Clinical impasse series - session four

Clinical Impasse Series – Session Four: Impasse as Enactment: Shaping the Destiny of the Racial Moment 

With Narendra Keval and Zack Eleftheriadou (Chair)

In this five-part series, we will explore why, with some clients, the therapy ‘gets stuck’. You can engage in the entire series, there are recordings if you are unable to attend any of the dates. Alternatively, you can attend the ones that work for you.

A therapeutic impasse can lead to self-doubt among therapists, as well as concerns that the client may terminate the therapy prematurely. We aim to demonstrate that these challenging moments can offer great insights for both client and therapist if they can be worked through.

More recently impasses, collisions, and collusions have been acknowledged as inherent and valuable aspects of clinical practice. This means that the experience of getting stuck or encountering a therapeutic impasse can actually help the therapist to understand more about the client's inner world and potentially shed light on how the histories of both the client and therapist are interacting unconsciously. Identifying, naming, and making sense of these clinical impasses can serve as a way forwards

Our speakers will cover themes including the recognising unconscious dynamics between therapist and patient which maintain a stasis in the therapy, the impact of intergenerational transmissions on progress, the phenomenon of "othering" within the context of relational psychoanalysis and racialized enactments, and the delicate art of being affected by the therapeutic process without becoming overwhelmed by it.

The primary objective for this series is to support therapists' capacity to navigate and work through these challenging phases. By participating in this series, therapists can gain the confidence and skills necessary to effectively address moments when they and their clients find themselves in the challenging position of feeling "stuck".

See trtogether.com for full details.