Turning Points
Transformative Experiences in
Depth Psychotherapy

A Clinical Conference with
Allen Bishop, JoAnn Culbert-Koehn, Lionel Corbett, Aaron Kipnis,
Donald Marcus, and Mary Watkins

July 23–25, 2004
Radisson Hotel
Santa Barbara, California

This conference is designed for mental health practitioners and students in clinical and counseling psychology programs.

A profound and rich gift that we as therapists can give to each other is to share our understanding of our personal journeys. In particular, the unique moments arising out of inner and outer events profoundly influence how we work and who we are. What we know is that good therapeutic work involves growth and transformation in both individuals. It requires that we as psychotherapists actively participate and hold ourselves open to being affected through the connection to self and other. Our therapeutic work is a personal, professional, and common human journey that cannot escape being affected by events in our consulting rooms and in the world around us.

Through honest, vulnerable, and insightful dialogue and discussion, five noted therapists will share those encounters and experiences which have challenged, disturbed, and initiated increased integration in themselves and their patients. They will lead us in an exploration of ways to share this rich, but too often private aspect of depth psychotherapeutic practice. Following Searles' concept of 'patient as therapist to the analyst,’ this conference will open the door into the soul of the therapist to reveal a depth of experience that could shift our traditional views of psychotherapy.

Conference Program and Special Pre-Conference Reception
At the edge of the Pacific Ocean, overlooking the Channel Islands, and in full view of the Santa Ynez Mountains, one of Santa Barbara’s historic Spanish hotels, The Radisson, blends indoor intimacy with outdoor ambiance for this year’s conference.

In addition to the conference program, there will be ample opportunity for socializing, exchanging ideas, and quiet walks on the beach. A Friday evening reception, continental breakfasts, and lunch on Saturday are included for your convenience and to provide an opportunity for ongoing dialogue and exchange.

Check-in for the conference will be Friday afternoon from 4:00-6:00 pm, preceding the reception from 6:00-7:30 pm and keynote presentation at 7:30 pm. The conference will end on Sunday at 12:15 pm.

We hope you will join us in July for a stimulating, provocative, and enjoyable conference in beautiful Santa Barbara.

Conference Schedule

Conference Presentations

On Being Pushed to Grow "The Patient as Therapist"
Allen Bishop, Ph.D., Conference Moderator

Over a quarter century ago, Harold Searles drew our attention to what he called "psychotherapeutic strivings" in our patients. By this he meant the patient’s desire and attempts to "cure" the analyst of their limitations and conflicts, which have emerged in the course of treatment. The conference opening and closing remarks will be dedicated to looking at what facilitates and what inhibits the therapist’s capacity to accept the challenges of our patient’s interpretations. I will stress the need for psychoanalytic therapists to enter each new treatment with the desire for and openness to integrating conflicted and painful states of mind.

Allen Bishop, Ph.D., is completing his 6th year as the Chair of the Clinical Psychology Department at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Dr. Bishop received his analytic training at the Psychoanalytic Center of California in Los Angeles and served as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Psychoanalytic Child Psychotherapy at the Reiss-Davis Child Study Center. He served as a training and supervising analyst at the Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. Dr. Bishop continues to practice analysis in Santa Barbara, and this fall will be embarking on a research and writing sabbatical devoted to examining the ways in which the life of Beethoven illuminates issues around the confluence of hopelessness, transcendence of object need, and artistic creativity.

The Non-Dual Perspective in Psychotherapy
Lionel Corbett, M.D.

In this presentation, I will offer an alternative to the traditional notion that psychotherapy occurs between two individuals who produce an inter subjective field. Instead, I will describe a perspective that sees no fundamental separation between therapist and patient. In this model, both are manifestations of, and are contained within, a super ordinate field of Consciousness. We are separate at the level of the ego and conventional reality, but at the deeper level of the transpersonal Self we are not divided. Each of us is a part of this Totality, and therapist and patient are simply meeting aspects of themselves. Because we know ourselves as the other, there is no "I-Thou" distinction. This approach broadens our usual understanding of the therapeutic field, changes the therapist’s view of his or her client, and builds a tentative bridge between psychotherapy, depth psychology, and the contemporary views of consciousness that are emerging from within quantum physics.

Lionel Corbett, M.D., trained in medicine and psychiatry in England and as a Jungian analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago. Dr. Corbett is a core faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute. He is particularly interested in the synthesis of psychoanalytic and Jungian ideas. His primary dedication has been to the religious function of the psyche, especially the way in which personal religious experience is relevant to individual psychology. He is the author of The Religious Function of the Psyche and is co-editor, with Dennis Patrick Slattery, of Depth Psychology: Meditations in the Field and Psychology at the Threshold. He has also authored Spirituality Beyond Religion, a set of audiotapes produced with Sounds True.

Echoes and Reverberations: Deep Reaches of the Mother Wound
JoAnn Culbert-Koehn, L.C.S.W.

In "General Problems in Psychotherapy," Jung writes that "a good half of every treatment that probes deeply consists in the doctor’s examining himself, for only what he can put right in himself can he hope to put right in his patient." When I first met my patient Frances on a May morning twenty-four years ago, I could not have predicted her powerful influence on my life or the years of self-examination that would come out of our work together. Ours was a quiet relationship, and there was an easy compatibility, but the threads that bound her psyche to mine led deeply into both the personal and collective unconscious. Frances has had a profound influence on the past twenty years of my work, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that issues that were stimulated in the work between us influenced my ability to speak out and to participate in this conference.

JoAnn Culbert-Koehn, LC.S.W., is President of the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles, where she has previously served as Director of Training and Co-Director of the Hilde Kirsch Children’s Center. She has taught internationally, most recently in Poland, China, and Mexico. Her work and writing integrate Jung, Klein, and Bion. Dr. Culbert-Koehn is an adjunct faculty member at Pacifica Graduate institute. She is currently Associate Editor at the Journal of Analytical Psychology. She is a Jungian analyst in private practice with adults and children in Beverley Hills, California.

Tending the Community Soul: Psychological Consulting with Groups
Aaron Kipnis, Ph.D.

While personal development, history, and unconscious influences produce some psychological artifacts, many also have social/cultural origins. In this presentation, I will discuss a widening of the traditional clinical sphere of influence (consulting room) to embrace larger groups (temenos). As one example of "culture as client," I will discuss a decade of working psychologically with western males in small and large groups and how that experience transformed my personal and professional psychology.

This material can benefit both psychologists and their patients in better understanding how cultural identity and experience can have a profound influence on individual treatment planning and implementation.

Aaron Kipnis, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in Santa Barbara, California and a core faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Dr. Kipnis is the author of Knights Without Armor: A Guide to the Inner Lives of Men; What Women and Men Really Want; and most recently Angry Young Men: How Parents, Counselors and Teachers Can Help "Bad Boys" Become Good Men. For access to online articles, chapters, weblog, vita and other information, please visit www.online.pacifica.edu/kipnis.

A Case in Which the Analyst May Have Grown as Much as the Patient
Donald Marcus, M.D.

When we speak of the transformation that occurs in depth psychotherapy, we ordinarily are referring to the change that occurs in the patient. In this case, both members of the dyad were transformed. The patient came to therapy to (re)gain access to a vital, passionate, sexual aspect of her personality, and this is what she achieved. I, as far as I could tell, wanted only to do the work I love with a patient who could use it. As an unintended consequence, however, I developed greater courage to use myself and my intuition in ways which, while contrary to my training, proved to be of great value to my patient. What may be of special interest to the conference participants is that the patient’s view of the analytic experience is liberally interspersed.

Donald Marcus, M.D., is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of California and the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute. Dr. Marcus was trained in "Classical American" Psychoanalysis, and then later had a Kleinian analysis and supervision with Wilfred Bion. He has written on Psychoanalytic Cure, Unconscious Communication, The Use of Countertransference, Self-Disclosure, and Sex and Love in Psychoanalysis.

Creating Critical Clinical Practice from the Mess of Misgivings
Mary Watkins, Ph.D.

Beneath the persona of clinical psychology’s efforts to present itself as a developed and accepted discipline and set of practices lie the welter of misgivings its practitioners are beset by in their daily efforts at healing. Powerful forces—institutionally and intra psychically—attempt to repress and silence these misgivings. Could it be that our careful listening to them, our meeting their challenges to our ways of thinking and practice, could provide the dynamic insight necessary to forge a critical practice of psychotherapy—one that is self-questioning and responsibly improvisational to meet the evolving needs of those we work with? Through sharing the path that has opened as a result of listening to my own misgivings in the course of a 25-year practice, I will open a space where we as practitioners can claim our exiled knowings as the gold they are in questioning our theories, re-orienting our practice, and dreaming psychotherapy into the multiple forms of healing human suffering requires.

Mary Watkins, Ph.D., is the Coordinator of Community and Ecological Fieldwork and Research in the Depth Psychology Doctoral Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Dr. Watkins is the author of Waking Dreams and Invisible Guests: The Development of Imaginal Dialogues; the co-author of Talking With Young Children About Adoption; a co-editor of "Psychology and the Promotion of Peace" (Journal of Social Issues, 44, 2), and essays on the confluence of liberation psychology and depth psychology. Her clinical training included object relations, Jungian, archetypal, phenomenological, and developmental approaches.