TICP Scientific Meetings
Upcoming Events
May 27, 2026 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm Temporal Disjunctions between Self-States: The Broken Dialogue between Child and Adult Selves in Male AnalysandsRegister NowKeith Haartman Ph.D.
This presentation explores core temporal discrepancies and conflicts between developmentally
younger and older self-state structures in male analysands.
Psychoanalytic models that diverge theoretically share at least one element in common. Differing
schools account for the complexity of mind by positing dynamic structures that crystalize usually
via complex processes of identification. These developmental structures appear as “islands” of
personality endowed with degrees of partial function (perception, cognition and affect,
intentionality etc.), and capacities to engage with neighbouring structures (merging, co-
operating, attacking, censuring and censoring, etc.). I refer to Freud’s structural model,
Fairbairn’s endopsychic situation, the Kleinian/Bionian ego-destructive superego, the concept of
self-envy explored by Scott, Lopez Corvo, and Searles. In the Relational schools, Davies and
Frawlies describe the antipathy between a child and an adult self in survivors of sexual abuse,
and Bromberg describes self-states alienated by differing degrees of linguistic formulation.
Hans Loewald suggests that in conceptualizing psychic structures we replace concrete spatial
conceptions with temporal ones. Psychic structures or complex self-states are radically
temporal.
Psychic structures tend to form as defensive responses to trauma. Trauma involves states of
encapsulation where time freezes and recurs cyclically. When developmentally earlier
traumatized states vie with healthier adult states in linear/episodic time, the traumatized state,
trapped in an alternate repetitive temporality, fails to empathically comprehend the lived reality
or umwelt of the adult. While themes of guilt and accusatory antagonism may occur at this
interface, conveying a punitive ego-superego atmosphere, I suggest that a neglected yet crucial
discrepancy is the problem of antithetical temporalities. This irreconcilable difference underlies
the breakdown in the dialogue – the temporal confusion of tongues between developmentally
younger and older structures.
My awareness of this issue first arose working with two male patients who each experienced an
unbridgeable gulf between an economically and emotionally bereft childhood, and, in adulthood,
undreamed of success, wealth and fame. In their dreamlife, as well as in sessions, a fractured
dialogue between younger and older selves manifests in the form of guilt, impostiture, and
derealization.
This presentation examines facets of the broken dialogue in male analysands between
traumatized younger selves and socially adapted, yet compromised, adult selves. The clinical
work attempts to create a “contact barrier” between the younger and older selves such that
mutual intrusiveness gives way to integrative dialogue.
Upcoming Events
May 7, 2026 12:00 am – May 10, 2026 12:00 am IARPP 2026 TorontoRegister NowSave the Date
Upcoming Events
TICP Workshops
Upcoming Events
Apr. 11, 2026 10:00 am – 4:00 pm Invited Speaker Workshop with Nancy McWilliams and Michael GarrettRegister NowHelping Patients with Paranoia:
Clinical Implications of Psychotic and Nonpsychotic Paranoid Psychologies
Approved for CE Credits
The speakers invite clinicians to approach paranoia as a deeply intrapsychic process of disavowal and projection, often related to trauma and inadequate psychological separation from early caregivers. Although most visible in psychosis, nonpsychotic paranoid states of mind are common. Dr. McWilliams and Dr. Garrett offer a rare opportunity and a significant contribution to understanding paranoia with depth and complexity that impacts the possibilities for treatment.
May 2, 2026 10:00 am – 4:00 pm Invited Speaker Workshop Susi Federici and Gianni NebbiosiRegister NowWe are deeply convinced that one cannot study the human soul and the human behaviour as “a thing”, that a discourse in third person will never equate a discourse in first person, and that not all the human communication is understandable and translatable into conceptual thought. We will illustrate this assumption in a review of research that led us to the particular “technique” of miming after the session, never in the patient’s presence.
Co-Sponsored
Upcoming Events
May 7, 2026 12:00 am – May 10, 2026 12:00 am IARPP 2026 TorontoRegister NowSave the Date