Upcoming Salons

Friday, March 4, 2027
1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

TWWOOD Art Museum (in person)
46 Barre St. (Enter on Monsignor Crosby Ave.)
Montpelier, VT
$60

This seminar explores the work of loss, mourning, and body event through psychoanalytic approaches. Particular attention will be given to the work of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Jacques-Alain Miller, and Philip Bromberg, whose distinct theoretical frameworks offer ways of thinking about and working with the body in the psychoanalytic space.

The seminar will address:

  1. Traumatic events and the body: Freud and Lacan on traumatic events, bodily experience, and the limits of representation
  2. Dissociation and body fragmentation: Bromberg’s Concept of dissociation alongside the approaches of Lacan and Jacques-Alain Miller’s approaches to fragmentation in the body
  3. The unconscious and dream work: ways of accessing unconscious processes

Clinical case material will be presented and discussed, emphasizing ways of thinking and working with diverse clinical presentations involving the body.

This workshop is designed for clinicians, since clinical material will be presented.

Presenter: Shira R. Louria, PsyD, is a psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in Burlington and Montpelier, VT. She is a clinical supervisor at the University of Vermont Medical Center pre doctoral internship program in psychology and serves as faculty and board member at the Vermont Institute of Psychotherapies.

Educational Goals and Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of this workshop, participants will be able to:

  1. Describe the relationship between traumatic events and their effects on the body from psychoanalytic perspectives
  2. Explain Freud’s concepts of Mourning and Melancholia and consider their relevance to loss, and unprocessed material
  3. Describe Lacan’s concept of the Mirror Stage and its significance for understanding trauma, fragmentation, and experiences that are ‘stuck’
  4. Apply psychoanalytic concepts and techniques to clinical case material
  5. Integrate theoretical concepts with clinical thinking in developing ways of working with diverse clinical presentations involving the body

Schedule:

1:00-1:45 Presentation with Q&A
1:45-2:00 Break
2:00-2:45 Presentation with Q&A
2:45-3:00 Break
3:00-3:45 Discussion

Continuing Education: 3 CE credits Are pending with the boards of social workers, clinical mental health counselors, and psychologists.

Registration: To register, please email Dr. Shira Louria at shiralouria@proton.me

Fee: $60. For 3 CE Credits. Please mail a check to Mr. Marek Pyka, 307 Sadie Foss Rd., Plainfield, VT 05667

Psychodynamic approaches that can enable prescribers and clinicians better understand and collaborate in treating these challenging patients.

Friday, April 2, 2027
2:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Hayes Room
Kellogg Hubbard Library
Montpelier, VT
Free

In the last several decades there has been an increasing emphasis on mental disorders as biologically determined illnesses best treated with medication. Mental health clinicians are educated to identify DSM Axis 1 Disorders and to refer to a prescriber to evaluate the need for medication. Increasingly, mental health clinicians and psychiatrists/prescribers are caring for patients described as “treatment resistant”. These are patients who have failed to recover and who remain impaired despite multiple trials of medication. In this salon we will review a paper by David Mintz, a psychiatrist from Austin Riggs, who presents the concept of Psychodynamic Psychopharmacology as an approach to treatment resistance. This will be useful to prescribers as well as non-prescribing clinicians who work with these challenging patients.

Objectives:

  • Become familiar with potential psychodynamic issues underlying pharmacologic treatment resistance.
  • Utilize psychodynamic concepts to more effectively treat these patients as a prescriber or therapist.
  • For non-prescribing therapists, make use of psychodynamic understanding of pharmacologic treatment resistance to effectively collaborate with prescribers.

Presenter: Alice Silverman MD is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who has worked in community mental health and hospital settings and is currently in private practice in Montpelier. She is a past president of the Vermont Psychiatric Association, current president of the Vermont Institute for the Psychotherapies and is an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Dept. of Psychiatry at the University of Vermont Medical School.

Continuing Education: 2 CE credits for psychologists, mental health counselors and social workers.

Registration: To register and receive a copy of the paper we will be reviewing contact Alice Silverman alicehersheysilverman@gmail.com