Description: In this series of discussions, we will study the important foundational contributions of Melanie Klein to our more contemporary ideas about transference/countertransference, enactment, intersubjective communication, and therapeutic action. We will make use of two complementary texts, both of which each student will be asked to purchase: (1) Our primary text will be Margaret Rustin and Michael Rustin’s excellent 2017 book Reading Klein, giving us access to a thorough understanding of Klein’s work with children, Epistemophilia, Mourning, Depressive Position, Splitting, Projective Identification, and Envy and Gratitude, with extensive quotes from Klein’s own writing ($44.95 at Amazon); (2) our secondary text will be The Klein Tradition, edited by Penelope Garvey and Kay Long (Routledge, 2018), which provides current applications and developments of Klein’s central ideas ($66.95 at Amazon). Discussion will invite exploration of participants’ clinical material that illustrates the concepts we’re studying. We will also explore ways in which Klein’s ideas help us understand current social and political tensions.

Target Audience: This class is for clinicians at the intermediate to advanced level.

Format: This class will combine lecture and seminar formats. All participants will read and synthesize the materials presented, partly through the sharing of clinical experiences.

About the Instructors:
Christine Erskine, LCSW, is a former founding member of the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center of NC (now included in the PCC). She is a graduate in adult psychoanalysis of the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute and a former analytic instructor at the Washington Center for Psychoanalysis. She began distance studies in Klein and British Object Relations at the Washington School of Psychiatry and the International Psychotherapy Institute in the 1980s and has continued to understand transference and countertransference primarily through a Kleinian lens. Having returned to the Triangle area, she now sees patients and supervisees virtually in Raleigh. After a term as President of the PCC, she is now Faculty Chair and enjoys teaching contemporary psychoanalytic theories.

Jacqueline Neilson, PhD, is a training analyst, faculty and supervisor at Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis and a Clinical Instructor at George Washington University Department of Psychiatry. She received her doctorate in existential-phenomenological psychology from Duquesne University and her undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of California Santa Cruz. She lives and works in full-time private practice in Washington, DC. She teaches courses on Kleinian theory and applications of Kleinian thought to issues of diversity and leads a study group on post-Kleinian theory and technique. She has worked with several Kleinian psychoanalysts and is especially indebted to Alberto Pieczanski, Nydia Lisman-Pieczanski, Laura Etchegoyen, and John Steiner for their invaluable contributions to nurturing her analytic mind.