Narrative, Meaning & Motivation: 

From Theory to Technique

Online: May 16 - 29, 2016

This one-hour online presentation is taught by Joseph D. Lichtenberg, MD, a faculty member in our Luminary Series, and represents a distillate of his cur­rent thinking about the interface between psychoanalytic constructs and the application of those theoretical concepts to the clinical situation.

The lecture will present an expanded view of the role of narrative as a fundamental building block of development and assert that infants form mini-stories from their lived experience. The role of narratives, stories and story-telling will be applied to clinical practice.

Specific learning objectives:

• Learn to appreciate and utilize narrative in understanding development and practicing clinically.

• Consider how meaning leads and results from narrative formation.

• Appreciate the dyadic interplay of narrative for parent and child, analyst and analysand.

LS16-3 | 1 CE Credit | $45

Joseph D. Lichtenberg, MD, is a practicing psychoanalyst in Washington, D.C.  He received his psychiatric training at Spring Grove State Hospital and the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital where he served as Clinical Coordinator.  He has written articles about the psychoses, psychosomatic illnesses, literature and creativity, psychoanalytic theory, attachment theory and research, affect development, and the technique of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.  In 1976, as an Adjunct Professor, he taught a course on Biographies written by psychoanalysts at the Humanities Center of the Johns Hopkins University College of Arts and Sciences.  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-Rapaport Study Group, and 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 presented a Plenary Address at the December 1996 meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association.  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 Psychoanalysis and Motivational Systems: A New Look (2010). In 2005 he wrote Craft and Spirit: A Guide for the Exploratory Psychotherapies; in 2007 Sensuality and Sexuality across the Divide of Shame.