A free Zoom program for active ICP members – 2.5 CE’s

Therapists often feel an immediate urge to respond to patients’ extreme self-judgments or condemnations, a verdict against their own character. Yet in appealing such foreclosing “rulings,” such well-intentioned interventions can become verdicts in different-colored robes. Drawing on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s idea of language games, Darren Haber discusses how such declarations function less as expressions of feeling than as rules—moves in the game—organizing the conversation itself. A vignette demonstrates how, by tolerating silence rather than filling the gap—or searching for what lies “behind” such statements—therapists can dwell in the openness of pauses, allowing for newer, more improvised moves: moments when the verdict is suspended, the hanging judge silenced, as the game is re-invented rather than simply repeated ad nauseum.

Learning objectives:
At the end of the program, participants will be able to:

1. Discuss how the concept of language games applies to the “rules” or principles underlying participants’ perspectives, and how these may be operating with incommensurate assumptions.
2. Identify ways that analysts’ interventions against patients’ statements of self-loathing or being a “failure” might ensure rather than challenge foreclosure—i.e., if they are said too quickly or bypass an examination of the purpose or function of such foreclosure.
3. List ways in which analysts are challenged by the rigidity of patients’ self-condemnation, and how such dilemmas can parallel patients’ unspoken isolation or suffering.