“Psychotherapy of Unbearable Experiences: Crises and New Beginnings”

“Psychotherapy of Unbearable Experiences: Crises and New Beginnings”

Avi Berman, PhD

Friday, February 28, 2025

6:30PM – 8:30PM (EST)

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.

The term unbearable suggests a subjective experience of excess, “too muchness.” This experience brings the individual to their subjective limit, beyond which their long-standing adaptation ends. It marks a limit to tolerance and containment by introducing the counterbalancing aspect of intolerance. While adaptation can be a developmental achievement of ego strength, it may also lead to a primary tendency to give up essential needs while privileging the needs of others. Dr. Berman proposes the term over-adaptation to this attitude. It is characterized by blurring the experience of subjectivity and avoiding interpersonal conflicts. Sometimes, it may also characterize processes of identification with the aggressor, including submission to his needs (Ferenczi, 1933). In a therapeutic process—and in any case, always in a relationship with a benevolent other—a wish can appear to stop over-adaptation and diminish the pain and damage of giving up and submission. An alternative position of influencing the environment can emerge in place of over-adaptation.

The experience of the unbearable is a significant marker, representing the limit of what one has been enduring until now. It is authentic, spontaneous, and often challenging, sometimes accompanied by feelings of rage. It is created following an interpersonal process within which subjectivity, separateness, and the recognition of basic needs are formed.

This lecture deals with the possibility of transformation from over-adaptation to influence on interpersonal reality. This transformation can be life-changing. It involves a growing ability to express one’s essential needs and engage in interpersonal conflict situations. It can include a breakup or a change of relationship. It can save relationships that have run aground or allow self-realization that has been forbidden until now.

Avi Berman, PhD is a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, training analyst, and group analyst. He is the initiator and co-founder of the Israeli Institute of Group Analysis, its first chairperson, and a current member. He is also a member of the Tel Aviv Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and from 2014 to 2024, he was the former head of the group psychotherapy track in Tel Aviv University's psychotherapy program. With Ivan Urlic and Miriam Berger, he co-authored “Victimhood, Vengefulness, and the Culture of Forgiveness” (2013). With Smadar Ashuach, he co-edited “Sibling Relations and the Horizontal Axis in Theory and Practice” (Routledge, 2022) and with Gila Ofer, he co-edited “Tolerance: A Concept in Crisis” (Routledge, 2024).

Learning Objectives

After attending this presentation, participants will be able to:

• identify unbearable experiences and conceptualize them in psychodynamic and psychoanalytic frameworks.
• describe intersubjective challenges and bilateral transferences that occur in therapy.
• apply technical considerations in the therapeutic milieu.

Agenda

6:30 – 7:00: Description of unbearable experience.

7:00 – 7:30: Discussion of the intersubjective challenges and bilateral transferences that occur in the face of unbearable experience.

7:30 – 8:00: Technical considerations when working with unbearable experience.

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, or national or ethnic origin in the administration of its admissions and educational policies.

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