News & Events
08/01/2010
BGSP Names Dr. Jane Snyder as Next President
The Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis (BGSP) welcomes new President, Dr. Jane Snyder. She succeeds Dr. Dena Reed, who is stepping down after 6 years as President.
The appointment concludes a national search by the BGSP Board of Trustees. Dr. Jane Snyder, Provost, was unanimously recommended by the faculty and unanimously selected by the Board to assume the Presidency of BGSP, effective August 1, 2010.
Dr. Snyder has held many administrative positions at the school including Director of the Extension Division, Coordinator of the Institute for the Study of Violence, Dean of Graduate Studies and most recently as the Provost. She has worked for many years as a part of an administrative team on degree program development. In addition to her new role as President, she will continue to co-chair the Research Committee, teach, supervise, and conduct training analyses.
“BGSP is a unique school; our programs are solid and growing,” stated Dr. Snyder. “I look forward to building on the strong foundation already established by former presidents Dr. Meadow and Dr. Reed over the past 38 years and to continuing to engage in innovative psychoanalytic education.”
Dr. Snyder holds a BA in English from Lebanon Valley College in Annville, PA, a Ph.D. in Psychology from Boston University, and an M.A. and Certificate in Psychoanalysis from the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. She has written and presented on topics including treating the action prone patient, adolescent issues, family violence, and psychoanalytic research.
BGSP is the only regionally accredited, degree granting, independent psychoanalytic school in the country. Since its founding in 1973, BGSP has opened doors to psychoanalytic study to exceptional students from a wide variety of academic backgrounds. Graduates of the school apply what they have learned in clinical settings as well as in education, business, politics, and the arts. Details on the school and its program can be found on www.bgsp.edu, or call 617-277- 3915 for more information.
06/15/2010
Connection or Disconnection: Psychoanalysis and the Technological Revolution.
Join us for the 26th Annual Cape Conference in Welfleet, MA, August 2nd through 6th, 2010. Come experience the real, the not real, and the virtual real! For registration information click here.
05/15/2010
BGSP 2010 Commencement
BGSP held its Spring 2010 graduation ceremony on May 15 at the Oakley Country Club in Watertown, Massachusetts. Thirty-six students received Certificates, Masters Degrees and Doctorates in six different programs; four in the one year program, twelve in the Master of Arts in Psychoanalysis, twelve in the Master of Arts in Psychoanalytic Counseling, one in the Master of Arts in Psychoanalysis and Culture, two in the Doctor of Psychoanalysis and Culture, and five in the Doctor of Psychoanalysis.
Dr. Jane Snyder welcomed the large audience of faculty, friends and family, commenting on the impressive variety of degrees and number of graduating students. “Psychoanalysis”, she said, “is alive and well.”
Dr. Dena Reed, president of BGSP, then took the podium to award an honorary degree of Doctor of Psychoanalysis to Stephen Hayes. Dr. Hayes was a member of the first graduating class at the Boston Center for Modern Psychoanalysis and has remained a valued member of the BGSP community ever since. He has devoted his professional life to community mental health and is currently serving as Chairman of the Board of BGSP, earning the admiration and respect of those who have worked with him over the years.
Dr. Lynn Perlman introduced the traditional reading of final logs, commenting that this is her favorite part of the program, revealing the students’ perception of their emotional and intellectual growth during their years at BGSP or CZMI (Cyril Z. Meadow Institute) in Vermont. The logs, read by all the Doctoral students and one representative from each of the other programs were at once humorous, heartfelt, personal and profoundly moving.
The program closed with the awarding of degrees by members of the faculty most involved with the students in various programs.
05/03/2010
Gallery 1581 Presents "About Face"
Gallery 1581’s recent art exhibition at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis collected work on the theme “About Face” exploring the possibilities for self-representation through various media. The final show displayed 78 works of art selected by jurors Gunta Kaza and Linda Bourke of Mass Art, and opened with a reception on April 30th, followed by a public gallery showing on May 1st and 2nd . We had one of our largest turnouts in terms of contributing artists as well as attendees to the reception.
As part of Brookline Artists Open Studios Weekend, the public gallery showing displayed Leela Wagner’s “In the Mirror” in the event’s weekend flyer and studio map. This large oil on canvas painting captured the theme of the show, both in its title and in the image portrayed. The face, set in a slightly upward tilt, wore a confident and bold expression which seemed to call the question, “Who do you wish to be?” The soft colors and sensual features conveyed a sense of calm and poise, as though this woman had made a decision to confront the world. Such an evocative image served as a useful segue to the larger exhibit in its ability to gesture towards self-searching – a valuable message for viewing the show at large.
The entire exhibition certainly embodied the theme “About Face.” Contributing artists depicted courageous depths of human emotion and demonstrated the many variations that can be produced by one’s perception of the self. It has been fascinating to study psychoanalysis in a space that portrays such a wide range of feelings. Discovering pieces of ourselves in the surroundings can be both exhilarating and terrifying. It seems that art and psychoanalysis each contain healing elements in their ability to provide the artist or analysand an opportunity to explore perceptions of the self—whether casting a reflection of one’s self-image onto a canvas or onto an analyst. Submitted by Ms. Tayloe Denton for Gallery 1581
04/10/2010
The Forum of Social Theory at the University of Massachusetts Boston held its seventh annual meeting this year on April 7th to 9th around the theme of “Critical Social Theory: Freud and Lacan for the Twenty First Century.” The aim of the conference was to invite Freud along with Lacan back to the United States—not to psychiatry or psychology departments but to humanities and social sciences departments. Dr. Siamak Movahedi was the chair of the organizing committee and coordinator of the conference. Judith Feher Gurewich and Robert Samuel were the two keynote speakers. Many major educational institutions such as Sigmund Freud Foundation Museum & Library (Vienna), University of Rome Tor Vergata, Faculty of Letters and Philosophy (Rome), City University of New York Department of Sociology ( New York), Boston College Department of Sociology & Psychoanalytic Studies, Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis & The Institute for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture, Brunel University School of Social Sciences (London), and the Clark University Department of Language and Culture had sponsored the conference. Over 200 psychoanalysts, professors of humanity and social sciences, psychoanalytic candidates and graduate students attended. There were over 30 different sessions, each organized around different topics. The relationship between critical social theory and psychoanalysis was examined from different theoretical perspectives. From its very beginning Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis has walked the border as a kind of fugitive discipline in academia yet one multifarious in its influence on the mainstream. Surely the welter of hostile and critical responses accompanying its trajectory in the history of ideas bears a kind of testimony to its rich intellectual underpinning. In sociology it has had a creative influence on critical theorists such as Herbert Marcuse, Eric Fromm, and others of the Frankfurt School, and now has engaged feminist theorists, post-structuralists and other sociologists interested in the way in which unconscious processes figure in the construction of hierarchical social relations. Jacque Lacan’s French reading of Freud comes particularly close to the sociological imagination. His theory of the symbolic order and the linguistic precursors of the unconscious have added additional dimensions to the discourse of social theory. His notion of the decentered and alienated self rooted in the intellectual culture of Emile Durkheim, Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Michel Foucault find its corollaries in the writings of sociologists and philosophers such as George Herbert Mead, Charles Horton Cooley, and Erving Goffman. The conference participants and presenters employed rigorous analyses and interpretations of the past and present of various intellectual engagements that form the foundation of contemporary psychoanalysis and modern social theory. Submitted by Dr. Siamak Movahedi
1/06/2010
BGSP Faculty Member Book Chapter Published
Dr. Rodrigo Barahona's chapter (co-written with Eddy Carrillo) "Costa Rica: Attitudes towards war, peace, and torture", in State Violence and the Right to Peace: An International Survey of the Views of Ordinary People, has just been published (November, 2009) by Praeger Security International. This chapter contains original qualitative research dealing with the consequences of events such as the Spanish conquest, the civil wars in Central America during the Cold War, and the current debates on free-trade, the Iraq war and torture, on the unique socio-cultural-political identity of the average Costa Rican citizen.
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