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Psychoanalysis and Work in Traumatized Communities:
Two In-Depth Case Studies

October 3, 2015 | Chicago, Illinois

Jointly sponsored by the Institute for Clinical Social Work and
the AAPCSW Committee on Social Justice
Program

6 CEUs
Fee: $125 ($85 for ICSW students)

Presenter: Ricardo Ainslie, PhD
Date: Saturday, October 3, 2015
Time: 9:00 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Register: http://www.icsw.edu/events/special-conference
Contact Elizabeth Oller (312) 935-4245

Location: The Standard Club
320 S Plymouth Ct., Chicago, IL 60604 [ MAP ]
Tel: (312) 427-9100

6 CEUs provided, which satisfy requirements for either the ethics or the diversity requirement. Continental breadfast and lunch will be provided.

In 1998, three white men dragged James Byrd to death behind a pickup truck in Jasper, Texas. Byrd was black, and at least two of his killers were members of a white supremacist prison gang known as the Confederate Knights of America. The racially motivated dragging death was a modern-day lynching.

Dr. Ricardo Ainslie has spent two decades taking psychoanalysis out of his consulting room and into communities.  In this presentation he will describe the nuts and bolts of how he enters communities, including transference and countertransference dynamics. He will also describe analogues to the therapeutic alliance in this kind of work. Finally, he will discuss how interventions are shaped and a variety of forms they may take as one attempts to use psychoanalytic insights to address community conflicts. Dr. Ainslie will organize his discussion around two case studies, which will include a screening of his documentary film, Crossover: A Story of Desegregation.

The Case of Jasper, TX: Dr. Ainslie traveled to Jasper repeatedly after the dragging murder of James Byrd, creating a traveling photographic exhibit as a kind of community intervention. He spent two-and-a-half years researching the book in Jasper and on Texas Death Row, where King is presently housed. His book, Long Dark Road: Bill King and Murder in Jasper (University of Texas Press, 2004), was runner up for Best Non-Fiction for the 2005 Hamilton Book Awards.

The Case of Hempstead, TX: In his film Crossover: A Story of Desegregation, Dr. Ainslie addresses issues of cultural conflict and transformation by examining the impact of school desegregation on the community of Hempstead, Texas. Dr. Ainslie will screen the documentary with us, and will discuss his work in Hempstead as an extended case study of a community divided by racial conflict.  His work there involved an oral history intervention, as inspired by the Truth and Reconciliation/Testimonio model, as well as a community story telling intervention, and, of course, his documentary.

Ricardo Ainslie: For almost two decades now Dr. Ainslie has devoted himself to working in communities in Texas and Mexico that have experienced significant conflict and transformation, exploring broader questions about how communities function and how individuals and cultural groups live within them. In this work he has gravitated toward the methodological sensibilities more typically associated with anthropology, American Studies, Liberal Arts, and creative non-fiction, rather than those of Psychology, developing a hybrid methodology that he terms psychoanalytic ethnography, because in most cases he conducts in-depth interviews with key individuals and these typically have a deeply psychological character.

Dr. Ainslie is a psychoanalyst and affiliate faculty member at the Houston Galveston Psychoanalytic Institute. He is a professor in the Department of Educational Psychology and a Fellow in the Charles H. Spence Centennial Professorship in Education at the University of Texas at Austin. In 2002, he received the Outstanding Contribution to Science Award from the Texas Psychological Association. In 2006 he was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters. And in 2009, he received the Science Award from the American Psychological Association’s Division of Psychoanalysis. In 2010 Ricardo Ainslie was selected for the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. He is also a Fellow in the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2010-2011). Dr. Ainslie a native of Mexico City, Mexico, and a US citizen. He earned his Bachelor’s degree (Psychology) at the University of California at Berkeley, and his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at the University of Michigan.

Program Outline

8:00am: Registration and Continental Breakfast

9:00am:  Introduction: 

Dr. Allan Scholom, Co-Chair, ICSWs Committee on Social Justice and ICSW Faculty
Dr. Jennifer Tolleson, Chair, Committee on Social Justice of the AAPCSW and Co-chair,
ICSW Committee on Social Justice, and ICSW Faculty

Dr. Ricardo Ainslie
9:15am - Noon: Narrative, Reconciliation, and Documentary

Three Interventions in a Community Riven by Segregation: The Case of Hempstead, Texas (will include a screening of Dr. Ainslie’s documentary, Crossover: A Story of Desegregation)

12:00 - 1:00pm: Working lunch; group  conversations

1:00 - 2:30pm: Hate crime and collective trauma in Jasper, Texas.

Photographic exhibit

2:30 - 3:00pm: Dialogue with Dr Ainslie

3:00pm:  Closing

Dr. Scott Harms Rose, Dean and President, ICSW
Dr. Judith Aronson, President-Elect, AAPCSW and ICSW Faculty


You may register on ICSWs website, http://www.icsw.edu/events/special-conference, or through Elizabeth Oller at 312-935-4245. You may be in touch with Jennifer Tolleson, Conference Chair, with any questions.