Philip Bromberg offered a helpful way of thinking about enactment in therapy, as the \u201croyal road\u201d by which dissociated experience can come to be known and worked through. As Bromberg implied in his use of the image of \u201cpotholes\u201d to describe the bumpiness of this \u201croad,\u201d enactments often hurt! And may feel like a breakdown. One of the hardest experiences for therapist and patient alike is when an enactment of trauma seems too big to work through together. Ruptures may be opportunities for transformative repair, but the danger of harm is real, and so is the vulnerability of both parties in the work.<\/p>\n
In this ten-week class, through readings and discussions we will work to expand our own and each other\u2019s reflective space for thinking about ruptures in our own experience\u2014 as therapists, as patients, and as witnesses. We\u2019ll consider Robert Jay Lifton\u2019s thoughts about \u201cmoral injury,\u201d and apply it to the impacts we and our patients may experience when faith in therapy itself is shaken. We\u2019ll look at a range of ruptures, from outright boundary violations to more subtle kinds of impasse. We\u2019ll discuss Sandor Ferenczi\u2019s idea that, in working with traumatized patients, the therapist may inevitably be pulled into enacting the abuser role\u2014and Jessica Benjamin\u2019s thinking about what it means for a therapist to bear \u201cthe bad\u201d in such painful situations. We\u2019ll also be considering that traumatizing societal norms, such as white supremacy and misogyny, may be enacted harmfully in therapy, and how to work on undoing the dissociation which can pull us into re-enactments.<\/p>\n
Participants will be encouraged to do their own reflective brief writing in response to each reading, and to make connections between the readings, clinical experience, and other readings or sources of helpful insight for our discussions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Philip Bromberg offered a helpful way of thinking about enactment in therapy, as the \u201croyal road\u201d by which dissociated experience can come to be known and worked through. As Bromberg implied in his use of the image of \u201cpotholes\u201d to describe the bumpiness of this \u201croad,\u201d enactments often hurt! And may feel like a breakdown. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"template":"","level_of_course":[981],"class_list":["post-27450","courses","type-courses","status-publish","hentry","level_of_course-introductory"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n