This event has filled, please contact Danny Gellersen at dannygellersen@gmail.com to be added to the waitlist.
This Zoom event begins at 10am PST.
This program, when participated in its entirety, is available for 2.5 continuing education credits. Division 39 is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Division 39 maintains responsibility for this program and its content. This presentation also meets the requirements of WAC 246-809-620 (definition of recognized categories of continuing education for licensed mental health counselors, marriage and family therapists and social workers).
This presentation will address the challenges when working with patients whose trauma and neglect are not available for symbolization and mentalization. In this paper I will suggest that the analytic relationship offers a unique situation that – following Laplanche – provokes enactments in which the unsymbolized and unrepresented can speak in the idiom of action, impact and mutual enactment. Rather than seeking to understand and get out of enactments, the analyst can unobtrusively companion the patient in states of fragmentation, disorganization and non-relatedness and thus make space for early and inchoate trauma to speak in its own idiom. Enactment is thus regarded as an “untelling” of what has been trapped in the “unpast” (Scarfone) of continual painful repetition. When the analyst can companion the patient in the emergence of early and wordless “hollowed out” enactments and psychic spaces, old and constraining “translations” and “filled in” (Laplanche) enactments are transformed, pain and suffering that has never been suffered can finally be known by and with an Other and time, self and relatedness are reconstituted.
Presenter: Robert Grossmark, PhD, ABPP is a psychoanalyst in New York City. He works with individuals, groups and couples and conducts psychoanalytic consultation and study groups. He is on the teaching and supervising faculty at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, The National Institute for the Psychotherapies Program in Adult Psychoanalysis, The National Training Program in Psychoanalysis, National Faculty Member, the Florida Psychoanalytic Center and lectures at other psychoanalytic institutes and clinical psychology training programs nationally and internationally. He is an Associate Editor for Psychoanalytic Dialogues. He is the author of The Unobtrusive Relational Analyst: Explorations in Psychoanalytic Companioning and co-edited The One and the Many: Relational Approaches to Group Psychotherapy and Heterosexual Masculinities: Contemporary Perspectives from Psychoanalytic Gender Theory, all published by Routledge.
Reading: Attendees are encouraged to purchase Dr. Grossmark's book, The Unobtrusive Relational Psychoanalyst. His paper, "The Untelling", Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 2024. 34, 1: 3-19 will be provided to registrants.
Learning objectives:
Attendees will be able to:
- Describe how enactments open opportunities for the narration of unsymbolized trauma.
- Outline the elements of the unobtrusive relational position of the analyst.
- Distinguish between the “filled in” and “hollowed out” enactments.
Participants: This event is designed for graduate level students in mental health and all mental health professionals from introductory to advanced levels.
Class size: Limited to 12 participants
Cost: $170 for Alliance members/$190 non-Alliance members
Refund Policy: Refunds less a $35 handling fee will be given up until three weeks before the presentation.
This program, when participated in its entirety, is available for 2.5 continuing education credits. Division 39 is committed to accessibility and non-discrimination in its continuing education activities. Division 39 is also committed to conducting all activities in conformity with the American Psychological Association's Ethical Principles for Psychologists. Participants are asked to be aware of the need for privacy and confidentiality throughout the program. If program content becomes stressful, participants are encouraged to process these feelings during discussion periods. If participants have special needs, we will attempt to accommodate them. Please address questions, concerns and any complaints to Danny Gellersen at dannygellersen@gmail.com. There is no commercial support for this program nor are there any relationships between the CE Sponsor, presenting organization, presenter, program content, research, grants or other funding that could reasonably be construed as conflicts of interest. Participants will be informed of the utility/validity of the content/approach discussed (including the basis for the statements about validity/utility), as well as the limitations of the approach and most common (and severe) risks, if any, associated with the program's content.
SPPP (Division 39) is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. SPPP maintains responsibility for the program and its content.
