St. Louis Psychoanalytic Society

A conference on “Memory, Suggestibility, and Seduction in the Clinical Psychotherapeutic Situation” was cosponsored by the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Society and the Department of Psychology at Washington University in fall 1998. Presenters included a psychologist-neuroscientist involved in neuroimaging, Moisy Shopper, Elizabeth Loftus, Henry Roediger, and others. They grappled with the clinical implications of modern research on human memory.

Interest in the neurosciences runs high in Seattle, in good part as a result of the work of Carol A. Kusché and Werner H. Schimmelbusch. They have been pioneers in returning attention to the importance of the biological foundations of psychoanalysis.

Kusché recently remarked, “We should expect that successful psychoanalytic treatment actually influences and alters neurological organization and structuralization in the brains of our patients.” She developed the PATHS (for Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies) Curriculum to teach “emotional literacy” to elementary schoolchildren. She described this work as follows: “We used psychoanalytic, psychobiological, developmental, and other theories to form a powerful, integrated model for emotional and social education for children. We were then able to document its effectiveness.”

Schimmelbusch's interest in neurobiology led to the implementation of a new elective class at the Seattle Institute that focuses on integrating psychoanalytic understanding with modern knowledge of brain functioning. His enthusiasm and encouragement led the Seattle Institute and Society to become one of the first in the country to sponsor a major symposium on psychobiology and psychotherapy, “Meetings of the Mind,” organized in 1996 by Randall Riggs.

The symposium was a groundbreaking series of four weekend programs on psychobiology and psychotherapy presented by the Seattle Institute in conjunction with the University of Washington Department of Psychiatry. Featured speakers were