About this Event
Description:
Aggression is often approached in treatment as something to be contained or reduced. This workshop invites clinicians to consider it differently: as a communication, a bid for recognition, and an expression of a self struggling to cohere. Three IEA faculty members and supervisors draw on their private practice cases, clinical thinking, and the arts to explore how anger and aggression emerge when selfhood and relatedness have been compromised, and how the therapeutic relationship, and creative expression within it, can help transform them. Moving across development from childhood to adolescence to the wider culture, the presentations offer psychoanalysts, creative arts therapists, and clinicians from the broader community new ways of understanding and working with aggression in the consulting room. Each presentation will be followed by a Q&A.
Presentations:
"I Have No Free Time": Looking Back on the Expressive Therapy of a Nine-Year-Old Boy
Bonnie Allie, LCAT, LP
Reflecting on an art therapy treatment with a young boy, Bonnie considers the idea of free time within the therapy hour and how the experience of drifting in and out of focus with a patient can mirror the treatment itself. She explores not knowing, participant observation, and the use of expressive tools to help patients and therapists alike experience conflict as a portal for growth.
Bonnie Allie, LP, LCAT is a Child and Adult Expressive Arts Psychotherapist and supervisor in private practice since 1985. Long time member of the IEA. Semi-retired. In her free time, she paints and writes stories.
- Adjunct professor/supervisor: College of New Rochelle Art Therapy Program & New Hope Guild child training program, retired
- MPS, Pratt Art Therapy Program, 1981
- New Hope Guild Child Psychotherapy training program, graduated 1984
- Long-term supervision with Arthur Robbins and Pierre Boenig
- Five years’ of supervision with Pamela Sorenson, Tavistock trained Child Psychoanalyst
To Merge, or Not to Merge: Intersubjective Perspectives on Anger, Aggression, and Violence
Francis Novak, D.Psa., LCSW-R
Drawing on intersubjective and relational theory, Fran proposes that aggression is an attempt to force merger with the other when selfhood and relatedness have been compromised. Through clinical and cultural examples, from the relationship between Javert and Valjean in Les Misérables to Hadestown, he examines narcissistic vulnerability, rage, and thirdness as pathways toward individual and collective peace.
Francis Novak, D.Psa., LCSW-R*, is faculty and supervisor at the Institute for Expressive Analysis and faculty at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies. His research and publications examine self-development and identity, intersubjectivity, trauma and recovery, sociopolitical life, humanism and the arts. He is a founding member and Principal Clarinetist of the Queer Urban Orchestra. He is in private practice in Manhattan.
Adolescence in the Manosphere: The Psychodynamic Treatment of an Isolated 16-Year-Old Boy
Stephanie Vanden Bos, LCSW
This case follows an isolated adolescent boy overwhelmed by anxiety and rage about feeling invisible and powerless. Seeking clarity and dignity, he turns to online communities offering rigid narratives about gender and power. Stephanie explores how the treatment relationship supported a more cohesive, enlivened self, one able to tolerate ambivalence, integrate anger, and risk connection.
Stephanie Vanden Bos, LCSW is a graduate of the Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Training Program at the William Alanson White Institute. She completed psychoanalytic training at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy (ICP) in 2007, where she is a training analyst, supervisor and instructor. She has been affiliated with IEA for many years as a supervisor, training analyst, instructor and mentor. She has also trained in a number of trauma treatment modalities including EMDR, AEDP, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and Somatic Experiencing. She has been in private practice in New York City for the past 25 years.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:
- Describe how aggression can function as a communication of unmet relational needs and a bid for recognition, rather than solely as a symptom to be managed.
- Identify ways that adolescents experiencing isolation and invisibility may seek identity and dignity through rigid online narratives about gender and power, and discuss relational approaches to treatment.
- Explain the intersubjective concept of aggression as an attempt to force merger with the other, and its relationship to narcissistic vulnerability and rage.
- Apply expressive arts techniques and a participant-observer stance to help child patients tolerate not knowing and engage conflict as an opportunity for growth.
CE Information:
2 CE credits available for LPs, LCATs, LMSWs, and LCSWs. Proof of attendance provided for
all other participants. Certificates of attendance will be emailed following the workshop.
Participants are responsible for meeting CE requirements.
Institute for Expressive Analysis is 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 #SW-0453, as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychoanalysts #P-0028, as an approved provider for continuing education for licensed creative arts therapists #CAT-0029.
For more information, email [email protected].
Event venue & nearby stays
The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center, 208 West 13th Street, New York, United States
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