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PSA - Third Trimester 2007-08
Second Year Candidates
10:00 am - 12:50 pm
Starts April 26th, 2008
Arden Rothstein, Ph.D.
Jennifer Stuart, Ph.D.
Prepare in advance:
- Bring to class a written description, at least two pages (double-spaced) in length, of a clinical moment of interest to you. Try to capture the moment as vividly as possible, to allow all of us in class to feel as if we were there. The aim is to bring to life both your patient’s inner experience of that moment and your own. Bits of dialogue, with enough context to clarify their meaning, can be effective; so can specific visual images, which may arise from the patient’s words or from your own associations to them. Close observation of bodily experience – again, both the patient’s and yours – can help to communicate internal states, so you may want to record shifts in posture, facial expression, vocal timbre, etc. If you are not currently working with a patient in analysis, you can write about a psychotherapy patient or about a consultation for either therapy or analysis.
Read in advance:
- Bernstein, S. B. (In press). Writing about the psychoanalytic process. Psychoanalytic Inquiry. This paper offers a fine, general orientation to psychoanalytic case writing, with specific instructions that you may find helpful – especially if you are finding it hard to get started.
- *McLaughlin, J.T. (1991). Clinical and theoretical aspects of enactment. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 39:595-614. This is, for both of us (your instructors), a favorite clinical-theoretical paper. It contains what we consider to be an exemplary piece of case writing. What makes it so good is, in part, its idiosyncrasy; no one else could have written exactly this clinical vignette, in exactly this way. The same will be true of your best clinical writing – whether or not you follow Bernstein’s (or anyone else’s) guidelines.
Present in class:
We will review clinical vignettes written by three or four members of the class.
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