June 18, 2010 6:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m.
Nancy McWilliams, Ph.D., Some Thoughts about Working with Paranoid Patients and
Richard Reichbart, Ph.D.,
The Therapist Mistaken for a Monster
Hartman Lounge, The Mansion, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, NJ
Two Views on Treating Paranoid Disorders
Two senior analysts will present differing views on the treatment of patients with paranoid dynamics, with one thing in common: both strongly believe that paranoid dynamics are more prevalent in our non-psychotic patients than the literature would suggest, and that there are important ways of addressing them successfully. McWilliams will argue that the relational turn in psychoanalysis is particularly useful for treating patients with paranoid psychologies, and Reichbart will stress that paranoid dynamics are a defense against closeness to the analyst and represent an attachment to a parental figure that can be addressed by seemingly concrete interpretations.
This phenomenological consideration of paranoid dynamics addresses their implications for psychotherapy, especially therapy with nonpsychotic paranoid individuals, a group not well represented in professional literature. It differentiates the psychoanalytic understanding of paranoia from DSM descriptions, covers different manifestations of the paranoid process, reports etiological research and speculation, and summarizes therapeutic implications. McWilliams argues that the relational turn in psychoanalysis has created a set of concepts that are particularly useful for therapists working with individuals with paranoid psychologies.
Reichbart notes that paranoid dynamics are a striking defense against closeness to and vulnerability toward the analyst. These defenses are often more a part of analytic treatment than the psychoanalytic literature would suggest. The analyst discusses two patients, one whose paranoia was not psychotic and the other whose paranoia was closer to psychosis, and will show how the paranoia, in both cases, invaded and took over the treatment. And he will suggest an approach that -- although seemingly concrete in nature -- addresses the patient's attachment to a parental figure who so often figures at the center of a paranoid system, usually through identification. There focus will be on the transference dynamics here as well as the almost inevitable countertransferential reactions that occur to the analyst who attempts to treat such patients.
Nancy McWilliams, Ph.D. teaches at Rutgers University's Graduate School of Applied & Professional Psychology and has a private practice in Flemington, New Jersey. She is author of Psychoanalytic Diagnosis (1994), Psychoanalytic Case Formulation (1999), and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (2004), and is associate editor of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (2006). She is past president of Division 39 (Psychoanalysis) of the American Psychological Association, and on the editorial boards of Psychoanalytic Psychology and The Psychoanalytic Review.
Richard Reichbart, Ph.D. is a training and supervising analyst at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR) and at CPPNJ, and he is also a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APA) and the Council of Independent Psychoanalytic Institites (CIPS). He has published numerous psychoanalytic articles, particularly in the fields of gender studies and of child psychoanalytic psychotherapy. He is at present program chair of the New Jersey Psychoanalytic Society. He has maintained a private practice in Ridgewood, New Jersey for the past twenty years.
Faculty and Others: $60 at the door / $50 pre-registration by June 8.Candidates: $50 / $40
Students with ID: $10