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SPRING 2024 CONFERENCE

SATURDAY, APRIL 6, 2024

The Unobstrusive Relational Analyst: Enactment, Trauma and Time

Robert Grossmark, Ph.D.

In Person and Virtual

Innis Town Hall Theatre,

2 Sussex Ave., Toronto

10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

About The Day
Two papers will be presented. The first is an overview of the whole approach of the unobtrusive relational analyst and the second a more specific look at mutual enactment as narrative and how this relates to the issues of being, time and
therapeutic action.

Morning Paper:

The Unobtrusive Relational Analyst and Psychoanalytic Companioning: The Shift from Epistemology to Ontology in
Psychoanalysis

Unrepresented and yet-to-be-suffered trauma and neglect announce themselves in the language of symptoms, absence
and emergent enactments in the treatment field. I will address the challenges when working with patients whose trauma does not avail itself to symbolization and mentalization. These patients often suffer disturbances in the area of self-other definition, continuity and regulation of self. In this presentation I will outline how the analyst can unobtrusively create the
safe and robust space within which the fullness of the patient’s internal world and trauma can be realized and
companioned such that the patient can be known in the register of illusion, fragmentation and non-relatedness that are the signature of the residue of trauma and neglect. The emphasis is on companioning and being-with the patient in their particular idiom and register rather than seeking to bring the patient into the analyst’s reality and understanding

Afternoon Paper:

Enactment, Narrative and Untelling

In this paper I will offer some thoughts about the therapeutic action of unobtrusively companioning patients in the
flow of enactive engagement. I will suggest that along with the emergence of yet-to-be-experienced breakdown and
pain in mutual enactment, this unique therapeutic relationship offers the space for the instantiation of time such that
trauma can be located in memory and the past. This involves the un-telling and un-doing of prior “translations”,
personality structures and relational patterns such that being and time can be re-assembled and re-integrated. I will offer a detailed case to illustrate this process.

 

Register Here

About the speaker

ROBERT GROSSMARK, PH.D, ABPP is a psychoanalyst in New York City. He works with individuals, groups and couples.
He is on the teaching and supervising faculty at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and
Psychoanalysis, The National Institute for the Psychotherapies Program in Adult Psychoanalysis, The National Training Program in
Psychoanalysis, National Faculty Member, the Florida Psychoanalytic Center and lectures at other psychoanalytic institutes and
clinical psychology training programs nationally and internationally. He is an Associate Editor for Psychoanalytic Dialogues.

Learning Objectives:

  1. Participants will be able to describe three elements that comprise the
    concept of an unobtrusive yet relational analyst
  2. Participants will be able to spell out two examples of how an analyst enters the patient’s world rather than bringing the patient into the reality of
    the analysts
  3. Participants will be able to describe specific examples of unworded
    phenomena expressed in mutual enactment.

Accreditation
CE Credits have been applied for

Schedule of The Day:

10:00 a.m. – Introduction

10:10 a.m. -“The Unobtrusive Relational Analyst and
Psychoanalytic Companioning: The Shift from
Epistemology to Ontology in Psychoanalysis”

11:00 a.m. – Audience Discussion

12:00-2:00 – Lunch *on your own

2:00 p.m. – “Enactment, Narrative and Untelling”

3:00 p.m. – Audience Discussion

4:00 p.m. – Closing Remarks