Love as seen through a developmental empathic lens*
Speaker: Joseph D. Lichtenberg, M.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 7th 2011
Time: 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
Love – everyone knows what that means, but do we really? In this presentation, Dr Lichtenberg will consider the many splendored variations of love and loving and their connections to the intentions and goals of differing motivational systems. Dr Lichtenberg is the main author of the psychoanalytic motivational systems theory through which we can come to understand, and sometimes explain, complex intentions, goals and mental states through an empathic developmental lens. Loving and being loved is one of those complex affect state which involves all of the motivational systems and their interplay.

In his talk, Dr Lichtenberg will first focus an empathic lens where love and loving all begin, that is on the interactions of the parent’s caregiving system and the infant’s attachment and sensual systems. Turning to a developmental perspective on the life cycle, he will distinguish between childhood, adolescent, and adult dyadic and triadic attachment love, romantic love, lustful love, and lust without love. He proposes that «the foundational pattern of triadic relations that forms early in life becomes central to romantic love and rivalry in the oedipal phase, shifts form in middle childhood and young adolescence to same-sex intense friendships, generally shifts again in later adolescence to opposite sex desire, and again shifts in adult relationships.» (Psychoanalysis and Motivational Systems: A New Look, 2010, p.92.)

Dr Lichtenberg’s presentation will be augmented by multiple illustrations derived from infants and children’ s observations in developmental research and adults in clinical situations.

The Speaker
Dr. Joseph Lichtenberg is a practicing psychoanalyst in Washington, D.C. He has written and published extensively about the psychoses, psychosomatic illnesses, literature and creativity, psychoanalytic theory, attachment theory and research, affective development, and the technique of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.

Dr. Lichtenberg is the chairman of an on-going workshop/seminar on creativity, past President of the International Council of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, Corresponding Member of the Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis (Los Angeles), Supervising Analyst of the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity (New York), a member of the Klein- Rappaport Study Group, and on the editorial boards of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. He is also on the Advisory Board of the Institute for the Advancement of Self Psychology (Toronto). He is the Editor-in-Chief of Psychoanalytic Inquiry and the Psychoanalytic Inquiry Book Series. He is a Founder and Director Emeritus of the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis (Washington, DC). He is the co-editor of Reflections on Self Psychology (1983), Empathy I and II (1984), and Attachment and Sexuality (2007).

He is the author of The Talking Cure (1985), Psychoanalysis and Infant Research (1983), Psychoanalysis and Motivation (1989), and with Frank Lachmann and James Fosshage: Self and Motivational Systems: Toward a Theory of Psychoanalytic Technique (1992), The Clinical Exchange: Techniques Derived From Self and Motivational Systems (1996), A Spirit of Inquiry: Communication in Psychoanalysis (2002), and recently Psychoanalysis and Motivational Systems: A New Look (2010). In 2005 he wrote Craft and Spirit: A Guide for the Exploratory Psychotherapies, and in 2007, Sensuality and Sexuality Across the Divide of Shame.

Learning Objectives
During this one day conference, participants will first be given a review of the central concepts of the motivational systems theory and their application to the clinical situation in understanding intentions, goals and mental states as exemplified by the complex affect of love. Application of this understanding by the participants will enhance their approach to the clinical exchange in the following way:

• Participants will improve their ability in the clinical exchange to make meaningful inferences about the emotions, intentions and goals of others and one’s self, as seen through a developmental empathic lens.
  
• Participants will improve their ability to recognize and apply these ideas to their own work in psychotherapy by being able to recognize the constant multiple shifts of motivational dominance in the intersubjective field they constitute with patients.

Organizing Committee
Lucie Lalonde, psychologist
Marie Noël, psychologist
Annette Richard, psychologist, president of the GEI

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