A New Four-Part Workshop with Todd Anderson, PhD, PsyD, LP

Paradox, Containment, and the False Self in Clinical Practice

PRESENTED IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE CONFERENCE ADVISORY BOARD OF WAWI

Held in person at the Institute* on four Monday evenings in October and November

6 CEs are available

* The William Alanson White Institute is located at 20 West 74th Street, between Central Park West and Columbus Avenues.

ABOUT THIS SERIES

Drawing upon four chapters from Todd Anderson’s book, The Fragmented Self, Recognition, and the Edge of Desire, this workshop explores how clinicians work with paradox, fragmentation, premature adaptation, and difficulties in symbolic life.

Across the four sessions, Dr. Anderson will examine the clinical tension between coherence and containment, the legacy of premature self-organization, and the paradoxes of false-self functioning and authenticity. Emphasis throughout the meetings will remain on applied clinical thinking: analytic stance, listening, timing, symbolization, and the conditions under which experience can become more thinkable and livable in treatment.

Complete session descriptions and readings are detailed below.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER

Todd Anderson, PhD, PsyD, LP, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. His clinical and theoretical work focuses on personality structure, dissociation, paradox, symbolic life, and the conditions under which experience becomes thinkable in analytic treatment. Rooted in a relational and developmental orientation, his writing draws on object relations, queer theory, and post-structural thought. He is the author of The Fragmented Self, Recognition, and the Edge of Desire and three other books in psychoanalysis.

THE SCHEDULE

Sessions are being held in person on the following four Monday evenings from 7:00-8:30PM: October 26th, November 2nd, 9th, 16th

SERIES COST

Professionals with Early Registration discount, $450 – register by September 25th

Professionals, Regular pricing, $600 – starts September 26th

Candidates and students, $300

Special Bonus: Registrants of this Workshop will be offered a discount to attend the new, 5-part Fran Anderson mini-series set for  Spring 2027, a follow-up workshop to her popular series, Chronic Somatic Pain. Announcement to come during the 2026-2027 season.

SESSION CURRICULUM

Session 1: The Original Paradox
This session introduces paradox not as a problem to be solved, but as a basic structure of psychic life and analytic process. It will consider how contradiction, fragmentation, and internal complexity may need to be borne rather than prematurely resolved, and how clinicians can work more responsively when experience cannot yet be organized into coherent meaning. The meeting will also include time to explore clinical material in relation to these themes, allowing for integration of theory and practice.

Session 2: The Dialectic of Coherence and Containment: Ferenczi’s Legacy and the Ethics of Listening
This session focuses on the tension between the analyst’s wish to help create meaning and the equally necessary capacity to contain affect, dissociation, and uncertainty without rushing toward interpretation. It will examine coherence and containment as mutually necessary yet potentially disruptive analytic functions, especially in trauma, dissociation, impasse, and enactment. The meeting will also include time to explore clinical material in relation to these themes, allowing for integration of theory and practice.

Session 3: The Wise Baby and the Unborn Self
This session explores the figure of the prematurely knowing child and the “unborn self” as enduring psychic structures organized around survival, dissociation, and foreclosed development. It will consider how some patients come to know too much before they have been sufficiently held, and how analytic work may involve not simply insight, but the gradual emergence of what has not yet been able to take form. The meeting will also include time to explore clinical material in relation to these themes, allowing for integration of theory and practice.

Session 4: The False Self as Curator: Symbolic Life, Containment, and the Paradox of Authenticity
This session rethinks the false self not as a simple mask to be stripped away, but as an intelligent structure of survival, adaptation, and symbolic mediation. It will explore how performance and accommodation may preserve aliveness under conditions of mis-recognition, and how authenticity may depend less on dismantling the false self than understanding its protective and developmental function. The meeting will also include time to explore clinical material in relation to these themes, allowing for integration of theory and practice.

SUGGESTED READING

All readings are from The Fragmented Self, Recognition, and the Edge of Desire.

Readings may consist of one book chapter for each meeting:
1. “The Original Paradox”
2. “The Dialectic of Coherence and Containment: Ferenczi’s Legacy and the Ethics of Listening”
3. “The Wise Baby and the Unborn Self”
4. “The False Self as Curator: Symbolic Life, Containment, and the Paradox of Authenticity”