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*All registrants are required to select an item from the potluck list to bring*

About the Author: 

Dr. Anne J. Adelman is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst with the Contemporary Freudian Society.  She is coauthor of, “Wearing My Tutu to Analysis and Other Stories: Learning Psychotherapy from Life.”  Dr. Adelman is a member of the New Directions Writing Program and maintains a private practice in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

About the Article:  

The author writes of the shock she experienced at the unexpected death of a patient she had been seeing three times a week for three years. She felt bereft, sitting alone in her chair during the hour she should have been seeing her client. Dr. Adelman reviews her sessions with this patient in her mind for us with an authenticity we therapists rarely share with each other.
Days later she attends the funeral-seeing all the people her patient had discussed with her and realizes that no one knows who she is and that she is not in a position to tell them who she was to her patient. She is basically left to grieve alone.  Dr. Adelman begins asking herself many questions she had not dealt with before.  She explores the meaning of the analytic relationship for both patient and analyst. She asks several meaningful questions that are not necessarily shared amongst therapists, such as, “Where do we draw the line between the analytic alliance and the bond of love that ties us to our patients?”  Empathy grows and becomes love.” These are courageous questions which we will be discussing in this meeting.   

Facilitator: 

Marta Zehner, LCSW, BCD is a  Founding Member of PSCSW. She maintains a small private practice and works for a small non profit, WCRP, that builds affordable housing for low income families. In Marta’s long career she helped found and served on the board of Women Against Abuse. She worked for Women Organized Against Rape, where she served as co-director and developed their Child Sexual Abuse Program, and she directed a training program for the Medical College of Pennsylvania. Marta also taught Clinical Practice at Bryn Mawr Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research and The University of Pa Graduate School of Social Policy and Practice.

Clinical Goals:   

Upon reading this article and participating in this discussion, participants will earn 3 CEU’s and be able to:

1. Reflect on your own reactions when you have had a patient die or leave unexpectedly.
2. Question the issue of boundaries in your clinical relationships and  “ How empathy becomes love,”  Who are we to our clients and who are they to us?
3. Engage in opportunities to share these issues with other therapists.