Psychoanalytic Complexity: Theoretical Innovation and Clinical Practice*
Speaker: William J. Coburn, Ph.D., Psy.D., psychoanalyst

*The presentation will be given in English. Simultaneous translation will be available both from English to French and from French to English (during the question period).

Date: Saturday May 1st 2010, from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (Registration starts at 8:30 a.m.)
Location: Le Nouvel Hôtel, room Dorchester / Maisonneuve
1740 West René-Lévesque Blvd, Montréal, (514) 931-8841
Metro Guy-Concordia
Indoor parking: entrance on Saint-Mathieu St.

To register, please download the brochure at the bottom of this page.

The Conference
At this conference, Bill Coburn will introduce and elaborate a Psychoanalytic Complexity Perspective, a cutting-edge approach to applying nonlinear dynamics systems theory to psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice. Although well-established in disciplines such as physics, molecular biology, and many other natural sciences, the study of complexity is relatively new to psychoanalysis. This new perspective is enhancing the theory of intersubjectivity’s explanatory capacity and it is now revolutionizing our views about the emergence and transformation of emotional life and meaning. Psychoanalysts and psychotherapists are thereby offered a richer paradigm with which to engage in the experiential worlds of each of their patients. Psychoanalytic Complexity Theory embodies a deep respect for the complexity of human experiencing, profoundly altering our conceptualizations of human development, psychopathology, relationality, and therapeutic action and change. Complexity is concerned with:

• the emergence and patterning of emotional experience from the self-organization and cooperation of many parts;
  
• the conditions necessary to produce adaptive change;
  
• the process of making meaning out of apparent randomness;
  
• the process by which the "rules" of human relating change as a result of the "play";
  
• a vision of the clinical narrative as an emergent property of the larger relational and historical system of which each of the participant is an integral constituent.

The therapeutic advantage of a psychoanalytic complexity sensibility emerges not in technical prescriptions, but through a modification of the therapist’s essential attitudes and presuppositions about the patient and the therapeutic relationship that may determine a positive therapeutic outcome. Bill Coburn’s explication of Complexity Theory will be augmented by a dramatic slide and video presentation along with rich clinical examples. Registrants can expect to leave with a sound understanding of the fundamentals of complexity theory and its therapeutic application to human relating, emotional experience, meaning-making, and therapeutic action and change.

Learning Objectives
During this one day conference, participants will first be given a review of the central concepts of Complexity Theory and their application to psychoanalytic theory and practice. Application of this new understanding by the participants will enhance their understanding of the clinical exchange in the following way:

• Participants will form a more in-depth and contemporary understanding of the current usage of this theoretical approach in the understanding of human development, psychopathology, relationality and the process of change.
  
• Participants will improve their ability to recognize and apply these ideas to their own work in psychotherapy by being able to recognize the emergence and patterning of emotional experience from the self-organization and cooperation of many parts.
  
• Participants will gain an understanding of how Contemporary Self Psychology and the clinical approaches informed by these ideas and principles enable the therapist to facilitate the making of meaning out of randomness and to create conditions necessary for adaptive change.

The Speaker
Bill Coburn is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology and is an Editorial Board Member of Psychoanalytic Inquiry. He is a Faculty Member and Training and Supervising Analyst at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles and at the Northwestern Center for Psychoanalysis in Portland, Oregon. He is a Council Member of the International Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology (IAPSP) and an Advisory Board Member of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (IARPP). Author of numerous articles and book chapters, he has researched and written extensively in the areas of intersubjectivity, complexity, countertransference, and supervision. He recently co-edited and published, with Nancy VanDerHeide, Self and Systems: Explorations in Contemporary Self Psychology, and is currently co-editing, with Roger Frie, a book titled The Challenge of Individuality: New Perspectives in Psychoanalytic Contextualism (Routledge).

Partial Bibliography

• * Coburn, W. J. (2007). Psychoanalytic complexity: Pouring new wine directly into one’s mouth. In: New Developements in Self Psychology Practice, eds. P. Buirski & A. Kottler. New York: Jason Aronson.
  
• * Coburn, W. J. (2002). A world of systems: The role of systemic patterns of experience in the therapeutic Process. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 22:655-677.
  
• * Coburn, W. J. (2008). Attitudes in psychoanalytic complexity: An alternative to postmodernism in psychoanalysis. In: Beyond Postmodernism: New Dimensions in Clinical Theory and Practice, eds. R. Frie & D. Orange. New York: Routledge Press.

* Available for downloading in the Member's section. To become a member of the GEI and benefit from the members' privileges, please visit our To Join page.

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