A Live Streamed Web Series

MICHAL RIECK, Psychoanalyst

ADRIAN SUTTON, Psychiatrist

The Use of the Therapist's Somatic Experience:

On the Importance of Not Being 'No Body'

Moderator: Dodi Goldman, PhD

Friday, November 11th, from Noon to 2:00PM

All of this year's Colloquium series events are live streamed at the indicated hour in Eastern Daylight or Standard time.

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ABOUT TODAY'S TALKS

Living an (Embodied) Experience Together or Evenly Hovering Somatic Attention by Michal Rieck

Winnicott was the first to give full recognition to the fact that somatic experience is the basis of all emotional development: 70 years later there is a growing interest in placing the body at the center of theoretical and clinical psychoanalysis. In my presentation I'll relate to the analyst's 'corporeality', that is the presence of his actual body and his subjective-corporeal experience, and show how working with somatic countertransference/the somatic-sensory aspect of the analyst's reverie creates receptivity to unmentalized materials existing inside the patient in the form of deeply buried body memories, not expressible otherwise. I'll suggest the phrase, evenly hovering somatic attention, which relates to the sensory-somatic channel within the evenly hovering attention which Freud suggested to us, analysts, as a basic analytic attitude and the phrase, 'living an (embodied) experience together' which relates to the sensory-somatic channel within Winnicott's basic analytic attitude of living an experience together.

Stories Only the Body Can Tell by Adrian Sutton

Winnicott’s practice as a child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst emerged from his medical training and practice as a Pediatrician. He emphasized the role psychoanalytic understanding could play in alleviating suffering and promoting mental health and development not only through direct psychotherapeutic treatment but also through optimizing parental care and shaping professionals’ responses to children and their careers. My presentation will focus on the arena of children with Medically Unexplained Symptoms to illustrate how, through recognizing, reflecting upon, and better understanding the somatic manifestations of the impact of the patient upon me, it became possible to adapt my therapeutic responses to the children and adolescents, assist parents in caring for their children and support colleagues. 

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Michal Rieck, Psychoanalyst, is a clinical psychologist, a training and supervising psychoanalyst and faculty at the Israel Psychoanalytic Society, and co-founder of the Israel Winnicott Center, where she is also teacher and supervisor. Her main areas of interest are ontological psychoanalysis and the body in the consulting room.

Adrian Sutton, Psychiatrist, is Director of the Squiggle Foundation, and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a Registrant of the British Psychoanalytic Council and an Honorary Senior Teaching Fellow in Medical Education at the University of Manchester. Dr. Sutton is a Visiting Professor of Psychiatry at Gulu University, in Uganda, and a Visiting Lecturer, in the Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust, in London.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Dodi Goldman, PhD, is a Training and Supervising Analyst and Faculty at the William Alanson White Institute in New York. He authored, In Search of the Real: the origins and originality of D.W. Winnicott, and is the former book review editor of the journal Contemporary Psychoanalysis.  His latest book, A Beholder’s Share: essays on Winnicott and the psychoanalytic imagination, won the 2017 Gradiva Award for Best Psychoanalytic Book.

To view the entire schedule for this year's Colloquium series, click here