Trauma

Adult Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (APP)
2019-20, 3rd Block — Mondays, 8:00-9:15pm
Sally Bjorklund, MA LMHC

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Introduction

Our contemporary understanding of how trauma affects brain functioning has had a dramatic impact on how we think about treating trauma. A familiarity with the neuroscience of brains impacted by trauma helps guide how we approach treatment. Van der Kolk is a pioneer and leader in the field of treating trauma. Howell, Itzkowitz and Bucci also have written extensively on trauma.  Bromberg’s work is central to how I approach treatment.  His ideas about multiple self states, enactment, and dissociation as a normal process are emblematic of a relational approach to psychoanalysis. I hope to cover both trauma as surviving extraordinary external events (war, accidents) as well as developmental trauma which impacts many of us and our patients.

Learning Objectives

Participants will become familiar with:

1. the impact of trauma on brain functioning
2. treatment approaches to working with trauma and why some approaches work better than others
3. the work of Bromberg and clinical applications for working with dissociation

January 27, 2020

[24 pages]

Readings from The Dissociative Mind in Psychoanalysis (Howell and Itzkowitz eds.)

Chapter 3:  Howell and Itzkowitz, “The everywhereness of trauma and the dissociative structuring of the mind”

Chapter 16: Wilma Bucci, “A multi-dimensional view of dissociative processes”

Howell, E; Itzkowitz, S. (2016) Ch3 in The Dissociative Mind in Psychoanalysis, Routledge. pp33-43.

Howell, E; Itzkowitz, S. (2016) Ch16 in The Dissociative Mind in Psychoanalysis, Routledge. pp187-199.