The theme of this year’s Self Psychology conference in Chicago was “Forms and Transformations of Connectedness.” Connectedness is an idea that Dick Geist has examined and written about extensively in the past six or seven years, and I suspect the title of the conference was a tip of the Self Psychological cap in Geist’s direction. This suspicion was made stronger by the fact that Geist was the keynote presenter at the first plenary on Friday, the official first day of the conference. Implicit in the idea of connectedness is the assumption of the necessity of attending to the selfobject transference. Geist does not write often about the selfobject transferences, but they are an important part of his clinical thinking. (Full disclosure: Geist has been my supervisor for four years.) The selfobject transferences had been strikingly absent from the previous two conferences, as if they had been pointedly uninvited.
For me, steeped as I am in the ideas of Kohut and in the intellectual tradition of Stolorow and Atwood’s Self Psychological intersubjectivity, this year’s theme represents a welcome return by the larger Self Psychology community to a continued discussion of Kohut’s ideas.
Contributed by Gordon Powell
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I like your style very much. And have a Merry Christmas!
Going along with Gordon’s entry, for me, this year’s conference was exciting as it was focused on an expansion of Kohut’s ideas. it was Chicago after all. Dick Geist’s clinical process demonstrates the importance of empathic immersion. His ideas are steeped in classical self psychology, psychology and intersubjectivity. In my view, he has extended empathy and empathic immersion. His clinical process is like a conversation with his patients while considering the self object, relational, affective and proceedural dimensions.
Nicely put, Shake’. I’m late in replying, but I did enjoy that conference a lot. Also liked and took in the remarks in the blog. Thanks for reminding us of the work.