some pilot data from MRI studies of therapeutic change across different types of psychotherapy are presented. All are discussed in the context of a psychoanalytic metapsychology and relevance to the relationship between psychoanalysis and empirical research.

MP3

$10.00

$10.00

Subtotal

$30.00