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Featured Events
Psychoanalysis
Friday, June 21, 2024
Hidden neurodivergence that can mislead the clinician and short-change the patient
With Phil Mollon
Psychoanalysis
Saturday, October 5, 2024
With Nancy McWilliams, PhD & ABPP
CPD Credits
3
Event Type
Live Online Event
Location
Zoom & Recording for 365 days
Time
4:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Standard
£90.00
Trainee/NHS
£76.50
Friday, April 19, 2024
Early Relational Trauma, Fusion and Confusion
Facilitating containment of unrepresented experience
With Dr Judy Eekhoff
Dr Eekhoff’s workshop will focus on the eruption of confusion in the consulting room when working with clients who have experienced severe disorganisation in their early relationships. Judy will elaborate how the disruption of normal projective identifications, may lead the individual to psychically ‘merge’ with their primary carers creating an unconscious fusion and primitive organisational development. This type of internal structure can allow adult patients a pseudo-maturity covering up a depth of disorganisation, chaos and confusion which can erupt when a distinction of minds enters awareness particularly in relationship with the therapist.
For therapists and analysts working in the somatic relational process can be disorienting. Analysts and therapists frequently report confusion in their thinking by not being able to find meaning in a patient’s words or emotion and in their narratives. This confusion is uncomfortable and frightening, sometimes eliciting in the analyst a need for an immediate answer, an immediate understanding. When that does not appear in the analyst’s confused mind, unmediated affect such as rage or extreme maternal care, intense love or violent hate, can arise inside the analyst. These experiences contribute to the confusion and disturbance, while the violent affects and emotions seemingly create an illusion of certainty.
This seminar will offer an opportunity to think about how the therapist or analyst can learn to be with the elicited confusion. This challenging process can give rise to the containment of previously unrepresented experience which can result in the development of a three-dimensional analytic space and be internalized by the patient who no longer need rely on fusional states for safety. Through the seminar there will be lectures and time for Q&A with our speaker and colleagues.
Programme
16:30 (UK) Introductions and Zoom Housekeeping
16:35 The Confusional Object
In this first session Dr Eekhoff will describe how normal projective identifications are disrupted due to early trauma. A patient might, in phantasy, become the person they are with instead. This silent and unconscious fusion enables a primitive organisation to develop that provides structure and seemingly results in a capacity to function procedurally in the world. Whenever this phantasy is threatened by relationship, confusion results. Neither the patient nor the therapists can discern who is who. The confusion becomes manifest in a variety of ways, for example, in passivity, poor memory, or in a difficulty making decisions. It also appears via unconscious mimicry which includes a primal identification.
17:20 Q&A
17:30 Break
17:45 The Play of Identifications
In a healthy psychic world, our identifications serve to build internal structure and create our personalities and our identities. In addition, they serve to link us emotionally with those we consciously love and admire, creating an internal and external community that is cohesive and integrated. As defenses, much like language is a defense, identifications create a background of safety. Our clients may do this by unconsciously splitting themselves and their objects into black and white categories. These can eventually become less polarised, enabling us to differentiate, categorise, and subordinate information gained from experience. When early trauma interrupts these processes, the spontaneous psychic play is restricted. With such restriction comes a disruption in body relations and object relations.
18:30 Q&A
18:45 Somatic Defenses
Somatic defenses isolate a person from whomever they are near. When a patient functions in a pseudo-object relations manner, the symbolic order is challenged. Words are about words and are not symbolic. Confusion can arise, for example, when the analyst makes an interpretation and the analysand focuses on the sound of the voice, the rhythm and tone, the volume and alliteration of sounds. The words become stripped of meaning and unrelated to emotional experience. Confusion and miscommunication can then arise when each member of the dyad assumes the other is using words in the same manner they are. How can we bring meaning to the words, create a three dimensional connection where fusion is no longer necessary for safety.
19:15 Q&A
19:30 End
Judy Eekhoff
Judy K. Eekhoff, PhD, FIPA is an IPA certified training and supervising psychoanalyst and a licensed child psychologist. She is a full faculty member of Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society & Institute and Seattle Psychoanalytic Society & Institute. She has a private practice in Seattle, Washington, USA where she teaches, writes, and consults. She is the author of numerous papers and book chapters as well as two books: Trauma and Primitive Mental States: An Object Relations Perspective and Bion and Primitive Mental States: Trauma and the Symbiotic Link. Dr. Eekhoff is on the editorial board of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis.
- Psychotherapists
- Couple and Family Psychotherapists
- Psychoanalysts
- Psychologists
- Clinical Psychologists
- Psychiatrists
- GPs
- Counsellors
- Social workers
- Teachers/Educators
- Learn to differentiate a confusional object from a transitional object.
- Recognize a somatic defense as found in ‘language as action’.
- Appreciate the value of pathological mimicry.
Standard Registration: £90
Group Rates (for 4 or more): Contact makeritafaumui@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 48 hours after the event.
Upcoming Events
Trauma
Friday, June 14, 2024
Theoretical and Clinical Insights
With Valerie Sinason
Psychoanalysis
Friday, June 21, 2024
Hidden neurodivergence that can mislead the clinician and short-change the patient
With Phil Mollon
Relationships
Friday, July 5, 2024
Karnac Author series