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Working Group
on the Study and Development
of Psychoanalysis
Future seminars
"OUTSTANDING CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOANALYSTS"
The Working Group for the Study and Development of Psychoanalysis invites you to participate in seminars by internationally recognized contemporary psychoanalysts.
Online lecture and supervision
Christine English
The Kleinian approach to narcissism
26 October, 2 and 23 November, 7 and 14 December 2025
This autumn Christine English will teach a 5-seminar series on the subject of Narcissism in Kleinian psychoanalysis. In the first seminar of the series (October 26th 2025) we will revisit Freud’s seminar paper ‘On Narcissism’, in which he fully elaborates the concept. We will look at this in conjunction with Hanna Segal and David Bell’s paper, ‘The theory of narcissism in the work of friend and Klein’, which very helpfully discusses Freud’s paper and explores the development of his theory of narcissism in the work of Melanie Klein.
In seminar 2 (2nd November 2025) we shall look first at Rachel Blass’s paper, ‘Freud’s view of death and repetition as grounds of a Kleinian approach to narcissism: implications for clinical practice’. This paper further considers the grounding of Klein’s work in Freud's, especially his thinking about the death instinct, and addresses what characterises Kleinian clinical practice. We will also study Denis Flynn and Helga Skogstad’s paper, ‘Facing towards or turning away from destructive narcissism’. With clinical material from work with adolescents, they address the theory of destructive narcissism as elaborated by Freud and then Rosenfeld.
In seminar 3 (23rd November 2025) we will look at another of Hanna Segal’s papers, ‘Some clinical implications of Melanie Klein’s work: emergence from narcissism’, in which she elaborates her own view that a narcissistic personality structure serves as a defence against the death instinct and envy. We will then study Leslie Sohn’s paper, ‘Narcissistic organisation, projective identification, and the formation of the identifícate’. Here, Sohn describes a narcissistic organisation in which psychic equilibrium is upheld through an identificatory process which establishes an ‘identifícate’, an internal object which has assumed the characteristics of another object which has been taken over. This serves as a powerful defence against the recognition of envy, dependence, need and illness.
In seminar 4 (7th December 2025) we will look at two of John Steiner’s papers, ‘Perverse relationships between parts of the self: a clinical illustration’, and ‘Seeing and being seen: Narcissistic pride and narcissistic humiliation’. The first uses detailed clinical material to highlight the difficulty of making contact with a patient with a narcissistic personality structure. The second looks at the challenges connected with emergence from a narcissistic retreat, which entails the recognition of separateness and then the experience of seeing and being seen, which may be felt as a total humiliation.
The final seminar (14th December 2025) will focus on the work of Ron Britton, looking at two of his more recent papers. The first, ‘Libidinal and destructive narcissism’, considers the difficulties patients with narcissistic disorders face in analysis, including those posed by the internal saboteur. The second, ‘Narcissistic problems in sharing space’, addresses the problems and anxieties which arise where mental space seeps, as it inevitably does, into physical space. The roots of such difficulties in early failures of containment are considered.
Dear Colleagues!
We had an interview with a famous French psychoanalyst and author Marilia Aisenstein (conducted by IPA psychoanalyst Mikhail Yerish, interpreter Yakov Podolniy).Marilia Aisenstein speaks about herself, her life journey, how she became a psychoanalyst. The outstanding personalities she has worked with and learnt from. About such a key concept in psychoanalysis as masochism. About her contribution to the theory and practice of psychoanalytic treatment of psychosomatic disorders.
Marilia Aisenstein Interview
The Working Group for the Study and Development of Psychoanalysis invites you to participate in seminars by internationally recognized contemporary psychoanalysts
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