Liminal Spaces: Between No Longer And Not Yet

Now offered entirely online. Three-part conference begins with a virtual panel on Friday evening, followed by two full days of panels and discussion, which may be attended online or in person, featuring keynotes by Adam Phillips and Claudia Rankine, and over 30 panelists.

Access the conference program here. 

FRIDAY, MARCH 31st, 5:30-7:30 PM/Eastern Daylight

This evening is an online-only event.

SATURDAY, APRIL 1st and SUNDAY, APRIL 2nd, 9:00 AM-6:00 PM/Eastern Daylight*

Weekend days may be selected for attendance in person on location OR online

* A limited number of on location places are available. Because of cautionary limits for in-person attendance, Saturday & Sunday are now offered online. Once location limits are met, only online attendance will be offered.

Location address:  Constantino Hall, Fordham University, 150 West 62nd Street, New York City

Boxed Lunch and beverages are included for the conference’s Saturday & Sunday on-location attendees.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

• Entry links for online attendance will be sent prior to the event to the email address supplied during registration.
• Please note that the Institute is not responsible for attendees’ Internet connection or reception.
• CE/CME credits are available for paid registrants, only.

You may register and attend Friday evening only, OR register for the entire Conference including Friday evening

Registration rates:

Attend the entire conference (includes Friday evening online AND Saturday & Sunday – in person OR online):

$375/professional or $175/student or candidate

OR

Purchase and attend ONLY the Friday evening virtual event:

$50/professional or $20/student or candidate

______________

Conference Agenda:

FRIDAY, MARCH 31st, 2023 from 5:30-7:30PM/Eastern

Capture the Invisible:  The Liminal Space in Photography 

Moderator:  Maria Nardone, Ph.D.

Panelists: Grace Aneiza Ali, Anton Hart, Ph.D. and Maggie Taylor

Liminality is as much a state of the human mind as it is a particular place. Artists in general, and photographers in particular,  enter a liminal state when they create. From this creative state of mind, the photographer looks in from the outside and out from within, in the creation of their images.  Psychoanalysts work similarly in a state in tune with their own thoughts and feelings while listening to their patients. During this session our photographers will share images of their work while discussing their perspective on liminality with our psychoanalysts.

SCHEDULE & DETAILS FOR SATURDAY & SUNDAY

SATURDAY, APRIL 1st, 2023

Introduction: Jean Petrucelli, Ph.D.

9:00- 9:10am

Keynote: Adam Phillips

9:15 – 10:30am

Psychoanalysis for Beginners

Coffee Break 10:30-10:45am

PANEL I

10:45-12:15pm

Transitionality, Illusion, and Play: Invitations and Foreclosures

Moderator: Jill Gentile, Ph.D.

Panelists: Sarah Schoen, Ph.D., Stephen Seligman, DMH, Don Troise, LCSW

Play is increasingly understood as an essential aspect of human development and psychotherapeutic action. Cultures can be more or less supportive of this transitional area, with its potentials for imaginative connection with ourselves, in relationships with others, as well as in the broader social surround. With that as a point of departure, these papers will take up how people do or do not find their way into this realm—in psychoanalysis, in the world outside the consulting room, and in the ways these locations intersect.

LUNCH 12:15-1:00pm

PANEL II

1:00-2:30pm

Embodied Liminality: Betwixt and Between as we cross Thresholds

Moderator: Anton Hart, PhD, FABP, FIPA

Velleda Ceccoli, Ph.D.; Susie Orbach, Ph.D.; Jean Petrucelli, Ph.D., FABP, CEDS-S

If we think of liminality as an ambiguous, transitional space that constitutes a form of generative embodiment, where power and powerlessness, separateness and communion ebb and flow with possibility, then perhaps we can begin to question what happens when such forms of embodiment are challenged? Is it possible to re-inscribe how we engage with one another on a “bodily level?” Are we then in a better place to challenge the body as the site of difference and embodiment acts as one of the constitutive forces that shapes subjectivities? As psychoanalysts, we can play in the liminal, co-creating opportunities to rehearse, shape, and deconstruct what is embodied and experienced. However, what happens when this space is crushed by political realities that threaten to govern and define our bodies and re-construct us through a cultural and social lens that confines possibilities and choice?

BREAK: 2:30-2:45pm

PANEL III

2:45-4:15pm

Queering the Gaze: Identity, Gender, and Sexuality

Moderator: Cynthia Chalker, LCSW

Panelists: Kirsten Lenz,Ph.D.; Adrienne Harris, Ph.D.; Mx. Mar Kidvai Padilla, MSEd, LMSW

What are the challenges to the perception and understanding within psychoanalysis of what may appear to be a complex swirl of sexualities and gender identities? Queer moves beyond the binary to create a fresh perspective. This panel will seek to “queer” the psychoanalytic lens by deconstructing and de-centering cis-heteropatriachial constructs of identity, gender, and sexuality.

BREAK 4:15-4:30pm

PANEL IV

4:30-6:00pm

Is This Really Happening?

Struggling to Stay Alive While Facing Illness, Disappearance, and Death

Moderator: Eugenio Duarte, Ph.D.

Panelists: Eugenio Duarte, Ph.D., Ph.D.; Ruth Livingston, Ph.D.; Anna DeForest, MD

Discussant: Susan Kolod, Ph.D.

This panel will focus on the emotional and psychological conflicts faced by individuals dealing with terminal or life-altering illness. These include living somewhere between aliveness and deadness, between old and new forms of being, between facing and denying heart-wrenching realities. Panelists will speak to the perspectives of the various players involved–patients, caregivers, and doctors. How can we foster resilience in such situations? What does it take to stay alive and present to the moment? To cherish rather than squander the remaining moments? These and other questions will be taken up.

SUNDAY, APRIL 2nd 2023

Welcome: Dr. Jean Petrucelli

Keynote: Claudia Rankine

9:00-10:15am

The Power In Powerlessness: Or, How Do We Live, Knowing the Limits That Exist in Our Ability to Negotiate Change?

Coffee Break 10:15-10:30am

PANEL I

10:30-12:00pm

Between Promise and Devastation: Poetic Forms in Psychoanalysis and Human Experience

Moderator: Elizabeth Halsted, Ph.D.

Panelists: Sandra Buechler, Ph.D.; Forrest Hamer, Ph.D.; Anna Vitale, LP; Cleonie White, Ph.D.

Poetry uses language, as well as rhythm and prosody in order to create new and heightened experience. Poetic forms can initiate a loss of the illusion of consensual reality. There is the possibility of upending conventional cultural norms and messages. This creates space for new individual meaning as well as opportunities to share experience in a novel form. This panel explores how psychoanalysis attunes to poetic forms, including metaphor, within the dyad, and explores how such forms invite the analysand into liminal spaces where the self can be discovered and transformed.

LUNCH: 12:00-1:00pm

PANEL II

1:00-2:30pm

The Intersectionality of Race and Gender

Moderator: Max Belkin, Ph.D.

Panelists: Rhona Kaplan, LCSW-R, Hannah Pocock, LCSW, Michelle Stephens, Ph.D., Usha Tummala-Narra, Ph.D.

Black feminist theory examines the intersection between different forms of oppression. This panel will discuss the ways in which the intersectional approach to understanding the interplay between race and gender that is rooted in Black feminism can enrich the clinical practice of psychoanalysis, somatically informed psychotherapy with trauma survivors, and group psychotherapy.

BREAK 2:30-2:45pm

PANEL III

2:45-4:15pm

Living in the Liminal Space, an AAPI Experience

Moderator: Sophia Cai

Panelists: Karen Chuck, JD, LCSW-R; Milan Patel, MD; Arun Venugopal

Asians in America exist in a middle state; “privileged” due to proximity to whiteness and the label of “model minority,” while simultaneously construed as “foreign” and not fully American. Growing up as an AAPI person in America requires existing in the paradox of privilege and negation, which has deep clinical implications. Clinical work with AAIP clients must be contextualized by the complex social and historical forces that shape their lived experience.

BREAK 4:15-4:30

PANEL IV

4:30-6:00pm

Transcendental and the Uncanny: The Liminality of Death Itself

Co-Moderators: Rande Brown, LCSW and Naomi Snider, LLM, LP

Panelists: Alexis Tomarken, Ph.D, Koshin Paley Ellison, MFA, LMSW, DMIN, Leanne Domash, Ph.D.

Freud’s materialistic understanding of death as the end of human consciousness (1915) continues to be treated as axiomatic within psychoanalytic theory and practice. From this perspective, belief in an afterlife is reduced to magical thinking. In what ways does this orthodoxy foreclose deeper exploration with patients of the nature of being and non-being and the spaces in between? Contemporary psychoanalysis has become more open to the “extraordinary” and uncanny ways in which minds meet in defiance of traditional boundaries of space and time. Yet, remarkably little has been said about how such experiences might shape our relationship to death and the deceased. Against this backdrop of silence and silencing, panelists will explore expanded understandings of consciousness and their impact on psychoanalytic encounters with death, loss, and the vagaries of living.