Talk

In this virtual lecture, Renee Obstfeld, Ph.D., LP, NCPsyA, LCAT, will focus on analytic work with adults and the challenges that may confront the therapist in their efforts to feel with patients who are trapped in cycles of self-loathing and shame, who typically respond to an empathic understanding with a negative therapeutic reaction of some kind or another. Such challenges can range from engagement in enactments around power and control to the therapist’s sense that they are fighting for their own psychic survival.

Learning objectives:

1. Participants will be familiarized with the concept of emotional communication and its potential as a therapeutic tool.

2. Participants will gain a fundamental understanding of mentalization.

3. Participants will be familiarized with the processes underlying the sequestering of self states characteristic of people who have sustained developmental trauma (borderline and dissociative conditions).

4. Participants will be able to identify at least three behaviors that suggest they may be avoiding "feeling with."

School of Visual Arts, MPS Art Therapy Department is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed creative arts therapists. #CAT-0054.

1.5 CE hours available for LCATs.