NIPPA Membership

Focus Seminars

The NIPPA Focus Series is a sequence of seminars presented throughout the academic year, offering members the opportunity to present original papers, works in progress or compelling case studies.  

The seminars are held on Sundays from 11:00 am to 1:30 pm at NIP. 

NIPPA Focus Seminars for the 2011.2012 academic year included: 

  • Strangers to Ourselves: Exploring the Limits and Potentials of the Analyst's Self Awareness in Self and Mutual Analysis, presented by Ken Frank, PhD
  • Bring Me Your Perverts, presented by Art Baur, LCSW
  • I'm Fat, You're Fat: Losses and Gains in the Analytic Relationship, presented by Caryn Sherman-Meyer, LCSW
The Making of Donald Winnicott
Michael Clifford, M. Div., LCSW, Ph.D.
The Winnicott we know was not a given, not the inevitable result of his early years. Throughout his life, he was deeply affected by encounters with powerful personalities, as many biographies, memoirs and interviews demonstrate.  These people include those in his family, his analysts (James Strachey and Joan Riviere), his supervisor Melanie Klein, his wives Alice and especially Clare, and his patient-editor Masud Khan.  In this presentation, Dr. Clifford takes a comment from Winnicott's second wife and explicates it.  Clare Winnicott said, referring to D. W. Winnicott's refusal to give Melanie Klein's son Eric a medical disqualification from serving in World War II, "It was the making of him."  Michael will focus on how Winnicott developed into the Winnicott we know.  Alongside the discussion of his biography, Dr. Clifford will also discuss the development of Winnicott's theory, and how it does and does not seem to reflect his biography.  
 

Michael Clifford, M.Div., L.C.S.W., Ph.D., teaches the history of psychoanalytic theory at NIP, and at other psychoanalytic institutes.  Michael co-founded NIP's original Child/Adolescent Training Program.  He is the Archivist of Self Psychology (a project of the International Association of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology), and as such sits on the advisory board to the president of IAPSP.  For three years, he was also the president of AAPI, the Association of Autonomous Psychoanalytic Institutes (a group of 25 international psychoanalytic institutes).  Dr. Clifford is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Manhattan, treating children, adolescents and adults.  He has special training in treating traumatized children and adolescents.

  • The Making of Donald Winnicott, presented by Michael Clifford, M Div, LCSW, PhD
Focus Seminars for the 2012.2013 academic year will be announced in Summer 2012.