Welcome to the APM

Theodore Shapiro, MD, Eric Marcus, MD, Marina Mirkin, MD, Panelists
Christine Anzieu Premmereur, PhD, MD Moderator

PLEASE NOTE DIFFERENT LOCATION • 247 East 82nd Street • New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute

Reception with wine and cheese will open the event
For years psychoanalysts have been so invested in proving that psychoanalysis is a science that they have all but forgotten that it is an art of a kind. There have been many attempts to tease apart creative and scientific aspects of psychoanalysis. Bowlby famously made a distinction between “the art of psychoanalytic therapy and the science of psychoanalytic psychology.” Is such separation possible? Is it useful? This panel will discuss different aspects of creativity in everyday psychoanalytic work. Dr. Shapiro will consider various definitions of creativity and explore their applicability to art and psychoanalysis. He will investigate the use of the psychoanalytic setting as a creative integrative opportunity to facilitate the treatment. Dr. Marcus will take up the issue of creativity in science and apply these thoughts to creativity and science in psychoanalytic work and research. The claim will be made that psychoanalytic work is inherently creative and can be scientific. Examples from dream interpretation with patients and use of dreams in social science research will be used to illustrate his ideas. Dr. Mirkin will discuss the transformative role of creativity in therapeutic action of psychoanalysis. She will outline the analyst’s contribution – the analyst’s own creativity – to the treatment and suggest that the development of the patient’s creative capacity is a measure of the progress of the treatment. The panelists will engage in discussion amongst themselves and with the audience to further our understanding of these complex issues.

Eric Marcus MD, Training and Supervision Analyst at the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and author of Psychosis and Near-Psychosis (3rd ed. 2017).

Theodore Shapiro, MD a psychoanalyst and researcher in the areas of language disorders, developmental disorders such as Autism and PDD, anxiety disorders, panic psychopharmacology in children, psychoanalysis, and linguistics at Weill Cornell Medical College.