For fellow clinicians, I offer consultation and supervision on clinical cases that present a unique set of challenges. In particular, I provide theoretical and technical guidance to clinicians whose patients do not respond well to the so-called traditional interpretive methods and/or insight-oriented psychotherapeutic approaches.
Patients engaged in both concrete and perverse defenses
The clinical literature often describes these patients as “difficult” patients because they do not respond well to the traditional psychotherapeutic treatment. However, according to a particular post-Freudian, contemporary, theoretical view, their unique psychic world requires a specific method of interpretation that is different from the interpretive method taught by Ego Psychology schools. I have many years of therapeutic and analytic experience treating concrete patients who employ perverse defenses.
Clinicians working with Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Gender Non-Conforming (LGBTQGNC) Population and/or clinicians who are interested in deepening their understanding of the link between psychoanalytic theory and gender/queer theory
In many years of working with patients in the LGBTGNC community, I have come to understand that Freudian theory is viewed as stemming from a phylogenetic orthodoxy that is invested in the examination not of gender difference (social constructionism) but that of sexual difference (biological determinism). However, not all Freudians regard the difference between men and women as biologically determined. The responsible psychoanalytic ethic indicates that we are in an era of gender-difference not sexual-difference. I offer guidance in thinking through the expression of gender and sexuality that incorporates an analysis and critique of the phylogenetic arguments of biological determinism so as to understand the unique needs of LGBTQNC clients.
Clinicians attentive to the Theory of Difference and/or seeking to incorporate Critical Race Theory
From its inception, psychoanalysis has always dealt with issues of race. Whereas culture is adaptable, racial difference is not. Racism is the answer to a person’s primary response when encountering another who provokes his or her resistance to difference. Freud consistently engaged with the examination of this primary response in his critique of ideology, hegemony, and in his meta-psychology. In other words, Freud emphasized the influence one’s external environment has on the development of the mind, on a person’s internal reality, and on psychosexual development. Therefore, it is correct to say that Freudian theory offers a theory of difference. Or, more specifically, Freudian theory is a theory that illustrates how the mind develops in response to the experience of difference.
For many years I have worked with patients who have previously gone through psychotherapy and/or psychoanalysis and experienced difficulty working with clinicians who failed to understand their experience of racism. I also see that there is a tendency amongst clinicians to be dismissive of patients’ experience of racism because they claim racism does not concern the patients’ psychic conflicts. I help clinicians to attentively look at their own resistance to the examination of difference and analyze the effect of racism so that they can provide effective treatment to their patients.