Abstract
Relational Self Psychology is committed to expanding our understanding of human experience by connecting with important findings and concepts from other psychoanalytic perspectives and, importantly, from other related disciplines, thus broadening our ability to help our patients. I will present a clinical case in which I have used findings from brain research, attachment research, and studies of imagination and memory to facilitate my work with a
patient whose flashbacks and dissociation were the result of severe traumatic experience. I believe that the findings from brain research generate an understanding of momentary disruptions in comprehending present reality, and their distinctness from past traumatic experience, as emergent in dissociative flashback states. Applying these conceptualizations to the treatment of my patient over an extended period alleviated the effects of a disabling early
childhood spent within a highly inadequate, cruel or absent, parental surround.
Learning Objectives
At the conclusion of this workshop, participants will be able to:
1. Describe Gerald Edelman’s two categories of consciousness, and distinguish patients suffering from primary consciousness from those reflecting higher-order consciousness.
2. Define dissociaton and provide an example of a patient who manifests its effects.
3. Define D Category Attachment Disorder and name two aspects of its distinction from non-pathological attachment.
Biography
Estelle Shane is a Training/Supervising Analyst and Faculty at the New Center for Psychoanalysis. She is also a Founding Member, Training/Supervising Analyst, and Faculty at the Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, where she serves on the Board of Directors and chairs the Training and Supervising Analyst Committee. Additionally, Estelle is a Founding Board Member, Founding Vice President, and Past Board President of the International Association of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology. She serves as an Advisor for the International Association of Relational Psychoanalysts and Psychotherapists. She also serves on the editorial boards of two psychoanalytic journals, has published numerous articles, and has co-authored one book. Estelle is certified as a Child, Adolescent, and Adult Analyst. Her clinical practice is in Los Angeles, and she is especially interested in working with patients who have experienced trauma. Her orientation is Relational Self Psychology, a version of self psychology expanded by findings from related disciplines and by concepts from relationality.
References
Magid, B., Fosshage, J. & Shane, E. (2021). The emerging paradigm of relational self psychology: An historical perspective. Psychoanalysis, Self, and Context, 16(1), 1-23.
Saketopoulou, A. (2019). The draw to overwhelm: Consent, risk, and the retranslation of enigma. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 67(1), 133-167.
Weisel-Barth, J. (2020). Theoretical and clinical perspectives on narrative in psychoanalysis: The
creation of intimate fictions. Routledge.
