Introduction to Analytic Listening

Second Year Adult Psychoanalytic Training (APT)
2022-23, 1st Trimester — Fridays, 12:00-1:30pm
Katherine Weissbourd, PhD

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October 21, 2022 — Trauma, attachment, and fragmented analytic process

How does trauma impact analytic process? Patients who have difficulty using free association may be impacted by past trauma. Adverse childhood experiences, both environmental and emotional, constrict the capacity to reflect, particularly when there is no one to talk to about traumatic events. A history of trauma is often enacted in analysis, when a past disruption is repeated rather than remembered. Analysts reflect on their own unexpected responses to enactments. This allows them to be attuned to ways that present experience can open up memories of past suffering.

Optional Reading

Varvin, S. (2016) Psychoanalysis with the traumatized patient: Helping to survive extreme experiences and complicated loss. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 25:73-80

Fonagy, P. & Allison, E. (2016) Psychic Reality and the Nature of Consciousness, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 97:5-24