This lecture will take place on:

*To enable access to the widest possible audience these lectures are planned to be delivered live, but remotely, as webinars. Where we are able, a recording will be made available to all booked delegates although we encourage live attendance wherever possible. Please see the details above to see if this lecture will be recorded and available after the live event.

These lectures will be delivered remotely using Zoom. You will need a device with a suitably fast internet connection. Although mobile devices and tablets can be used, we recommend the use of laptop or desktop PC for the best experience. Some devices provided by employers may have restrictions in place. Please use this test link (https://zoom.us/test) to check your set up before booking.

You will be sent the necessary login link about a week before the course start date. Should you have any concerns about the accessibility of remote delivery please contact us at CPDEvents@tavi-port.ac.uk to discuss how we can best help you.

This is the third and final lecture in the Spring 2024 series.

Lecture 3: Somatic Experiencing: Enhancing Psychoanalytic Holding and Containment for Complex Trauma and Dissociation – Contending with the Flood and the Fog

7 March 2024

This lecture will be recorded.

Lecturer: Dr. David Levit

Dr. Levit will discuss his work on interweaving somatic approaches from outside of psychoanalysis into psychoanalytic treatment, especially for patients suffering from early developmental trauma and severe dissociation. Dr. Levit is a psychoanalyst who trained in Somatic Experiencing (SE). Developed originally as a treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder, SE is rooted in neurobiology and ethology. As the name conveys, Somatic Experiencing is about working therapeutically with the body, but it introduces ways of working in the body that are quite different from psychoanalytic modes. Its central focus is on posttraumatic dysregulation and disorganization at the levels of the lower brain, the autonomic nervous system, and the body. Attendees do not need to have prior knowledge about SE as Dr. Levit will provide an overview of the model, but the focus of his presentation will be on illustrating how somatically based approaches from SE can enfold into, and enhance, psychoanalytic treatment. He will present clinical process illustrating forms of responsiveness based on SE. In discussing each vignette, he will invoke Ogden’s notion of looking at any clinical process from multiple conceptual vertices. Dr. Levit will consider each vignette from the perspectives of: (1) SE/neurobiology, (2) holding (as variously defined by Winnicott), and (3) the concept of container and contained. In so doing, he hopes to illustrate the synergy when interweaving SE into psychoanalytic treatment.