Psychoanalytic Lunch & Learns
Learn how psychoanalytic concepts relate to your work!
We invite you to a series of Lunch & Learns introducing psychoanalytic concepts to community practitioners, researchers, social workers and those in all helping professions. Psychoanalysis goes far beyond Freud, and has been a valuable and important part of social work since the beginning! Join our discussions to learn something new and meet others with similar interests.
Upcoming Psychoanalytic Lunch & Learns
Upcoming psychoanalytic Lunch & Learns are listed on our Eventbrite page! All Lunch & Learns are free and online. After registering through Eventbrite, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about how to join the Lunch & Learn.
Lunch & Learn Topics
The following topics have been and may be presented again in future sessions. Contact us to request a specific Lunch & Learn topic or a custom presentation.
Mentalization & Reflective Parenting
Mentalization develops within the context of a secure attachment relationship and is the skill of being able to see yourself from the outside and others from the inside. This session will examine this ability in more detail, including how it relates to healthy parenting and positive child outcomes.
Borderline Personality Disorder and Mentalization
Learn how Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is linked to childhood attachment and how it relates to problems with mentalizing in adulthood. We also discuss clinical tips for working with BPD, including how to create epistemic trust via mentalizing.
Transforming Trauma
This session introduces trauma from a psychoanalytic/relational perspective, exploring the ideas of psychoanalyst Robert Stolorow and how we can help others process and mentalize trauma.
Ghosts in the Nursery
“In every nursery, there are ghosts. They are the visitors from the unremembered past of the parents, the uninvited guests at the christening.” So begins social worker Selma Fraiberg’s seminal paper, Ghosts in the Nursery. We discuss how Fraiberg’s psychoanalytic approach to impaired mother-infant relationships still has far reaching influence in the realms of attachment, intergenerational trauma, and adverse childhood experiences.
Family Minds
This session discusses Family Minds, an evidenced-based psychoeducational parenting intervention designed to help caregivers develop their mentalization skills to positively impact attachment, emotional regulation and child well-being.
Defense Mechanisms Explained
We’ve all heard of “denial,” and it’s definitely not a river in Egypt! In this session, we dive deeply into these dark waters, shining a light on how common psychological defenses both protect and harm their owners.
From Childhood to Adult Attachment
This session explores the basics of attachment through a psychoanalytic lens. We focus on the impact of child attachment on adult attachment, including how it influences adult romantic relationships.