WSPP – April 23, 2010 (12:30-3:30pm): Couples Work: From Ghosts to Ancestors – Sharon Alperovitz, MSW
Hanna Segal reminds us that our counter-transference reactions can be our wisest guide or our worst enemy in our therapeutic work with others. Figuring out who’s who and what’s what is hard enough when working with individual patients but when working with couples – it often feels impossible. Janet Malcolm was wrong when she wrote that psychoanalysis was the impossible profession. Those of us who work with couples know that being a couple therapist is truly the impossible profession. Many have expressed the idea that our hidden mission is to cure our parents. If there’s some truth in this then it might help explain why working with couples is so hard and why it stirs such uncomfortable feelings in us: the room is filled with so many opportunities for complex and confusing counter-transference reactions.
The focus of this interactive workshop will be on us. In the spirit of understanding this tough work – I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours. Please bring clinical vignettes (especially those that are giving you the most trouble), and I will too. Together we will tease out what might be going on in the three-some of couple work and how we might creatively use our reactions/contributions to help couples learn from the experience, think a new thought, and mourn the past so as to allow them and us — “to turn ghosts into ancestors.”
Cost: Registration is free to Members, $20 for non-members
CEU\’s: Earns 3 CEU\’s for an additional $5.
Registration: Contact Lynn Hamerling (LynnHamerling@gmail.com) or (202) 722-1507.
For More Info go to www.WSPP-DC.org.