Psychopathology III

Fourth Year Adult Psychoanalytic Training (APT)
2022-23, 3rd Trimester — Fridays, 3:30-5:00pm
Martin Bullard, LICSW
John De Mott, DO

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Introduction

It is commonly understood in the psychoanalytic view of psychopathology that experiences of undifferentiation (psychotic processes) are a normal condition of the first year of life.  Psychotic  experiences persist under conditions of stress, hallucinogenic drug experiences and reactions, and not infrequently erupt into the full blown and chronic psychotic illnesses.  Psychosis and the pain that accompanies it plague many of our nation’s unhoused, who are by far the most marginalized individuals in our society.  Psychosis means not being able to trust reality itself.  It means being unsure about self and other, often filling in this uncertainty with terror.   Psychoanalysts, as mental healers are well advised to understand psychotic processes to be able to work with them in outpatient, inpatient, or outreach treatment contexts.

Learning Objectives

At the end of the course participants will be able to:

1. empathize with the loneliness and terror of psychotic experience in themselves and their patients, for the purpose of providing comprehensive and humane psychoanalytic treatment.
2. differentiate psychotic from borderline and neurotic personality functioning in clinical practice for the purpose of effective diagnostic evaluation and treatment.
3. work effectively with psychotic presentations as “here and now” challenges to interpersonal trust, reality-testing and the therapeutic re-integration of projected self-states.

March 24, 2023 — Course and Psychopathology Overview

[32 pages]

Stone, L. (1954). The Widening Scope of Indications for Psychoanalysis. JAPA, 2:567-594.

Arieti, S. (1957). What is Effective in the Therapeutic Process? Am. J. Psychoanal., 17(1):30-33.

Bullard, C.M. (2023) Psychoanalytic Psychopathology and Direction of Anxiety Development.