The Narcissistic/Borderline Couple: New Approach to Marital Therapy

The Narcissistic/Borderline Couple:

New Approach to Marital Therapy

Thursday, May 14, 2015

8 - 11 AM

Joan Jutta Lachkar, Ph.D.

CAMFT's 51st Annual Conference

San Francisco Airport Marriott Waterfront
Burlingame, CA
www.CAMFT.org/AC15

This intermediate level presentation draws from many theoretical perspectives, including classical psychoanalysis, self-psychology, ego psychology, object relations, attachment theory, contemporary theorists and others. It addresses what happens when a narcissist and a borderline get together in a marital bond, how each one unconsciously projects a negative feeling into the other, and how the other identifies with what is being projected. It also includes many treatment points and procedures as it offers specific procedures and techniques to explain the psychodynamics of the couple, e.g., why couples stay in painful destructive, on-going behaviors also known as traumatic bonding or "the dance." Aside from this work, it has applicability to all kinds of couples, including cross-cultural couples.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

At the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Explain the couples' mutual projections and how each one tends to identify or over-identify with the negative projections of the other;
• Describe how old archaic injuries ("V-Spot") impairs the couples' current perspective of reality (judgment, perception, reality testing);
• Utilize the different perspectives to draw from different procedures and techniques to know when and how to interpret, confront or intervene during couples counseling.

Joan Lachkar, Ph.D. is a licensed MFT in private practice in Sherman Oaks, CA, as well as an affiliate member of the New Center for Psychoanalysis. She has authored several books including The Narcissistic/Borderline Couple:  Psychoanalytic Perspective on Marital Treatment, The Many Faces of Abuse: Treating the Emotional Abuse of High-Functioning Women, The V-Spot, How to Talk to a Narcissist, How to Talk to a Borderline, The Disappearing Male, New Approach to Marital Therapy, and her new book,  Common Complaints that Bring Couples into Therapy. She also writes as a psycho-historian and has been widely published in journals on the subject of marital and political conflict in the Journal of Psychohistory, Frontpage, Family Security Matters, and published her paper, "The Psychopathology of Terrorism," at the Rand Corporation.

To sign up for this workshop, please call (818) 290-3390 or email jlachkar@aol.com.