Course Title:  Attachment Theory Applied:  Working with the Enacted in Psychotherapy (12 CE credits)

Instructor:  David Daskovsky, PhD
Meeting dates (2022):  March 8, 15, 22, 29; April 5, 12
Meeting time:  Tuesdays, 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. (CST), via Zoom                                                

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. These patterns derive, to a large degree, from the person's significant attachment experiences and resulting attachment styles. Enactments occur at the crossroads between the patient’s and the therapist’s unconscious minds, 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 service of the treatment, they can become crucial fulcrums of change. 

This seminar will focus on helping participants to recognize enactments as they occur, to understand their meanings, and to learn how to address them in treatment. Particular attention will be given to the therapist’s own role in the enactment and how to use judicious self-disclosure to address and thus to begin to change these patterns. The class will read and discuss articles by Bowlby Jacobs, Black, Chused, Bromberg, and Pagano, among others. The instructor will share case material, and participants will also have opportunities to discuss their own relevant clinical work.

Biographical Information:

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

In 1998, Dr. Daskovsky become Director of Psycho-Social Rehabilitation at Trilogy, Inc., and from 2003 to 2009 he served as that agency’s Clinical Director.  While at Trilogy, he 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 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