The Child & Adolescent​ Psychotherapy Training Program

IN PERSON OPEN HOUSE

Wednesday, June 4, 2025 from 7:30-9:00pm

Envy, Greed, and the Search for a Holding Environment: Working with Stealing and Lying in a Latency-Age Girl

A Clinical Case Presentation by Dan Liu, LCSW

with discussion led by Mara Heiman, LCSW

Held at the Institute, 20 West 74th Street (between Columbus Avenue & Central Park West)

ABOUT THIS EVENT

According to Melanie Klein, envy is a primitive and fundamentally destructive affect, whereas greed refers to the impulse toward excessive taking and possessing that is often driven by envy. Clinically, behaviors such as lying and stealing can be understood as manifestations of both envy and greed – expressions of destructiveness, anger, and aggression that involve taking from others and depriving them of what they have. Yet these behaviors may also be seen as communications that seek a holding environment in which such intense feelings can be contained and transformed, allowing movement toward the true self.

Ms. Liu will discuss a long-term treatment with a nine-year-old girl, illustrating how envy and greed emerged in the clinical work and how the holding environment made it possible to recognize, contain, and work through these dynamics.

Join us for a rich presentation by a current candidate,  demonstrating the culmination of a sophisticated learning process and the integration of clinical theory and technique.  It will be an opportunity for those interested in child and adolescent psychotherapy training to learn more about our program, participate in a discussion, and take part in a Q&A. Light refreshments will be available. 

ABOUT THE PRESENTER

Dan Liu is a candidate in the Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Training Program (CAPTP) at the William Alanson White Institute. She completed her psychoanalytic training at the Institute, where she now serves as faculty in the Intensive Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program. Ms. Liu earned her Master’s degree in Social Work from New York University and has lived in New York City for the past 14 years, where she maintains a private practice in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.  Originally from Shenzhen, a coastal city in southeastern China, she brings a multicultural perspective to her clinical work. She speaks English, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Japanese, and works with individuals from diverse racial, ethnic, and social backgrounds.

FOR QUESTIONS ABOUT THE CHILD & ADOLESCENT PROGRAM, CONTACT MARA HEIMAN AT maraheiman18@gmail.com