IPA Webinar: Psychoanalytic Approaches to Addiction
This webinar will be in English.
Panellists: Marina Loukomskaia, Marc Wallis, Jose Alberto Zusman
Moderator: Kristin Whiteside
Addiction has accompanied the human species since the beginning of its existence. Being born a dependent species we desperately need other human beings to develop our own humanity. In case of early trauma or deficit we may follow through a path of connection with substitute concrete objects that stand in the place of real human bonds. These substitutes, instead of transition objects, work more like transitory ones that don't last long.
In this webinar we intend to show how we can help an addict to (re) establish human bonds and find a more meaningful life. The pain the analyst feels when treated as an inanimate thing and the pain an addict feels when treated as a human person. Every human is dependent and potentially addicted. Having that knowledge, we as analysts may understand better the scenario lived by the addict and go beyond the pain to find a personal history of a real person. Doing so, the pair may find a way to understand where the pain is, what is missing and why the patient chose to follow through the path of addiction, may it be related with drugs (licit or illicit) or behavioural addiction. Only when the addict patient and the analyst acquire resources to share life concrete or symbolic life experiences, emerges the hope to stand the obstacles as a pair and find a way to find compassion and self care which are so representative of the human world. In this important webinar where addiction is first addressed by an international IPA event, we will discuss the many psychoanalytic approaches in order to help the addict find a possible way out of the difficult, painful and meaningless world he lives in.
Dr Marina Loukomskaia, M.D., Ph.D., is a psychiatrist and psychanalyst. Dr Loukomskaia is a training analyst of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society. Born in Moscow, she worked on dependency problems at the National Research Centre and represented Russia as the WHO Adviser in the context of International Alcohol and Drug related studies. Since 1993, Dr Loukomskaia lives and works in Paris. She is involved in the development of a psychoanalytical approach in the community Mental health institutions and Drug treatment Centres in Paris. She is invited regularly to teach in the European Psychanalytical Institute and training seminars of IPA. She published a monograph entitled Alcoholism in Russia: Social, Psychological and Clinical Study and a number of articles in French, English, Russian and other languages.
J. Marc Wallis, LCSW is a graduate analyst and faculty of the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, where he is also Chair of Admissions for the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program. A member of the IPA Subcommittee on Addiction, and clinical faculty at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, he teaches and consults on integrative psychoanalytic approaches to addictive disorders. He is in private practice in San Francisco and Marin County, California, treating adolescents, couples and adults.
Jose Alberto Zusman is a full Member and Professor at the Rio de Janeiro Psychoanalytic Society (Brazil); Chair of the IPA Subcommittee in Addiction; Post Doctorate in Addiction made in partnership between the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) mentored by Prof. Antonio Egidio Nardi (UFRJ) and Prof. Edward Khantzian (Harvard Medical School) , PhD in Psychoanalysis (UFRJ) Mentored by Eustáquio Portella Nunes, Master degree in Psychiatry (UFRJ) mentored by Eustaqui Portella Nunes, Professor of psychotherapy psychoanalytic oriented at the Psychiatric Residency Programme (UFRJ).
Kristin Whiteside is a clinical psychologist and recent graduate in Adult Psychoanalysis from the San Diego Psychoanalytic Centre. She currently serves as the IPSO VP for North America. She is Assistant Professor in the Clinical PsyD Programme at the California School of Professional Psychology in San Diego and is Assistant Professor in the Health Sciences at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine.