Thursday, March 24, 2022

7:30 PM – 9:30 PM


“SEARCHING FOR EMBODIED CONNECTION IN THE AGE OF COVID-19”
Heather Ferguson, LCSW – presenter
Shelley Doctors, Ph.D. – discussant

As teletherapy remains an ongoing mode of treatment during the pandemic, clinicians grapple with the loss of shared in-person space. Without access to the same richness of expression through gesture, movement, and embodied experience, therapists must consider the psychic impact of this new way of being with our patients. In this presentation, Ferguson describes work with a young patient where the treatment comes unexpectedly alive in response to the destabilizing impact of COVID-19. With the re-emergence of traumatic material catalyzed by circumstances resulting from the pandemic, Ferguson considers the challenge of connecting to the traumatized body through a screen. Despite the physical distance, Ferguson and her patient track somatic experience, use visual imagination through hypnosis, and engage playful bodily mirroring to create a felt presence, a sense of “being with” each other in alive connection.


Location:

Virtual, via Zoom

(Meeting link will be e-mailed to registered participants on the day of the event)

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER


Heather Ferguson, LCSW, is faculty and supervisor at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity and the National Institute for the Psychotherapies in NYC.  She teaches courses on contemporary self-psychology, trauma, intersubjectivity theory and the treatment of disordered eating. She is Co-Book Review Editor for Psychoanalysis, Self and Context.   hfergusonlcsw@outlook.com

Dr. Shelley Doctors is a clinical psychologist/psychoanalyst, faculty member and Supervising Analyst at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity, the National Institute for the Psychotherapies, and at the Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in Washington, D.C. She is immediate past President of the International Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology. Previously, she served as Secretary of the International Society for Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology for 12 years. Her more than 40 book chapters and peer-reviewed journal articles focus on self psychology, intersubjectivity, and adolescence. Additionally, she has lectured nationally and internationally on over 180 occasions. Along with Bernard Brandchaft and Dorienne Sorter, she co-wrote and co-edited Toward an Emancipatory Psychoanalysis: Brandchaft’s Intersubjective Vision, published in June 2010 by Routledge Press.


1.5 Continuing Education Credits for Social Workers & LMHC’s