COURSE FIVE – The Inside Story: How Writers Write

Course Coordinator: Karen Dougherty, MA, RP (CRPO), FIPA

Wednesdays, 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm: November 22, 2023, January 31, March 27, 2024. (3 sessions)

Fee: No charge.

Deadline for registration is November 15, 2023.
Preregistration is required.

** DISTANCE PARTICIPATION ONLY – This course will be conducted online.

This new extension course, to be offered yearly, draws back the curtain on the psychoanalytic writing process.

Each evening presents one writer and a recently published paper, essay, poem, or book. The purpose is not to present the work but for the writer to delve into their inspiration, routine, struggles, and blocks. How did they jot down initial thoughts and how did they approach research? What was the idea’s genesis? How did they shape and reshape the work? When did they share it with others for feedback? What was the revision process? And, finally, how did they get their work published?

We will invite registrants to read the paper or book excerpt in advance so they may participate in the discussion.

November 22, 2023
Fadi Abou-Rihan, Finding Winnicott: Philosophical Encounters with the Psychoanalytic, Routledge, 2023
Fadi Abou-Rihan, RP, PhD, is a Toronto-based Registered psychotherapist (CRPO) and psychoanalyst in private practice. He is a graduate of the Toronto Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. Alongside his clinical work, he has authored two books (one on Winnicott and another on Deleuze and Guattari) as well as articles on trauma, technique, queer theory and HIV/AIDS.

January 31, 2024
Elizabeth Wallace, “What the Pandemic Did to My Mind,” ROOM:A Sketchbook for Analytic Action, 2023.
Elizabeth Wallace, MD, FRCPC, is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst living in Calgary, Canada. She maintains a private practice of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis and teaches and supervises psychotherapy in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Calgary. She is president of the Western Canada Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and a training and supervising analyst with the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis. She is a graduate of the New Directions program in psychoanalytic writing and enjoys writing creative nonfiction with a psychoanalytic bent.

March 27, 2024
Frank Marra, “Henry Miller’s Writing Impasse: Autobiographical Fiction in the Shadow of Psychoanalysis,” (2019). Psychoanal. Q., (88)(1):141-163.
Frank Marra, PhD, FIPA is a Psychoanalyst and Social Worker who has served as the Lead for Newcomers Mental Health at the Toronto Catholic District School Board and Clinical Director for Delisle Youth Services. Presently, Frank Marra, PhD, FIPA is in full-time private practice in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in Toronto. Frank Marra, PhD, FIPA maintains academic interests and has published articles on literature and cinema.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

1. Understand more fully the psychoanalytic writing and publication process;
2. Unpack the many meanings of the term “writer’s block”
3. Query the notion of “inspiration.”
4. Appreciate the unique vicissitudes of psychoanalytic writing.

Karen Dougherty, MA, RP (CRPO), FIPA

Karen Dougherty is a Registered Psychotherapist and Psychoanalyst in private practice in Amaranth, Ontario. She is also a documentary filmmaker, a former producer in TVOntario’s Documentary Unit, and a mental health consultant for film and television. She teaches at the ATPPP, the FPP, the Extension Program of the TPS, and at the Documentary Institute at Seneca College.