Dr. Jill Savege Scharff is an internationally known psychoanalyst for children and adults, couples and families.  She is the co-founder and formerly co-director of the International Psychotherapy Institute (www.theipi.org) where she is now a board member emeritus and frequent contributor to the blog. She was the founding Chair of the International Institute for Psychoanalytic Training, the analytic training program at the International Psychotherapy Institute, where she also developed an analytic supervision training program, a child therapy and child analytic curriculum. She is a teaching analyst at the Washington Center for Psychoanalysis and a clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University. Her private practice is in Chevy Chase, MD.

Jill Scharff is the author ofProjective and Introjective Identification and the Use of the Therapist’s Self (1992), and senior co-author with David E. Scharff of The Primer of Object Relations: Second Edition (2005), Tuning the Therapeutic Instrument:  Affective Learning of Psychotherapy (2000),Object Relations Individual Therapy (1998),Object Relations Therapy of Physical and Sexual Trauma (1996), With David Scharff as the senior author, Jill Scharff co-wrote many books on object relations Object Relations Family Therapy (1987), Object Relations Couple Therapy (1991), and The Interpersonal Unconscious (2012). Colleagues praised these books: “Jill and David Scharff bring object relations theory alive” (2000) — Otto Kernberg; “A masterful integration of theory and practice” (1991) –Thomas Ogden, “a modern classic” (1987) — Alan Gurman.

As an editor, Jill Scharff was delighted to compile the work of her mentor John D. Sutherland in The Autonomous Self: The Work of John D. Sutherland (1994) and The Psychodynamic Image: John D. Sutherland on Self and Society (2007).  For her family therapy colleagues she edited Foundations of Object Relations Family Therapy (1992) and with David Scharff, she co-edited New Paradigms in Treating Relationships(2006) and Psychoanalytic Couple Therapy (2014).  For individual therapists at the International Psychotherapy Institute, she edited Clinical Supervision of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (2014) and with Stan Tsigounis Self Hatred in Psychoanalysis (2003).

She is co-series editor with David Scharff of the Library of Object Relations at Jason Aronson (now at Rowman and Littlefield) and series editor of the Library of Technology and Mental Health at Karnac. Jill takes great pleasure in helping colleagues, especially those for whom English is a second language, find their voice and get their ideas published. Psychoanalysis Online (2013), Psychoanalysis Online 2 (2015) both published by Karnac are Jill Scharff’s newest edited books: “The most important book of its era on the many dimensions of teleanalysis” (2013) and “Jill Savege Scharff and the other contributors to this book advance the depth potential of psychoanalysis and are, fortunately, not above controversy in doing so” (2015)  — Christopher Bollas.

Jill’s interest in object relations extends to include chaos theory and link theory to broaden and deepen understanding of individual, family and society, and she is bringing this expanded knowledge through secure video connection to therapists where there is no analytic training. With them she is studying the practice of teleanalysis, its similarities and differences from traditional psychoanalysis, its indications and contraindications, and its clinical effectiveness, with particular emphasis on developing all channels of perception to develop deep unconscious communication that allows for work in the transference.