Interpretation: Voice of the Field with Donnel Stern, Ph.D.
Through lecture, interaction with attendees, and case material, Donnel Stern, Ph.D., one of the most influential thinkers in contemporary psychoanalysis, will explore and develop some of his newest ideas about therapeutic action and how analytic therapists can be most effective.
Dr. Stern believes that, for patients, the most memorable moments in psychoanalytic treatment are seldom the contents of the analyst’s interpretations, but the feeling of being understood. Interpretations are most meaningful, he says, not only because of what they say, but because each one is evidence that the analyst, who generally becomes someone of great significance to the patient, knows the patient more than they did the moment before. Dr. Stern calls this process “witnessing” (Stern, 2009, 2022). As a result of it patients not only know and feel—they also “know and feel that they know and feel.” They can feel their roles in authoring their own experience. Therapeutic action results: Patients “come into possession of themselves.”
Dr. Stern goes on to present interpretations as the outcomes of shifts in the interpersonal field, shifts that reveal this new freedom to think and feel. These shifts allow creation of the analyst’s interpretations, which therefore are a sign of the new way of being that has now become possible between analyst and patient. Because field shifts are jointly created, without conscious intention, the interpretations that arise from them are therefore not really created independently by the analyst, but are instead the voice of the field.
Learning Objectives
1. Attendees of this program will be able to apply the idea of witnessing to patients in their clinical practices.
2. After attending this program, attendees will see how their interpretations to their patients emerge from the clinical process between themselves and their patients.
3. After attending this program, attendees will see how shifts in the interpersonal field they establish with their patients provoke their clinical interventions.
Donnel B. Stern, Ph.D. is Training and Supervising Analyst at the William Alanson White Institute in New York City; and Clinical Professor of Psychology and Clinical Consultant at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. He is the Founder and Editor of a book series at Routledge, "Psychoanalysis in a New Key,” which has over 80 books in print. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of the journal Contemporary Psychoanalysis. He has published articles and book chapters for 40 years, and has co-edited four books and authored four others, the most recent of which is The Infinity of the Unsaid: Unformulated Experience, Language, and the Nonverbal (Routledge, 2019). A fifth authored book, On Coming Into Possession of Oneself: Transformations of the Field, is in press, and another is written but not yet scheduled for publication: Contributions to the History and Definition of Interpersonal Psychoanalysis. He is in private practice in New York City. He has taught and lectured for many years across North America, Europe, Australia, and South America.