Upcoming Conference

What: APS Spring Conference with Antonio Virsida, PhD: The Ordinary and Extraordinary Work of Psychotherapy

When: March 27, 2010

Where:  Rothchild Catering, Ten Mile Center, 8807 Kingston Pike, Knoxville, TN 37919

Time: 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM

Fees: $125 for Members and Scholar Members if registration sent by March 22; $35 for Graduate Student Members if registration sent by March 22.  After March 22, fees are $150 and $50 respectively.  Nonmembers: $150.

Dues: We will also be collecting 2010 dues: $70 for members and $25 for graduate student and scholar members.

Registration: Send check (made out to APS) and registration information to APS, c/o Bill MacGillivray, 7 Forest Court, Knoxville, TN 37919

Amenities: Breakfast, lunch and snacks included in the registration fee.

Continuing Education: 6 hours of CE available

And now for the write-up . . .

During the morning session Dr. Virsida will address the role of money and fees and implications for psychotherapy. Considered the “last taboo” by many authors, money and fees in psychotherapy, among therapists and patients alike, are commonly difficult to speak about in practical, interactive and clinical ways. Historically, culturally and personally derived meanings assigned to money and fees in psychotherapy are powerful sources of conflict and ambivalence. Everyday practice presents clinicians with an abundance of ordinary, but difficult and often intersubjectively derived dilemmas.

Dr. Virsida will address the wide variety of meanings assigned to, and conflicts aroused by, money and to fees generally, and specifically in psychotherapy. He will address the history of how money and fees are thought of and handled in psychotherapy and provide scenarios and clinical examples from his practice, to illustrate the therapeutic, and sometimes anti-therapeutic, impact that fees activate in both therapists and patients. Dr. Virsida will suggest fee policies and therapeutic methods and approaches that are grounded in therapeutic concepts and simultaneously address therapists’ financial needs.

The afternoon session will include a film presentation and a paper and discussion of the film, Stranger than Fiction. Dr. Virsida will discuss obsessive-compulsive psychodynamics, structures and their ubiquity. Based on contemporary understandings of the primacy of emotions derived from early interactions and experiences in organizing our psychic life, interpersonal patterns and identities, Dr. Virsida will address these defensive patterns as concrete expressions that lie on the trailing edge of obsessive-compulsive anxieties. He will illustrate how countertransference-derived feelings and verbal behaviors or enactments lead to further mutual understanding and can become an ordinary form of mutative discourse and intervention with these patients.

Selected Readings
Eissler, K.R. (1974). On some theoretical and technical problems regarding the payment of fees for psychoanalytical treatment. International Review of Psychoanalysis, 1: 73-101
Krueger, D. W. (Ed) (1986). The Last Taboo: Money as Symbol and Reality in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. New York: Bruner Mazel
Freud, S. (1909). Notes upon a case of obsessional neurosis. In J. Strachey (ed. and trans.) The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud, 10:153-320. London: Hogarth Press, 1955 (Original work published in 1909)
McWilliams, N. (1994). Psychoanalytic Diagnosis: Understanding Personality Structure in the Clinical Process. N. Y., Guilford.
Novick, J. & Novick, K.K. (2009). The rat man and two systems of self-regulation. The Round Robin, Newsletter of Section 1 of the Division of Psychoanalysis, 1-17.

About the Presenter

Antonio Virsida is Supervising and Training Analyst at Southeast Florida Institute for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy SEFIPP) and maintains a private practice in Boca Raton, FL. He was a founder of both SEFIPP and its local chapter, Southeast Florida Association for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and editor of its newsletter. He has been active as a presenter and consultant in his local chapter and with Miami Psychoanalytic Institute and Tampa Bay Psychoanalytic Society, as well as APS.

PROGRAM SCHEDULE
8:30  Registration
9:00 Introduction
9:15 Setting Fees and Managing Money
10:30 Morning Break
10:45 Case Examples and Discussion
12:00 Lunch
1:30 Stranger than Fiction
3:00 Afternoon Break
3:15 Obsessional Conflicts and the Disavowal of the Beauty of Actuality

PROGRAM OBJECTIVES: Participants will be able to  . . .
1. Identify the common difficulties psychotherapists face in setting fees based in professional and personal conflicts.
2. Apply basic psychoanalytic understanding of the need for a consistent frame for treatment in being able to approach issues of fee setting and financial goal setting.
3. Describe the interpersonal and intrapersonal conflicts at the core of obsessive-compulsive dynamics.
4. Compare and contrast the artistic vision of obsessional conflicts as portrayed in Stranger than Fiction with real-life clinical encounters.
5. Identify how the psychoanalytic understanding (and treatment) of obsessional conflicts originally identified by Freud has evolved and changed through the integration of developmental and attachment concepts.

FEES AND POLICIES
$125   Professional and Scholar Members by March 22, $150 thereafter.
$35     Student Members by March 22, $50 thereafter
$150   Non-members
Refunds honored with written notice at least 24 hours before conference. Contact Kathleen Erickson ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ) to negotiate fees if needed.

REFRESHMENTS AND AMENITIES
Breakfast, lunch and snacks are included in the registration fee

PARTICIPANTS
This conference is open to all mental health professionals and is at an intermediate level of practice and knowledge for psychologists.

APS CONTACT
Please see our Web site, www.aps-tn.org for full information addressing concerns regarding ethics, confidentiality, possible negative reactions to activity and accommodations. Please contact Kathleen Erickson ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ) with any questions, comments, or concerns.

MEMBERSHIP
We will be collecting dues for 2010 at this meeting. Please include a check for $70 (professional) or $25 (scholar or student in mental health graduate program) along with your fee for the workshop to remain a member during 2010.

CONTINUING EDUCATION
6.0 continuing education credits are available for full attendance at this program. Upon completion of a conference evaluation form, a certificate will be issued, which serves as documentation of attendance for all participants. Division 39 is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Division 39 maintains responsibility for the program and its contents.

GRADUATE STUDENT ASSISTANCE FUND (GSAF)
APS is committed to providing opportunities for graduate students to learn more about psychoanalytic theory and practice. The GSAF was established to raise additional funds for this purpose. Please consider making a separate tax-deductible donation to the GSAF. There will also be books and APS tchotchkes for sale during the conference with proceeds going to the GSAF.