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Psychoanalytic Work With Homeless and Formerly Homeless Adults: Unsettling Theory

A Scientific Meeting presented by Deborah Luepnitz, Ph.D.

Event Price: Event is free. CE fee is $10 for CPC/HP members and non HP/CPC students, $25 for nonmembers who are not students. HP and CPC students and candidates receive CEs for free.

Continued Education (CEU/CME): 1.5 credits

Attendance: This is a hybrid event - in person and online attendance is available. Online attendees will have a webinar experience which will not include the ability to ask questions of the speaker.

NOTE: Pre-registration is encouraged. Walk-ins are welcome but no CEs will be available.

Reception 6 - 6:30 p.m. at the Center before the presentation.

Course Description:

A common misconception about treatments derived from psychoanalysis is that they are appropriate only for highly educated people of means. This presentation challenges that assumption by referring both to Freud's free clinics and to Winnicott's work with homeless children. We will proceed to a discussion of IFA (Insight For All)-- a group in Philadelphia  that connects analytically trained clinicians with individuals who are, or have been, street homeless. 

A relational framework leaning on Winnicott's concepts will be used while making room for relevant insights from the French tradition. There will be one case history of the 10-year treatment of a man who had nearly ruined his health on the street, and who made good use of the talking cure.   Caring for marginalized people can have the positive effect of unsettling psychoanalytic theories and expanding them for our time. 

Learning Objectives:

  1. Name at least 3 psychological categories of homelessness. 

  2. Describe two concepts from the work of Winnicott that can be useful in working with formerly homeless adults. 

Deborah Anna Luepnitz, Ph.D. has taught courses on psychoanalytic theory in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine for over 30 years.  She is currently on the faculty of the Institute for Relational Psychoanalysis of Philadelphia. Dr. Luepnitz is the author of 3 books, including The Family Interpreted: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and Family Therapy   and   Schopenhauer's Porcupines: Five Stories of Psychotherapy. The latter has been translated into 7 languages, and was released last year as an Audiobook.  She was a contributing author to The Cambridge Companion to Lacan, as well as to Karnac's  The Winnicott Tradition.   She lectures widely, and in 2003 was given the Distinguished Educator Award by the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education.   In 2004, Dr. Luepnitz launched Insight For All, a project that offers analytic treatment to homeless adults. She maintains a private practice in Philadelphia. 

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