“A Difficulty in the Path of Psychoanalysis”: The Community Psychoanalysis Consortium and the Community Consultants

ABSTRACT

This paper describes the functioning of the Community Psychoanalysis Consortium (CPC) and the role of the Community Consultants in the Community Psychoanalysis Track at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California. The existence of the CPC and its projects is an interruption of psychoanalytic training as exclusive to privatized psychotherapeutic practice, reclaiming and extending psychoanalytic pedagogical traditions that thrive in community mental health contexts. Persistent difficulties encountered in the exchanges between those steeped in institutional psychoanalysis versus community mental health are illustrated and analyzed as symptoms of a series of broader cultural splits. The work of the CPC is a collective effort toward training psychoanalysts to perform transgressive psychoanalytic community-based work. We see this effort as essential, as those community programs that continue to operate do so under continual threat of being dismantled and/or defunded. We assert, however, that community psychoanalysis is not primarily about expanding the borders of who gets analyzed. Rather, it is about who takes up the analytic gaze, what depths are probed, what resistances are seen to be at issue, and what other investments might be possible when dominant structures are confronted and collective libidinal resources are freed up.

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Notes on contributors

Lani Chow

Lani Chow, Ph.D., is Associate Faculty in the PsyD department of the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco. She directed the Psychological Services Center, the departments training clinic, from 2007-2019. She has been a clinical supervisor at Rafiki Coalition for Health and Wellness in San Francisco since 2016. She also maintains a practice serving individuals and couples.

Maria Seymour St. John

Maria Seymour St. John, Ph.D., M.F.T., is Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of CA, San Francisco, and serves as Co-Director of Training of the UCSF Infant-Parent Program, which is based at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. Dr. St. John also holds a private practice in Oakland, CA: MariaSeymourStJohn.com.