On The Writings of Adam Phillips

Instructor
Dr. Michelle Harwell

Date & Time
Five Consecutive Tuesdays,
September 1, 8, 15, 22, 29
12:00–1:30pm PST

Location
Hybrid Course, both In-Person and Zoom

In-Person at
The Alamo Psychotherapy & Training
6401 Ruby St.
Los Angeles, CA 90042

Zoom link shared to registrants before first class

CEs
7.5 CEs offered for qualifying professionals.

Course fee
Early Registration (Through Aug 18)
$230 for licensed therapists / $175 for pre-licensed and students
Late Registration (After Aug 18)
$260 for licensed therapists / $190 for pre-licensed and students

“Satisfaction is no more the solution to frustration than certainty is the solution to skepticism.”
―Adam Phillips

Adam Phillips has built an entire career on the suspicion that we already know more than we let ourselves feel, and considerably less than we like to pretend. For four decades he has been writing essays that behave like our patients: elliptical, self-interrupting, prone to saying the truest thing moments before changing the subject. To read him closely is to be quietly rearranged. Certainties loosen. The tidy interpretation begins to feel a little embarrassed of itself. Gradually it becomes clear that Phillips is doing to his reader what a good analyst does in the consulting room: withholding the neat conclusion, tolerating the drift, trusting that something more useful than certainty will arrive. Read this way, he is not just a stylist. He is tutoring us toward an analytic posture.

Phillips writes the way he wants his reader to listen; reading him becomes a rehearsal in staying with something before explaining it away. For the developing analyst, this is the real curriculum. This five week course moves chronologically, watching an aphoristic young writer apprenticed to Khan and Winnicott grow into a critic willing to say in public what psychoanalysis has mostly preferred to whisper: that frustration is not a design flaw, that giving up can be a species of courage, and that sanity, properly examined, is the stranger of our two conditions.

Bring your own resistance. He will have theories about it.

This is a hybrid class, offered simultaneously in-person and online via Zoom. Readings will be provided by instructor prior to the start of the course.

Instructor Credentials

Michelle Harwell, PsyD, LMFT #50732 is a training and supervising analyst, respected instructor, and practicing clinician with specialization in trauma, development, and contemporary relational psychoanalysis. For over a decade, Dr. Harwell has trained and supervised clinicians through a unique integration of contemporary psychoanalytic principles and the humanities, believing that our reverence for theory must live alongside a deep humility and respect for the complexity of the human story. She is the author of numerous papers and her writing interests are centered on the interior process of the analyst. She is noted for her expertise in areas of early-life and relational trauma, adoption, and neuroscience, and her ability to communicate complex topics with clarity and humor.

For more information or questions contact us at thealamoprograms@gmail.com

Refund policy: Participants seeking a refund can email us at thealamoprograms@gmail.com at least 15  days before the first meeting. Refunds requested 15 days or earlier will receive 100% refund. 14-7 days prior, participants are eligible for a 50% refund. No refund will be provided 6 days prior or less.

Course meets the  qualifications for 7.5 hours of continuing education credit for PhD, LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and/or LEPs as required by the American Psychological Association and the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. 

Please note: Attendance at all class meetings is required for continuing education credits.

Course certificates awarded at the end of the course upon receipt of  completed evaluation form.

The Alamo Psychotherapy and Training is a dba of Michelle Harwell Therapy. Michelle Harwell Therapy is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists and many licensed clinicians. Michelle Harwell Therapy maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

No known conflict of interest or commercial support for Michelle Harwell Therapy, The Alamo Psychotherapy and Training, or the instructor.

To request accommodations for special needs, obtain the grievance policy, report a grievance, request a refund, request more information about the course, or if you have general questions, please email us at thealamoprograms@gmail.com