“The causes of events are ever more interesting than the events themselves.”
-Cicero
Psychodynamics is a theory of how we understand human symptoms, suffering and experience as arising out of unconscious experience including unconscious conflicts, the defenses we use to cope with them, and developmental snags we've run into growing up.
The first task is being curious about how these snags show up in the clinical hour. It is a theory of psychotherapy and its historical roots are in psychoanalysis. This theory began with Freud but there have been many great minds that have expanded and elaborated on these ideas since that time. These elaborations can help us put an understanding of psychodynamics to good, practical use.
How is this useful today? We all have patients who don't respond to simple encouragement, positive reinforcement, or reasoning through their dilemmas. CBT and DBT can be helpful, but there are limits and we find ourselves perplexed and even sometimes frustrated or overwhelmed. Not all patients respond well to behaviorally focused treatments.
About the Presenter: Dr. Loula will present on the clinically relevant aspects of the theory and review a clinical hour that illustrates the approach. There will be ample time for Q&A and general discussion. She will also address any clinical vignettes of your own cases if interested and available time.
If you would like to present a case vignette, contact Charlie Pohl in advance via email: charlespohl@live.com.
Cathy Loula, M.D. is a psychiatrist-psychoanalyst in private practice in Brookline and Northampton, Massachusetts. She completed her psychiatry residency at Cambridge Hospital, fellowship at The Austen Riggs Center and psychoanalytic training at the PINE Psychoanalytic Institute of New England, East. She taught for many years psychiatry residents at The Cambridge Health Alliance Psychiatry Residency and continues to teach fellows at the PINE Psychoanalytic Society of New England, and fellows and candidates at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis, as well as supervising therapists and analysts interested in working with patients with more severe psychological difficulties.
Learning Objectives:
Attendees will be able to:
1.Describe the importance of curiosity in approaching understanding client behavior
2.List the key principles guiding the dynamics of client behavior
3.Identify client “stuck spots” and strategies for breaking through impasses and dealing with resistance.