A dash of madness: Introduction to human narcissism / shelterwood collective

friday december 12th / 1pm - 4pm / hybrid in person + zoom

My best friend and fellow therapist Joe Sawyer and I have been gripped by the phenomenon of narcissism over the past fifteen years, both personally in our individual lives, as well as what that enormous, vague, and misused word even begins to try to capture in our consulting rooms in therapeutic practice. We have read the literature. We have attended trainings. We have tracked and attended to these pushes and pulls within our own souls, year after year after year. We were confident in our learnings, and yet…

We were left wondering how to bring all of this experiential learning and information out of misconception and generalization and psychiatric textbooks of old into fresh, relatable, invitational, and non-pathologizing ways of partnering with narcissism. How does shame and jealousy and greed and envy and hatred of life all play into, and out of, this one word? How does the world get collapsed into a dyadic poll of GOD and WORM? What does narcissism have to do with responsibility? With truth? With integration and ordinary love?

A Dash of Madness will address the sincerity in every human being for narcissistic choices, defenses, and ways of being. Using a psychoanalytic point of view, we will explore how narcissism manifests itself as a deeply defaulted, and therefore unconscious process, that transcends a person’s race, sexuality, culture, and upbringing as a shorthand way to navigate a complicated universe—both internally and externally. We will work to provide and showcase alternative choice points for clinical practice, as well as a deep understanding of the narcissistic everyday mindset, in our patients and in ourselves.

Through this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Identify narcissistic pressures and pulls, outside in society, as well as internally in the self.

• Understand the interplay of neglect, trauma, and shame as intensifiers to narcissistic choices and perspective.

• Feel empowered to become aware of and partner-with one’s own unconscious narcissism and how to heal.

This experience will be hybrid, where you may join us in person in Pioneer Square, or join in via Zoom. The exchange is $120 for the general public, $160 with 3 CEUs included, and Shelterwood members receive $20 off of their CEU admission with code MEMBER20. There are also a few sliding scale scholarships available by request—feel free to contact me, at dmlouderbacktherapy@gmail.com to apply.

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PSYCHoanalytic diagnosis: feeling in the dark / nw alliance for Psychoanalytic study

thursdays, january + February / 6:30pm - 8:00pm / zoom

"Not knowing is the precondition for being able to imagine..." —Thomas Ogden

What on Earth do we do, let alone think, about diagnosis in psychoanalytic psychotherapy? Does diagnosing a patient become the royal rule—a sort of psychiatric branding—that identifies and locates our patient, never to be departed from in a treatment? Or, is diagnosing an archaic practice with suffocating, reductionistic, and maybe even cruel origins that we don't allow ourselves to consider as we sit sincerely with fluid, dynamic, and complicated human beings? After all, psychoanalytic training teaches us to rid ourselves of memory and desire prior to each session. Does this include a diagnosis?

Might we be able to imagine a fresh, humane, and helpful way of thinking about diagnosis that can locate and serve a specific patient’s treatment, without it becoming set in stone and an unhelpful shortcut for those that we are forever getting to know in a therapy? Can we instead describe a thoughtful diagnosis as constructing a room with particular kinds of furniture and features in it, so that we as clinicians might have some idea of where we are and how to move around as we work with integrity in the dark?

This eight class seminar will walk us the through the diagnostic process by using the psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliam's wonderful offering "Psychoanalytic Diagnosis." We will explore how powerful and useful diagnosis—once understood and held loosely in an analytically dynamic way—can be in setting up, organizing, and continuously holding a treatment that aims for longevity, surprising growth, and transformation.

Come join us in the tension of thinking diagnostically in a psychoanalytic way-or as I like to say, comfort in feeling around in the dark. 

Learning Objectives:  

1) Students will understand and apply the nuisances of thinking psychoanalytically about diagnosis in their casework.

2) Students will better characterize the fundamental differences and useful technical applications of the eleven diagnoses that we will spend significant time getting to know.

3) Students will be able to apply the learnings of psychoanalytic diagnosis to their treatments in any and all stages of care.

Exchange: $550 Alliance Members/$600 Alliance Non-Members (sliding scale available upon request, please contact me directly)

CEs: 12.00

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