Presenter: Denise Fort PhD
“Portrait of a Trauma Contained"

Dr. Fort and Dr. Hacker will present and discuss the treatment of a child born with an anatomical anomaly requiring corrective surgery. The surgery was invasive and highly traumatic. Inchoate thoughts and feelings accompanying the child’s experience seem to have been overwhelming and poorly integrated. Therapy proceeded on a largely nonverbal basis, which involved the production of a series of drawings. The drawings can be understood to show the impact of the trauma on the ego, and also allowed for the expression, deconstruction, and adaptive reconstruction of affective and cognitive aspects of the trauma.

Denise Fort, Ph.D. is a member of the SPSI faculty and chair of the Child Analytic Program. She completed her Child and Adult Analytic training at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute. She has written on a number of topics including Transference, Shame, Violent Fantasies in Children, and Regret. Dr. Fort is in private practice in Bellevue and has a particular interest in the treatment of young children.
 

Discussant: Tony Hacker, PhD
“Drawings Heal As They Reveal” 

Dr. Hacker’s discussion will be interspersed with Dr. Fort’s presentation. Together with the audience, they will look at and discuss the patient’s drawings to show how treatment does more than just contain trauma.  They will use the drawings made in Dr. Fort’s presence to understand more about how the patient, using very few words, was able to co-construct a coherent narrative out of what they presume had previously been an inchoate bodily experience.

Tony Hacker, Ph.D. is a psychologist and psychoanalyst on the faculty of SPSI.  His current clinical interests include psychoanalytic couples work, applying neuropsychoanalytic ideas to clinical work, and psychoanalysis for engineers!

SPSI Scientific Sessions are free to attendees, but seating may be limited.