Group title: Working with enactment and projective identification in psychodynamic treatment

Group leader: David Daskovsky, PhD

Meeting dates:  Alternate Tuesdays, beginning October 4

Meeting times:  7:00 - 8:30 on Google Meet

Group Description:  

In this ongoing consultation group, members will share their work with challenging clients, while exploring the ways that difficult experiences can be evoked in the therapist and played out in the treatment relationship.  One major focus will be on the transference-countertransference matrix, with particular attention to projective identifications and enactments, which can illuminate what is happening in the treatment relationship and how this might relate to the patient’s presenting problems and character issues. 

As group members take turns presenting case material, we will be able to discuss ways to recognize these phenomena, and how to address them directly in the treatment.  In some instances, we will see how enactments can play a role in treatment impasses and what can be done in those circumstances.  For those participants who care for patients in the context of an agency or treatment team, we will have an opportunity to see how enactments can play out among team members, and how this might be addressed helpfully.  

Case presentations will be informal and follow a format that helps to highlight the above issues, among others.  This will involve describing sessions in some detail, including what it feels like to be in the room with this person (aka, your countertransference), and what difficulties are arising in the treatment.  The emphasis will be on a safe, thoughtful, and enriching exchange, as group members share their work.

About the leader:

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.