Scientific Program featuring Neal Vorus, PhD

Saturday, April 26, 2025
10:00 am to 12:00 pm
1101 Gorman Street

The Interpretive Process

Presented by Neal Vorus, PhD

 
Registration Fee: $60*

*Free admission and CE/CME credits for PCC members, LDC staff and board, full-time students with ID, and trainees in the Departments of Social Work, Psychology, Psychiatry, and Mental Health Counseling.

The aim of this program is to redefine the concept of interpretation in a way that better reflects the interpsychic and processive dimensions of this concept as increasingly represented in current psychoanalytic writings. Implicit in his redefinition is the view that, while the interpretive process is essential to therapeutic action, the notion of “making interpretations” is an artificial and problematic way of viewing the work of analysis. In this paper, Dr. Vorus will review an expanded definition of interpretation as developed through the writings of Hans Loewald and elaborated by more contemporary thinkers such as Sheldon Bach, Ronald Britton, and Antonino Ferro. An extended clinical illustration will be offered to illustrate the application of this concept.

About the Speaker

Dr. Neal Vorus is a Training and Supervising analyst and Faculty Member at IPTAR, where he serves as an Associate Dean and as Chair of the Faculty and Curriculum Committee. He is also a Faculty Member and Supervisor at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. Dr. Vorus has written a number of papers and book chapters on the history of the Freud-Klein Controversies and comparative models of therapeutic action. He is currently Book Review Editor of the journal Psychoanalytic Psychology. Dr. Vorus is in full time private practice, where he treats adults, adolescents, and children.

After this presentation, participants will be able to:

1.    Discuss and critique the traditional conception of interpretation in psychoanalysis.
2.    Summarize and explain the relevance of the process model of interpretation.
3.    Apply the concept of interpretive process to a clinical example.
 

This program is intended for physicians, psychologists, psychiatrists, clinical social workers, licensed professional counselors, and other clinicians or interested academics who want to increase their understanding of the phone’s impact on human mentation.

Confidentiality Statement: All case material will be carefully disguised. We ask that participants agree to hold all material presented with the utmost care, following ethical and professional guidelines.

Accommodation Statement: To request an accommodation for this program, please email  Kayla Schilke, PCC Training and Education Program Manager, at least two weeks before the start date.

1.    Vorus, N. (2024). The interpretive process. Unpublished Manuscript.
2.    Vorus, N. (2011). Cultivating meaning-space: Freudian and neo-Kleinian conceptions of therapeutic action. In A. Druck, C. Ellman, N. Freedman, & A. Thaler (Eds.), A new Freudian synthesis: Clinical process in the next generation. Karnac.
3.    Loewald, H. (1960). On the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 41, 16-33.
4.    Loewald, H. W. (1979). Reflections on the psychoanalytic process and its therapeutic potential. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 34, 155-167. 
5.    Bach, S. (2011). Chimeras: Immunity, interpenetration, and the true self. Psychoanalytic Review, 98, 39-56.
6.    Britton, R. (1989). The missing link: Parental sexuality in the Oedipus complex. The Oedipus Complex Today: Clinical Implications, 54, 83-101.
7.    Ferro, A. (2009). Transformation in dreaming and characters in the psychoanalytic field. IJPA 90, 209-230.
8.    Ogden, T. (2019). Ontological psychoanalysis or “what do you want to be when you grow up?” Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 88, 661-684.
9.    Ungar, V. (2015). The toolbox of the analyst’s trade: Interpretation revisited. International
Journal of Psychoanalysis, 96, 595-610.

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