When Words Fail and Bodies Speak: Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders
Tom Wooldridge, Psy.D., ABPP
September 13, 20, 27; October 4, 11, 18, 25; November 1

This course will examine psychoanalytic conceptualization and treatment of eating disorders. We will explore these complex and confounding syndromes through multiple lenses: as failures of thought, with unthinkable thoughts becoming stuck in the body; as complex compromise formations tied to early relational experiences; as autistic defenses against intolerable anxieties; as dissociative disorders linked to early experiences of trauma and affective dysregulation; and as disorders of desire, clandestine love affairs marked by anticipation, excitement, secrecy, and disappoint-ment, leaving emptiness in their wake. We will attend to the importance of gender, culture, and the role of the therapist’s body throughout the treatment situation.

The Body: Sexed and Gendered
Betsy Kassoff, Ph.D.
November 8, 15, 22; December 6, 13, 20; January 10, 17

In our clinical work, the body is ground zero for the many ways our patients express their sexual and gendered identities. Psychoanalysis has evolved from early models of infantile sexuality culminating in heterosexual genitality, to contemporary theorists exploring multiple developmental trajectories to hetero-sexual, homo-sexual, and trans identities. Intersections between sex, gender, race, class, and socio-political context further complicate how each of us construct our sexual selves. In this class, we will read relational psychoanalytic authors such as Corbett, Davies, Dimen, Harris, Saketopoulou, and Suchet to deepen our understanding of the sexed and gendered body, and apply these ideas to our clinical work.

Our Bodies, Our (Clinical) Selves
Audrey Martin, MFT
January 24, 31; February 7, 14, 21, 28; March 6, 13

Splitting, projecting, holding, containing, internalizing are key psychoanalytic terms that help us describe our visceral clinical experience. This class will bring our attention to the sensate component of our clinical work, focusing on how we use our bodies as clinicians to make contact with our patients. Also inviting gender and culture into our conversation, we will use the work of contemporary female artists and writers (Dorothy Allison, Amy Sherald, Jill Soloway, Beyoncé) to help us experience and explore concepts from analysts such as Adrienne Harris, Anne Alvarez, and Jacqueline Rose, and apply them to our ordinary/extraordinary clinical moments.

Loosened Links/Broken Bodies, or The Acts of Madness
Paul U. Alexander, Ph.D.
March 20, 27; April 3, 17, 24; May 1, 8, 15

How do we clinicians encounter states of madness and psychic collapse in our patients, and how are our own bodily selves impacted? In this section, we will consider fragmentations of the psyche-soma: How shattered psyches, as constituted and expressed by culture and group, are met physically in the context of treatment. We will think about layers and moments of bodily experience within the setting of the “talking cure,” and the meaning of “acts” (spoken, performed) that take place in the clinical hour. Psychoanalytic readings will be supplemented by examples from art and cultural criticism.

Readings: Winnicott, Rosenfeld, Bleger, Lombardi, Williams