What can we learn from the false/delayed memory controversy?

Working with survivors of trauma and abuse can challenge or shatter therapists' basic beliefs about safety, goodness, and meaning, leaving one anxious, vulnerable, uncertain and prone to countertmnsference act-out. Through discussion and structured ewences that allow for individual pacing, participants in this experiential clinic will have an opportunity to identify, transform, and work through issues of the self of the therapist including countertransferences, parallel process, secondary traumatization, and the intense and sometime immobilizing existential crises that may result from this work. The leader will endeavor to create an enjoyable playful climate of mutual respect, trust, confidentiality and containment throughout the day. Educational objectives: A. Participants will engage in group and individual exercises designed to break with injunctions, scripts and internalizations left over from the family of origin that have prohibited personal authority and experimentation. B. Through lecture/discussion and exercises, participants will explore countextramference issues, secondary PTSD, and common therapeutic impasses and the existential crises they evoke in the self of the therapist. C. Participants will engage in group and individual exercises designed to assist in the resolution of on-going countertransference issues growing out of their current clinical practice. Bibliography: (1)Benedeck, E.P. (1984). The silent scream; Countertransference reactions to victims. American Journal of Social Psychiatry, IV, 3:49-52. (2)Camstock, C.M. (1991). Countertransference and the suicidal MPD patient. Dissociation, Vol. IV, No. 1;25-35

Conference

English

David Calof
Wendy Maltz
Francine Shapiro
Walter Young

Calof, D., Maltz, W., Shapiro, F., & Young, W. (1995, June). What can we learn from the "false/delayed memory" controversy? Evening symposium and town meeting conducted at the EMDR Network Conference, Santa Monica, CA