Workshops

This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of American Psychoanalytic Association and the Association for Child Psychoanalysis. The American Psychoanalytic Association is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians. The American Psychoanalytic Association designates this Live Activity for a maximum of 1.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity. 

Total of 1.5 hours of CME credit offered per Workshop

Workshop A

Session Title: Enacting, Talking and Imagining
Presenter: Karl Huntbach

Discussant: Kevin Udis, PhD

Course Objectives:

• Participants will explain two common areas of resistance frequently encountered in analytic work with children who have experienced parental neglect and incapacity as well as multiple placements and losses.

• Participants will explain two ways in which countertransference of the therapist can disrupt the developmental trajectory of the treatment with children from backgrounds characterized by deprivation and multiple losses.

• Participants will describe two types of intervention that can be effective in analytic work with children who have experienced environmental deprivation or are heavily defended due to other intrapsychic factors.

Course Description:  

Children who experience significant environmental disruption due to parental negligence and multiple foster care and adaptive placements are often in need of intensive intervention while also presenting with significant resistances to analytic interventions. Child analysts are often inclined to bypass the child's defensive structure and prematurely interpret underlying feelings of loss and uncertainty, leading to treatment impasses and/or disruptions. This workshop will provide a conceptual discussion that includes the countertransference vicissitudes in working with these children and approaches to working with the formidable defenses they can present. Detailed material from an ongoing analysis will be used to illustrate these concepts.

Workshop B

Session Title: Between Reality and Madness: Four Years of Psychotherapy with a Late Adolescent Girl
Presenter: Maria Papadima
Discussant: Sham Bailly

Course Objectives:

• Participants will identify two common challenges that arise in analytic work with adolescents with borderline pathology.

• Participants will explain the role of parent work with adolescents/emerging adults in the treatment of borderline adolescents.

• Participants will describe two ways in which the fear of abandonment in borderline adolescents complicates adaptation to daily predictable functioning.

Course Description:

Adolescent patients functioning within the borderline developmental range and expressing suicidal ideation pose a number of challenges. This workshop will demonstrate the use of an array of technical interventions that include interpretation of repressed affects, setting boundaries, a focus on daily functioning and safety, and collaboration with other providers. The focus will be on presentation of detailed process material taken from one analytic treatment, and the discussant will provide a psychoanalytical framing for the diagnostic and technical considerations. A discussion of the parental pathology in terms of its influence on the patient's difficulties and the treatment process will also be included.

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Workshop C

Session Title: Intensive Work with an "Autistic" Adolescent: Creativity and Play as a Developmental Bridge to Affective Life The Interplay of Body and Mind: Eating and Pain in the Psychoanalytic Work with a Severely Malnourished Adolescent
Presenter: Sophie Morgan
Discussant:  Justine Kalas Reeves, PsyD

Course Objectives:

• Participants will describe two ways in which overuse of the diagnostic label of autism may preclude potentially valuable approaches to treatment in some children or adolescents.

• Participants will describe two ways in which the use of play and work in the displacement can enhance the capacity for affectual expression in some children and adolescents diagnosed as autistic.

• Explain two types of defense mechanisms utilized by some children and adolescents presenting with the diagnosis of autism.

Course Description:

The diagnoses of “autism” and “neurodivergence” are being given frequently to children and adolescents who present with limited social interaction and who are highly defended against the acknowledgement of emotional content. This workshop seeks to enlarge diagnostic understanding of some of these children and adolescents, and to suggest psychoanalytically grounded intervention strategies.  There will be a focus on the use of the analyst as a developmental object and the interpretation of affective life. The content will include a conceptual discussion along with presentation of detailed material from the analysis of an adolescent who presented with the diagnosis of autism.

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Workshop D

Session Title: The Interplay of Body and Mind: Eating and Pain in the Psychoanalytic Work with a Severely Malnourished Adolescent
Presenter: Megan Virtue
Discussant: Sarah Birss, M.D.

Course Objectives:

• Participants will identify two common challenges inherent in working with an adolescent in which separation/individuation challenges are expressed through bodily illness.

• Participants will describe the trajectory found in analytic theory and clinical practice for helping an adolescent put bodily expressions of emotional life into words and thought.

• Participants will explain the transference/countertransference potentialities inherent in working with adolescents with psychosomatic presenting problems.

Course Description:

The development of seemingly intractable physiological symptoms in children and adolescents complicates the analyst's thinking about diagnosis and technical approaches to intervention. This workshop will feature the in-depth presentation of an analysis involving an adolescent presenting with life-threatening gastrointestinal symptoms and will include a conceptual overview of the relevant psychoanalytic literature concerning case formulation and intervention. The goal is to enhance participants' ability to provide interventions that can modify the intrapsychic factors contributing to the physical symptoms, and to understand the interface between mind and body in these clinical presentations