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The Pseudo-Self - Gila Ashtor, PhD, LP (Webinar live online)
2025-26 Friday Night Guest Lecture Series
This session will increase clinical competence by helping learners identify the subtle features of pseudo-self presentations, which often go unrecognized due to the patient’s/client’s apparent functionality and lack of overt distress. Participants will gain tools to detect dissociative defenses and emotional absence masked by compliance and verbal engagement. The session will also offer strategies for fostering affective depth and authentic connection in treatment, including how to work with resistant or emotionally disconnected transference dynamics. By integrating sociocultural awareness with clinical technique, learners will be better equipped to engage these patients/clients meaningfully, improving therapeutic outcomes and deepening long-term treatment efficacy.
References
Ashtor, G. (2021). Exigent Psychoanalysis: Jean Laplanche’s theoretical interventions. Routledge.
McDougall, J. (2019). The normotic personality: Disavowal, affect, and clinical implications. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 67(3), 537–560.
Bollas, C. (2020). Emotional absence and the false self in contemporary personality organization. International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology, 15(2), 123–145.
Learning Objectives
Define and differentiate the clinical constructs of the “pseudo-self,” “false self,” “normotic personality,” and “as-if personality,” and examine how these forms of dissociative organization manifest in high-functioning patients with minimal subjective distress.
Analyze the challenges these patients pose to traditional psychoanalytic technique, including the difficulty of detecting absence of affect, the absence of complaint, and the implications for transference-countertransference dynamics and therapeutic engagement.
Critically evaluate the relationship between contemporary neoliberal cultural ideals (e.g., optimization, efficiency, emotional detachment) and the emergence or reinforcement of pseudo-self structures, considering how psychoanalysis can both reflect and resist these societal norms.
Gila Ashtor, PhD, LP, is an assistant professor of clinical psychoanalysis at Columbia University. She is also on the faculty at New York University’s Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, and at IPTAR. She is the author of three books, Homo Psyche: On Queer Theory and Erotophobia (Fordham UP, 2021), Exigent Psychoanalysis: The Interventions of Jean Laplanche (Routledge, 2021) and Aural History (Punctum, 2020). Her primary areas of academic and clinical expertise include dissociative disorders, trauma and sexuality. She is in private practice in New York City.
Austen Riggs Center Inc. adheres to the ACCME’s Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Medical Education. All those at Austen Riggs Center involved in the planning of this activity, including the presenter(s) listed above, report they have no relevant financial relationships with an ineligible company*.
The views and opinions expressed in this presentation are those of the presenter(s) and do not necessarily represent the official policy or position of the Austen Riggs Center.
* An ineligible company is any entity whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients.
Available Credit
- 1.50 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™
ACCME - As a Jointly Accredited Organization, The Austen Riggs Center, Inc. designates this learning activity for a maximum of 1.50 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
- 1.50 APA
As a Jointly Accredited Organization, The Austen Riggs Center, Inc. designates this learning activity for 1.50 continuing education credit(s) (CE) for psychology. Continuing Education (CE) credits for psychologists are provided through the co-sponsorship of the American Psychological Association (APA) Office of Continuing Education in Psychology (CEP). The APA CEP Office maintains responsibility for the content of the programs.
Austen Riggs Center, Inc. is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0115.
- 1.50 ASWB-ACE
As a Jointly Accredited Organization, The Austen Riggs Center, Inc is approved to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Organization, not individual courses, are approved under this program. State and provincial regulatory boards have the final authority to determine whether an individual course may be accepted for continuing education credit. Austen Riggs Center maintains responsibility for this. Social workers completing this will receive 1.50 continuing education credit(s).
Austen Riggs Center, Inc is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0843.
- 1.50 Contact Hours/ ParticipationA certificate of attendance for all Learners.