Somatic Experiencing: Enhancing Psychodynamic Therapy

In Person Seminar

Smith College Campus

Northampton, MA 01060

Instructor: David Levit, Ph.D., ABPP, SEP

Note: Exact classroom to be announced prior to event

Level: Intermediate

CEs: 3

Review CE accreditation and approvals for this course on tab above.

This program is focused on interweaving Somatic Experiencing (SE), a trauma therapy, into psychodynamic therapy for clients who suffer from unresolved early trauma and severe forms of dissociation. David Levit will outline the SE model and discuss its basic principles. He will illustrate ways to draw upon approaches from SE by presenting clinical process from therapy with clients who struggled with catastrophic dissociative episodes and who had a histories of severe early trauma. Levit will discuss the interweaving of SE in terms of various psychodynamic perspectives, with emphasis on Winnicott, and especially on the role of SE in enhancing provision of holding. He will also illustrate in a broader sense how the SE model can supplement talk therapy by enriching our ways of looking, listening, and responding.

Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a model originally developed by Peter Levine for understanding and treating post traumatic stress disorder. It has been expanded to treat psychic/somatic/nervous system dysregulation more generally. SE provides perspectives and approaches that are especially helpful in our work with clients who are prone to either states of intense over-activation (anxiety, panic, terror, agitation, rage, etc.) or under-activation (freeze, numbness, emptiness, deadness, etc.). A central aim of SE is to facilitate the restoration and enhancement of the client’s intrinsic regulatory capacities, with the larger goal of bringing a more highly resourced self to the task of processing life’s ongoing experiences (including experiences in the therapy context). SE has particular relevance for people who are vulnerable to the triggering of dissociative states related to trauma.

This program is appropriate for all psychotherapists, those who are informed by psychodynamic, CBT, EMDR, or other approaches. No prior knowledge of SE is needed.