Holding, Humor, and Shame: Some New Ideas About an Old One

2 CE credits for Social Workers and Psychologists

When does Winnicott’s concept of holding fit within a contemporary relational frame? Can we invoke a parental metaphor without thinning the work we do? If so, what is holding’s underlying therapeutic function? Reviewing the evolution of the parental metaphor and its current place in our thinking, Slochower theorizes about holding’s dynamic function. A case example illustrates the use of humor within the holding space and the mutative impact of holding in work with acute underlying shame states.

Joyce Slochower, PhD, APBB, is a professor of psychology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, and is on the faculty of the NYU Postdoctoral Program, the Steven Mitchell Center, the National Training Program of NIP, the Philadelphia Center for Relational Studies, and PINC in San Francisco. She is the author of Holding and Psychoanalysis: A Relational Perspective (1996 & 2014) and Psychoanalytic Collisions (2006 & 2014), and is in private practice in New York City.

Free to students.

Public ($20)