Peninsula Extension Division

Sharon Levin, L.C.S.W. and Mark Snyder, M.D., Co-Chairs
Maureen Smith Ruffell, M.D., Michael Smith, Ph.D., Susan Yamaguchi, L.C.S.W., Committee Members

 

Peninsula Yearlong Program
September 2012 — June 2013

 

The Many Faces of Trauma

 

Ubiquitous and inevitable in human experience, trauma may lead to creative adaptations and personal growth, or may lead to rigidifications of personality that inhibit development. We will explore the many and often overlooked ways that trauma presents itself in psychotherapeutic work, and the challenge to the therapist of bringing traumatic material into a dialogue that preserves its full emotional significance while maintaining an atmosphere of safety that enables exploration and understanding.

 

Dates:	Fridays, September 14, 2012 - May 10, 2013
Time:	12:00pm - 01:30pm
Sessions:	31 Sessions
Location:	Stanford University Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences Building 401 Quarry Road Stanford, CA 94304
Tuition Fees:	$ 1,000.00 Reader and CME/CE credit fees are not included in the tuition See Registration and Fees, Refund Policy, and CME/CE Credit Information for details
CME/CE:	This program has been awarded a total of 44.5 CME/CE credits.
Class Size:	minimum enrollment of 8, maximum enrollment of 16

 

Resilience and the Traumas of Everyday Life

What constitutes a trauma?  How is it that sudden and unexpected interruptions in everyday life become a challenge for one individual and a trauma for another? How do we help our patients cope and develop what Jack and Kerry Kelly Novick call "emotional muscle"?  How do we bear our patients' traumas as well as manage our own countertransference reactions?  We will address these questions through readings and clinical material.

Sharon Levin, L.C.S.W., Faculty & Member, SFCP
Susan Yamaguchi, L.C.S.W., Member SFCP
Fridays, September 14, 21, 28, October 5, 2012
This seminar has been awarded 6 CME/CE credits.

Educational Objectives:

Participants will be able to:

1. Describe how trauma overtaxes the individual's psychological resources and reawakens old issues
2. Analyze strategies to help patients develop emotional resilience
3. Enhance their ability to use their counter transference to facilitate work with trauma patients.

 

 

Can We Remember What We Need to Forget

When our patients describe their lives, where do we position ourselves vis-a-vis their psychic reality? Is it the therapist’s function to wonder how true a recollection is? How can we do justice to the reality of our patient’s suffering without passing judgment on whether something “really” happened. We will discuss the concepts of screen memory and memory-in-feeling as well as the controversial subject of recovered memories of trauma.

Svetlana Bonner, M.D., Member & Faculty, SFCP
Fridays, October 12, 19, 26, November 2, 2012
This seminar has been awarded 6 CME/CE credits.

Educational Objectives:

Participants will be able to:

1. Learn the impact of making clinical decisions about combining historical and "here-and-now" interpretations in everyday work with patients.
2. Become familiar with contemporary and historical approaches to the subject of traumatic memories.
3. Learn the technical approaches that validate the patient's experience both in and out of treatment.

 

 

Childhood Trauma, Real and Imagined

These three sessions will focus on the unconscious life of the infant and young child, and the way that life events are experienced as trauma.  We will link the childhood trauma (psychic reality) with adult pathology and dysfunction.  Film, readings and case examples will be utilized.

Mary Jane Otte, Ph.D., Training & Supervising Analyst, Child Analyst, SFCP
Fridays, November  9, 16, 30, 2012
This seminar has been awarded 4.5 CME/CE credits.

Educational Objectives:

Participants will be able to:

1. Accurately describe psychic reality.
2. Describe the concept of unconscious guilt.
3. List 3 normal childhood events that could be perceived as traumatic.

 

 

The Psychological Impact of Alternative Reproductive Technology

This course will focus on the psychological issues and possible traumatic impact for individuals involved in various aspects of alternative reproductive technology.  We will focus on the long term psychological impact of these procedures on the individuals involved and their offspring.   We will address how to help these individuals work through their losses as they go through these procedures.

Mali Mann, M.D., Training & Supervising Analyst, Child Analyst, SFCP.
Fridays, December 7, 14, 2012
This seminar has been awarded 3 CME/CE credits.

Educational Objectives:

Participants will be able to:

1. Demonstrate their knowledge of the psychological difficulties involved in reproductive technologies
2. Recognize the long term impact on parents and their children
3. Describe strategies for helping patients mourn their losses as they go through these procedures.

 

 

Perspectives on Trauma

We will look at trauma from a number of points of view with an emphasis on clinical examples.  One viewpoint concerns whether the problematic experiences are brief and intense (Shock trauma), or chronic (Strain trauma).  Another viewpoint involves the nature of trauma, e.g., childhood illness; parent loss in childhood; childhood physical or sexual abuse; parental divorce; genocide (e.g., holocaust) survival.  We will discuss the possible effects of such different sorts of experience by looking at the form traumatic residue may take in intensive treatments through the use of clinical examples.  How does trauma appear in therapeutic process?  What stance does a psychoanalytic therapist take in dealing with trauma?  What are the ultimate goals of therapy with trauma victims?

Richard Almond, M,D., Training and Supervising Analyst, SFCP
Fridays, January 4, 18, 25 2013
This seminar has been awarded 4.5 CME/CE credits.

Educational Objectives:

Participants will be able to:

1. List three effects of trauma on personality development.
2. Increase their capacity describe the way trauma may manifest in treatment
3. Learn how to modify technique in working with trauma.
4. Differentiate between Strain Trauma and Shock Trauma as well the nature of trauma

 

 

Weaving a Tangled Web: Traumatic Repetition in the Consulting Room

When traumatic experience overwhelms and remains unassimilated it forces memory into action because there are no words to speak it.  In analytically oriented clinical work, we establish a relationship with our patients that we hope will facilitate communication of those “reminiscences.”  Within the safety of the therapeutic frame, we allow the patient to impact us, creating mutual engagement at the interface of our subjective experiences that in turn impacts the patient and opens possibility for the construction of a less troubled reality.  We will explore the manifestations of trauma in the consulting room through clinical examples and reading from the work of Philip Bromberg and others.

Maureen Smith Ruffell, M.D., Member & Faculty, SFCP
Fridays, February 1, 8, 15, 2013
This seminar has been awarded 4.5 CME/CE credits.

Educational Objectives:

Participants will be able to:

1. Describe the defensive and adaptive functions of traumatic repetition.
2. Articulate the definition of enactment as understood in analytically oriented treatment.
3. Identify and work with their patients' unconscious communications through action.

 

 

The Perverse Adaptation to Trauma

As a concept, perversion caries a negative connotation because it is associated with culturally unacceptable or prohibited behavior, particularly in the area of sexuality. We shall see that it is really a broader idea that is fundamentally about the relationship to reality, and often functions as a means of avoiding unbearable thoughts and feelings. We will focus on perverse thinking as a common but often unrecognized feature of the psychotherapy process and in particular on its relationship to feelings associated with traumatic experience.

Michael Smith, Ph.D., Associate Member, SFCP
Fridays, February 23, March 1, 8, 15, 2013
This seminar has been awarded 6 CME/CE credits.

Educational Objectives:

Participants will be able to:

1. Describe two distinct conceptualizations of perversion.
2. Gain an understanding of how perverse thinking and behavior protects patients against unbearable thoughts and feelings associated with traumatic experiences.
3. Implement modifications of therapeutic technique to work with their patients' perverse thought processes in clinical practice.

 

 

Dissociation and Trauma

The term “trauma” can refer to any experience that overwhelms a person to the point of its not being assimilated.  These experiences are split off from consciousness by a phenomenon called dissociation.  Proponents of different psychoanalytic theories view dissociation differently; this course will review those different views and will explore both the nature of trauma and of dissociation.

Karen Johnson, M.D., Training & Supervising Analyst, SFCP
Fridays, March 22, 29, April 5, 12, 2013
This seminar has been awarded 6 CME/CE credits.

Educational Objectives:

Participants will be able to:

1. Gain a working knowledge of the different meanings of dissociation.
2. Compare and contrast trauma and dissociation from different theoretical perspectives.
3. Develop and ability to work with dissociation as it arises clinically.

 

 

On Psychosomatic Illness and Trauma

What is the relationship between primitive trauma and psychosomatic disorders? What are psychosomatic disorders and how can our understanding of the relationship between trauma and psychosomatic disorders inform our clinical work? How do we treat an illness when the patient uses the body rather than the mind to reveal psychic pain? Looking at these questions, we will distinguish between three categories of psychic pain which are communicated through the body: hypochondria, pain that becomes chronic, and psychosomatic illness.                                                                                                                          

Carol Harrus, M.D., Member, PINC; Community Member, SFCP
Fridays, April 19, 26, May 3, 10, 2013
This seminar has been awarded 6 CME/CE credits.

Educational Objectives:

Participants will be able to:

1. Describe three somatic responses to trauma.
2. Define psychosomatic illness.
3. Give one example of how the body "speaks".