New Developments in Neuroscience and Psychoanalysis – Joshua Kellman

New Developments in Neuroscience and Psychoanalysis Series
This exciting online series hosted by the Neuropsychoanalysis Association showcases the cutting-edge knowledge that is currently emanating from neuroscientific disciplines and the field of psychoanalysis. The series includes presentations from leading authorities that will enhance neuropsychoanalytic understanding, while at the same time inspire our multidisciplinary community. The series will demonstrate the amazing variety of topics that are relevant to the fascinating field of neuropsychoanalysis.

Joshua Kellman, MD

Friday, January 6
11:00 a.m. – 1 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time)

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The webinar will be 2 hours long.

In this talk I will revisit Freud’s concept of the repetition compulsion and consider some updated biological research that may contribute to a more contemporary and more biologically grounded understanding of the repetition compulsion. I will then consider the significance of play in psychoanalytic work. While play has long been a subject of psychoanalysis, and we are all aware that Melanie Klein, Anna Freud, Donald Winnicott, and others have contributed to our understanding of the significance of play in the analysis of children, I will take a broader psychoanalytic approach to the subject of play here, considering the extent to which play is valuable in psychoanalysis not only for working with children, but for working with patients across the lifespan. I will also look into the relationship between play and flexibility, and consider the use of play in psychoanalysis as a means of surmounting the repetition compulsion. Finally, I will consider the relationship between play and music, both from the point of view of considering the underlying neuroanatomical substrates involved in play, and those involved in listening to and enjoying music, and also from the point of view of what may be seen as similar structures of play and music in integrating a balance between routinized, automatized behaviors or experiences versus novel, surprising behaviors or experiences. Ultimately I will argue that this balance is central to both the nature and the evolutionary function of play.

Bio
Joshua Kellman, MD is a child and adult psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst. He is on the faculty at the University of Chicago, in the department of psychiatry, predominantly in the section of child and adolescent psychiatry. He teaches classes on psychodynamic work with children and adults, and on development. He is also involved in research on play, including a recent study involving parents tickling their children, examining the relationship between heart rate variability and play, and the relationship between play and flexibility. He is also on the faculty at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, where he teaches classes on psychoanalysis and neuroscience with Virginia Barry, on the hierarchical models approach to psychoanalysis, and case conferences.

CPD credits: 2
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