IPTAR and The New School For Social Research
Clinical Psychology Department Present the Norbert Freedman Memorial Lecture
Honoring a Major Contributor to Psychoanalytic Technique
Sheldon Bach, PhD The Disembodied Self: Dysregulation and Feelings of Unreality
Introduction by Steven Ellman, PhD Sunday April 3, 2016 –
10:00–12:30CE: Approved for 2 Credits
IPTAR IS PROUD TO HONOR Dr. Bach for his contributions to the treatment of narcissistic pathology and
sado-masochistic relationships, as well as his teaching and supervision of so many students throughout the years. Because of his dedication, we can now conduct analyses with patients who used to be considered unreachable. Dr. Bach has taught technique for over 50 years, teaching us, “how to hold a patient in mind”, “how to enter the patient’s world”, “how to help our patients enter transitional space through attunement and mutual trust” and how to be open and honest and loving in treatment. Dr. Bach’s sensitivity and ability to reach both patients and students has been profound. We cannot thank him enough.
Dr. Bach will discuss two groups of patients who live in their heads and feel alienated from their bodies, with a consequent disturbance in their feelings about reality, but not in their reality testing. Through clinical examples of patients whose inner world feels lonely and emptied of objects or whose inner world feels colonized by toxic
objects, he suggests that both traumatic over and under stimulation within the mother-infant system is an important determinant of the Cartesian separation of mind and body. Under circumstances of trauma or
cumulative trauma the soma can retreat into the psyche, leaving patients with a body in their head that feels either disembodied or not owned, and with experiences that feel strange, unreal and inauthentic. Dr. Bach suggests that an intimate knowledge of the history of the trauma and its meaning to the patient is the best guide to an effective
treatment.
Dr. Bach is an Adjunct Clinical Professor of Psychology at the N.Y.U. Postdoctoral Program for Psychoanalysis, a Fellow of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and a Training and Supervising Analyst at the Contemporary Freudian Society. He is the author of several books including Narcissistic States and the Therapeutic
Process, The Language of Perversion and the Language of Love, Getting from Here to There and, most recently, A Handbook for Students of Psychoanalysis. He is a recipient of the Heinz Hartmann Award for “outstanding contributions to the theory and practice of Psychoanalysis.”
Register Here: iptar.org/sheldonbach Registration Fee: $15 for all attendees
Time & Location: Sunday April 3, 2016 – 10:00–12:30
Starr Foundation Hall, UL 104, University Center
63 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10003
Educational Objectives: To understand patients with depersonalization,
derealization and bodily detachment symptoms
To understand understimulated and overstimulated infants and the effect on their sense of self
To discuss how to use “mindfulness” of the body in treatment to help these patients
Program Committee: Carolyn Ellman (chair), Michael Moskowitz, Ben
Kafka, Jeanne Even, Judy Ann Kaplan, Chris Christian, Eva Atsalis,
Susan Berger, Steven Ellman, Carlos Padron
The Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR) is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for
licensed social workers #0226