Shrinks and Drinks Fall!
Dates
Fridays
August 28,
September 25,
November 6
Time
4:30 – 6:30pm
Location
The Alamo Psychotherapy & Training
6401 Ruby Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90042
Tickets
$15, includes beverages and snacks
We’re back—with more shrinks, and more drinks.
The Alamo is kicking Fall off early with a new set of fun and engaging evenings.
Psychoanalysis has always known that the most interesting conversations happen in intimate rooms, between people willing to sit with uncertainty and say what they almost didn't. Shrinks and Drinks is built on that conviction — a series of Friday evening talks in which psychoanalysts open their clinical thinking to colleagues, offer a case for shared consultation, and make room for the kind of dialogue that doesn't often survive the formality of the conference setting.
Come as you are, wherever you are in your training. This is a window into analytic practice, not a test of it. The conversation is the point. We provide the shrinks and the drinks. You bring the appetizing case material.
Friday, August 28, 2026
Darren Haber
Nothing but Footnotes: The Language of Obsessive Eroticism
What do we mean when we speak of a patient’s “fetish”? A process, a concretization, or an eroticization (of what)? Such multiplicity of meanings reflects the difficulty of discussing fetishism (and sexuality) itself, as illustrated in a vignette involving a defended male patient with an erotic fixation on feet: a point of contention in a volatile marriage, and his own pointedly self-critical psyche. Such fixation excited and imprisoned him, protected and isolated him from his partner’s passion—sexual yet also rageful—within an obsessive personality where affective vulnerability was warded off and “held” within a stubbornly unsymbolized fortress. Affectivity like the foot, in other words, became a footnote to his everyday vocabulary, both desirous and reproachful. Our discussion also considers how theoretical language functions in understanding this case and in clinical work more generally, by bringing intersubjective-systems and Freudian ideas into dialogue—the old and the new (or new again)—whose harmonies and dissonances echo the patient’s own alphabetic thickets, simultaneously inviting and obstructing psychic clarity.
Darren Haber, PsyD, is a psychoanalyst practicing in west Los Angeles. He specializes in treating childhood trauma, addiction, and anxiety/depression. His book, Circles Without a Center: Addiction, Accommodation and Vulnerability in Psychoanalysis was published in July 2022 by Routledge. His new book, Words Apart: Dissociation, Compulsion, and Language Games in Psychoanalysis, will be out this winter. He publishes a weekly Substack column called “Hearing the Worlds of Others” and is the winner of several analytic writing awards. He has published online at the Los Angeles Review of Books, Psyche/Aeon, Psychology Today, GoodTherapy.org, the APA blog site, and The American Psychoanalyst. He frequently teaches, and has published numerous papers in the journals Psychoanalysis, Self and Context, and Psychoanalytic Inquiry. His website is www.therapistinlosangeles.com and is on Twitter/X at @darrenhabermft.
Friday, September 25
Wendy Bauer
The Allure of Sharing Suffering: emotional resonance in the face of trauma
Much of what facilitates an effective therapeutic process involves the therapist’s use of her emotional experience as a means to understand and make meaning of the patient’s lived experience. As we reference similar moments in our lives, we experience an emotional resonance that fosters empathy and attunement, deepening the patient’s felt experience of recognition and creating the conditions for therapeutic growth. It is a process of moving in and out of identification with the patient’s experience while maintaining a constant awareness of our own separate subjectivity and its impact on the intersubjective field. But what happens when the traumatic narratives of the patient and therapist collide?
Dr. Wendy Bauer presents a compelling case in which events in the therapist’s life unfold during the course of treatment that closely resemble the patient’s traumatic narrative. A profound emotional resonance of shared suffering developed, blurring the lines between self and other. Dr. Bauer discusses the struggle and necessity of holding on to one’s subjectivity in the face of the seductive pull towards a sense of sameness, as well as the potential therapeutic benefits of shared suffering.
Wendy Bauer, PsyD, MA is a psychoanalyst based in Los Angeles. She has a private practice where she works with adolescents and adults struggling with a range of issues including trauma, grief, and anxiety. She received her master’s in Clinical Psychology from Antioch University Los Angeles and her doctorate from The Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis where she has chaired and served on multiple committees. Dr. Bauer won the 2021 IAPSP Essay Award Contest for her paper, “The Bereaved Analyst: Vulnerability in the intersubjective field.” The essay also won an honorable mention for the 2021 Dr. Daphne S. Stolorow Memorial Essay Award at ICPLA.
Friday, November 6
Jimmy Fisher
Save the date!!!
Refund policy
Participants seeking a refund for Shrinks and Drinks can email us at thealamoprograms@gmail.com at least 10 days before the event. Refunds requested 10 days or earlier will receive 100% refund. 10-5 days prior, participants are eligible for a 50% refund. No refund will be provided 4 days prior or less.
Contact Us
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
