TRAUMA AND THE SYMBOLIC LINK

Judy Eekhoff, PhD

Tuesdays, February 25 & March 4 & 11, 2025 7:30-9 pm

Zoom

 

Early childhood trauma affects the development of the mental apparatus for thinking and feeling. This seminar will explore the most primal defenses that are called into service to protect the psyche during times of overwhelming physical and psychic experience. The workshop will draw on the books Trauma and Primitive Mental States: An Object Relations Perspective and Bion and Primitive Mental States: Trauma and The Symbiotic Link, by J. Eekhoff.

The seminar is for therapists who work with traumatized patients who are difficult to reach and who act out of primal body states, even using language as action rather than as symbolic communication. Clinical vignettes will illustrate the deep and disturbing processes inevitable when working therapeutically with patients who suffer life-long pain.

I will describe how trauma survivors suffer from direct access to primal undifferentiated positions of the psyche. This access, unmediated by symbolic representation but represented in the body, disrupts the normal trajectory of development and of relationships.  I will explore how primitive body relations and object relations include the body of the analyst as part of the analytic frame and are essential in establishing a therapeutic alliance.

 

4.5 Contact hours = 4.5 CE credits

 

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify a patient’s use of primal defenses.
2. Differentiate between representation in the body and symbolization.
3. Analyze the impact trauma has had on a patient’s ability to process experience and the pressure to enact post-traumatic states.

 

Judy K. Eekhoff, PhD, FIPA is an IPA certified training and supervising psychoanalyst and a licensed child psychologist. She is a full faculty member of Northwestern Psychoanalytic Society & Institute and Seattle Psychoanalytic Society & Institute. She has a private practice in Seattle, Washington, USA where she teaches, writes, and consults. She is the author of numerous papers and book chapters as well as two books: Trauma and Primitive Mental States: An Object Relations Perspective and Bion and Primitive Mental States: Trauma and the Symbiotic Link. Her third book Bion’s Emotional Links: Love, Hate, and Knowledge is under contract with Routledge. Dr. Eekhoff is on the editorial board of the American Journal of Psychoanalysis.

4.5 CE credits

• $240 general admission
• $140 members
• $120 candidates / students

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify a patient’s use of primal defenses.
2. Differentiate between representation in the body and symbolization.
3. Analyze the impact trauma has had on a patient’s ability to process experience and the pressure to enact post-traumatic states.

4.5 CE credits will be granted to participants who have registered, have documented evidence of attendance of the entire program and have completed the on-line evaluation form. Upon completion of the evaluation form a Certificate of Completion will be emailed to all participants who comply with these requirements.

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