Containers Lost and Found
Presented
by: Holly Anderson, LCMFT, LMFT
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Psychoanalysis teaches us to sit with
the unknown and to hold what cannot be resolved. But what happens when the loss of an emotional container disrupts our capacity to feel grief,
make meaning, and connect?
In this talk, Holly Anderson invites
participants to explore how personal experiences of institutional histories and national tragedies have created a need to restore the
connection and belonging that a container provides through creativity, ritual, presence, and process.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, a unique
inflection point emerged for her training cohort, instructors, and leadership at the Greater Kansas City-Topeka Psychoanalytic Institute as
they grappled with ruptures in containment. Losses woven into the Institute’s history, including the closing of the Menninger
Clinic and the deaths of key figures, had already left their imprint. When ordinary in-person rituals like hellos, goodbyes, and moments of
gathering disappeared, the community was confronted with both the echo of those earlier losses and new challenges to containment unfolding in
the present.
How can containment be regained after
loss?
These ruptures point to the need for a
deeper conversation not only about personal grief but also about the legacy of the Greater Kansas City-Topeka Psychoanalytic Institute itself.
Unresolved transitions shape how continuity and belonging are experienced across personal, institutional, and societal life.
The closing ritual her cohort created
offered one path toward restoring containment. It revealed how new rituals, playful acts, and shared presence can re-establish meaning and
connection.
These gestures of symbolic repair
offer new forms of containment that continue to ripple outward into consulting rooms, the Institute, and the broader culture of
psychoanalysis.
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LEARNING
OBJECTIVES:
After
attending this session, participants should be able to:
1. Describe how disruptions in emotional containment at individual, institutional, and societal levels affect mourning,
meaning-making, and connection within a psychoanalytic framework.
2. Explain how symbolic repair through ritual and creative acts can support containment and transformation following
collective or institutional loss, drawing from psychoanalytic theory and lived experience.
3. Apply psychoanalytic concepts of mourning and creativity to clinical, institutional, or societal contexts where
emotional containment has been disrupted.
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Holly Anderson
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About the Presenter
Holly Anderson, M.A., LCMFT, LMFT is a psychoanalyst in private practice across Kansas City, Kansas and
Missouri. She works with individuals and couples who seek deeper self-understanding and a greater capacity to
hold complexity within themselves and their relationships. She also offers supervision and consultation for
clinicians.
Holly’s clinical and writing interests center on relational psychoanalysis, mourning, creativity, and the lived
experience of containment and rupture. She is especially drawn to the intersections where personal,
institutional, and societal histories converge, exploring how meaning emerges through symbol, ritual, presence,
and process in both treatment and organizational life.
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Monday,
November 17th, 2025
7:00 p.m.
to 8:30 p.m. Central Time
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This
seminar is free and open to the public.
Click HERE to
Register
or
visit our
website www.gkcpsa.org
The Zoom link
will be emailed to registrants on November 14th.
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1.5 CMEs/CEUs
are available for this seminar.
Certificates
of attendance are FREE for Center members,
$30 for
non-Center members.
(Details about
how to receive CMEs/CEUs will be provided during the seminar.)
Helpful
Information to Access and Participate in the Center Seminar
·
We strongly recommend that you use your PC or Mac for this meeting rather than phone or tablet, as the
reception and functionality is much better.
·
When you enter the meeting, you will be on mute. You are free to unmute yourself during the event
during discussion
.
We ask that you plan to attend the event with your personal video camera on so that you may be seen
by the other participants on screen. This is necessary for CME/CEU attendance tracking purposes.
·
Make sure you have labeled your name in the box with your video picture. If you have not done so, or if you
want to change your name, place your mouse on your video image. In the right corner, you will see three dots (…). Click the
dots, then click “rename” and insert your name as you want it to read. This is also necessary for CME/CEU attendance
tracking purposes.
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Continuing
Medical Education Credits
ACCME
Accreditation Statement
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 the Greater
Kansas City Psychoanalytic Institute. The American Psychoanalytic Association is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing
medical education for physicians.
AMA Credit
Designation Statement
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.
Disclosure
Statement
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.
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About the
Center
The Greater
Kansas City-Topeka Psychoanalytic Center is a nonprofit organization which provides a forum for discussion of theoretical,
cultural, and clinical ideas regarding psychoanalysis, as well as networking opportunities for professionals, through community
forums, professional workshops and annual film series. Membership is open to any person with a serious interest in
psychoanalysis. The Center is the parent organization of the Greater Kansas City Psychoanalytic Institute, which provides post
graduate training in the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. More information about the Greater Kansas City-Topeka
Psychoanalytic Center is available at www.gkcpsa.org.
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