DATE: 10/2024

TIME: 9:15AM

PSYCHODYNAMIC CHILD WORK

The utility of psychodynamic psychotherapy with children rests in its ability to map meaning and function inside the experience of the child. In other words, despite developmental limitations precluding richer expression in language, the internal processes and emotional charges within child can be interpreted and understood in the context of their conscious experience and interior lives. Moreover, the child carries information about the relational template they themselves need and are given from the parental figures and culture.

INSTRUCTOR: Dr. Max Kusovitsky DSW, LCSW, CASAC II

ABOUT ME: Dr. Max Kusovitsky is a psychoanalyst and Doctor of Clinical Social Work. Max completed his doctoral research at New York University as well as his Master’s degree at Yeshiva University, simultaneous to his license in substance-abuse treatment. Dr. Kusovitsky currently works as a (neuro)psychoanalyst in private practice, focusing upon wholehearted, psychoanalytic treatment, evangelizing the therapeutic benefits to understanding unconscious forces (in the brain, mind and heart) within the lived experience of subjective mental life.

ABSTRACT Anxiety may be an intrinsic part of our daily lives, but it not without its significance and informational value. In this workshop, teachers and staff will be exposed to a likely new way of managing, interpreting and understanding the emotional states of students AND their parents. Accordingly, by thinking and feeling a bit more counterintuitively, attendees can dive deeper into realizing what gives rise or generates the outburst in the child or that pesky, anxious phone call from the parent that nags at us days later. This workshop will provide case examples, (neuro)analytic theory, plain-English definitions and plenty of irreverence to animate the boring jargon in service of lively discussion.

LEARNING GOALS

• Attendees will be familiarized with basic psychodynamic concepts to child development, parental/relational styles and brief overviews of the interdisciplinary field of neuropsychoanalysis.

• Attendees will be able to (re)formulate their understanding of cases and experiences between students, parents and classwork behaviors in the context of what is operating outside of awareness and underneath perception of all parties.

• Attendees will practice organizing responses and reflections to students and parents in light of approximating unconscious motivations and inner conflicts that perpetuate anxious symptoms and/or acting out.

ACTIVITIES

• Dr. Kusovitsky will provide a brief lecture substantiating the principles behind thinking and feeling about the motivation and animation of strong emotional states (anxiety) in children and parents as well as the goals of the workshop.

• Teachers and staff will provide case examples and questions particular to their own concerns managing and relating to children and parents when the emotional iron is hot and “cooling down” seems unavailable.

• Workshop discussion will involve significant time for Q/A as well as illustrations of how unpacking the operating conditions within the child, parent, child-parent relationship and teacher-child-parent relationship significantly benefits communication, understanding and relatedness towards consensual, educational goals.

KEY TERMS & CONCEPTS • Psychotherapy • Case Formulation • Psychoanalysis • Temperament • Psychological Anatomy • Anxiety • Stress • Perception • Unconscious • Conscious Awareness • Reflective Functioning • Feeling • Affect • Emotion • Charge • Global State • Channel State • Information (Theory) • Causal Power • Explanatory Value • Evaluative Experience • Vertical Alignment • Horizontal Framing • Relationship • Relatedness