Florida Psychoanalytic Center

Dr. Mendelsohn will appear in Person

Working as a therapist is irreducibly challenging.  We deal with loss, adversity, and preoccupation, and we live and work in a time of considerable instability and dysfunction. The benefits of our personal analyses or therapies notwithstanding, we remain complicated people. Given all this, it might seem like a minor miracle that we do good work.  And yet, I believe, we do.

My talk will address how, as working therapists, we need a holding environment to sustain us in an ongoing way.  I will highlight how the traditions we internalize, the relationships we form with our patients, and the legacies of our relationships with our analysts/therapists, supervisors, teachers, colleagues, and those whose work we study, together constitute this needed holding environment. These ideas will be brought to life with case examples.

My hope is that I can talk with you more than read to you, and that we will create a lively atmosphere for discussion.

Dr. Eric Mendelsohn is a psychoanalyst practicing in Westchester, NY. He is beloved by many in the community who have worked with him in individual supervision or other contexts, for the refreshing sense of humanity and poetry he brings to psychoanalytic work. He is also Faculty and Supervisor at the Westchester Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy; the National Institute for the Psychotherapies, Training Institute and National Training Program, and the Postgraduate Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Adelphi University. He has taught at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute; the Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Washington, D.C.; and the Kansas City Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, where he served as Co-Director. Dr. Mendelsohn’s practice includes individual psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, psychotherapy with couples, and individual supervision and consultation.  He also leads reading and supervision/consultation groups. His papers and book chapters take up the patient-therapist relationship and the subjective experience of the therapist.

Learning Objectives:

At the conclusion of this presentation, participants will be able to:

1. Describe the ways in which our “therapist selves” may differ from the selves we become in other relational contexts.
2. Identify working conditions and relational traditions that constitute their holding environment.
3. Delineate ways in which our patients participate with us in constructing such holding environments.