Description: Come and talk about the complexities of identity that don’t immediately add up, but can be sensitively explored through a socially-conscious psychoanalytic paradigm. The contemporary political climate pushes for oversimplifications, but is that who we really are, as therapists and people? In a sense yes, when the polarizing eye places its projection and enactment upon its subject. Yet our patients need us to contain them in their particular, often seemingly contradictory  range of social identities—all the while holding the analytic line of their drives, defenses, fantasies—and at the same time, empathizing and supporting them with the challenges of their realities. And don’t we as therapists and humans need the same? Not an easy task, but one that many of us have chosen to sign up for. Bring your intellect, heart, personal stories, and clinical experiences/questions to a workshop that will make room to hold, explore and process these radical paradoxes together.

Presenter Bio: Adam Shechter is a psychoanalytic therapist who works with individuals, couples and groups. Since he was a young child the multiplicity of identity has been on his mind. Before becoming a therapist Adam pursued various creativity; writing, musicality, and visual art forms. Poetry ultimately won out though found more nourishing soils in becoming a therapist and focusing on the verbal relation of understanding others. His writing has been published in psychoanalytic and literary journals including European Journal for Psychoanalysis, GROUP, Free Associations, Psychoanalytic Perspectives, The Minnesota Review and others. Adam has presented his work at various analytic conferences including EGPS, IFPE, APCS and IPHA. He also co-moderates an online study group on the work of Michael Eigen.