Due to concerns over the COVID-19 virus, the March SPSI Scientific Session will be postponed and rescheduled at a later date. If you’ve registered for the event, you will be notified of the new date once it’s finalized.

Presented by Denise Fort, PhD; Don Schimmel, PhD; & Julie Wood, MA.

Children in treatment draw the therapist into a world of magical ideas, fierce monsters, fantasy legends, superheroes, and the child’s psychological attempts to negotiate what seems like an immense external world, as well as to master experience stemming from the child’s internal world. A panel of three child psychoanalysts will explore the unique aspects of working with children, pondering together how children may invite or incite regression in the therapist. We will consider the process of the therapist’s induction into the child’s world, the handling of powerful counter-transference feelings, and the moment to moment creativity called for in therapeutic work with children. With audience participation, we will use clinical material to illustrate therapist regression as an aspect of therapeutic progression.

Denise Fort, PhD, Don Schimmel, PhD, and Julie Wood, MA are child psychoanalysts affiliated with SPSI, committed to collaborative approaches working with children, adults, and families.

Learning Objectives

As a result of attending this presentation participants will:

1. gain an understanding of the dynamic structure and utility of the analyst’s regression.
2. develop an appreciation of how the emotional climate supported by the analyst’s regression contains and detoxifies frightening, destabilizing emotions.
3. gain knowledge about the use of play in the analysis of adults.

Coming Attractions: