Here’s the link to the May, 2025 Newsletter.
The May 9, 2025 Community Meeting is 3-4:30 PM Mountain Time. The Zoom link is in the newsletter.
Thank you to those who participated in the CCMPS April 11 Community Meeting. Your contributions led to rich discussion. Attempting a discussion of intensity with those who do not know each other has its own kind of awkwardness, but you made it work.
If you missed the Friday, April 11 CCMPS Community Meeting, here’s the link to the video of the conversation. While we usually do not record CCMPS Community Meetings, we heard from several of you who could not attend, so here it is.
Video – Must We Drown in the Wake?/Tracy D. Morgan/CCMPS
In her courageous and provocative paper Tracy D. Morgan writes:
Will we, as a profession that cleaves to speech, truly and actually act on these findings? Will we confront power, which often takes the form of institute leadership, to clear away that which corrodes, that which has effectively kept people of color from entering the field? Or will we take what Ta-Nahesi Coates (2015)* has called a “a hall pass through history” (p. 33) and manage to do nothing? Can we, as psychoanalysts, actually organize for change? Is activism even germane to this passive profession? Or is it not? And if not, why?
*Coates, T.-N. (2015). Between the world and me. Oneworld.
—
This passage is relevant to what we have been discussing in CCMPS Community Meetings. We hope you can join us on May 9th.
The organizing questions around which we are operating are threefold:
1) What constitutes psychoanalysis?
2) What constitutes a psychoanalyst?
3) What constitutes a sophisticated psychoanalytic community?
CCMPS seeks to embrace multiple psychoanalytic schools of thought. Yet, history shows that even when an institute engages but one theoretical conception of our three questions, one finds intragroup dynamics terribly challenging and often failed. Of course, just like in politics, one party might claim success when quite another state of affairs prevails. A common actuality are conditions of censorship, orthodoxy, implicit or explicit denigration and threats of expulsion of those who rebel.
So far, we have managed to behave as a democratic group (see previous Community Meeting reports) that is neither authoritarian nor laissez-faire. Can there be leadership without obfuscated oppression? Can members speak openly, debate without persecution? We have only begun this experiment.
In his (1952) Prescription for Rebellion, Robert Lindner asks whether communities – indeed, even civilization – succeed at a radical and far-reaching rebellion against destructive adjustment to hegemonic discourses? Can we brave full speech, receptivity, and openness, aiming at something unforeseeable but generative, and – as Lindner ends his book – toward ” … What?”
– – –
If you haven’t read the essay yet, it is in GROUP, Vol. 48, No. 1.2-3, Summer-Fall 2024. GROUP has given permission to distribute, for more information, contact tracedoris@gmail.com or staff.ccmps@gmail.com. Link to PDF below.
From the abstract:
In response to the Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in American Psychoanalysis report that tells us that “action is needed at all levels,” a series of questions and concepts are explored to discern whether activism, and particularly activism addressing racism, is possible within the field of psychoanalysis.
Must We Drown in the Wake?
Notes on Addressing Racism in Psychoanalytic Institutes
Please join us for the Friday, April 11 CCMPS Community Meeting 3 pm Mountain Time, 5 pm Eastern Time.
Tracy D. Morgan, Psychoanalyst, LCSW-R, M.Phil., has written a provocative and courageous piece published in Group and we are excited to have a conversation with her in April.
It is recommended that you read this fascinating piece before the meeting if possible. E-mail Lynne at staff.ccmps@gmail.com
From the abstract: In response to the Holmes Commission on Racial Equality in American Psychoanalysis report that tells us that “action is needed at all levels,” a series of questions and concepts are explored to discern whether activism, and particularly activism addressing racism, is possible within the field of psychoanalysis.
About: Tracy Morgan is a psychoanalyst working with groups, individuals and couples in Brooklyn. She is on the faculty at the Center for Modern Psychoanalysis in NYC, has studied intensively with what was once called The Group Center and is now the Center for Group Studies, and was a founding member of Das Unbehagen in NYC. She is ABD in American History with a focus on African American history, the history of medicine and the history of sexuality. Her writings scan various fields—from movement theory to psychoanalysis. She is the founding editor of New Books in Psychoanalysis, founded over 15 years ago.
Invitation:
It’s fine if you haven’t attended a CCMPS Community Meeting before, guests are welcome.
There is no $charge$. There is no need to formally register, just make sure you’ve got the time, date, and Zoom link. You are encouraged to read the article before the meeting. You can do that by writing to staff.ccmps@gmail.com
The Zoom link for the meeting is below.
If you’d like a reminder for the meeting, please subscribe to the newsletter or shoot us an email.
On March 14, 2025, we held our fifth Community Meeting. The organizing questions around which we are operating are threefold: 1) What constitutes psychoanalysis? 2) What constitutes a psychoanalyst? And 3) What constitutes a sophisticated psychoanalytic community?
CCMPS seeks to embrace multiple psychoanalytic schools of thought. Yet, history shows that even when an institute engages but one theoretical conception of our three questions, one finds intragroup dynamics terribly challenging and often failed. Of course, just like in politics, one party might claim success when quite another state of affairs prevails. A common actuality are conditions of censorship, orthodoxy, implicit or explicit denigration and threats of expulsion of those who rebel.
So far, we have managed to behave as a democratic group (see previous Community Meeting reports) that is neither authoritarian nor laissez-faire. Can there be leadership without obfuscated oppression? Can members speak openly, debate without persecution? We have only begun this experiment.
In his (1952) Prescription for Rebellion, Robert Lindner asks whether communities – indeed, even civilization – succeed at a radical and far-reaching rebellion against destructive adjustment to hegemonic discourses? Can we brave full speech, receptivity, and openness, aiming at something unforeseeable but generative, and – as Lindner ends his book – toward ” … What?”
Joseph Scalia III, Psya.D.
Join us for the next community meeting, Friday, March 14, 2025
March 14 Community Meeting Link Here
What constitutes psychoanalysis? What constitutes a psychoanalyst? What is the role of psychoanalysis outside the consulting room?
Community meetings by Zoom will be held generally on the 2nd Friday of each month from 3:00 – 4:30 PM Mountain Time. Update your calendars for future meetings:
March 14, 2025
April 11, 2025 – Guest, Tracy Morgan, LCSW-R, M.Phil., LP
May 9, 2025
June 13, 2025
July – no meeting
August 8, 2025
September 12, 2025
The next CCMPS Community Meeting
Friday, March 14, 2025
3 – 4:30 PM Mountain Time
Joseph Scalia III, Psya.D.
Clinical Director
In the CCMPS Board Meeting of March 2, 2025, the Board formally adopted the multiple-schools-of-psychoanalytic-thought approach that we have been undertaking. We are avowedly declaring that our only “umbrella” theory of psychoanalysis is solely psychoanalysis itself. The Modern Psychoanalytic approach will continue to be a part of who we are, while now including such theories and techniques as classical, object relations, self psychology, and Lacanian. Crucially, we see ourselves as contributing to advances in each of these approaches and to our vital questions of “What constitutes psychoanalysis?” and “What constitutes a psychoanalyst?”
And as we move forward, we are explicitly facing the question of what place might psychoanalytic institutes occupy in today’s apocalyptic anxieties about any continuing civilization, any global justice and any Earth that might sustain humanity. This has been a debated question within our discipline’s organizations, and it is a question we see as worthy of uncensored consideration.
Relatedly, we maintain a vigilance regarding the ubiquitous oppressive practices of psychoanalytic schools. We strive to enact the notion of Cornelius Castoriadis that democracy requires the enigmatic dialectical practice 1) of being populated by a wealth of individuals capable of independent thought, and 2) of being a togetherness that generates such individuals.
Parenthetically but quite noteworthily for us, Castoriadis became a psychoanalyst in the Lacanian tradition, but broke with Lacan over the latter’s privileging of certain fundaments to the exclusion of, or non-integration with, other schools of thought.
Can we be democratic and not its laissez-faire facsimile?
In the spirit of democracy and free speech versus ostracism and censorship in psychoanalytic institutes, our April Community Meeting will see a presentation by Tracy Morgan, LCSW-R, M.Phil., LP on this topic.
Join us for the Friday, 2-14-25
Community Meeting
3 – 4:30 PM Mountain Time
Here’s the Zoom link:
Zoom Link for 02-14-2025 Meeting
From Clinical Director, Joseph Scalia III, Psya.D.
We have now had our third monthly Community Meeting, on January 10, 2025. It was a fine gathering. Highlights that I took away include the following.
– What is a psychoanalyst? What characteristics does a psychoanalyst have? What constitutes “the end of analysis?” How do different psychoanalytic schools of thought theorize answers to these questions?
– How do we think differentially about praxis, here considered to be how theory and practice inform each other? This definition of praxis should be distinguised from a synonym of practice, the latter being its frequent meaning. How do the varying schools of thought uniquely conceptualize technique?
– Likewise, what is psychoanalysis? What does it mean to “make the unconscious conscious?” What is the difference between the analysand’s narrative – the conscious story they tell – and what we might hear as disguised messages from the unconscious? What are the clinical effects of one versus the other?
– What is a community? What is a group? How do groups, or institutes – for example, those of psychoanalysis, or of the humanities, or ecology or education – go awry in terms of group dynamics? Group resistances of idealization, or scapegoating, or collective hysteria come easily to mind as ways groups can unconsciously and compromisingly cohere.
– What is the place of psychoanalysis in today’s world? How is it that psychoanalysis has been marginalized by the mental health, or “behavioral” health institutions? Likewise, how is it that psychoanalytic institutes and associations have prevailingly opted out of public positions about the state of the world? Might culture inform psychoanalysis as much as psychoanalysis can inform culture?
– And how do we “grow” CCMPS? What do we offer, and do we offer something unique that would call potential students to consider affiliating with us? And, if so, how do we communicate this to the world?
As can be seen by the extent of the topics above, it was a rich meeting. We missed those of you who didn’t, or couldn’t, attend. Please watch for new zoom link URL’s that are sent out within a few days of each meeting, as these will be different ones for every gathering. If you are unsure, reach out to Executive Director Lynne Scalia for assistance, at either staff.ccmps@gmail.com or 406-581-5969.
From Lynne Scalia:
As CCMPS Executive Director, I come from the perspective of a 30 years+ educator who believes PreK-12th schools need and would find relief and understanding if more psychoanalytic thinking was incorporated in working with young people. This is especially the case as we see a wide variety of students, each with their own unique needs, desires, and backgrounds, more included than ever in general classroom and special settings. Now, retired from education in Montana, but still involved in public school education in Colorado, I intend primarily to use this blog to explore conceptual and structural openings between psychoanalysis and education.
For now, on this first day of 2025, I want to share a passage from Melanie Klein’s Narrative of a Child Analysis, first published in 1975. This book is a daily record and reflections of an analysis of a 10-year old child, Richard, which lasted 4 months (93 sessions!) during World War II in England. In the preface, Klein writes:
Working-through was one of the essential demands that Freud made on an analysis. The necessity to work through is again and again proved in our day-to-day experience: for instance, we see that patients, who at some stage have gained insight, repudiate this very insight in the following sessions and sometimes even seem to have forgotten that they had ever accepted it. It is only by drawing our conclusions from the material as it reappears in different contexts, and is interpreted according, that we gradually help the patient to acquire insight in a more lasting way. The process of adequately working-through includes bringing about change in the character and strength of the manifold splitting processes which we meet with, even in neurotic patients, as well as the consistent analysis of paranoid and depressive anxieties. Ultimately, this leads to greater integration. (pgs. 12-13).
There is a treasure trove of Klein’s work located at the Melanie Klein Trust. Check out the child’s drawing of Envy. Oh, and yes, I know that in the psychoanalytic world Klein is considered to be “modern” but not big M modern. You will find that study and research into various schools of psychoanalytic thought is the order of business here. Innovation, creativity, a democratic community, and relevance to today’s world is what we seek.
(Photo by Louisiana naturalist, Taylor Naquin)
Friday, December 13, 2024
3 – 4:30 PM Mountain Time
Meetings are in discussion format.
There is much to discuss in our next community meeting, including Spring Semester courses. Faculty members Victor Stampley and Lynn Irwin and Clinical Director, Joseph Scalia III will briefly preview current offerings. Changes at the Board level are also happening, and we thank Travis Svensson for moving into the CCMPS Board Chair role and we thank Helene Stilman for her years of service as Board Chair.
We continue to make changes to CCMPS and to the website. You can find past newsletters on the About page for those who may be interested. Websites have both static and dynamic content. You will begin to see more dynamic content via a CCMPS blog.
Thoughts today as we move through the week:
As community-building unfolds at our school, we have a seminal opportunity for evolution.
Can we embrace this opening together and help each other face the resistances that always accompany change?
Possible topics – from December 1 newsletter:
Thoughts to ponder as we approach our next gathering:
As we enter our second Community Meeting, moving forward from a time of sharp decline, we’re looking to a school future worthy of the term “community.” What, though, is community?
And what does it mean in today’s unprecedentedly troubling times for a space of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic community to exist? Is there a place in our perhaps apocalyptic era for psychoanalysis? And if so, toward what end? Can psychoanalysis learn from the humanities as well as contribute to them?
Can we live with differing schools of thought? Can we manage a move from more decidedly Modern Psychoanalytic theory and practice to a more diverse position? How does a school change its identity?
And perhaps most crucially of all, can we live within a healthy group functioning, “practicing what we preach?” Can we be open to discovering unconscious enactments amongst ourselves?
What might be our place in the psychoanalytic world and the world at large?