Psychoanalysis: Cultural and Social Dimensions- 5-5:30pm PA Social Psychodynamic Approach to Psychosis: A Case Presentation - Abdel Aziz Al Bawab, MD
- 5:30-6pm Sawubona--I See You: The Core Conflictual Relationship Theme Method as a Framework for Culturally Responsive Case Formulation and Treatment of Persons Experiencing Psychosis - Shanique Meyler, MA, MPhil
A Social Psychodynamic Approach to Psychosis: A Case Presentation - Abdel Aziz Al Bawab, MD
This is a case presentation of a social psychodynamic psychotherapy for psychosis, with particular attention to the social field as both a site of pathogenic influence and therapeutic action.
Exploring themes of marginalization and alienation in a racialized world, the clinical case centers on a pivotal moment in which a pathogenic social intrusion entered the treatment and coincided with a worsening of psychotic experience. As this intrusion was subsequently recognized and worked through, it proved therapeutically beneficial.
While psychodynamic psychotherapy has long emphasized the therapeutic value of working through the here-and-now experiences of repetition within the clinician–patient dyad, what distinguishes this case is that the site of the repetition is not within the clinician–patient dyad but within a shared social field. The question ultimately raised is: To what extent does the clinician's conduct in the broader social field shape the treatment and experience of psychosis?
Sawubona--I See You: The Core Conflictual Relationship Theme Method as a Framework for Culturally Responsive Case Formulation and Treatment of Persons Experiencing Psychosis - Shanique Meyler, MA, MPhil
The treatment of psychosis has long rested on a foundational exclusion, the classical psychoanalytic assumption that persons experiencing psychosis are incapable of the transference relationship that meaningful psychodynamic work requires. This presentation challenges that exclusion across historical, theoretical, empirical, and clinical registers, tracing the contemporary reconceptualization of psychotic experience as relationally organized and therefore relationally addressable, while centering the racialized dimensions of a history that determined whose inner world received sustained clinical attention. We will explore the Core Conflictual Relationship Theme (CCRT) method, which operationalizes transference through the systematic identification of the patient's core wish, the characteristic response of other, and the habitual response of self, as a systematic, empirically grounded, and culturally adaptable framework for understanding and treating psychosis through a relational lens. Attendees will engage with CCRT-informed approaches to case formulation and intervention across individual psychotherapy, group treatment, and integrated multidisciplinary care, with particular attention to cultural context, social location, and the clinician's own CCRT as a source of countertransference requiring sustained self-examination. Narrative vignettes with full CCRT case formulations drawn from diverse cultural backgrounds will be presented and discussed.
