Songs From Soma: Reawakening Enchantment | October 2025 – June 2026

In this course, we will weave our way through psychoanalytic literature, group reverie and clinical material to discover and expand our experience of somata-psychic attunement as it reveals a resonant underlying fabric of enchantment. The voices of P. Goldberg, Winnicott, Ogden and others will guide (lure) us into somatic depths where enchantment can be ignited or re-ignited. Cut off from somatic rhythms, symptoms may be heard and felt as figures/voices from the depths signaling distress in attempts to lead us back to the experience of aliveness and integration (home). This course will explore somatic mysteries, not attempt to solve the riddle of who we are and will become.

Coleen Gold, MA, BC-ATR, FIPA
Coleen Gold is an Art Therapist and Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst in private practice in Vancouver with a background in Fine Art and a special interest in psychoanalytic aesthetics.

Judith Setton-Markus is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in Vancouver. She is a member of the Western Canada Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and faculty member of both the Western Canada Psychoanalytic Society Course Programs and the Western Canadian Psychoanalytic Institute. She is an assistant clinical professor in postgraduate education in Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia. Judith facilitates infant observation seminar groups and an ongoing, open-ended supervision group for psychotherapists, several of whom have progressed to undergoing full psychoanalytic training.

Paul Steinberg is clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry of University of British Columbia where he maintains a private practice in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy. He is a training and supervising analyst in the Western Canada Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, and is a member of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society, and the International Psychoanalytic Association. He was awarded the 2016 Douglas Levin Essay Prize of the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society. He is on the editorial board of the Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis. He is the author of 115 peer-reviewed papers and book reviews, and one book chapter, on psychoanalytic and psychodynamic topics, and of Psychoanalysis in Medicine: Applying Psychoanalytic Thought to Contemporary Medical Care (2021), and Psychoanalysis in Mental Health: Applying Psychoanalytic Thought to Contemporary Mental Health Practice (2022).

Darren Thompson is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in private practice in Vancouver, Canada. He is a Training and Supervising Analyst of the Western Canada Psychoanalytic Society & Institute (Past-President), Faculty of the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society & Institute, and a Fellow of the American Board of Psychoanalysis and the International Psychoanalytic Association.

Elizabeth Wallace, MD, FRCPC is a psychiatrist in private practice in Calgary, and Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, University of Calgary where she teaches and supervises residents. She is a training and supervising analyst with the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis and on faculty at the Western Canada Psychoanalytic Institute. She is Past President of WCPSI.

Catherine Young PhD, FIPA is a registered Psychologist in private practice in Victoria BC and on clinical faculty in the Department of Psychiatry at UBC where she supervises psychiatric residents. She is a training and supervising analyst with the Canadian Psychoanalytic Institute and on faculty at the Western Canada Psychoanalytic Institute. She is the past Director of Training in the WCPSI Institute. She has designed and facilitated WCPSI, formerly WPSI, (Victoria) courses for the past 15 years.

Learning Objectives

• Attending to and awareness of these dimensions of somatic experiencing:
• How symptoms may dissolve as they are dreamt.
• How the therapeutic couple may listen to transform nightmares (symptoms) into enlivened dream figures as powerful agents of change.
• How the therapeutic couple may enchant dissociated parts of the self into existence.
• How the therapeutic couple may distinguish between the body, a thing to be instructed and the soma, a voice desiring to be heard and an experience desiring to be lived.
• How re-emerging the long-forgotten element of enchantment may arise as a mutual therapeutic intention.

Session 1, October 30
Blum, A., Goldberg, P. and Levin, M. (2023), Chapter 6, (pp. 143 – 171). In Here I’m Alive, the Spirit of Music in Psychoanalysis – Catherine Young, Ph.D., FIPA

Session 2, November 27
Blum, A., Goldberg, P. and Levin, M. (2023), Chapter 5, (pp. 117 – 139). In Here I’m Alive, the Spirit of Music in Psychoanalysis – Darren Thompson, M.D., FIPA

Session 3, January 29
Ogden, Thomas. (2025), Chapter 6, (pp. 67 – 83). In What Alive Means. And Edited by Caldwell, L. and Joyce, A.(2011), Chapter 4. (pp. 83 – 98). In Reading Winnicott. – Paul Steinberg, M.D., FRCPC, FIPA

Session 4, February 26
McDougall, Joyce. (1989). Introduction and Chapter 10, (pp. 1 – 11 and 140 – 161), In Theatres of the Body: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Psychosomatic Illness. – Judith Setton-Markus, M.Ed., R. Psych. FIPA

Session 5, March 26
Lemma, Alessandra. (2015), Chapter 8, (pp. 128 – 142). In Minding the Body – The Body in Psychoanalysis and Beyond. – facilitator to be announced

Session 6, April 30
Marty, Pierre, de M’Uzan, Michel. (1963), Chapter 8, (pp. 449 – 458). In Reading French Psychoanalysis. – Coleen Gold, M.A., BC-ATR, FIPA

Session 7, May 28
Melzer, Donald, Harris Williams, Meg. (1988), Introduction and Chapter 1, (pp. xi – 33). In The Apprehension of Beauty. – Elizabeth M. Wallace, M.D., FRCPC, FIPA

Session 8, June 25
Eigen, Michael. (2011), Chapter 2, (pp. 17 – 30). In Contact with the Depths. – Catherine Young, Ph.D., FIPA