The Seasoned Clinician’s Notebook

The educational series, “The Seasoned Clinician’s Notebook: How Psychoanalytic Concepts Inform the Practice of Psychotherapy,” features clinicians from a range of disciplines who share how they use concepts from psychoanalysis to enrich their clinical work, from cultivating creativity to working with addictions.

These PCC sessions take place on Zoom. They are free of charge, but reservations are required.

CEUs will not be offered for The Seasoned Clinician’s Notebook, but Letters of Attendance will be sent upon completion of a program evaluation survey.

Get the details and register for The Seasoned Clinician’s Notebook!

Therapist as Backup Band:
Understanding Psychoanalytic Concepts Through Musical Metaphor

Presented by Terri Onstad, LCMHC

Saturday, October 21, 2023
10 am to 12 pm ET
via Zoom

Clinical work calls upon our ability to deeply listen, attune to, and “play” with the music our clients bring to us – like backup musicians. Terri Onstad, a psychoanalytic clinician and musician, will discuss how she understands and works with her clients using musical metaphors. She will illustrate how to play with the client’s music by employing case examples and concepts, including transference and countertransference, interpretation, relational patterns, rhythm, and frame. This talk will provide fresh musical metaphors to enrich the work of newer and more seasoned clinicians alike.

Terri Onstad is a licensed clinical mental health counselor practicing intensive psychoanalytic treatment in Durham, NC. Working with adults and couples, she uses concepts from attachment theory to frame her work.

Terri received her master’s of education degree from Vanderbilt University in the Human Development Counseling program and is currently an advanced psychoanalytic candidate at the Psychoanalytic Center of the Carolinas. She has undertaken advanced-level training in attachment theory and is a parent facilitator for the Circle of Security Parenting program. Her work with trauma is enhanced by her training in EMDR.

Terri is an active member of the PCC community. She has served as chair of the Scientific Programs Committee and currently serves on the Curriculum Committee and the Anti-Racism Task Force. For six years, she has led a study group, Psychoanalysis at the Margins, concerned with issues and groups historically overlooked by psychoanalytic institutions.

I Want You to Want Me:
Understanding Desire in the Treatment of an Eating Disorder

Presented by Amy H. Olson, LCSW, CEDS-S
Licensed Psychotherapist, Certified Eating Disorder Specialist
Approved Supervisor, International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals

Saturday, November 4, 2023
10 am to 12 pm ET
via Zoom

Finding, articulating, and elaborating desire are cornerstones of recovery from an eating disorder. For patients with an eating disorder, the development of desire has gone awry. Stuck concretizing desire in food, weight, and shape, their focus is on being an object of desire (Am I thin enough? Smart enough? Good enough?) rather than becoming a desiring subject whose impact is felt.

The presenter plans to draw insights from the myth of Persephone and Demeter, along with psychoanalytic theory and case examples, to understand the factors that facilitate or foreclose the development of desire. Special attention will be given to the process of separation and individuation from the maternal relationship and the significance of the paternal function in the recovery from an eating disorder. Practical suggestions for encouraging dissociated states of desire into the clinical encounter will be offered.

Amy Olson, LCSW, CEDS-S, is a licensed psychotherapist, certified eating disorders specialist, and International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals supervisor. She is a graduate of the Intensive Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program at the William Alanson White Institute and the Eating Disorders, Compulsions, and Addictions Program at the White Institute.

She received the 2016 Teachers Academy Fellowship from The American Psychoanalytic Association. In 2023, she published her first book, Chrome & Creativity: Expressive Pole Dance, Embodiment and Psychic Change.

Throughout her 23-year-long private practice in Cary, NC, Amy has demonstrated a commitment to helping individuals recover from eating disorders and explore a healthier relationship with their bodies. She is deeply interested in understanding how women develop a sense of self in the world, exploring mind-body issues, and investigating personal growth through creative movement practices.

The Linchpin of Connection:
How Identity, Meaning-Making, and the Therapeutic Relationship Alleviate Human Suffering

Presented by Marvice Marcus, PhD, LP, HSP-P

Saturday, December 2, 2023
10 am to 12 pm ET
via Zoom

Psychotherapy – both an art and science – is a fascinating endeavor composed of two or more people. Psychoanalysts, psychologists, and clinical social workers, among other allied professionals, have long argued that the therapeutic relationship is the most valuable aspect of the clinical enterprise. The available fund of knowledge that supports this claim is robust. The proverbial “talking cure” has a genesis in psychoanalysis and is facilitated by the establishing and unfolding of a distinct relationship. Manifest and latent material shape interactions between the provider and patient. Classical psychoanalysis has been criticized for its one-directional, top-down sensibility. The political undercurrents, for example, of identity, social conditions, and historical factors, are often given little attention or deemed unimportant. A two-person psychology, however, provides a point of departure to examine, with discipline and rigor, the complexities of identity and its bearing on relational dynamics within the psychic field. Reflexivity promotes thought expansion, and arguably, a critical praxis may help establish, deepen, and sustain a therapeutic relationship. This webinar will discuss individual and field-specific factors that shape clinical interventions and the culture of psychotherapy.

Dr. Marcus is a licensed psychologist, consultant, and clinical educator/supervisor in Durham, NC. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees, both in psychology, from the University of Nevada, Reno. Dr. Marcus completed a doctorate in counseling psychology at Washington State University. He previously served as the Training Director at Duke University Counseling & Psychological Services.

He enjoys working with individuals across the developmental spectrum. While he deeply values training and education, clinical work is his first love. His service provision includes individual and group psychotherapy, with the latter modality giving birth to a strong interest in structural deficits, transference, and object relations. Psychodynamic thought, cultural studies, critical inquiry, and liberationist praxis energize Dr. Marcus.

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