WCSPP Annual Conference (IN-PERSON)

LOCATION: Manhattanville University, Reid Castle
2900 Purchase St, Purchase, NY 10577

CE: 5 CE credits for most NY and CT licenses (pending)

Conference Overview

This conference will focus on the intersection of therapist’s and patient’s subjective experiences. The wish to rescue and heal our parents is a widely recognized catalyst for choosing to become a therapist. However, the ongoing presence in the treatment room of not only the patient’s but also the therapist’s internal objects, a phenomenon that influences choice of theory, therapeutic technique and specific interventions is so ubiquitous (or imagined to have been thoroughly analyzed) that the implications are not always well-enough examined or understood.

Dr. Steven Kuchuck has written and presented extensively on the topic of the therapist’s subjectivity. He will deliver a paper describing his work with a patient traumatized by toxic, fragile objects in treatment with an analyst similarly impacted by parental fragility. He will consider a period of existential crisis for both parties in which events overlapped, finality hovered, and confusion enveloped the dyad. Senior analysts and discussants Hillary Grill, LCSW, and Rachel Sopher, LCSW, will help illuminate clinical and theoretical nuance and deepen the broader conversation.

In addition, Dr. Kuchuck will respond to a paper presented by Cara Maniaci, LCSW, exploring the impact of idealizing transference in psychoanalytic action. Maniaci builds on the concept of idealization as a point of identification and desire, and looks at how the resolution or mourning of an idealized transference between patient and analyst enables self-recognition. Her paper examines this process from various vantage points – using clinical material from her work with patients and drawing from her own experience as an analysand.

Speaker Biographies

Dr. Steven Kuchuck is former Editor-in-Chief of Psychoanalytic Perspectives, where he currently serves as Senior Consulting Editor; Past President of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (IARPP); current Editor of Routledge’s Relational Perspectives Book Series; and faculty, NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, NIP National Training Program, and other institutes. His book, The Relational Revolution in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, has been translated into numerous languages. He won the Gradiva Awards for best book of 2015 for Clinical Implications of the Psychoanalyst’s Life Experience and in 2016 for The Legacy of Sandor Ferenczi: From Ghost to Ancestor. His most recent book, The Workbooks of Masud Khan: Diary of a Fallen Psychoanalyst (co-edited with Linda Hopkins), is published by Karnac Books.

Cara Maniaci, MA, LCSW, is a 2026 graduate of the Advanced Program in Psychoanalysis at WCSPP. She has completed a two-year program in Relational Psychoanalysis at the Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Studies. She is also a graduate of WCSPP’s Couples Therapy Training Program. Cara has written for The American Psychoanalyst and Psychoanalytic Quarterly. She is an active member of APsA’s President’s Commission on Artificial Intelligence. Cara has a private practice in Pleasantville, NY, working with adults, adolescents and couples.

Hillary Grill, LCSW, is a psychoanalyst practicing in New York City. She is a supervisor, faculty member and training analyst at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies and the Institute for Expressive Analysis. She is on the faculty and supervises at the Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center. She writes and presents widely and is executive editor of the journal Psychoanalytic Perspectives. Areas of interest are the psychological aspects of women’s reproductive health, contemporary family-making, the impact of the socio-cultural environment on the individual and the genesis of creativity.

Rachel Sopher, LCSW, is Faculty and Supervisor, National Institute for the Psychotherapies Training Institute (NIP); Faculty and Supervisor, NIP’s National Training Program; and Faculty and Supervisor and on the Executive Committee of The Stephen Mitchell Relational Study Center. She is co-Editor with Amy Schwartz-Cooney of the collection Vitalization in Psychoanalysis and Senior Editor of Psychoanalytic Perspectives. She writes and presents on reaching nonverbal states and vitalizing interactions in the psychoanalytic encounter and maintains a private practice in New York City.

Moderator – Carter Thornton, LCAT, LP, LPC, is a Psychoanalyst and Creative Arts Therapist in private practice in New York. He is faculty and clinical supervisor at Institute for Expressive Analysis, and is an instructor and co-chair of the film committee at the Westchester Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. He is also a Zen practitioner, a working musician, and a visual artist.