Sadomasochistic Struggles Within the Consultation Room: A Candidate’s Dilemma

Please join us for the following APsaA candidate focused programs, both taking place on Thursday, January 15th at the at the Waldorf Astoria in NYC.

Affiliate’s Forum-Winter 2009, Thursday, January 15th, 2:00-4:30PM

Sadomasochistic Struggles Within the Consultation Room:  A Candidate’s Dilemma.          

Chair:  Hilli Dagony-Psy.D. (New York, New York), Presenters: Brenda Berger, Ph.D. (New York, New York), Stephanie Newman, Ph.D. (New York, New York), Discussant: Robert Glick, M.D. (New York, New York)

Program Description

This panel explores a common difficulty which many candidates experience in the training situation, especially when treating individuals with entrenched sadomasochistic character defenses.   Presenters will offer clinical material to illustrate the difficult technical issues which arise when regressive and real aspects of being a candidate collide with patients’ sadomasochistic defensive styles.   They will show how candidates, vulnerable in their own candidacy, become hampered, or imprisoned by, their patients’ defensive struggles.   Typical among these struggles are issues about fees, treatment times, and the competency of the analyst.   Presenters will also show how candidates, trapped in their own realities and those of the training situation, become blind to their countertransferences, and then over, or under gratify patients’ needs, rather than analyze the defensive functions of those needs

Educational Objectives

After attending this session, participants should identify sadomasochistic struggles within the analytic situation and analyze the mutual impact of the transference and countertransference on the patient-analyst dyad.

 
Candidate to Candidate Discussion Group – Winter 2009, Thursday, January 15th, 4:45-7:15PM

Challenges of Being Supervised in the Analytic Training

Chair:  Hilli Dagony-Clark, Psy.D., (New York, New York)  Presenter: Francis Baudry, MD (New York, New York)

Program Description

This discussion group will focus on a primary struggle inevitably encountered by all candidates in analytic training: the supervisory experience.  Emphasis will be given to the burden supervisees feel under constant evaluation; the balance between their expression of mastery and the desire to attain knowledge in the supervision; the tension encountered through recognition of analyst and supervisor differences in theoretical and/or technical approaches; empathetic failures committed within the supervisory couple; and the manifestation of parallel processes.  Dr. Francis Baudry, who conducts a supervisory group, will share his experiences as a supervisor and supervision group coordinator, and discuss the nature of the dyadic supervisory experience.

Educational Objectives

After attending this session participants should be able to recognize how their own dynamics contribute to their supervisory experiences; appraise how their patients’ transferences might influence their reactions toward their supervisors; and determine how to best address empathetic failures in the supervision when they occur.