FRIENDSHIP

WHAT MAKES IT, WHAT BREAKS IT

Winter 2017

This weekend will explore the many facets of friendship across the lifespan.  We will look at friendship through the eyes of both writers and clinicians, examining why friends are important to us, how friendships take shape, and how they become meaningful.  This weekend will also explore ruptures, loss and repair in friendship, and the affiliative longings and subsequent disappointments that characterize friendship across the developmental spectrum.

Coordinators: Anne Adelman, Ph.D. and Christie Platt, Ph.D.

GUEST FACULTY:

Lisa Gornick, Ph.D.  is a writer and psychoanalyst.  She is the author of two novels—Tinderbox  and A Private Sorcery, and a collection of linked stories, Louisa Meets Bear.  Her stories and essays have appeared widely and have received many awards, including a distinguished story citation in the Best American Short Stories anthology.  Currently on the faculty of the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, she has taught at Yale, Fordham, and the New York Academy of  Medicine.

Erica S. Perl is the author of popular and critically acclaimed books for young readers. Her books include Chicken Butt!, Goatilocks, Ferocious Fluffity, and When Life Gives You O.J., which earned a Sydney Taylor Notable Award, was an Amazon Best Book of the Month, and is on multiple state book award lists. Erica’s newest novel, The Capybara Conspiracy, is an unusual creature, as it is also a play. Erica is a crowd-pleasing presenter at schools and libraries and she enjoys working with reluctant readers and writers as much as she enjoys working with enthusiastic ones. She honed her writing and presentation skills while working as a criminal defense lawyer in New York City – no joke.

Judith Stone has been a storyteller, host and curator at The Moth, the international storytelling organization. She is the author of Light Elements, Essays on Science from Gravity to Levity, a collection of her award-winning humor columns from Discover magazine, and When She Was White, which was the basis for the 2009 film Skin.

Steve Tuber, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology, Program Head and Director of Clinical Training of the Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology at the City College of New York, CUNY. He is the author of five books and numerous papers on the interplay of assessment and treatment of children, adolescents and adults and has a private practice in New York City.

Additional faculty may be announced at a later date.