On Friday evening, Mr. Campbell will use details from his therapeutic work with an adolescent in order to explore the defensive use of his body in violent acts. Mr. Campbell illustrates how he helped this patient utilize his talent for drawing to sublimate his violent activity into violent images. This, in turn, enabled the patient to reflect on his anxieties. Mr. Campbell will consider the radical changes that occur in the adolescent’s primary and secondary sexual characteristics and musculature, while Oedipal and pre-Oedipal anxieties and fantasies are revived. 

During the first part of Saturday morning, Mr. Campbell will explore the power of violent images provoked by a patient in the analyst’s mind during a session. He suggests that these images can be disturbing and may, in turn, provoke resistance in the analyst to analytic work. These moments can generate a crisis in the treatment, leading the analyst to feel intellectually and emotionally stuck. Mr. Campbell will demonstrate how self-analysis can be the means by which we work through the anxieties that get in the way of being open to new possibilities and new interpretations.

During the second half of the morning, we will hear clinical case material presented by a local clinician. Mr. Campbell will comment on the material and lead us in discussing it in light of the questions we have been examining.

Click here for the brochure and full schedule.  

 

Donald Campbell is a past President of the British Psycho- analytical Society, former Secretary General of the International Psychoanalytic Association, and served as Chair of the Portman Clinic in London where he worked as a child, adolescent and adult analyst for 30 years. He has published on such subjects as violence, suicide, perversion, child sexual abuse and adolescence