National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis
NPAP CONTINUING EDUCATION COMMITTEE
Series on Trauma, Social Action and Psychoanalysis Presents
Traumatic Psychosis: Narrative Form of the Muted Witness
by Dori Laub, MD
This presentation describes the video testimonies taken from chronically hospitalized Holocaust survivors in Israel who had been diagnosed with mental disorders, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and have spent decades in hospitals. These patients were hospitalized during the 1950’s and 1960’s, before PTSD was developed as a diagnosis, and at a time when the Israeli society and medical profession refused to accept the emotional impact of the Holocaust on survivors. Excerpts of such testimonies are shown in Hebrew with an English translation handed out. The presentation will sensitize the therapist in listening for traumatic elements in the patient’s narrative.
Dori Laub, MD, is a practicing psychoanalyst in New Haven, Connecticut, who works primarily with victims of massive psychic trauma and with their children; Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine and Co-Founder of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. He was Acting Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale in 2000 and 2003. Since 2001, he is also Deputy Director for Trauma Studies. He has published on the topic of psychic trauma, and co-authored Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History.
Date: Sunday, April 3, 2011
Time: 5:00 – 7:00 PM
Place: NPAP, 40 West 13 Street, New York, NY
RSVP by March 31: 212.924.7440 / info@npap.org
Open to NPAP members, candidates and the general public by RSVP. No charge.
Committee:
Alice Entin, Helen Goldberg, Judy Greenwald, Edith Laufer, Judy Ann Kaplan, Joan Klein, Loveleen Posmentier, Judith Rappaport, Penny Rosen (Chair)