Abstract
Dr. Knafo, who has worked with psychosis in a variety of settings for over 40 years, will describe the reasons why she believes most psychoanalysts have veered away from the treatment of psychosis in recent decades. She will then present her approach to meeting the challenges of working with individuals undergoing extreme states. Her approach focuses primarily on providing safety, forging a working alliance by meeting the patient where they are and allotting them maximum personal agency, understanding their symptoms as attempts at adaptation and restoration of the self, coping with loneliness, and working with the transference and countertransference. She works with a patient's strengths as well as weaknesses. Most importantly, Dr. Knafo's approach to therapy involves viewing the patient as a whole person rather than a collection of symptoms, prioritizing subjective experience and affect, and seeing the patient as a true collaborator in their own treatment. Clinical examples will illustrate her points.
Learning Objectives
At the end of this presentation, participants will be able to:
1. Explain why many mental health practitioners have shied away from working with psychosis.
2. List three techniques for working with psychosis and extreme states in clinical practice.
3. Discuss how to identify and work with positive and negative symptoms of psychosis.
Biography
Dr. Danielle Knafo is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst with expertise in the treatment of psychosis. During her tenure as professor at Long Island University’s Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program for 22 years, she trained doctoral students on how to work therapeutically and psychodynamically with serious mental illness. She received the prestigious Barbro Sandin award for this work. Currently, she is faculty and supervisor at Adelphi’s Postgraduate Programs and NYU’s Postdoctoral Program for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. She has written and lectured extensively on the topics of art and creativity, psychoanalysis, trauma and psychosis, sexuality and technology. From Breakdown to Breakthrough: Psychoanalytic Treatment of Psychosis (with Michael Selzer) is her tenth book. Dr. Knafo maintains a private practice in Manhattan and Great Neck, NY
References
Eshel, O. (2013). Patient-analyst “withness”: On analytic “presencing,” passion, and compassion in states of breakdown, despair, and deadness. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 82(4), 925-963.
Grossmark, R. (2016). Psychoanalytic companioning. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 26(6), 698-712.
Knafo, D. (2020). Alone in a crowded mind: When psychosis masks loneliness. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 37(2), 108-116.
