NOBPC | New Orleans-Birmingham Psychoanalytic Center

Film Series - DATE CHANGE -I Have to Think These Things Up: Imagination, Differentiation, and Defense at Grey Gardens by Jon Dimond, Phd
2025-06-21 14:00 - 17:15 UTC | NOBPC or Zoom, 3624 Coliseum St., New Orleans, 70115, United States
Psychoanalysis and Cinema: Elevate your clinical competence by understanding the persistent impact of fused family dynamics in adult patients. This talk addresses the gap in recognizing how defenses maintain these relationships and how cultural shifts impede separation. Learn to apply these insights to your practice, fostering deeper understanding and more effective interventions with clients navigating individuation and lifespan challenges.
Psychologists, Social Workers, and Licensed Professional Counselors may also receive continuing education credit for this activity if their accredited associations or boards recognize CME credits.
Screening begins at 2pm Central Time at NOBPC.
Discussion begins at 3:45pm Central Time at NOBPC or Zoom
The Maysles Brothers’ Grey Gardens (1976) is many things – a genre defining cinema verite masterpiece that inspired a Broadway musical, an HBO dramatic remake, and truly singular fashion iconography. Some call it a definitive cult classic. It is also a psychologically intense and profoundly intimate portrait of a mother/daughter struggle for dominance, independence, and love at a particularly vulnerable moment in their shared developmental trajectory. Together we will visit the real life East Hampton estate of Grey Gardens and encounter its singular inhabitants Edith “Big Edie” Bouvier Beale and Edith “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale in media res.
We will attempt to read this documentary as a narrative representation of the imaginative world of the home’s occupants, returning to cyclical memories of loss, thwarted ambition, and an aching desire for security and love. We will also focus on the ways in which humor and intimacy create opportunities to both connect with and wound others. Participants will additionally be invited to link these observations and insights to their own work with patients contending with overly fused relationships, attempts at individuation, decay, and the precarity of the lifespan.
Learning Objectives:

Identify and describe the defenses that Big Edie and Little Edie use throughout the film
Define Jung’s concept of differentiation and determine whether Big Edie and Little Edie achieve it within their mother-daughter dyad
Assess Big and Little Edie’s respective self-concepts and how that is defended and interfered with throughout the film in the domains of seduction, loss, and decay

Dr. Jon Dimond received his doctorate in clinical psychology from The New School for Social Research in New York City. Although his practice is broadly oriented toward general adult psychotherapy, he has specialized training in treatments for severe personality disorders and trauma. Dr. Dimond additionally has an extensive research and clinical background working with individuals who identify as transgender, genderqueer, gender non-conforming, and gender non-binary.
Attendance is free but pre-register HERE
Please click HERE for registration with CME credits. If you prefer to pay by check, please email nobpcenter@gmail.com.
Fee for 1.5 CME credits:

NOBPC members $10
Non-members $15

In-person space is limited so please register early.
If you wish to join only for the discussion, please watch the film prior to joining. If joining for the discussion only, please arrive at NOBPC by 3:40pm or join the Zoom link.
The film is available to rent on several streaming services.
Zoom registration ends 24 hours before the event and is only available for the discussion portion.
This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of American Psychoanalytic Association and NOBPC. The American Psychoanalytic Association is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
The American Psychoanalytic Association designates this live activity for a maximum of 1.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
The APsA CE Committee has reviewed the materials for accredited continuing education and has determined that this activity is not related to the product line of ineligible companies and therefore, the activity meets the exception outlined in Standard 3: ACCME’s identification, mitigation and disclosure of relevant financial relationship. This activity does not have any known commercial support.
Optional Readings:

Chodorow, N. (2020). Women, mother, daughters: The reproduction of mothering after the second wave. International Psychoanalytical Association. https://www.ipa.world/IPA/IPA_DOCS/PDFDocuments/Chodorow%202020-%20Women%20Mother%20Daughters.pdf
Golan, M., & Bachner-Melman, R. (2021). Keep it quiet: Mother–daughter parentification and difficulties in separation–individuation shaping daughters’ authentic/true self and self-silencing: A mediation model. Journal of Adolescence, 89, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2021.04.002
Akhtar, S. (2022). Selected papers of Salman Akhtar. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003278736
