Featured Events
In the Consulting Room
Friday, January 19, 2024 –
Friday, March 15, 2024
When The Therapy Gets Stuck
With Salman Akhtar, Anthony Bass, Narendra Keval, Steven Kuchuck, Jill Salberg & Zack Eleftheriadou (Chair)
The Body
Saturday, February 24, 2024
A live webinar with Margaret Altemus, Sarah Benamer, Letticia Banton, Yansie Rolston and Jane Catherine Severn
With Margaret Altemus, Sarah Benamer, Letticia Banton, Yansie Rolston & Jane Catherine Severn
In the Consulting Room
Friday, March 22, 2024
Holding the frame with Orna and Colleagues
With Orna Guralnik, Nuar Alsadir, Ken Corbett, Kali Cyrus & Eyal Rozmarin
CPD Credits
3.5
Event Type
Live Online Event
Location
Zoom & Recording for 365 days
Time
3:30 pm - 7:00 pm
Standard
£70.00
Trainee/NHS
£52.50
Saturday, December 2, 2023
Working with Neurodivergent Clients
With Stephen Seligman
In this 3-part live webinar, we will be thinking about how to define and work with different forms of neurodivergence. Stephen will explore the multiple elements interacting in these challenging situations, sorting out how clients may be presenting with constitutional neurodynamic factors as well as psychosocial difficulties caused by intrapsychic conflict or environmental factors, such as attachment or developmental trauma.
Psychotherapists often overlook neurodivergences, and our biases might get in the way of our seeing the complicated combinations of strengths and "weaknesses" at hand. An understanding of neurodynamic factors, including sensorimotor, auditory and visual processing, can help psychotherapists make sense of cases which otherwise can appear puzzling. For instance, clients may present with disorganised, inattentive styles that do not align with their reports of trauma, neglect, or other familial factors. Stephen will illuminate how neurodynamic differences can impact a person’s sense of self at physical, emotional, cognitive and interpersonal dimensions of experience.
With a wealth of experience as a child, adolescent and adult psychotherapist, Stephen will draw on case material to share his work with neurodivergent clients. He will also discuss assessment and intervention approaches and highlight how a collaborative multidisciplinary approach is often helpful. There will be plenty of time for questions and lively discussion across the day. The aim of the event is to help participants feel more confident about working with neurodivergent clients.
Programme
15.30 Introductions and Housekeeping
15.35 Identifying the problem
Sometimes we meet clients who defy our psychodynamic theoretical understanding of how a client ‘should’ present. They may sit in the chair opposite and seem oddly unresponsive, withdrawn or even slightly 'psychotic'. They may be very successful in some areas of their life but struggle in others. Their behaviour doesn’t fit with their accounts of developmental trauma, or our typical formulations and diagnoses, leaving us confused as therapists. In such cases, a consideration of neurodynamic factors can be helpful. Thinking about constitutional ‘neurodynamic factors’ can also prevent us from putting clients in neurodiverse boxes such as ‘ADHD’ and ‘Asperger’s’ which may be culturally biased and stigmatising for the client, and crucially prevent us from a deeper enquiry that can identify an effective treatment approach, and recognise special aptitudes. The talk will also consider how neurodynamic factors interact with psychosocial difficulties, such as attachment and psychological conflicts.
16.05 Q&A
16.20 Break
16.30 Defining neurodiversity
In this talk, Stephen will provide descriptions of specific neurodynamic factors and discuss how they often arise from nervous system differences which impact language, memory, emotions, attention, motor skills and more. He will provide child and adult case examples, and illuminate how neurodynamic factors shape a person’s character, development, and relationships. Stephen will emphasise how understanding and recognising these factors is essential for more accurate diagnoses and effective treatments in a profession that is trained to look out for intrapsychic and environmental factors, such as infant-caregiver attachment difficulties and other childhood difficulties.
17.15 Q&A
17.30 Break
17.45 The need for integration
In this session, Stephen will provide suggestions for assessment and treatment strategies when working with neurodivergent clients. He will discuss where neurodynamic factors need to be distinguished from intrapsychic conflict and environmental factors, such as early relational trauma, as well as where integrated, synergistic perspectives that include psychodynamic, behavioural, and psychosocial understandings are important. Stephen will highlight how multidisciplinary inputs to an assessment are often useful, for example occupational, speech and language, or physical therapy. He will offer ideas on how specific, experience-near interventions can illuminate how neurogenic differences impact how a person relates to self and other at explicit and implicit levels of communication.
18.15 Discussion with participants
In this final interactive session, we invite participants to share their clinical challenges while working with potentially neurodivergent cases, bearing in mind client confidentiality. We want to understand where your challenges lie in the clinical work so we can identify where more in-depth training could be helpful, as well as to open further discussion and debate.
19.00 End
Stephen Seligman
Stephen Seligman is Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco and at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis; Training and Supervising Analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California; and Editor Emeritus of Psychoanalytic Dialogues. He is the author of Relationships in Development: Infancy, Intersubjectivity, Attachment (Routledge, 2018), which has been translated into Italian, Spanish, and Ukrainian (delayed), and co-edited the American Psychiatric Press’ Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health: Core Concepts and Clinical Practice. An experienced infant and child psychotherapist, Dr Seligman teaches internationally and throughout the US, with study groups including members from California, New York and Europe. He has worked for over 4 decades in the development and dissemination of the original “Fraiberg model” of infant-psychotherapy. He has published nearly 100 articles, chapters and reviews, many of which take up the intersection of infancy research, child development and psychoanalysis.
- Psychotherapists
- Couple and Family Psychotherapists
- Psychoanalysts
- Psychologists
- Clinical Psychologists
- Psychiatrists
- GPs
- Counsellors
- Social workers
- Teachers/Educators
What’s the problem?
- Identify cases where unusual presentations are not explained by conventional factors
- Consider the role of neurodynamic factors in such puzzling cases more frequently
- Review the uses and limitations of frequently applied diagnostic categories such as ADHD and ASD
What is Neurodiversity?
- Identify specific neurogenic factors in assessing psychotherapy cases
- Understand the effects of such factors in the subjective experience of patients
- Consider the complex interactions between environmental influences and constitutional factors
An Integrative Approach
- Provide multidisciplinary evaluations when indicated
- Use team approaches including practitioners from several relevant disciplines
- Attend to the effects of neurogenic differences in their specific interventions with patients
Sign up to Newsletter: £52.50
Standard Registration: £70.00
Trainee, NHS staff and Third Sector: £52.50
Group Rates (for 4 or more): Contact lucysam@trtogether.com for customised pricing.
Trainee discount: To qualify for this offer you need to be taking a course which provides core practitioner training in counselling or psychotherapy that is at least 1 year full time or two years part time and recognised by the BACP or UKCP. TR Together reserve the right to ask to see evidence of training being undertaken.
Alumni: If you are a TR Alumni (TRAPC member) please email anitabruz@tavistockrelationships.org for a discount code to add at checkout
Your CPD certificate will be available to download from your TR Together account within 48 hours of the event.
Upcoming Events
Upcoming Events
Relationships
Thursday, December 7, 2023
An in-person social event at the Freud Museum London
With Julia Samuel, Sophie Samuel, Emily Samuel & interviewed by Eugene Ellis
Relationships
Friday, December 8, 2023
Lectures from the Tavistock Relationships Model
With Susan Pacey
In the Consulting Room
Friday, January 19, 2024 –
Friday, March 15, 2024
When The Therapy Gets Stuck