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Superego Resistance: Working with forms of Self-Harm

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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

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.

Bio: 

Jon Frederickson, MSW, is on the faculty of the Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) Training Program at the New Washington School of Psychiatry. Jon has provided ISTDP training in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Poland, Italy, Switzerland, India, Iran, Australia, Canada, the U.S., and the Netherlands. He is the author of over fifty published papers or book chapters and seven books, including Co-Creating Change: Effective Dynamic Therapy Techniques, Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: Learning to Listen from Multiple Perspectives, The Lies We Tell Ourselves, Co-Creating Safety: healing the fragile patient, Healing Through Relating: a skill-building book for therapist, and Clinical Thinking in Psychotherapy: how to do it and how to teach it. His book, Co-Creating Change, won the first prize in psychiatry in 2014 at the British Medical Association Book Awards. His books have been translated into eighteen languages. He has DVDs of actual sessions with patients who previously failed in therapy at his websites www.istdpinstitute.com and www.deliberatepracticeinpsychotherapy.com There, you will also find skill-building exercises designed for therapists. He writes posts on ISTDP at www.facebook.com/DynamicPsychotherapy.

REGISTER HERE

Registration closes January 9th, 2025 at noon ET.