Susan Ann LaGanza

PhD Student

E: suelag@bigpond.com

Some of the formative experiences of her professional life were at the Spastic Centre of NSW and at Arndell Children’s Unit, in Sydney, where she worked psychoanalytically with very disturbed children. This work led into an interest in psychoanalysis, and to adult and child psychoanalytic training.

Susan enrolled as a post-graduate student at the CCR in March 2005. Her PhD research consists of a reflexive ethnography on death (a blending of the personal and the cultural) with comparative focus on various artistic/creative representations in multiple genres of the experience of death and mourning.

Conference papers

1989 The Analysis of a Three-Year-old Boy with Sleeping Problems,
Psychotherapy Association of Australia Conference, Adelaide

1990 The Development of True Expressive Language and True Self in
the Analysis of a Young Child, at AMMHI Conference Melbourne

1991 Termination in Child Therapy, P.A.A. Conference Melbourne

1992 Oedipus Orsiris and the Rainbow Serpent. A Seven-Year-old Boy
Searches for his own Myth of Creation, Australian Psycho-
analytical Society Conference Leura, Sydney

1993 Close to the Edge: The Impact on the Therapeutic Relationship of
a Major Event in the Life of the Therapist, Psychotherapy
Association of Australia Conference, Coolum, Queensland

1994 Childhood Depression and Child Development, Study Day
Auckland NZ

1999 Desert Spaces: The Five-year Analysis of a Child who Presented
at age two and a half with Autistic Features, Psychotherapy
Association of Australia Conference, Fremantle WA

2002 Encounters in Supervision: Moments of New Understanding,
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association of Australia Conference
Encounter Bay, South Australia.

2002 Poem to Celebrate the New Home of the New South Wales
Institute of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, presented at the
members’ end of year function at NSWIPP House, Glebe, Sydney

2003 The Development of the Capacity to Cry, Australian Psycho-
Analytical Society Conference, Melbourne

Publications

Lagans, S.A. (2003). Encounters in Supervision; Moments of New
Understanding. Australasian J of Psychotherapy, 22: 48-59.

LaGanza, S. A. (2003). A Poem to Celebrate the New Home of the New South
Wales Institute of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. Australasian J of
Psychotherapy, 22: 88 – 89.

Book Review
Rhode, M. and Klauber, T. (Eds.) (2004). The Many Faces of Asperger’s
Syndrome. Karnac, London. Published in The Australasian J of Psychotherapy,
2005 24: 132-137

Membership of Organisations

NSW Institute for Psychoanalysis

The Australian Psychoanalytical Society

International Psychoanalytical Association

NSW Institute for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy

The Psychotherapy Association of Australia