Superego Resistance: Working with forms of Self-Harm
A unique, line by line and scene by scene videotape explication of a three-hour session exploring transference, countertransference and other clinical phenomena “on the fly.”
Presenter: Jon Frederickson, MSW
Date: Saturday, January 11, 2025
Time: 9:00am - 5:00 pm ET
Location: Virtual Zoom Online
6.0 CEs pending
Program Description:
Some patients come to treatment, but they resist our efforts to help them. Some do so by taking an oppositional or defiant stance. Others become passive, uninvolved, and detached. The purpose of their resistance is to distance themselves from the therapist so they can distance themselves from their painful feelings. They enact a past, pathological relationship in therapy to tell us the history of their suffering.
However, another group of resistant patients also often neglect themselves, engage in self-destructive relationships, and justify why they should stay with harmful partners. Some of them even claim that they do not suffer at all! As a result, the therapist often feels stumped, seeing self-punishment while the patient does not. Or she sees that self-punishment is a problem while the patient does not. Frequently, these patients have learned to protect their loved ones from their rage by turning it upon themselves. Or they punish themselves as their abusers punished them, using the same rationalizations their abusers used. It’s as if the patient enacts the role of the abuser, and the therapist is the only one seeing reality.
In this videotaped three-hour session, we will study the patient’s comments line by line to understand how to assess the defenses and transference that cause the patient’s suffering. We will analyze the projections and the countertransferences they induce. We will also see the unique interventions these patients require. Finally, we will learn how to hear the unconscious supervision that patients’ responses give us so we can reach their longings for freedom from suffering.
Schedule:
9:00 AM - 10:15 AM Identifying superego resistance: forms of self-punishment
10:15 AM - 10:30 AM Coffee break
10:30 AM -12:00 PM Helping patients when they justify their self-punishment
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM Lunch
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM Projection of the capacity for reality testing
2:30 PM - 2:45 PM Coffee break
2:45 PM - 4:00 PM Breakthrough of unconscious feelings and longings
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM Discussion
1. Identify self harm behaviors
2. Reflect self-harm beliefs
3. Avoid enacting the patient's conflict between the wish for self-care and the defense of self harm.
Learning Objectives:
1. Identify self harm behaviors
2. Reflect self-harm beliefs
3. Avoid enacting the patient's conflict between the wish for self-care and the defense of self harm.
If you’re wondering what it’s like to attend one of Jon’s workshops, here are two YouTube videos from some years ago that will give you a taste of Jon’s knowledge base and manner of presentation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKzmk2-xnzY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDmVgoKPVkw
