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This conference brings together two dynamic clinician-authors at the heart of the contemporary discourse on the place of the body and somatic experience in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis: William Cornell, author of Somatic Experience in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (2015) and Jon Sletvold, author of The Embodied Analyst: From Freud and Reich to Relationality (2014). The program will combine conceptual elements with discourse, clinical and supervisory examples, demonstrations of training and supervision techniques, and a good deal of experiential work drawn from the speakers' many decades as clinicians and trainers. This diversely formatted program will appeal to psychodynamic and analytic clinicians, those involved in the training and supervision of psychotherapists, and somatic psychotherapists who want to experience the clinical and training styles of these internationally-known body psychotherapy innovators.

Sweetie Pie Syndrome typically starts in childhood — it is usually characteristic of females, but it does occur in males. This condition begins as young children are either ignored by or are demeaned by a parent or parents. This behavior can also be role modeled by a parent. As a result of this chronic neglect, abuse, for example, these children develop a sense that a) there is something wrong with them, b) they are basically unlovable, and/or c) if they do not do things to be accepted, they are unworthy. They then develop a behavioral repertoire of constantly trying to do good things and help others to gain a sense of worthiness and lovability. But no matter what or how much they do, the dysfunctional parent perpetually ignores or fails to respond with recognition, positive reinforcement and love. So, the children invest in doing more.

During the workshop, she will begin by looking at some key scientific aspects of the neurobiology of touch and how they relate to the diverse uses of touch in Biodynamic psychology. Scientific findings underpin our understanding of the use of touch clinically. She will explore an updated understanding of the place of touch in the therapeutic encounter, referencing current research on the neuroscience of touch, affective touch, attachment, and trauma using clinical examples and integrated experiential work. She will pay attention to the phenomena of embodied transference, countertransference, resonance and interference (Boadella, 1981) whilst negotiating the dilemma: to touch or not to touch, and, if to touch, how to touch. Exploring how we as psychotherapists can “hold the possibility of touch, as it can be both an appropriate or inappropriate therapeutic intervention” (Asheri, 2009 page 108).

I focus my reviews on prepublication manuscripts and “hot-off-the-press” texts. Because I’m a small niche publication, I try to offer readers material they cannot get else where. But I started to wonder about revised and second editions. All things considered, it can take years for people to write and publish their work. The time, the turmoil, the tears. It takes a toll. Combine joy, release, and celebration to that mix? You just might create a tsunami of emotional and/or physical impact on one’s body and soul. The question nudging my brain awake at 2 am was: Why do authors go through that ordeal with the same material? Isn’t once done, good enough?

The drum is a powerful grounding tool with the resonance activated by the player seeping from the drum, through the body and connecting and aligning to the rhythms of the natural world. Both mindfulness and grounding exercises can be given additional efficacy through the use of the drum, usually played at a tempo that replicates the mothers heart-beat at rest; 60-80 beats per minute. This tempo is associated with the calm and security that accompanies our time in the womb and is also believed to be the primary stimuli under which the areas of the brain responsible for our stress response are formed.