Karen Maroda: Conflict avoidance, enactment and negative counter transference
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Wessex Counselling and Psychotherapy
Description
Why are therapists, including psychoanalysts, so conflict avoidant? And how does our reluctance to engage in conflict impact the therapeutic process. Guilt and shame over perceiving the patient in a negative light have contributed to the ongoing practice of minimizing or denying negative feelings toward patients. Yet patients themselves report greater benefit from treatment when the therapist’s feelings are expressed appropriately. Psychoanalysis seems to be moving more in the direction of waiting for enactment to take place rather than actively negotiating conflict and minimizing enactment. This position is justified using the argument that negative countertransference cannot be known until it is acted out, a concept that is not supported by either case reports or the neuroscience literature. Maroda argues for therapists’ responsibility for facilitating conflict, including using constructive self-disclosure to promote ongoing affective engagement.
About the presenter:
Karen J. Maroda, Ph.D., ABBP, is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Medical College of Wisconsin and in private practice in Milwaukee, WI. She is board certified in psychoanalysis by the American Board of Professional Psychology, and a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis. The author of four books, The Power of Countertransference, Seduction, Surrender and Transformation, Psychodynamic Techniques, and The Analyst’s Vulnerability, as well as numerous journal articles and book reviews. She also sits on the editorial boards of Psychoanalytic Psychology and Contemporary Psychoanalysis. She gives lectures and workshops both nationally and internationally.
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