This program, when participated in its entirety, is available for 4.0 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).

When the Container Fails: Is Psychoanalytic Witnessing a Professional Obligation or a Moral Imperative?

This presentation will begin with an account of an interview I was asked to undertake by a human rights organization with a young woman who was seeking asylum in the United States.  Against the background of her painful account, I explore what it means to be a psychoanalytic witness.  Is psychoanalytic witnessing a professional obligation or a moral imperative?  Who is the witness? The person giving the account or the person listening?  What are the psychological consequences for each of them?  I shall propose that as clinicians, we must distinguish between witnessing and recognition; furthermore, we must acknowledge the considerable costs of being a witness and their crucial implications for our work. 

The Proliferation of the Term "Trauma" in Psychoanalysis

The case described earlier involves an example of massive psychic trauma, or, as I call it, "Adult-Onset Trauma".  In the second half of the program, I shall briefly describe my theory of adult-onset trauma, as it is laid out in Wounded by Reality: Understanding and Treating Adult-Onset Trauma.  Then I shall address a number of substantive questions that have been raised about the concept, because answering them will further clarify my thinking about this topic.  And finally, and ironically, having stood by the term "adult-onset-trauma", I shall invite the audience to join me in thinking about what seems to me a deplorable and often senseless increase in the popularity of the term "trauma" in our work today.  We must ask what its proliferation in psychoanalytic discourse means for us in terms of theory and practice.

Ghislaine Boulanger is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City, a member of the Relational faculty at New York University's Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and a faculty member of Adelphi University's Specialization in Trauma Studies.  She is on the editorial board of the Division/Review and the International Journal for Applied Psychoanalysis.  Since the publication of Wounded by Reality: Understanding and Treating Adult Onset Trauma (Routledge, 2007), Dr. Boulanger has taught and published extensively in the United States and abroad on the psychodynamic dilemmas facing both adults who have survived violent and life threatening events and the clinicians who work with them.  

LEARNING OBJECTIVES: 

• Participants will be able to name the four self states involved in Adult-Onset Trauma.
• Participants will be able to distinguish between witnessing as a professional obligation and witnessing as a moral imperative. 
• Participants will identify ways to acknowledge and work with vicarious trauma.
• Participants will name the criteria necessary for the definition of a traumatic event

RECOMMENDED READINGS:

Boulanger, G.  (2020).  Diagnosis and its discontents: Chaim Shatan and the definition of military trauma.  Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 21:218-225.  https://doi.org10.1080/15240657.2020.1798181

Boulanger, G.  (2018).  When is vicarious trauma a necessary therapeutic tool?.  Psychoanalytic Psychology, 35:60-69.

Boulanger, G.  (2012).  Psychoanalytic witnessing: Professional obligation or moral imperative?  Psychoanalytic Psychology, 29: 318-324.

Brown, L.  (2012).  Bion's discovery of alpha function: Thinking under fire on the battlefield and in the consulting room.  International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 93: 1191-1214.

PARTICIPANTS: This event is designed for graduate level students in mental health and all mental health professionals from introductory to advanced levels.  The presentation is geared for clinicians who wish to advance their knowledge and expand their skill base in psychodynamic clinical work.

REFUND POLICY: Refunds less a $35 handling fee will be given up until three weeks before the presentation.