COR saturday dialogues: “attempts—a shame story” led by michael forrester & facilitated by michael louderback | saturday september 26th, 2026 10am-12noon pst

My colleague Michael Forrester writes and wonders: “What are we to do when shame stops the conversation? In this case study, I hope to explore the ways that shame affects treatment with a patient who struggles to talk about themselves, but makes attempts to get close in ways that disrupt the therapeutic relationship. We will explore what it’s like to help someone with their persistent self-criticism and be the object of their skepticism about therapy, itself. We will explore questions about working with shame, but also, how we, as clinicians, can hold boundaries against provocation while encouraging healthy relationality. We will look at case material, countertransference, and patient communication to understand how shame forecloses attention and forbids curiosity about desire.”

I have the honor of facilitating Michael’s fascinating case presentation and work to a group of psychotherapists, students, and supervisors only at The Center for Object Relations, all bound by strict confidentiality for protection of the case. We will explore, together, the difficulties of Michael’s case, of shame, and of the work of careful and bounded psychotherapy in a modern era.

When: Saturday, September 26, 2026 at 10:00am to 12:00pm

Where: In-Person at the COR office—2915 E Madison St, Suite 300

CEUs: 2.0 ($10 processing fee to receive CEUs)

Maximum Class Size: 25

Non-Member Fee: $20

Member Fee for COR: FREE!

The Center for Object Relations asks that to help ensure a more comfortable and welcoming experience for everyone, registration is required for entry. To avoid overcrowding, COR members and non-members are kindly asked to submit their names in advance.

Registration Website: https://centerforobjectrelations.org/saturday-dialogue-on-9-26-26/

positions: the making of a psychotherapist | thursdays on zoom 7pm-8:30pm pst oct + Nov 2026

With all of the theories, ideas, and accumulated wisdom of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy at our fingertips—perhaps now more than ever—what do we actually do with them when we are sitting with another complicated human being? How do we begin to digest and distill these many intellectually interesting, albeit cognitive, ideas so that they become something lived in us, rather than simply something we know about? How do we become the kind of psychotherapist who is not only kind and helpful, but also alive, grounded, challenging, and available for transformation?

In this deeply thoughtful and beautifully pragmatic book, one of my psychoanalytic heroes Neville Symington turns toward these very questions and offers us a guide to the lifelong task of becoming a creatively useful psychotherapist. Symington, a remarkably experiential and wide-ranging thinker, gathers into this text the living spirits of Freud, Klein, Bion, Winnicott, Fairbairn, Jung, and Fromm, among many others. He writes with a rare blend of depth, clarity, practicality, and soul—making the book as helpful to those just beginning in psychotherapy as it is to those who have been practicing for many years and wish to return to the foundations of our strange, difficult, and beautiful work.

Over eight weeks together, we will read the entirety of this rich and provocative text, while also making generous space to reflect, converse, and workshop alongside one another. We will wrestle with exploratory questions, bring in real clinical material, and practice how these ideas might actually sound and feel in the consulting room. The hope is not simply to understand Symington’s book, but to let it work on us—to sharpen us, deepen us, and help us become more balanced, courageous, and creatively alive in the presence of those who come to us for help.

Class Schedule:
Week One: Your Voice & Beginnings
Week Two: The Various Traditions & Applications of Psychotherapy
Week Three: The Development of Curiosity, Imagination & the Care of Pain
Week Four: Complex Modes of Transference & Countertransference, part 1
Week Five: Complex Modes of Transference & Countertransference, part 2
Week Six: A Cure for a Lifetime: Our Lofty Aim
Week Seven: Narcissism as Root of All Mental Pain
Week Eight: Your Voice & Endings

Learning Objectives:
1) Understand and contrast the rich and varied context of psychoanalytic origins, theory, and practice—including Symington's contribution.
2) Comprehend more fully, and practically, how to embody the position of being an effective, holistic, truthful psychotherapist using my concept of the "tightrope".
3) Differentiate the various forms of complex transference and countertransference experiences that arise in a clinical encounter.

Exchange:
$550 for Alliance Members/ $600 for Non-Members (sliding scale available upon request, please contact me directly)

Required Text: The Making of a Psychotherapist, Neville Symington

Registration Website: https://www.nwaps.org/classes/positions-the-making-of-a-psychotherapist

fine line: a psychoanalytic seminar | ongoing Thursdays on zoom 8am pst

* * *

Beginning. Being. Begin. Bring.

Bring your being.

We’ll begin there.

Inspired by the psychoanalyst Michael Eigen’s long-running seminars on Wilfred Bion, I’ve been quietly wanting to make a room like this for years.

Now, in my 14th year of practice, I am.

A room for those moved by psychoanalysis—
students, therapists, supervisees, supervisors, colleagues, friends—

to gather, and set something of themselves down.

Not to master.
Not to perform.

But to read.
To linger and listen.
To think together.

We’ll spend time with the writers who have most shaped my clinical life and mind and being:

Neville Symington. Michael Eigen. Marion Milner. Adam Phillips.

Donald Winnicott. Jessica Benjamin. Harry Stack Sullivan. Erich Fromm.

This is a weekly close reading seminar, meeting whenever I’m in practice at the office.

You come when you feel called.

No texts required (though they may tend to find their way into your hands).

Sessions are recorded, in case you miss a week—or want to return.

The format is simple, but not rigid:

a kind of seminar/salon,
following the text,
and following what the text stirs in us.

Think less “coverage,” more dwelling—
like letting a good wine open slowly in the glass.

Cost is $20 per session.
Pay as you go, later, or what you can.
We’ll trust each other.

It’s never too late to join in and see what leads to what.

Just bring your being—

and we’ll begin.

* * *

Current text (as of August 2026): Becoming a Person Through Psychoanalysis, Neville Symington