Intergenerational Trauma and Family Therapy

November 13, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.
Presenter: Lisa Nakamura, PsyD
Discussant: Alice Shaw, PhD

Arnold is a 12-year-old biracial Native Hawaiian and Caucasian young man. He shares a history of being abused and neglected with his mother and grandmother. His grandmother’s boyfriend molested his mother when she was an adolescent. His mother has been in violent relationships with men since that time. As an adolescent, his grandmother was raped, disowned by her family and pressured by her parents to marry the perpetrator. Arnold’s father physically abused him when he was younger and living his mother.

This presentation examines how intergenerational trauma impacts a family’s dynamics. Specifically, the presentation will explore Arnold’s family dynamics, and the impact of his mother and maternal grandmother’s intense history of traumatic experiences. The discussion will highlight the family therapy interventions appropriate to use in light of the family’s collective trauma history, particularly in dealing with their avoidance and denial.

Awakening the Child from Within

June 19, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.
Presenter: Jerolyn Politzer, MFT & Michelle Limon, PsyD
Discussant: Peter August, MFT

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how therapy and assessment can come together in joining a young girl’s inner world to provide her with the internal resources and support that she needs to begin a new path of development. The case describes her attachment disruptions, language deficits, trauma, isolation, and her earlier childhood life with a mentally ill mother. Her therapist entered this pre-verbal world through a lens of intense emotional play and enactments of her relationships with her mother and her dog. While this was the beginning of self-formation the therapy pair would also lose themselves in this girl’s disorganized inner-experience. The assessment process provided a framework to better understand her use of primitive defenses as a way of coping with chaos. The test data helped organize overwhelming material and understand the nature of her interactions. Questions from the case include how to build on this bridge of her development, social connection, and identity, and how to empower her to engage in an alternative reality from her more isolated existence.

Out and About: A Therapeutic Journey with an Audrey Hepburn Fanatic

January 9, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.
Presenter: Ryan Shallat, PsyD
Discussant: Diane Ehrensaft, PhD

In this presentation, a therapist explores his relationship with an 11-year-old client who, after 10 months of intensive individual treatment, revealed that he was gay. Attempts are made to chronicle their work together, and to candidly examine the thoughts, feelings, questions and vulnerabilities that emerged along the way. Efforts are also made to illustrate the challenges a child faces growing up in the foster care system, as well as how these challenges can impede and intensify the ‘coming out’ process.

Race as Adaptive Challenge

November 14, 2008
9:30 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
Presenter:
Kimberlyn Leary, PhD, ABPP, Presenter
Tracy Davis, MSW, Case Presentation
(This workshop has been submitted for approval to MCEP for 3 CEUs for psychologists. This workshop is approved for 3 CEUs for MFTs and LCSWS.)

This workshop will consider the way in which race has been constructed and lived in the 2008 election process. The presentation will focus specifically on the controversies that erupted over Obama¹s engagement with the Revered Jeremiah Wright and Obama¹s response to them, culminating in his widely heralded March 2008 speech on race. Dr. Leary will suggest lessons that future leaders, and followers, might draw from Obama's leadership story, including the lessons psychoanalysts and psychotherapists may draw about how to think through the meaning of race in psychic experience. Ms. Davis will present a clinical example to illustrate these concepts and stimulate discussion.

Case Presentations from the Advanced Training Workshop on Therapeutic Assessment of Children

Friday, September 12, 2008
9:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m.
Presenters:
Brooke Guerrero, Psy.D., Marianne Haydel, Psy.D., Jessica Lipkind, Psy.D.,
Barbara L. Mercer, Ph.D., Erin Rosenblatt, Psy.D., Audrey Rosenberg, Ph.D.
Facilitator: Stephen E. Finn, Ph.D.

This session will consist of case presentations by participants in the advanced training workshop on Therapeutic Assessment of children. Two cases will be described for which all standardized testing is completed and family sessions have taken place. The presenters will share their plans for giving feedback to the family and child, and attendees will collaborate and consult about these plans. In this process, the techniques and principles of Therapeutic Assessment will be demonstrated. A coffee break will separate the two case presentations.