“From Ruin to Rebirth: Working Relationally with Developmental Trauma”

“From Ruin to Rebirth: Working Relationally with Developmental Trauma”

Natalie Peacock-Corral, LCSW

Friday, December 6, 2024

6:30PM – 8:30PM (EST)

PPSC

Live Webinar on Zoom

$60 Regular Admission and $40 Student

*This talk provides 2 hours of continuing education credits for LCSWs, LMSWs, LPs, LMHCs, LCATs, LMFTs, and licensed psychologists.

When baby elephants lose their mothers, they weep for hours. Some even die. Robert never cried when his mother became terminally ill. Instead, he raged.

Twenty-five years ago, Peacock-Corral, then a young clinician, met Robert when he was 38 years old. Despite his complex psychiatric history, numerous psychiatric treatment failures, and utter lack of psychological mindedness, Peacock-Corral was undaunted. Soon, it became apparent that she would be working with two different patients: a highly intelligent, immensely creative, and compassionate patient and a very complex, wildly challenging patient consumed with dissociated rage.

This presentation will describe the remarkable twenty-five-year clinical journey that profoundly altered the life of both patient and therapist. Concepts from object relations, attachment, and relational theories will be noted, particularly concepts from the well-known pediatrician and psychoanalyst, D.W. Winnicott.

During this relational journey, a secret garden is discovered. Robert once told her: “I could tell you my life story through words or music. Music would be the real story.” Music becomes a secret garden, leading to a breakthrough in the treatment. In this presentation, Peacock-Corral will play several pieces of music and explain their relation to Robert’s internal life and development. She will discuss the important emergence of Robert’s creative self as a woodturning artist and how his artistic endeavors helped him to heal. The therapist's use of her own dreams, which propelled the treatment forward and gave her deep insights into her patient, will also be discussed.

Natalie Peacock-Corral, MSW, LCSW, CGP is a psychiatric social worker, psychotherapist, clinical writer, and trained vocalist. She is in private practice in Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and Durham, North Carolina. Peacock-Corral was recognized as the 2019 North Carolina Social Worker of the Year. She is a teaching scholar through the American Psychoanalytic Association, on the teaching faculty of the Psychoanalytic Center of the Carolinas (PCC), and is chair of the center’s Judy Byck Scholarship Program for social workers and AAPCSW-NC. She published a book chapter, “You are Never Too Old to Grow Young: Treating Developmental Trauma Relationally,” in Reflections on Long-Term Relational Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, published by Routledge Press in 2019. She is collaborating with Dr. Philip Flores to update his well-known Gradiva Award-winning book, Addiction As An Attachment Disorder, and will become the co-author of the second edition. She received her MSW degree from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She held a fellowship at the Yale Psychiatric Institute in Dual Disorders (Addiction and Psychiatric Disorders) before becoming a clinical instructor and counselor at Duke Addictions Program in the Department of Psychiatry at Duke Medical Center. She then worked as a psychotherapist and clinical supervisor at Family Counseling Service, a non-profit, for many years before entering full-time private practice. In between, she also graduated from PCC’s Advanced Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program.

Learning Objectives

After attending this presentation, participants will be able to:

• describe how developmental trauma can manifest itself in unconscious enactments that challenge the clinician.
• demonstrate what the concept of a worthy opponent is, as defined by Dr. Nancy McWilliams.
• illustrate how and why using the patient and clinician’s dreams are important aspects of long-term psychoanalytic treatment.

Agenda

6:30 – 7:00: Introduction and overview. Description of developmental trauma and how it manifests in unconscious enactments that can challenge the clinician.

7:00 – 7:30: Discussion of the concept or worthy opponent, as defined by Nancy McWilliams.

7:30 – 8:00: Presentation of the use of a patient and clinician’s dreams within a long-term psychoanalytic treatment.

8:00 – 8:30: Q & A.

*For a refund to a PPSC Annex event, we must receive a cancellation notice 24 hours prior to the event. Please contact [email protected] if you want to cancel within this timeframe or if you have any other questions or concerns.

*Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychoanalysts #P-0040, licensed mental health counselors #MHC-0166 and licensed creative arts therapists #CAT-0083, and licensed marriage and family therapists #MFT-0119. We are recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #0054 and by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0118. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center maintains responsibility for its programs and its content.

*PPSC does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, sexual orientation, sexual preference, gender, gender identity, marital status, national or ethnic origin in the administration of its admissions and educational policies.

Event Venue

Online