Dr Leo van Biene: "The Man Who Couldn’t Disappear – Adaptation and its Limits"

Friday 3rd March 2017

Dr Leo van Biene: "The Man Who Couldn’t Disappear –
A Study of Adaptation and its Limits"

This is a family story set in another place and in another time. Sam Noach has overcome early obstacles by becoming a successful businessman. He basks in his visibility and notoriety. At a critical moment, however, he hesitates and makes a fateful decision.

There are many threads to this narrative – the historical, the psychological and the personal. The presenter will illustrate this narrative about his grandfather with photos, videos and documents. Dr Leo van Biene MBBS (Hons) FRANZCP – Consultant Psychiatrist is a Fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrist, a member of its Section of Psychotherapy and a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He was born in the Netherlands and attended Medical School in Australia. While undertaking training in psychiatry in Boston he developed an interest psychodynamic psychotherapy. He has maintained a psychotherapy practice in Sydney for over three decades.

Leo has held a clinical appointment at Harvard Medical School and has been a member of the teaching faculty for the University of Sydney’s Masters of Medicine in Psychotherapy at Westmead Hospital Sydney since 1998. He has been a long-standing and active member of the Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychotherapists in which has held multiple positions including President, and has served on its teaching faculty for many years. He has taught and supervised throughout Australia and New Zealand, and has presented at conferences locally and in the United States, Europe and Asia.

His practice is informed by the Psychologies of the Self (Meares’s Conversational Model) and by contemporary Relational Psychoanalytic perspectives.