Psychopathology II: Borderline

Fourth Year Adult Psychoanalytic Training (APT)
2021-22, 3rd Trimester — Fridays, 3:30-5:00pm
Michael Pauly, MD
Charlotte Malkmus, MA LMHC

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April 15, 2022 — Trauma

[37 pages]

Joyce McDougall provides us with ample clinical material to show the impact of traumatic experiences that occur in the preverbal period of development and to highlight how these early experiences present via route of the non-verbal expressions affecting that analyst’s countertransference. She calls these primitive communications. Her paper speaks of the analytic process as helping to transform action-communications / action-symptoms into that which can be verbally represented in language, allowing containment of the experience.

McDougall, J. (1978) “Primitive Communication and the Use of Countertransference-Reflections on Early Psychic Trauma and its Transference Effects”, Contemp. Psychoanal., 14:173-209