|
Clinical Workshops
The Conference Organising Committee is delighted to announce the following Clinical Workshops are now available for the 6th International Conference on the Work of Frances Tustin.
FRIDAY, 20TH JULY
11.00 am - 1.00 pm
Working with an Adopted Young Child with Autistic Features and His Parents
Jeanne Magagna
The placement of a severely deprived not-speaking, not eating child with autistic features in an adoptive family requires a sophisticated way of attuning to the child in order to build a trusting relationship with him. Providing individual psychotherapy on its own may not be the best way of fostering faltering attachments between mother and child. This presentation will explore ways of facilitating the mother-child relationship while simultaneously providing psychoanalytic psychotherapy for the child in the context of regular meetings with the parents. To read more about Jeanne Magagna, click here...
Transformations: The Birth of Emotionality in a Child with Tourette's and Asperger's Syndromes
Shirley Gooch and Jim Gooch
Transformations from emotional deadness, acting-out, and somatization to psychic aliveness will be illustrated from clinical material in the analysis of a child presenting with Tourette's and Asperger's syndromes. To read more about Shirley and Jim Gooch, click here...
Autosensual Movements and Bion's Thoughts without a Thinker
Annie Reiner
"Thinking is a function forced upon the psyche by the pressure of thoughts, not the other way around." (Bion, 1970) In adhesive states there is no sense of separateness and so of course little capacity for thought. What prevails instead are states of panic and dissolution, fears of falling and collapsing. I will examine the ways in which auto sensual movements mask these primal anxieties by becoming a sort of dance of kinesthetic thinking for thoughts which cannot find a mind to think them. Like Bion's concept of thoughts without a thinker, these sensations represent unthinkable thoughts of a thinker without access to thinking. Ideas will be presented about language, and the view of ritualised movements as attempts to find a form for the raw energy of emotion pressuring the mind of the individual in these primal states. The patient becomes a kind of ideogram for the raw energy of proto-mental thoughts which, like Tustin's innate forms, cannot be symbolised or thought. To read more about Annie Reiner, click here...
FRIDAY, 20TH JULY
2.30 pm - 4.30 pm
The Self and its Circumstances: Aspects of Emergence from Autistic States
Jeffrey Eaton
This paper will explore what Tustin called "the development of I-ness" in the context of the analytic process. Attention will be given to the earliest self experiences and their foreclosure by autistic defences as well as to how establishing a psychoanalytic situation makes possible the emergence from autistic states and the growth of aliveness and self expression. Particular attention will be given to Bion's work and his theory of thinking which informs the analyst's sensibility. Extensive material from the treatment of autistic children will be presented as part of this program. To read more about Jeffrey Eaton, click here...
Raids on the Inarticulate - Working with Silent Patients
Ruth Safier
Is the silence a communication generating a poem - a mutual construction in the analytic field? Is it a resistance and an attempt to get the analyst to collude with the forces in both patient and analyst against progress involving catastrophic pain, or is the silence a response to inadvertent wounding of the patient by the analysts technique or failures. To read more about Ruth Safier, click here...
The Lady of Shalott, the Minotaur, the Medusa and Others
Jacqueline Adler
My patient was an isolated and friendless young woman from a very abusive background. She had fears of physical illness destroying her mind. Her material was full of hate, cruelty and perverse functioning and the transference contained very primitive and concrete elements. My countertransference experiences in working with her were of a particularly anxiety-provoking nature and I found myself struggling in very alien territory. Reading Frances Tustin's ideas and concepts opened up a unique perspective on understanding this patient and her encapsulated states of autistic functioning, enabling us to move forward beyond impasses. The patient has returned for further work at critical times over the years. To read more about Jacqueline Adler, click here...
Climbing a Waterfall: The Recovery of an Adolescent Boy from Autistic Retreat
Kathleen Fargione
This paper is the story of a ten year treatment of a very bright and very impaired adolescent male encapsulated in autistic retreat. It is also the story of the author's discovery of Frances Tustin's work and the light that work shed on the author's understanding of this patient. The author uses Tustin's ideas about autistic processes to explain her patient's sensory distress and his serious and debilitating withdrawal from all human contact and her efforts to maintain contact with him and to gradually draw him back into relationships with his family and other members of his community. His willingness to forge a relationship with the author and his own desire to understand himself were great aids in his healing. To read more about Kathleen Fargione, click here...
_________________________________________________________
|