Andrea Celenza, Ph.D. is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and Assistant Clinical Professor at Harvard Medical School. She is also Adjunct Faculty at the NYU Post-Doctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and The Florida Psychoanalytic Center. She has written numerous papers on love, sexuality and psychoanalysis and is on the Editorial Board of JAPA. She has two online courses and is the recipient of several awards. Her writings have been translated into Italian, Spanish, Korean, Russian, Chinese and Farsi. Her third book, entitled, Transference, Love, and Being: Essential Essays from the Field, was published in 2022 by Routledge and she has two forthcoming works, Erotic Transferences: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, July, 2024) and a co-edited volume (with Murray Schwartz) of American Imago on Perverse Scenarios. Dr. Celenza is in private practice in Lexington, Massachusetts, USA.

This presentation revolves around the role of love in psychoanalysis and how our love is conveyed in the analytic setting. This has been an erasure in our understanding of the way we work and is certainly reflected in the scant literature on the subject. Contemporary psychoanalysis is immersed, involved, yet asymmetric. The role our love plays is not sentimental or oversimplified, as in a corrective emotional experience, but in the way Loewald meant – to paraphrase a famous passage: It is through our sustained attention and moments of deep analyzing that we experience and reflect our love for our patients. I add another dimension to this - our willingness to take in, to receive the unconscious projections and emanations of our patients, our willingness to suffer these, reflect our deep commitment and love for our patients. The parallels to maternal eroticism are obvious as well.  

As a result of participating in this presentation, the attendees will become able to:

1) To identify and explore aspects of erotic transferences and countertransferences, especially as these relate to the multiple meanings underlying erotic transferences in its defensive and adaptive aspects.

2) To explore the ways in which the analyst’s countertransference can foster the emergence of the full intensity of erotic transferences at different phases of the treatment.

3) Acquire greater comfort in the identification and exploration of their own countertransference.

ACCME Accreditation Statement

This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of American Psychoanalytic Association and Psychoanalytic Association of New York. The American Psychoanalytic Association is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

AMA Credit Designation Statement

The American Psychoanalytic Association designates this live activity for a maximum of 2 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

Disclosure Statement

The APsA CE Committee has reviewed the materials for accredited continuing education and has determined that this activity is not related to the product line of ineligible companies and therefore, the activity meets the exception outlined in Standard 3: ACCME's identification, mitigation and disclosure of relevant financial relationship. This activity does not have any known commercial support. 

Psychoanalytic Association of New York (affiliated with NYU Grossman School of Medicine) is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0112.

Psychoanalytic Association of New York, affiliated with NYU School of Medicine is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0124.

Psychoanalytic Association of New York is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychoanalysts #P0064.

Psychoanalytic Association of New York is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed mental health counselors. #MHC-0304.

Dr. Omar Khan, MD is a psychiatrist who trained at NYU Grossman School of Medicine for residency and Consultation-Liaison Fellowship, now a 2nd year Adult Psychoanalytic candidate at the Psychoanalytic Association of New York. He currently works at the Weill Cornell Physicians Organization providing outpatient psychotherapy and psychopharmacology, in addition to treating Cornell House Staff. He serves as voluntary faculty at NYU and Weill Cornell where he teaches and supervises psychiatry residents. Born in New York City to a Mexican mother and Guyanese father, he has a particular interest in the way that people navigate multiple identities individually and collectively. Though not reflected in his current work, he has a strong interest in group psychoanalysis and understanding group process.

Dr. Arash Hessam, MD, Psychiatrist & Forensic Psychiatry Specialist is a board-certified psychiatrist with a fellowship in forensic psychiatry. He was born in 1975 in Tehran, graduating from Tehran University of Medical Science. Arash Hessam has over 12 years of experience as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and psychiatrist in private practice in Tehran. In addition to clinical work, he serves as a member of the Executive Committee of the Freudian Group of Tehran, where he also heads the Educational Committee, playing a pivotal role in advancing psychoanalytic education and practice in the region.

The purpose of this presentation is to expose participants to concepts beyond gender/sexual and religious normativity and to explore a psychoanalytic approach to working with these issues. PANY candidates, Dr. Omar Khan and Dr. Arash Hessam will present material from cases where differences in gender/sexual and religious identity between the analyst and analysand emerge in the transference and countertransference. Discussants, Dr. Ann Pellegrini and Dr. Rajiv Gulati will share their thoughts on the case material, followed by an open discussion.

1.    Describe challenges and complexities that arise in the transference and countertransference due to diversity in identities in the therapeutic dyad.

2.    Discuss how care is interwoven in psychoanalytic practice when working with patients whose subjectivity is shaped by very different experiences and background than those of the analyst.

3.    Summarize how to hold a frame where the patient can explore and create their own self theory or narrative when their experience is distinct from the social constructions of gender, sexuality and religion.

Psychoanalytic Association of New York (affiliated with NYU Grossman School of Medicine) is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0112.

Psychoanalytic Association of New York, affiliated with NYU School of Medicine is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0124.

Psychoanalytic Association of New York is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychoanalysts #P0064.

Psychoanalytic Association of New York is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed mental health counselors. #MHC-0304.

Gregory S. Rizzolo, PhD, is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association and a faculty member at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. He is the author of the Critique of Regression (Routledge, 2019), and his work has appeared in Psychoanalytic Psychology, the Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, and the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, among others.

“Obsessional neurosis is unquestionably the most interesting and repaying subject of analytic research. But as a problem it has not yet been mastered.” – Freud, 1926

The obsessional neurosis occupies a privileged yet enigmatic position in psychoanalytic history. Along with hysteria, Freud considered it a model condition for psychoanalytic intervention. He believed that it should have been easier to analyze than hysteria, in fact, because it manifests itself in language rather than in the obscurities of bodily symptoms. As late as 1926, and although he had already posited the central role of anality, he wrote, however, that the problem of the obsessional neurosis had yet to be solved. The difficult seemed to lie, at least in part, the heterogeneity of the disorder, that is, in its “variety of forms.” This talk presents three of the key developmental milestones that go into shaping obsessive and compulsive suffering: the just-so behavior of toddlerhood, the real-ideal self-discrepancy of later childhood, and narrative trends of adolescence and adulthood. I argue that we should think of obsessions and compulsions not as the result of any one fixation, but as a disorder of initiative that evolves across the lifespan. By means of this approach, we can not only account for a wider variety of obsessive presentations, but also better appreciate the nature of therapeutic action in psychoanalytic approaches.

(1) Participants will be able to situate obsessive compulsive disorder in the history of psychoanalytic thought.

(2) Participants will be able to identify the problems that have historically made it difficult for theorists and researches to understand the etiology and treatment of obsessive-compulsive problems.

(3) Participants will be able to articulate the benefits of a lifespan approach to this complex disorder.

ACCME Accreditation Statement

This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of American Psychoanalytic Association and Psychoanalytic Association of New York. The American Psychoanalytic Association is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

AMA Credit Designation Statement

The American Psychoanalytic Association designates this live activity for a maximum of 2 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

Disclosure Statement

The APsA CE Committee has reviewed the materials for accredited continuing education and has determined that this activity is not related to the product line of ineligible companies and therefore, the activity meets the exception outlined in Standard 3: ACCME's identification, mitigation and disclosure of relevant financial relationship. This activity does not have any known commercial support. 

Psychoanalytic Association of New York (affiliated with NYU Grossman School of Medicine) is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0112.

Psychoanalytic Association of New York, affiliated with NYU School of Medicine is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0124.

Psychoanalytic Association of New York is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychoanalysts #P0064.

Psychoanalytic Association of New York is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed mental health counselors. #MHC-0304.