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BARRIERS TO SUCCESS:
INTERNAL WORLD and UNCONSCIOUS FANTASY OBSTRUCTIONS
Full-day Workshop, ORI, Saturday, November 12, 2011
Workshop leader – Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP, D.Litt
In this workshop, Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler will identify critical psychological factors that
interfere with success. In the 1960s and 1970s we spoke of “self-actualization,” while today,
success is most often referred to in terms of external factors of overt worldly achievement. From
either vantage point, unconscious fears related to unconscious fantasies and unconscious desires,
and to split-off or unconscious aggression, can often lie at the root of inhibitions and
intimidations that prevent full manifestation of creative self-expression in life.
In 2005, Dr. Kavaler-Adler’s article in the International Forum of Psychoanalysis
entitled “My Graduation is My Mother’s Funeral” presented an in-depth process of
psychoanalysis that resolved terrors of success, as they played themselves out in the transference.
The developmental transformations of psychic fantasy constellations could be vividly seen in this
article. The idea of “fear of success” has also been the subject of many workshops conducted by
Dr. Kavaler-Adler. In this new workshop, the subject of “barriers of success” will expand on
past formulations, specifically focusing on intimidations related to fears of actual envy in others,
fears of projected unconscious envy (Melanie Klein wrote of unconscious envy which blocks
creativity and love), addictions to sadistic demon-lover figures (see Dr. Kavaler-Adler’s books
and articles on the “demon lover complex”), unconscious loyalties to shaming and retaliating
primal parent figures within the internal world (read on Ronald Fairbairn’s and Jeffrey Seinfeld’s
addictions to “bad objects”), and on general inhibitions against the conscious connection to
preoedipal primal rage and aggression. Addictions to personal self-image defenses based on
split-off aggression that manifests in interpersonal behavior as “self-righteousness” will also be
discussed.
In the afternoon portion of the workshop, Dr. Kavaler-Adler will ask for a volunteer from
the workshop participants to role-play a patient who is manifesting symptoms of “barriers to
success” in the treatment situation. This will allow the volunteer to experience their patient’s
subjectivity “in vivo” and to see how Dr. Kavaler-Adler responds, in the clinical moment, to the
enacted patient. The workshop group can then share in a discussion of the role play as each
person in the group experienced. Dr. Kavaler-Adler will answer questions and define the process
of the role play, and relate it to the broader workshop themes explored in the morning portion of
the workshop.
Bio: Susan Kavaler-Adler, PhD, ABPP has been in practice as clinical psychologist for
36 years. She is an experienced training analyst, individual and group senior supervisor, and a
faculty member of various psychoanalytic institutes. She is known internationally for her books,
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articles, and teachings on object relations theory within the practice of psychoanalysis and
psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Although formerly teaching actively at the National Institute for
the Psychotherapies (NIP), and Postgraduate Center for Mental Health, she founded the Object
Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis in 1991 (with the help of Dr. Robert
Weinstein who initiated the experiential group supervision program), after she designed a unique
curriculum that integrates the critical clinical and developmental theory contributions of the
British and American object relations theorists. Dr. Kavaler-Adler has served as the Executive
Director of the Object Relations Institute for 20 years, and teaches actively at the institute, along
with doing training analysis and supervision, and conducting workshops and conferences.
Dr. Kavaler-Adler is the author of three internationally read books, and 60 journal articles
and edited book chapters. She won an Honorary Doctorate in Literature in 2008, and 11
psychoanalytic awards for her writing over the years, which covers her writing on women artists
and writers, on the “developmental mourning process,” on the creative process, on the “demon
lover complex,” and on object relations theory related to issues of self-integration and
separation-individuation. Dr. Kavaler-Adler shows that process of self-integration is dependent
on the success of “developmental mourning” process (versus developmental arrest in the form of
an object relations pathological mourning state, which manifests as a bad object addiction that is
eroticized into the form of a “demon lover complex”). One of Dr. Kavaler-Adler’s awards was
the National Gradiva Award (from NAAP), won for her third Routledge book, Mourning,
Spirituality and Psychic Change: A New Object Relations View of Psychoanalysis. She is known
in America, England, and South Korea for her particular writings on erotic transference, and on
the development of the creative and spiritual selves along with the full evolution of erotic desire
and primary love. She is also noted for her writings on envy and “psychic vampirism.” Her
earlier books, The Compulsion to Create: Women Writers and Their Demon Lovers (Routledge,
1993; Other Press 2000), and The Creative Mystique: From Red Shoes Frenzy to Love and
Creativity (Routledge, 1996) are currently being reprinted by The Object Relations Institute
Press, with new illustrations, improved editing, and additional chapters. Information on Dr.
Kavaler-Adler’s writings, workshops, courses, and conference lectures can be obtained at her
website, www.kavaleradler.com. Her email is drkavaleradler@gmail.com .