Please join us for our seventh seminar in the
CSPP Seminar Series for
Early Career and Student Members
“I Will Have Dinner at Home”: A Child Case Study through the Eyes of Winnicott
Instructor: Maria Elena Oliva, Ph.D., LCSW
Saturdays, March 5 and 19, 2022
10:30am – 12:00pm
Via Zoom (link will be sent prior to the first session by the instructor)
This series is free of charge; maximum participants is 24.
There is a scarcity of writings on psychodynamically informed clinical work with children of color. Historically, individuals from marginalized and disenfranchised groups often have been considered as “unsuitable” for dynamically-oriented treatment (Javier, 1996). Black, Latino and Indigenous children and their families often experience themselves at the margins of society. As a way to support the idea that psychodynamic work can be a rich therapeutic framework for people of color, this seminar will provide an overview of object relations theory, with a particular focus on the concepts of the “two-person” psychology described by D. W. Winnicott (i.e., between mother/child and patient/therapist) as applied to the case of a 9 year-old Latino boy and his family. Treatment interventions that emphasize personal exploration and the power of a “facilitating environment” on a child’s capacity to thrive will be considered. Over the course of our two meetings in this seminar we will have a better understanding of object relations theory and “the belief that all people have within them an internal, often unconscious world of relationships that is different and, in many ways, more powerful and compelling than what is going on in their external world of interactions with real and present people” (Flanagan, 2008, p.122). I hope that you will feel engaged and comfortable in sharing your own case material.
Maria Elena Oliva is a clinical social worker with the state of Connecticut’s Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS) at the Connecticut Mental Health Center in New Haven, CT. She maintains a private practice in Orange, CT where she witnesses the power of a psychodynamic approach in treatment with children, adults, and bilingual individuals whose emotional lives live in their first language. She also offers supervision and consultation .
Any questions please contact Maria Elena Oliva
