Edna Reiss-Sophie Greenberg Chair and Conference

The annual Edna Reiss-Sophie Greenberg Chair and Conference recognizes nationally and internationally known professionals who have made major contributions to the field of infant, child, and adolescent mental health.

The 20th Annual Edna Reiss-Sophie Greenberg Chair and Conference will award Michael Diamond, PhD, for his passion in understanding early childhood development and the importance of the parent child relationship. His pioneering work on reviewing the role and conceptualization of the father and masculinity in psychoanalysis promotes an innovate view of fatherhood responsive to the sociocultural changes in society and promotes both wellbeing and growth for fathers, sons, and family as a whole.

​Current Reflections on Fathering and the Paternal Function

​Friday, May 9 at 11:00am-2:30pm
&
Friday, May 16 at 11:00am-2:30pm

​6 CEUs Total
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This two-part presentation will focus on both the symbolic and the actual, flesh-and-blood father and the impact each facet of fathering has on the child’s and the father’s development. While fathers have often been considered appendages of the mother and, within psychoanalytic theorizing, fathering itself has been minimized except in its absence or abusiveness, today, particularly in the realm of child development, clinical practice, and large social groupings, the traditional image of the father as primarily the bearer of power has been challenged. New forms of family and changing gender realities have made their presence felt in the social and clinical landscape. In the course of the two seminars, Dr. Diamond will clarify the nature of the so-called “paternal function,” more accurately termed the “symbolic function,” which signifies that a triadic matrix always exists psychically yet is not intrinsically gendered. Moreover, there is an ever present “father in the mother’s unconscious mind.” Consequently, triangular relations always operate within the mother-child dyad, including across heteronormative, gay or non-binary, and single parenting circumstances. As an embodied other, the actual father or surrogate (regardless of gender), operating as both a protective and attracting object as well as a separating agent serving as the “second other” to the mother, is called upon to recognize the child’s unique otherness. Challenges to fathering arise from inescapable dependencies, desires, rivalries, and absences or neglect.
Dr. Diamond will address how healthy child development entails both so-called “maternal” and “paternal” parenting as well as what is considered the “combined parental couple” that may reside in a single-parent’s internal world (regardless of gender). Particular dynamics arising for fathers with sons and daughters will be discussed, and challenges arising in clinical practice will be illustrated. In recovering the “missing” real father and the paternal function in dyadically-oriented clinical space is often required and illustrated with case material. In addition, participants will be encouraged to share their observations of children and their families as well as relevant vignettes from their clinical practices.

About the Chair
Michael J. Diamond, PhD, FIPA is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies (LAISPS). He is a Fellow of the International Psychoanalytic Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Clinical Psychology. His major publications are on fathering and the paternal function; masculinity, femininity, and gender theory; trauma and dissociation; psychoanalytic technique and analytic mindedness; hypnosis and altered states; and group processes, political movements, and social action. He has written five books including two focused on fathering: My Father Before Me: How Fathers and Sons Influence Each Other Throughout Their Lives (Norton, 2007); and his co-edited, Becoming A Father: Contemporary Social, Developmental, and Clinical Perspectives (Springer, 1995). He is currently working on a new book on Fathering and the Paternal Function. His most recent books are 2021’s Masculinity and Its Discontents: The Male Psyche and the Inherent Tensions of Maturing Manhood (Routledge) and 2022’s Ruptures in the American Psyche: Containing Destructive Populism in Perilous Times (Karnac/Phoenix Books). He is a well-respected international presenter and the honored recipient of numerous awards for his teaching, writing, and clinical contributions. He has a fulltime clinical practice in Los Angeles, California where he also remains active in teaching, supervising, and writing.

AWARDees:
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2024 - THE 19TH ANNUAL CHAIR:  Arietta Slade, PhD, presented Keeping the Child in Mind: Is It Time to Rethink How We Work with Parents?

2023 - THE 18TH ANNUAL CHAIR:  Neil Altman, PhD, presented Creating Nurturing Spaces for our Children in a Violent World.

2022 - THE 17TH ANNUAL CHAIR:  Allan Schore, PhD, presented Right Brain-to-Brain Psychotherapy.

2020 - THE 16TH ANNUAL CHAIR:  Beatrice Beebe, PhD, presented her pioneering work in the field of early infant-parent communication under the title Mother-Infant Research and Implications for Clinical Practice. Dr. Beebe is a Clinical Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University; and of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, New York State Psychiatric Institute, where she directs a basic research lab on mother-infant communication. She has been awarded many honors, including the Distinguished Scientific Award of the American Psychological Association, Division of Psychoanalysis; The John Bowlby Memorial Lecture, London; The Solnit Award, for “Mother-infant research informs mother-infant treatment” in Psychoanalytic Study of the Child (2005); and the 10th Annual Robert S. Wallerstein Lectureship, for “Infant research and adult treatment: Nonverbal communication” (2015), University of California San Francisco. She is the author or coauthor of six books and 77 peer-reviewed professional articles, with the most recent being The Mother-Infant Interaction Picture Book: Origins of Attachment (Beebe, Cohen, & Lachmann, Norton, 2016). She is faculty at several psychoanalytic institutes and has a private practice for adults and mother-infant pairs. 
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2019 - THE 15TH ANNUAL CHAIRS:  Miriam Steele, PhD. & Howard Steele, Ph.D.  Together, the Drs. Steele presented   A Day with Miriam and Howard Steele: Reflecting on their Groundbreaking Work in  Attachment Research and its Clinical Application to Trauma-Burdened Youth.  

2018 - THE 14TH ANNUAL CHAIR:  Peter Fonagy, PhD.  Dr. Fonagy presented on the topic of Imagination and Psychotherapy: My Evolving Thoughts on the Application of Mentalization   when Working with Children, Adolescents, and Parents.  A pioneer in the field of attachment and mentalization, he is the author of numerous research studies and books including   Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self. 

2017 - THE 13TH ANNUAL CHAIR: Ed Tronick, PhD.  Dr. Tronick lectured on the topic of My Work on Infants' Making of Meaning of Their Self in Relation to the World of People, Things, and Their Own Self. He is developer of the Still-Face Paradigm and the Model of Mutual Regulation.

2016 - THE 12TH ANNUAL CHAIR: Bruce Perry, MD, PhD.  Dr. Perry lectured on the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics.  He is the founder of the Child Trauma Academy, author of The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, and pioneer or the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics.

2015 - THE 11TH ANNUAL CHAIR: Alicia Lieberman, PhD.  Dr. Lieberman presented on Helping Young Children Cope with and Repair the Effects of Stress and Trauma on Early Attachment - a Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) approach.  As the director of the Child Trauma Research Program at San Francisco Research Hospital, author of numerous books including The Emotional Life of the Toddler, and pioneer of the Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) model of therapeutic intervention.

2014 - THE 10TH ANNUAL CHAIR: Bessel van der Kolk, MD.  Dr. van der Kolk lectured on Trauma and Development: how to more comprehensively understand, more accurately diagnose, and more effectively treat children and adolescents who might have a Developmental Trauma Disorder.  He is the director of The Trauma Center in Boston, also the director of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), author of numerous book including The Body Keeps the Score, pioneer in the field of physiological and neurological integration in the diagnosis and treatment of trauma.

2013 - THE 9TH ANNUAL CHAIR: Stephen Porges, PhD.  Dr. Porges lectured on Making the World Safe for our Children: Down-regulating defense and up-regulating social engagement to optimize human development.  He is the director of the Brain-Body Center, Department of Psychiatry, University of Illinois, Chicago, principal researcher for Behavioral Neuroscience at the Research Triangle Institute International, North Carolina, author of The Polyvagel Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation, and creator of the Polyvagel Theory.

2012 - THE 8TH ANNUAL CHAIR: Violet Oaklander, PhD.  Dr. Oaklander is a pioneer in the teaching and training of child and adolescent psychotherapy and the author of the following books: Windows to Our Children: A Gestalt Therapy Approach to Children and Adolescents (now in 14 languages), and Hidden Treasure: A Map to the Child’s Inner Self, as well as journal articles, book chapters, and audio and video tapes on psychotherapeutic work with children. Dr. Oaklander has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, a Masters of Arts in Marriage, Family and Child Counseling, a Masters of Sciences in Special Education with emotionally disturbed children, and is a certified Gestalt Therapist. She also holds a Lifetime Achievement Award from the U.S. Association of Play Therapy, and has received numerous other awards for her contributions to the field of mental health.
 
2011 - THE 7TH ANNUAL CHAIR: Peter A. Levine, PhD.  Dr. Levine presented on Developmental Neurobiology and the Effects of Trauma on the Developmental Trajectory with an Emphasis on Examining Somatically Oriented Interventions and Prevention Strategies in Working Clinically with Children and Adolescents.  He is the founder of the Foundation for Human Enrichment, NASA stress consultant, lecturer, teacher, author of In an Unspoken Voice: How the body releases trauma and restores goodness and many other works, developer of Somatic Experiencing.

2009 - THE 6TH ANNUAL CHAIR: Joseph Palombo, LCSW.  Joseph Palombo is a Clinical Social Worker who is a Founding Dean and faculty member of the Institute for Clinical Social Work, Chicago; faculty member of the Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Therapy Program, Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis; staff member of the Rush Neurobiobehavioral Center, Rush- Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center, Chicago; and is in private practice in the Chicago area. He was the co-chair of the Child and Adolescent Mental Disorders Section of the Task Force of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual. His publications include numerous papers and three books: Learning Disorders & Disorders of the Self in Children & Adolescents, Nonverbal Learning Disabilities: A clinical perspective, published by W. W. Norton, and Guide to Psychoanalytic Developmental Theories, Co-authored with H. Bendicsen and B. Koch, published by Springer Publications.

2008 - THE 5TH ANNUAL CHAIR: T. Barry Brazelton, MD. Dr. Brazelton is Clinical Professor of Pediatrics Emeritus at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Psychiatry and Human Development at Brown University. Dr. Brazelton was President of the Society for Research in Child Development and the National Center for Clinical Infant Programs. In 2002, Dr. Brazelton received the World of Children Award for his achievements in child advocacy. In 1993 Dr. Brazelton founded the Brazelton Touchpoints Center (BTC) at Children’s Hospital Boston to mobilize communities around children and families in order to bring relationships back into healthcare and to transform child care into family care. Among his 40 books on pediatrics and child development are The Irreducible Needs of Children, Infants and Mothers, which has been translated into 18 languages, Touchpoints the Essential Reference, Touchpoints: Three to Six, and The Brazelton Way series on parenting. His Emmy Award-winning television show, “What Every Baby Knows,” ran for twelve years.

2005 - THE 4TH ANNUAL CHAIR: Allan Schore, PhD. Dr. Schore is on the clinical faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, and at the UCLA Center for Culture, Brain, and Development. He is author of four seminal volumes, Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self, Affect Dysregulation and Disorders of the Self, Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self, and The Science of the Art of Psychotherapy, as well as numerous articles and chapters.  His groundbreaking integration of neuroscience with attachment theory has led to his description as "the American Bowlby," with emotional development as "the world’s leading authority on how our right hemisphere regulates emotion and processes our sense of self," and with psychoanalysis as "the world's leading expert in neuropsychoanalysis." The American Psychoanalytic Association has described Dr. Schore as "a monumental figure in psychoanalytic and neuropsychoanalytic studies."

2004 - THE 3RD ANNUAL CHAIR: Daniel Siegel, MD.  Dr. Siegel received his medical degree from Harvard University and completed his postgraduate medical education at UCLA with training in pediatrics and child, adolescent and adult psychiatry. He served as a National Institute of Mental Health Research Fellow at UCLA, studying family interactions with an emphasis on how attachment experiences influence emotions, behavior, autobiographical memory and narrative.  Dr. Siegel is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA.  Dr. Siegel is also the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute, an educational organization, which offers online learning and in-person seminars that focus on how the development of mindsight in individuals, families and communities can be enhanced by examining the interface of human relationships and basic biological processes.
 
2003 - THE 2ND ANNUAL CHAIR: Stanley Greenspan, MD.  Dr. Greenspan is clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at George Washington University Medical School and Chairman of the Interdisciplinary Council on Developmental and Learning Disorders. He is founding president of Zero to Three: The National Center for Infants, Toddlers and Families, and supervising child psychoanalyst at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute. He the recipient of the American Psychiatric Association’s highest award for child psychiatry research. Dr. Greenspan’s approach addresses how genetic and biological factors, in interaction with developmental experiences, express themselves in a hierarchy of intervening developmental organizations. These, then, mediate between genetic-biological etiological factors and presenting symptoms and behaviors. The identification of these intervening developmental pathways offers professionals in mental health and in education a more comprehensive approach to assessment, preventive intervention, and treatment.  Dr. Greenspan also is the author of hundreds of articles and more than 35 monographs and books in the field of mental health, including The Secure Child, The Growth of the Mind, The Child with Special Needs, and The Challenging Child.

2002 - THE 1ST ANNUAL CHAIR: James Gooch, MD.  Dr. Gooch was founder and first President of the Psychoanalytic Center of California (PCC), which became a Component Society of the IPA in 1987. He was born in Danville, Kentucky, and moved to Los Angeles to attend medical school.