“Hunger Artists: Enigmatic Strivings in Disordered Eating”

“Hunger Artists: Enigmatic Strivings in Disordered Eating”

Heather Ferguson, LCSW and Sarah Mendelsohn, LCSW

Friday, March 21, 2025

6:30PM – 8:30PM (EDT)

PPSC

Live Webinar on Zoom

$60 Regular Admission and $40 Student

*This talk provides 2 hours of continuing education credits for LCSWs, LMSWs, LPs, LMHCs, LCATs, LMFTs, and licensed psychologists.

Kafka’s short story “A Hunger Artist” evocatively illustrates how the symptoms of anorexia enact self-negation while paradoxically serving as a bid for recognition and self-determination. In two clinical reports, Mendelsohn and Ferguson explore how disordered eating offers a transient solution toward regulating unbearable affects and managing disavowed needs and longings. How do we balance our therapeutic goal of protecting our patients from self-endangerment while registering and honoring their striving for self-cohesion and selfhood? Taking a phenomenological clinical approach, Mendelsohn and Ferguson consider their patients’ disordered eating as an unfolding character in their life stories.

Heather Ferguson, LCSW, is a faculty member and supervisor at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity, the National Institute for Psychotherapies, and faculty at the Wilhelm Reich Center for the Study of Embodiment. She has written about eating disorder treatment, the role of intergenerational transmission of trauma, and the use of embodied techniques to deepen psychotherapeutic engagement. She is a certified hypnotherapist and practitioner of EMDR and has an office in the West Village. She is an associate editor for Psychoanalysis, Self, and Context.

Sarah Mendelsohn, LCSW, is a training analyst and supervisor on faculty at the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity and The Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in New York. She has written and presented on enactive clinical action and the analyst’s subjectivity, and is an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology: Psychoanalysis, Self and Context. She is a psychoanalyst and clinical supervisor in private practice in New York City.

Learning Objectives

After attending this presentation, participants will be able to:

• describe how eating disorder behaviors serve to enact self-negating impulses while serving as a bid toward recognition and self-determination.
• demonstrate features of a phenomenological approach that engages the patients' curiosity.
• identify clinical tensions and countertransferential dilemmas that may arise when working with patients with disordered eating.

Agenda

6:30 – 7:00: Introduction and overview. Description of eating disorder behaviors and how they serve to enact self-negating impulses while serving as a bid toward recognition and self-determination.

7:00 – 7:30: Identify features of a phenomenological approach that engages the patients' curiosity.

7:30 – 8:00: Identify clinical tensions and countertransferential dilemmas that may arise when working with patients with disordered eating.

8:00 – 8:30: Q & A.

*For a refund to a PPSC Annex event, we must receive a cancellation notice 24 hours prior to the event. Please contact [email protected] if you want to cancel within this timeframe or if you have any other questions or concerns.

*Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychoanalysts #P-0040, licensed mental health counselors #MHC-0166 and licensed creative arts therapists #CAT-0083, and licensed marriage and family therapists #MFT-0119. We are recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #0054 and by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0118. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center maintains responsibility for its programs and its content.

*PPSC does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, sexual orientation, sexual preference, gender, gender identity, marital status, national or ethnic origin in the administration of its admissions and educational policies.

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