In this presentation Marcia Dobson will elucidate how intersubjective ways of relating can evoke extra-ordinary experiences that extend beyond ordinary interchanges in the consulting room. Harkening to their sudden appearances in the therapeutic process opens us to a way of being and listening that can create heightened moments of shared substance in which we feel ourselves to be permeable with each other as well as the atmospheric surround. In the language of intersubjectivity, such moments occur when the forward (leading) edges of both analyst and patient are mutually attuned. They are experienced as spontaneous moments of energy that draw analyst and patient together into heightened affective states. They tend to occur in moments of deep empathic resonance with those of our patients whom we perceive to be felt presences in our lives. This can lead to profound healing.
Dr. Dobson’s goal is to increase our flexibility and sensitivity as therapists to various experiences in which the inexplicable occurs. Focusing on parts of her recent book, Metamorphoses of Psyche in Psychoanalysis and Ancient Greek Thought: From Mourning to Creativity, she explores these liminal or threshold states through her own early autobiography and her later therapeutic experiences with patients.
Marcia Dobson
Marcia D-S. Dobson is an award-winning professor of Classics at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, where she has taught the ancient Greek language, history, religion, myth, and literature for over 40 years. In mid-life she received a second Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology with an Emphasis on Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, CA, and is now a practicing, psychoanalytically oriented self psychologist in Colorado Springs. Marcia and her husband, John Riker, a professor of philosophy, initiated the popular Psychoanalysis Minor at Colorado College in 2007, and take a class of CC students to Chicago every year to learn from the psychoanalysts there who are associated with the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. They published a Psychoanalytic Inquiry issue in 2019 about the Chicago course.
Marcia has published numerous articles in addition to her recent book, Metamorphoses of Psyche in Psychoanalysis and Ancient Greek Thought, in the Art, Creativity, and Psychoanalysis series edited by George Hagman. Marcia, along with George Hagman, and John Riker, has recently been appointed editor in chief of Psychoanalysis, Self, and Context. She is an avid participant in TRISP.
George Hagman
George Hagman is a clinical social worker and psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City and Stamford, Connecticut. He is on faculty of the Training and Research in Intersubjective Self Psychology, and is a training analyst, supervisor, and faculty member of the Westchester Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. George is co-editor with Peter Zimmermann and Harry Paul of Intersubjective Self Psychology: A Primer (Routledge, 2019). He is also the Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Psychoanalysis, Self, and Context.
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