“The Spark of Life” with Judy K. Eekhoff PhD, FIPA (SPSI Scientific Session)

Some patients do not trust their own experiences. Since they cannot trust themselves, they look to others to show them what to do. Mimicry and “as if” behavior become the means for survival in a world that feels alien to them. Their ability to use personal truth for psychic nourishment is compromised. Desperate and isolated, they deaden themselves to get by. Worse still, their deadness may also indicate a developmental deficit that leaves them feeling as if they do not exist. Often, they describe themselves as going through the motions of life, but not living it. Feeling they are not fully alive, they come to analysis looking for what is missing. The analyst must find true life within the mimicry presented.

Judy K. Eekhoff PhD, FIPA is an IPA certified training and supervising psychoanalyst and a licensed child psychologist. She is a faculty member of the Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and has a private practice in Seattle where she teaches, writes, and consults. She is the author of numerous papers and two books: Trauma and Primitive Mental States: An Object Relations Perspective (2019) and Bion & Primitive Mental States: Trauma and the Symbiotic Link. (in press: Routledge). Dr. Eekhoff is on the editorial board of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis.

“Countertransference and Calibration – Kindling the ‘Spark of Life’”
Discussant: Kelly Lippman, LMHC

Kelly Lippman, LMHC is a psychoanalyst and child-focused family mediator in private practice in Seattle, Washington. She is on the faculty at the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and a courtesy Clinical Supervisor and instructor in the University of Washington Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

Learning Objectives

After attending this presentation, participants should be able to:

1. describe the fundamental difficulty with understanding and treating patients who experienced early infantile trauma;
2. differentiate between psychic equivalency and massive projective identification;
3. explore psychoanalytic techniques for reaching patients who believe they do not exist.