Trauma, Dissociation, and the Life of Pi:  

An Informal Discussion Forum with Judy Yanof

When: Saturday, March 8, 2025 

Time: 12 pm - 2 pm Eastern US

Attendance: Open to ACP members only as a member benefit

Cost: $25 for Regular and Collegial Members
          $10 for Candidates and Collegial Candidates

No CEs/CMEs are available

Zoom Link will be included in the confirmation email

For our first Discussion Forum, Dr. Judy Yanof has agreed to discuss the Marianne Kris Lecture that she delivered during the 2024 annual meeting, related to the topic of trauma. Judy will begin by summarizing the paper, and this will include material from an analytic case that illustrates the ideas under discussion.  Registrants will receive a summary of the paper, but the full paper will not be available.

REGISTER HERE

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Summary: Trauma, Dissociation, and The Life of Pi

I presented this paper for the Marianne Kris Lecture at the 2024 ACP Annual
Meeting. In the paper, I discuss the case of a young boy that I treated analytically
earlier in my career and raise questions about whether I had considered trauma
and dissociation sufficiently in assessing his diagnosis and in understanding what
emerged during the treatment. The play was engaging, disturbing in its content,
and creative, but my patient could never seem to leave the play to relate to it as
metaphor, going back and forth, in the way that children who are good players
can be in both worlds at once, real and pretend.

In the paper, I refer to my increased understanding of dissociative phenomena in
children, the ubiquity of trauma in the general population, and my greater
reliance on parent work for the children I treat as factors that stimulated this
retrospective gaze and questioning. I also reference Martel’s novel, The Life of Pi,
as part of my associative threads. During the seminar, I will present process
material from the treatment, which I hope will initiate a fuller discussion of the
topic and the case.