Wine, Cheese, & Bad Objects

Gather on Friday, May 30th with other colleagues to hear a presentation from Nicole Pardo, MD on "Borders, Bad Objects, and Psychoanalysis." Come benefit from Nicole's research during her psychoanalytic training as she dives into her experience of psychoanalysis and the role of the omnipotent phantasy in the field.

Borders, Bad Objects, and Psychoanalysis

Nicole Pardo, MD is a psychoanalytic therapist in private practice with a particular interest in working with complex trauma. She is an advanced psychoanalytic candidate at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC), and she is also currently enrolled in the Group Therapy Training Program (GTTP) at The Psychotherapy Institute (TPI). She is actively working toward her graduation paper for PINC, integrating her experiences with psychoanalytic and group training. This presentation covers her work on this project to date. 


As the daughter of an immigrant Venezuelan father and a white mother, Nicole talks about the challenges of finding language for the totality of her psychic experience within the frame of psychoanalysis, in which the social unconscious has historically been excluded. She explores her own experiences in training, both through psychoanalytic training and group process, utilizing dreams and group theory to critique and push against the frame of the classical Freudian tradition. She specifically expands upon Fairbairn’s idea of internalization of bad objects, exploring its attendant omnipotent phantasy. She goes on to explore re-enactments of omnipotent phantasy within the field, and she invites us to consider the potential for enriching psychoanalytic thought via re-integration of theories that have been split off through scapegoating.