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CPD Credits
3
Event Type
Recorded Event
Location
Your TR Together account
Standard
£67.50
Trainee/NHS
£57.38
Psychoanalytic Treatment of Psychosis
From breakdown to breakthrough
With Danielle Knafo
Psychoanalytic treatment of psychosis is rarely taught in trainings, and unfortunately a lack of preparedness results in avoidance of such work. Our speaker Dr. Knafo brings both theoretical understandings, clinical technique and case material in order that psychotherapists may feel more confident to engage with this challenging work.
Our speaker conceptualises psychotic symptoms, such as delusions and hallucinations, as a person’s attempt to cope under highly stressful, traumatic or isolating circumstances. She emphasises the importance of therapists reading and responding to unconscious messages embedded within the symptoms. In this work there is an emphasis on the importance of collaborating with and utilising non-psychotic self-parts to aid recovery and the importance of containing strong transference and counter transference experiences.
In the first session of the seminar Dr Knafo introduces a psychoanalytic approach to working with psychosis. The theoretical talk is followed by two case presentations illustrating both the creativity within psychotic symptoms and the creativity needed to work with psychosis.
There was time for discussion with attendees in both parts of the seminar. The aim of the seminar is to cultivate a deeper understanding of the roots of psychotic illness and the possibilities in working psychoanalytically with this patient group.
Programme
Introductions
Working with Patients Affected by Psychosis
Dr Knafo will delineate the major tenets of psychodynamic therapeutic work with psychosis including providing safety, forging a working alliance by meeting the patient where they are and allotting them maximum personal agency. Critical to this work is understanding psychotic symptoms as attempts at adaptation and restoration of the self, coping with loneliness in patient and analyst as well as working with the transference and countertransference. This work focuses on strengths as well as weaknesses viewing the patient as a whole person rather than a collection of symptoms and prioritising the subjective experience and affect. In sum, we focus on the patient as a true collaborator in their own treatment.
Discussion & Q&A
Break
Courage and Creativity in Two Case Presentations
Dr Knafo will discuss the link between creativity and psychosis from both the patient's and the analyst's viewpoints, providing clinical vignettes that demonstrate how a psychotic break can necessitate the creation of alternative realities for coping and, in turn, demand creative engagement from the therapist. In this context. the analyst navigates unchartered territory without a map or precedent by stepping into the patient's world. The first case will illustrate the creativity required to decipher and work with a patients' delusions and hallucinations and the second case will demonstrate how to reach a patient who has been deemed unreachable. Working with psychosis presents the ultimate challenge to our limitations because it requires courage and creativity.
Discussion with Q&A
End
Danielle Knafo
Danielle Knafo, PhD., is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst with expertise in the treatment of psychosis. During her 22-year tenure as professor at LIU's clinical psychology doctoral program, she chaired a specialty concentration that trained doctoral students on how to work therapeutically and psychodynamically with serious mental illness. She received the Barbara Sandin prize for this work. Currently she is faculty and supervisor at NYU's postdoctoral program in psychoanalysis and Adelphi's postgraduate programs. She has written and lectured extensively on the topics of art and creativity, psychoanalysis, trauma and psychosis, sexuality and technology. From Breakdown to Breakthrough: Psychoanalytic Treatment of Psychosis is her 10th book. Dr Knafo has worked psychodynamically with psychosis for 40 years, and she maintains a private practice in Manhattan and Great Neck NY.
- Psychotherapists
- Couple and Family Psychotherapists
- Psychoanalysts
- Psychologists
- Clinical Psychologists
- Psychiatrists
- GPs
- Counsellors
- Social workers
- Teachers/Educators
1. Support more clinicians to work more confidently and compassionately with psychosis
2. Draw from a psychoanalytic/psychodynamic perspective to conceptualise psychotic symptoms as a person’s attempt to cope under highly stressful, traumatic or isolating circumstances
3. Share strategies for working with psychosis across the course of the therapeutic frame, from beginnings and establishing a pre-alliance, to working with symptoms, developing a narrative of Self and endings
4. Discuss case examples to help embed theoretical and technical ideas in practice.
Standard Registration: £67.50
Trainee, NHS staff and Third Sector: £57.38
Group Rates (for 4 or more): Contact [email protected] 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. Please contact [email protected] to recieve the discount code.
Alumni: If you are a TR Alumni (TRAPC member) please email [email protected] 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 purchase.