Houston Psychoanalytic Society
Evening Speaker Series
Somatic Experiencing: Enhancing Psychoanalytic Holding and Containment for Complex Trauma and Dissociation -
Contending with the Flood and the Fog
David Levit, PhD, ABPP, SEP 
Thursday, September 7, 2023
7:30PM – 9:00PM Central Time

Live via Zoom
*Pre-Registration required for Zoom invitation
This event will not be recorded

Registration Fees
HPS Full Members: Free
HPS Student Members: Free
Non-Members: $30

1.5 CME/CEU/CE Credits

Instructional Level: Intermediate - Advanced
This presentation is about 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 neurophysiology, biology and ethology. As its name suggests, SE focuses on the body, but it introduces ways of working in the body that are quite different from psychoanalytic modes. Dr. Levit will provide an overview of the SE model, but the focus of the 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 SE, of holding, and of containing. In so doing, he hopes to illustrate the synergy when interweaving SE into psychoanalytic treatment.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After attending the program in its entirety, attendees will be able to:
  1. Illustrate and explain how a technique from Somatic Experiencing can enhance psychoanalytic holding (when holding is defined as minimizing impingements).
  2. Describe at least three techniques/interventions from Somatic Experiencing that would be appropriate when a patient exhibits signs of extreme autonomic over-activation or of dissociative freeze state.
  3. Describe methods of accessing traumatic experience within organizations.
  4. Describe a clinical moment with a patient and explain how they might apply a specific somatically based intervention. 
Presenter
David Levit, PhD, ABPP, SEP is a Diplomate in Psychoanalysis and in Clinical Psychology. He is a Fellow at the American Board and Academy of Psychoanalysis and a Fellow at the American Academy of Clinical Psychology. He is an SEP (certified Somatic Experiencing Practitioner). His current faculty positions are: Faculty and Supervising Psychoanalyst, Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis (MIP); Co-founder, Chair, and Faculty, MIP Postgraduate Fellowship Program-West; Instructor in Psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School. He is former Associate Clinical Professor in Psychiatry, Tufts Medical School, and former Adjunct Associate Professor, Smith College School for Social Work. He has written about the interweaving of Somatic Experiencing into psychoanalytic treatment, and has presented extensively on this subject regionally, nationally and internationally. He is in private practice in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he provides individual psychotherapy and psychoanalysis for adults and consultation for colleagues.

REFERENCES
1) Levine, P. A., Blakeslee, A., & Sylvae, J. (2018). Reintegrating fragmentation of the primitive self: Discussion of “Somatic Experiencing.” Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 28(5), 620-628.
2) Levit, D. (2018). Somatic Experiencing: In the realms of trauma and dissociation – What we can do, when what we do, is really not good enough. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 28(5), 586-601.
3) Ogden, T. H. (2004). On holding and containing, being and dreaming. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 85, 1349-1364.
4) Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. New York, NY: Penguin Books.

IMAGE photo of 2 figures walking in fog from Shutterstock
This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of American Psychoanalytic Association and Houston Psychoanalytic Society. The American Psychoanalytic Association is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

The American Psychoanalytic Association designates this Live Activity for a maximum of 1.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

IMPORTANT DISCLOSURE INFORMATION FOR ALL LEARNERS: None of the planners and presenters for this educational activity have relevant financial relationship(s)* to disclose with ineligible companies* whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients.

*Financial relationships are relevant if the educational content an individual can control is related to the business lines or products of the ineligible company.

-Updated July 2021-
Houston Psychoanalytic Society is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Houston Psychoanalytic Society maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

HPS, through co-sponsorship with the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies, also offers approved CEUs for Texas state-approved social workers, licensed professional counselors, and marriage and family therapists.
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