NEWS
Alumni Group Round Table Discussion Series
February 07, 2019 10:30 am to 12:00 Noon
CFPS Library - 900 Lovett, Houston, TX 77006
My Dog, My Cat, My Self
Gretchen Heyer, LPC
Psychoanalysts have recently shown an increasing interest in our relationships with non-human objects, though attachments to, and identifications with, companion animals were pathologized in the past. Nonetheless, there are suggestions that dogs exerted considerable influence on Freud, his patients, and possibly his theorizing. In a fascinating paper by Arthur Jacobs, he asserted that the Wolf-Man patient’s recurrent dream about wolves actually reflected day residue about the Freud family’s dog as well as transference about Freud and his inner circle of colleagues. JoAnn Ponder’s article presented a psychotherapy case in which the dog imagery became an organizing metaphor in the treatment, and a psychoanalytic case in which the patient’s dog identifications and projections evolved along with her inner objects. In Gretchen Heyer’s case, the patient identified with the analyst’s cat, which the patient saw in the analyst’s home office. This treatment also involved intersectional issues of race, gender, and social class.
CFPS Alumni Group invites you to join us from 10:30 am to 12:00 Noon to discuss a selected paper.
To RSVP for Round Table, please click the link below.