Course Title:  Attachment Theory Applied:  Working with the Evoked and the Enacted (12 CE credits).

Instructor:  David Daskovsky, PhD

Meeting dates (2021):  Jan. 19, Jan. 26, Feb. 2, Feb. 9, Feb. 16, Feb. 23

Meeting time: Tuesdays, 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Location:  Virtually (Zoom);
or 1560 Sherman Avenue, Evanston (if conditions permit)

Course Description:

Enactments, from an interpersonal psychoanalytic perspective, are verbal or behavioral scenarios that repeat central, often problematic, patterns in the patient’s relational world. Enactments occur at the crossroads between the patient’s and the therapist’s unconscious’ and so are, inevitably, co-creations of the two parties. When enactments are unrecognized and unaddressed, they can doom the treatment relationship to repeating the very dilemmas that the patient has come to treatment to remedy. On the other hand, when the therapist learns to recognize enactments as they develop and knows how to utilize these in the service of the treatment, they can become crucial fulcrums of change.

This course will focus on helping participants recognize enactments as they occur, to understand their meanings, and to learn how to address them clinically. Special focus will be on the therapist’s own role in enactments and how to use judicious self-disclosure to address and to begin to change these patterns.  Readings by Mitchell, Aron, Wallin, and Ginot, among others, will be used as a basis for discussion.  Dr. Daskovsky will share case material; and participants will be encouraged to bring their own clinical examples, as well.  

Biographical Information:

David Daskovsky, PhD is Visiting Faculty at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP) and Assistant Professor in the Division of Psychology at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine.  He earned his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Northwestern University’s School of Medicine in 1988. From 1989 to 1998, he was a staff psychologist at NMH’s Extended Partial Hospitalization Program, which offered intensive, long term treatment for adults with severe mental illnesses.

In 1998, he became Director of Psycho-Social Rehabilitation at Trilogy, Inc., and from 2003 to 2009 he served as that agency’s Clinical Director. While at Trilogy, Dr. Daskovsky was instrumental in the development of a highly respected practicum training program and has long been committed to teaching and training mental health professionals about the treatment of mental illness in community settings. 

From 2009 until 2019, he was on staff at Yellowbrick, where he served as Senior Psychologist and Director of Training. Dr. Daskovsky has taught and presented widely on issues related to the treatment of serious mental illness, attachment and psychotherapy, and therapist transparency in psychodynamic treatment.