Course Description:

Adolescence has been called, by no less a figure than Anna Freud, "a 'stepchild, where analytic thinking is concerned". This is undoubtedly due to the difficulties working with this age group. Adolescence is a time of turmoil, of reckoning with discontinuities- accommodating to a new physical self as well as cognitive changes, forming new attachments outside the family; in essence, a relinquishing of childhood. This presentation will detail what is lost in adolescence, how these losses are symbolized by the adolescent and in the culture at large, relying on Kleinian (as well as other) notions of symbolization and repair. How these losses are manifest in the treatment of youth will be illustrated with clinical examples. A particular focus on transferential and countertransferential enactments will demonstrate how these issues arise in therapeutic work with this age group, and the clinician having to reckon with, in Winnicott's words, "that bit of ourselves that hasn't yet had its own adolescence".

Course Link:
http://www.mcpp.online

CE Value (credits): 2
CE Type: Standard
 

Michigan Council for
Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy

Contact Information:
Rebecca Hatton, Psy.D
734-709-2183
rebecca.hatton1@gmail.com