Ethical Dimensions of the Analyst's Co-participation: Radical Openness and the Self-protective Aspects of the Concept of Transference

An Interactive Webinar

Downloadable Flyer

In order for the analyst to listen closely and be moved by the analysand, the analyst must be open, particularly to what is most foreign in the analysand’s discourse. In his previous visit to OPC, Anton Hart presented the concept of “radical openness”, a dispositional stance that involves the analyst’s “taking to heart” the things that the analysand experiences and formulates in relation to the analyst, both familiar and strange, as if there is likely to be truth within them no matter what. The radically open analyst aspires to take things that do not seem to personally apply and to live with them as potential truths that are beyond the analyst’s tolerable awareness.

Freud invented the idea of transference in order to enable the analyst to bear the strain of listening closely while feeling unrecognized. In this sense, the quite central concept of transference can be seen as having served as a self-protective edifice for analysts as they try to keep listening, even as they may regularly feel not listened to. But the downside of analysts’ adherence to the transference concept is that it may prevent them from being as open to the truths contained in analysands’ experience as analysts need to be in order to be moved, that is, to emotionally understand and to personally grow and evolve in response to the analysand’s discourse.

The implications–of radical openness and transference as self-protective edifice–for  both general psychoanalytic technique and specifically for addressing issues of diversity and otherness in the clinical situation, will be discussed.

Learning Objectives:
1. Develop an understanding the concept of “radical openness”.
2. Recognize the ways in which the concept of transference may represent a form of resistance to listening as fully and openly as possible to what the analysand conveys.
3. Apply radical openness and transference edifice to the challenges of addressing issues of diversity and otherness in the therapeutic process.

Anton Hart, PhD, FABP, FIPA is a Training and Supervising Analyst and on the Faculty of the William Alanson White Institute in New York City. He supervises at the Derner Institute of Adelphi University. He is a member of the Editorial Boards of the journals Psychoanalytic Psychology and Contemporary Psychoanalysis. He teaches in the Department of Psychology at Mt. Sinai Hospital, at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy, at the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute, and at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies National Program, the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, and the Institute for Relational Psychoanalysis of Philadelphia. He serves as Chair of the Diversities Section of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Department of Psychoanalytic Education. He is in full-time private practice of psychoanalysis, individual, family and couple therapy, psychotherapy supervision and consultation, and organizational consultation, in New York City.

When: Saturday, May 9, 2020
Time: 9am—1pm 
CME: 4* (meets ethics requirement for most licensing boards) 

$150 (non-members) ● $135 (members) ● $75 (residents/interns) Fulltime Undergraduate/Graduate Students  (free with valid student ID day of event) 

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Continuing Medical Education This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education through the joint providership of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the Oregon Psychoanalytic Center. The American Psychoanalytic Association is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
The American Psychoanalytic Association designates this Live Activity for a maximum of  4.0  AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
IMPORTANT DISCLOSURE INFORMATION FOR ALL LEARNERS: None of the planners and presenters of this CME program have any relevant financial relationships to disclose.