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Presenter: Rena Rubel, M.S.S., L.C.S.W.
When a client dies during treatment, the
therapist is left with a residue of grief, with no formalized connection
to the mourning process and with many questions about the course of
therapy itself. In the end, we are left to deal with the intensity of
our loss within the strict confines of professional confidentiality.
Death, and its finality, brings to the fore the central paradox of the
therapeutic relationship, the fact of knowing someone so intimately and
yet being totally outside the social structure of their lives. Three
cases will be presented to illustrate the complexity of feeling generated
when a client dies, considering as well, the isolation
and self-questioning engendered in the therapist when a process so
meaningful is cut short.
Objectives
- To consider
the paradoxes inherent in a relationship characterized by intimacy and
fairly rigid boundaries.
- To examine the questions that are raised
when treatment has been interrupted in mid-process.
- To
demonstrate through clinical material the complexity of feeling embedded
in the treatment relationship and the pressures upon the
therapist.
Rena Rubel, M.S.S., L.C.S.W. is a social worker and
family therapist in private practice in Broomall and Wayne,
PA.
| Date |
March 3, 2002 |
| Time |
11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.: Presentation
1:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.: Discussion |
| Location |
Courtesy of Thomas Bartlett, M.A.
1735 Lombard Street
Philadelphia, PA 19146-1518
(215) 732-3103
|
|
Philadelphia Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology