Unconscious Process in Psychotherapy
Weekly for 3 hours - 17h - 20h CET
ZOOM, ONLINE
On January 12, 19 & 26 Richard Erskine will conduct a 3-hour Zoom Seminar. These three sessions will provide a theoretical component to the Case Discussion and Supervision sessions that well follow on February 2, 9,16, &23 and March 2, 9, 16 & 23 in 2026. This seminar will meet each week from 17:00 to 20:00, Central European Time.
The theoretical part of the Seminar will focus on the Unconscious communication between client and therapist as a language that speaks without words. The unconscious communication appears through transference and countertransference, through preverbal experience, implicit memory, and repressed fragments of explicit memory.
In psychotherapy we encounter the unconscious not only in the client’s narratives but also in their affect, behavior, bodily responses, rituals, and metaphors. It is also reflected in the psychotherapist in subtle mood shifts, mental images, bodily sensations, and the therapist’s emotional responses. The professional task of the psychotherapist is multi-focused: to notice these processes, keep them in mindful awareness, to explore transference, distinguish types of countertransference, work with juxtaposition reactions, and stay attentive to what unfolds between.
At Dr. Richard Erskine’s unique practice-oriented seminar, we will study unconscious processes through the lens of the Integrative Psychotherapy approach — an approach that links the client’s cognitive, affective, physiological, and behavioral systems within a contactfull therapeutic relationship. We will explore how childhood deprivation and trauma come alive within therapeutic relationships and how to understand one’s own countertransference reactions.
The workshop includes lectures, clinical vignettes, and in-depth case discussions.
We will study:
• decoding unconscious relational patterns
• the difference between transference and transactions
• deepening intersubjective contact
• domains of unconscious communication
• working with juxtaposition reactions
• exploring countertransference in all its manifestations
• distinguishing reactive and responsive countertransference
• therapeutic use of countertransference
Learning objectives of the workshop:
— Learn to “read” unconscious relational patterns
— Understand the difference between transference and transactions
— Identify channels of unconscious communication
— Recognize physiological, affective, and fantasy-based reactions of the therapist
— Distinguish reactive and responsive countertransference and use them as therapeutic resources
The main language of the workshop is English, with consecutive translation into Russian. For participants who do not speak English or Russian but would still like to join: the organizers are open to accommodating groups who wish to participate with their own interpreters. If you represent such a group, please contact us — we will be happy to explore this possibility.
Contacts:
Lada Svirskaia
Email ladaswirskaya@gmail.com
Tel WhatsApp +7 985 529 77 11
Natalia Rukavishnikova Email nruk@me.com
Tel WhatsApp +7 916 814 22 98