Violence, Destruction, Survival: British Independent Theory in the Analytic Treatment of a Schizophrenic Patient (Online Presentation)

[2 CE Credits for Psychoanalysts, Psychologists, and Social Workers]

This presentation describes the psychoanalytic treatment of a patient, previously diagnosed as schizophrenic, who at times was severely regressed.  The analytic work is discussed from the perspective of British Independent theory, using Ferenczi, Winnicott, Michael and Enid Balint, and Bollas.  The treatment of this sadomasochistic patient entailed the analyst’s being available to be used within the facilitating environment, which was an unexpected experience for the patient, who expected cruelties in response to her destructiveness.  Her sadomasochism, rooted in traumatic preverbal experience, was unconsciously enacted in the frame of the transference-countertransference.  As she became able to verbalize her early object relations in terms of who was doing what to whom, she ceased her enactments of violent cruelties.  The British Independent theories on the destruction of the object and its survival, which do not rely on the death instinct, are discussed.

Jonathan Sklar, MBBS, FRCPsych, is an Independent training and supervising psychoanalyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society.  He was consultant psychotherapist at Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge, and he now works in analytic practice in London and lectures widely across the world.  He is an honorary member of the South African Psychoanalytic Society and the Serbian Psychoanalytic Society, and established and chaired the Independent Psychoanalytic Trust.  He is the author of Dark Times: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Politics, History and Mourning.

Download flier

Practitioners and General Public: $40
Students: Free