Integrating his thinking about airless worlds and needed relationships, in this talk Dr. Stern will get into the weeds of the kinds of clinical process through which patients suffering from airless world syndrome can be helped to liberate themselves from their psychic captivities. He will focus on five major principles or constructs as applied in two clinical examples: one relatively brief, the other more extended. The first four principles are: deconstruction (or co-deconstruction), re-subjectification, the needed relationship, and complex selfobjects. The needed relationship is the primary orienting principle. Deconstruction and re-subjectification are central elements of the needed relationship with airless world patients. A complex selfobject connection is the yield of the needed relationship as it evolves over time and is central to the transformational process. A fifth term, breathing together, is a more phenomenological characterization of the emergence of complex selfobject connectedness. Learning to “breathe together” is necessary for the patient to be able to resume psychic breathing on their own.
Steve Stern
Steven Stern, PsyD, is a faculty member, teacher and supervisor at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis (MIP) and the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity (IPSS) in NYC, and is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Maine Medical Center and Tufts University School of Medicine. He is a former member of the International Council of the International Association of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology and serves on the editorial board of Psychoanalysis, Self, and Context. He has been a frequent contributor to the contemporary psychoanalytic literature, with a particular interest in theoretical integration. His book, Needed Relationships and Psychoanalytic Healing: A Holistic Relational Perspective on the Therapeutic Process was published by Routledge in 2017 in the “Psychoanalysis in a New Key Book Series.” A second book, Airless Worlds and the Restoration of Psychic Breathing is in preparation, also for publication by Routledge. Dr. Stern practices in Portland, ME with specializations in psychoanalysis, psychodynamic psychotherapy, couples therapy, clinical supervision and consultation.
Gordon Powell
Gordon Powell LCSW is a psychoanalytically trained social worker in private practice in New York City. He proudly graduated from TRISP back in 1998, when it was a four-year psychoanalytic training institute. He has taught, supervised, and served as a training analyst at three institutes in New York City: TRISP, ICP (the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy), and PPSC (the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center). He is the author of a chapter entitled “Intersubjective Self Psychology and Sexuality: What Matters” in TRISP’s Intersubjective Self Psychology: A Primer (2019).
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