Continuing Education Lecture Series

​For mental health professionals in the Los Angeles community, Reiss-Davis Graduate School offers a series of continuing education presentations that stimulate thought and suggests different methods and techniques to augment working with children, adolescents, and their parents. The three-hour or full day seminars offer an opportunity to learn and discuss recent psychodynamic thinking, adjunctive psychotherapeutic and other services.
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Register via Eventbrite.
If you have any questions about the current series, ​contact Sarah Geissert.

upcoming Speaker

Creating Nurturing Spaces for our Children in a Violent World
Neil Altman, Ph.D.
6 CE credits
 
Friday, May 12, 2023
9:00am-4:00pm, Pacific Coast Time

Register Here

The 18th Annual Edna Reiss-Sophie Greenberg Chair and Conference will award Neil Altman, PhD for his pioneering work exploring the societal divisions of race, culture, and class, and for critically addressing the historical shortcomings in psychoanalytic theory and practice which have led to largely excluding children and adults of marginalized groups from psychoanalytic treatment.

​Event Description
In the wake of World War I and the 1918-1919 Spanish Flu pandemic, Sigmund Freud added a death instinct to his previously posited life instinct to conceptualize the workings of the human psyche. Soon after, Melanie Klein followed with a critical question: How do these opposing forces co-exist?
Today we are faced with a similar challenge as COVID meets an escalating outpouring of divisiveness, polarization, and violence around the world. One response among those who prepare children for life has been, in counterpoint, to emphasize a moral demand for kindness and tolerance for diversity. However, even the effort to promote awareness of diversity and acceptance of otherness is frequently now branded as the curse of political correctness and “wokeness.” While it is not uncommon for school communities to promote racial diversity within the school walls, the institutional integration remains questionable. Unless we can speak to children about longstanding historical and systemic injustice and contradictions, we risk appearing irrelevant or hypocritical to the next generation. Educators and clinicians need to address Melanie Klein’s question about the battle of constructive and destructive forces in individuals, groups, and society at large.
This presentation will not provide easy answers, instead together we will grapple with how we talk with our children about these issues. How do our children let us know they are confused and distressed? How can we be responsive in age-appropriate ways that do not take refuge in a denial of reality? How can we deal with our own disillusionment and despair?

​About Our Presenter
Neil Altman, Ph.D. is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, clinician, supervisor, teacher, speaker, and author. He is part of the faculty at the William Alanson White Institute, New York, and visiting faculty of Ambedkar University of Delhi, India.

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​PREVIOUS SPEAKERS​

Watch Interview

Gender in All its Splendor: The Gender Affirmative Model and its Applications
​Diane Ehrensaft, Ph.D.
3 CE credits

Saturday, January 28, 2023
9:30am-12:45pm, Pacific Coast Time

About Our Presenter
Diane Ehrensaft, Ph.D., http://dianeehrensaft.com/, is a developmental and clinical psychologist, adjunct professor of Pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, and Director of Mental Health at the Child and Adolescent Gender Center, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. Dr. Ehrensaft specializes in research, writing, clinical work, training, and consultation related to transgender and gender diverse children and adolescents. She publishes and lectures nationally and internationally on this topic. She is co-editor with Dr. Colt Keo-Meier of The Gender Affirmative Model, and author of The Gender Creative Child and Gender Born, Gender Made. Dr. Ehrensaft is co-investigator in a four-site NIH grant studying the effects of puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormones in gender diverse and transgender youth, and principal investigator in a companion four-site grant, The Gender Journey Project, studying the psychological experiences of prepubertal gender diverse children. She is also an author of the WPATH Standards of Care, Version 8, contributing to the newly introduced SOC chapter on prepubertal children.