Impasse in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis
Spring Workshop*: Jane Hall, LCSW Dancing in the Dark: Intuition as a Guiding Light
Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the New York Freudian Society; a founder of The New York School for Psychotherapy
Labels such as negative therapeutic reaction or impasse (a deadlock with no anticipated progress) can box us in. Ms. Hall invites us to explore what makes the therapist resort to these labels. Using case material she will revisit the repetition compulsion and the attachment to abuse that often exhaust the dyad. Her premise is that benevolent curiosity, hopefulness, caritas, and patience are what keep us going. She will remind us that change, no matter how longed for, means loss: loss of early objects, reliable (though often crippling) defenses, and even one’s sense of self. What often seem like impasses can be seen as calls for help to face powerful fears of separation. Although our work seeks to cast light we must also be comfortable dancing in the dark.
Case Presentation: To Be Announced
Levine, H. (2010). Creating analysts; creating analytic patients, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 91, 1385-1404.
*The Spring Workshop is co-sponsored by DSPP, the Dallas Psychoanalytic Center, and the Dallas Society for Psychoanalytic Social Work.