Group title:  Working with adolescents and emerging adults 

Group leader:  Diane Selinger, PhD

Meeting dates: Alternate Wednesdays, beginning September 28.  

Meeting times:  7:10 – 8:40 p.m.(CST) via Zoom

Group description:

Therapeutic work with adolescents and emerging adults is both gratifying and complex, and even more so during the Covid era.  This biweekly, ongoing consultation group will provide an opportunity for participants to present their work with adolescents and emerging adults.  We will share the developmental challenges we face in this work, as well as the potentially illuminating internal experiences we sometimes encounter along the way.  We will also address the additional issues that might arise in the work with parents, other family members, and schools.  The emphasis will be on a safe, thoughtful, and enriching exchange that will promote better understanding of the clinical process with adolescents and emerging adults, while deepening our understanding of our own experiences.  Concepts from various psychoanalytic perspectives will be included and discussed.

About the leader:

Diane Selinger, PhD is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice, who works with children, adolescents, and adults. She completed her training at the National Training Program of the National Institute of the Psychotherapies  (NIP). She is a faculty member of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP).

For many years, Dr. Selinger was the mental health consultant at Beth Osten and Associates, a multidisciplinary pediatric clinic. She continues to be the mental health consultant at Soaring Eagle Academy, a DIR® (Developmental, Individual-differences, Relationship-based) school for children with neurodevelopmental disorders and was instrumental in integrating a mental health component into both programs. She is senior faculty at Profectum Academy and was faculty at its DIR Institute predecessor. Diane’s teaching, presentations, webcasts, and publications have related to therapy with children and their parents.  They have spanned diverse topics, including autism and gender. Dr. Selinger most recently presented a paper this year at the Profectum Conference entitled “An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Therapeutic Power of Symbolic Play.” Her Paper was entitled, “Creating Possibilities: The Intermingling of DIR and Psychodynamic therapies.”