Saturday, June 22, 2024, at 9:00 am to 1:00 pm PST.
Symposium will be held at the David Brower Center and as a Live Streamed Webinar
Spring Symposium
The State of the World:
Facing our Brutality and Discovering Our Humanity
We have an increasing awareness of the violence that is plaguing the world. Social and news media bring reports of death tolls, destruction, and wide-spread human suffering to our daily attention causing us continuing concern, anxiety, and trauma.
To help us deepen our experience and traverse this global landscape, understand our triggers, and increase our capacity to respond, Era A. Loewenstein and Paula Christian Kliger will model bearing witness to on-going conflict and violence. Their teachings aim to help us to enhance our capacity to be in relationship with people from different racial, cultural, and political backgrounds during a time of considerable social fragmentation, adversity, and tribalism.
Paula and Era will each give a paper addressing these issues and engage participants in a creative psychoanalytic and personal discussion about cultural adversity and overcoming. The symposium is designed to help us hold space for our humanity and offer support to our families, clients, and communities.
Course Objectives:
- Participants will be able to describe the essence of fascistic states of mind including their reliance on omnipotent thinking, simplistic ideologies, attack on truth, racism, and the need to invent enemies.
- Participants will be able to describe how the practice of psychoanalysis can be utilized as a form of steady, peaceful resistance to the destructive seduction of fascist states of mind.
- Participants will be able to describe the value and impetus of deepening the self-reflective function to awaken the social un/conscious and to study the use of power.
- Participants will be able to describe in psychoanalytic work how the analytic therapist’s and patient’s blind spots of social divisiveness, racialized enactments, misuse of power, and the variations of "othering" show up as opportunities for reciprocal learning and transformational change.
Paula Christian Kliger, PhD, ABPP is a board-certified clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, and 35 years ago founded Psychological Assets and Kliger Consulting Group. With broad professional expertise in clinical, consultation and research practices, she works with children/adolescents, and adults and also represents professions, organizations/leaders, and family business clients from Fortune 500 multinational/global companies. She designs innovative socio-culturally-sensitive psychoanalytically-informed/humanistic programs presented throughout the US and internationally.
Dr. Kliger received the Public Leadership Credential (PLC) from Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School and was appointed IPA as the NA Region Representative of “The Community and the World Committee on Prejudice, Discrimination and Racism.” She is Chair of APSA’s DPE Section: The Psychoanalyst in the Community and is founding/member of Black Psychoanalysts Speak (BPS).
Dr. Kliger is an award-winning poet and illustrator and her co-produced podcast: “We Are Human First” received the 2020 Hermes International Creative Gold Award.
Era A. Loewenstein, Ph.D., is an adult, adolescent and child psychoanalyst and psychologist. She is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis where she serves on the faculty.
Era is a frequent presenter and discussant locally, nationally, and internationally on various topics including trauma, transgenerational transmission of trauma, the treatment of severe disorders such as perversion. Particularly dear to Era was her research on the creative process of the beloved illustrator Maurice Sendak as it related to his childhood trauma.
Era was an Associate Board member of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. In 2007 Era received, on behalf of the Child Development Program of SFCP, from APsA The Children and Family Community Service Award. Since the election of Trump Era has been exploring fascistic states of mind. Among her recent publications are: Dystopian Narratives: Encounters with the Perverse Sadomasochistic Universe. (Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 2017) and The Agitator and His Propaganda Machine: Donald Trump and the Road to American Fascism (Fort Da, 2018). Era is the Editor of the Psychoanalytic Inquiry Issue: Perspectives on Populist and Fascistic States of Mind (2023). The Issue includes her own paper: In Dark Times: Psychoanalytic Praxis as a Form of Resistance to Fascist Propaganda.
Date & Time: Saturday, June 22, 2024, from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm PST.
For in-person attendees, registration begins at 8:30 am.
Pastries, coffee and teas from around the world will be available.
Location: The David Brower Center, 2150 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA 94704 (get map and directions)
Parking: is available in the Oxford Garage directly below the Brower Center. Entrance is on Kittredge St.
Virtual Attendees will receive course instructions and meeting link a few days prior to event.
Contact Administrative Coordinator Sierra Wilson with any questions or concerns: swilson@tpi-berkeley.org.
| Fee if Registration Completed: | Early Bird by 04/29/24 | after 04/29/24 | after 06/03/24 |
| TPI Members | $115 | $140 | $165 |
| Nonmembers | $140 | $165 | $190 |
| Prelicensed Students/Associates | $100 | $125 | $150 |
CE: 4 Credits. $5 additional fee per CE credit (i.e. 4 CE credits is $20 total). Attendees must participate in live sessions to receive CE's. The Psychotherapy Institute is approved by the California Psychological Association to provide continuing professional education for psychologists, LMFTs, LCSWs, and LPCCs (provider number PSY005). The California Board of Behavioral Sciences accepts continuing education credit granted by the California Psychological Association or by any of its Approved Providers. The Psychotherapy Institute maintains responsibility for this program and its content. (see Registration and Course Policies).