Professional group study & Consultation
keeping ourselves alive & Engaged in our depth workApril 2021:
Holding The Trouble In Mind: Understanding The Function of Defenses
READINGS
- SELF EXAMINATION – CHAPTER ONE – ‘What Am I Getting Myself Into?’ – pages 7-20. (This is a re-read & review.)
- PSYCHOANALYTIC DIAGNOSIS – CHAPTER 5 – Primary Defensive Processes – pages 100-124.
- PSYCHOANALYTIC CASE FORMULATION – CHAPTER 5 – Assessing Defense – pages 85-101; CHAPTER 10 Assessing Pathogenic Beliefs – pages 180-199.
LECTURE NOTES
BOOK CHAPTERS
Highlighted & Underlined Cliff Notes
Documents
Structure for Case Presentations –READ! – expanded and revised
In psychotherapy, an understanding is established that the therapist will eventually be invited into the most troubled and vulnerable areas of the client’s life. Psychotherapy is a process that requires the willingness for risk and uncertainty – for the client and therapist both.
It is within these areas of trouble and difficulty that some of our most important learnings about ourselves will take place.
A psychotherapist seeks to provide a unique space and relationship within which we can finally explore aspects of our lives that we have often overlooked or avoided – trouble in mind.
Welcoming these troubled places within one’s self is no easy task, but it can be deeply intimate and rewarding.
“Years ago, when I was beginning
and struggling to get clients into their
therapy, striving to keep clients in their therapy,
trying to learn what therapy is,
a dear supervisor gave me advice that has stood me
in good stead ever since.
Tell your clients something they can use
and they will come back for more.”
– Warren Poland