Trauma Studies Certificate Program

This program is open to therapists, clinicians, those in helping professions, and those with a committed interest in deepening their understanding of trauma.  Note:  This program is not a substitute for personal psychotherapy; it is a professional training for practitioners. 

Over a century ago, the field of psychoanalysis began in a study of trauma, but it then suffered a kind of professional amnesia on the subject.  Recent decades have brought a revival of interest in trauma to the point where a revolutionary “new paradigm” has emerged in the field of depth psychotherapy.  This started with the “rediscovery” of childhood physical and sexual abuse and with psychiatry’s revived interest in the dissociative disorders, especially Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the lives of war-veterans.  But the truly revolutionary discoveries have been in the areas of early infant attachment and the enduring effects of relational attachment trauma in infancy leading to later psychopathology.  This includes the centrality of body-based emotion in the actual development of the brain and related to this, the neuro-biological basis of trauma’s symptoms.  Understanding these connections leads to powerful new treatment methods and approaches including effective new ways of working with the body and transforming dissociative defenses.  In short, the field is developing a far greater sensitivity to the vicissitudes of trauma than its founders could ever have imagined.

While remaining faithful to a depth psychological perspective which honors the unconscious, its symbolic images, and the sometimes “spiritual” experience and dimension of these, this program will broaden the focus to include many other facts of contemporary trauma research and therapy. These include: the unconscious processes and communications encoded in the body and how to gain access to the “implicit self” hiding beneath the words of the therapy hour (Ogden); the way dissociation alters consciousness along dimensions of time, thought, body, and emotion and how to intervene at different levels of dissociation (Lanius); the ways Attachment Theory and affective neuro-science have opened our understanding of the subtle relational aspects of regulation and co-regulation in the therapy dyad (Schore); the new-found realities of environmental, inter-generational and cultural trauma and how these collective realities are impacting us on a personal level, complicating our one-on-one efforts in the consulting room (Brewster, Kiehl and Cambray); the mysterious spiritual realities that are opened and catalyzed in some trauma survivors, including synchronicity, paranormal abilities, mystical experiences and other anomalous phenomena (Kripal, Cambray, Krohn); and finally the important perspective of Buddhism on the traumas of everyday life—including life’s impermanence—and how this perspective, including its emphasis on mindfulness, contributes to the healing of trauma (Epstein).

In each session of the program, Donald Kalsched will present a brief introduction to his own work as a “framework” for how the current presenter’s models might be integrated with a depth psychological understanding.  He will also engage each presenter in dialogue, exploring the important intersections between the inner structural and symbolic understanding of depth psychology on the one hand and the contemporary practical treatment approaches, research findings, and cultural/collective orientations brought by the presenters, on the other.  The scope of this program offers a deep and comprehensive framework for exploring trauma, its impact, and its repercussions on the lives of us all.

INDIVIDUAL SESSION DESCRIPTIONS

Session One: Mind, Brain and Body in the Understanding and Healing of Trauma
Donald Kalsched, Pat Ogden and Ruth Lanius

Implicit Communication, Trauma, Attachment Failure: A Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Perspective
Pat Ogden

Unconscious processes and communication that take place beneath the words during the therapy hour are arguably more significant than content. These implicit processes, visibly reflected in non-verbal behaviors of gesture, posture, prosody, facial expressions, eye gaze, movement habits and affect, are the heartbeat of all relationships. This workshop highlights the centrality of body experience as a primary target of therapeutic intervention to resolve trauma and attachment failure. Primary focus is given to the “implicit self” that is beyond the grasp of the conscious mind but continuously anticipates the future and powerfully determines one’s sense of self, behavior and quality of relationships. Body-oriented mindfulness approaches that directly address the visible physical indicators of the implicit self, along with emotions and beliefs, are illustrated, increase a positive the sense of self, improve relationships, and resolve the past.

The Challenging Client: A Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Approach to Treatment
Pat Ogden

Posture and movement are direct access routes to our clients’ potential and to what holds them back from achieving it. But therapists are often concerned that their clients are too destabilized, dissociative, body phobic, low functioning, or otherwise challenged to benefit from body psychotherapy. However, these clients may be exactly the ones who stand to gain the most from a somatic approach. This workshop will focus on the challenges, risks and rewards of integrating the body into clinical practice with “resistant” and otherwise “difficult” clients, including those with dissociative disorders, addictions, repeated hospitalizations, and those who are skeptical of body psychotherapy. The foundational spiritual and philosophical principles that underlie Sensorimotor Psychotherapy will be emphasized.

An Archetypal Model Demonstrating the Unconscious Self-Care System and How it both Protects and Persecutes the “Implicit Self”
Donald Kalsched

This presentation introduces the major inner figures that populate the inner world of trauma as featured in the work of Jung, Ferenczi, Fairbairn, Guntrip, Winnicott and Grotstein.  A case will illustrate the psyche’s response to body-sensitive therapeutic interventions which make contact with the orphaned self.

Session Two: The Inner World of Early Childhood Trauma
Donald Kalsched, Allan Schore and Mark Epstein

A Model of the Psyche’s Self-regulatory Processes with a Focus on Affect-Regulation

Donald Kalsched

This lecture will re-visit the Self-Care System, re-defining it as a self-regulatory system which becomes defensive at the extremes of dissociation.  Dreams that show these self-regulatory processes will be presented.  The centrality of affect and the nuances of relational regulation and co-regulation will be featured.

(please note:  Tickets to Mark Epstein’s evening session will be sold and live streamed to the general public at a separate, ticketed rate. This session is included in Certificate registrations and Certificate attendees do not need to register separately for this session.)

The Trauma of Everyday Life: Perspectives from Buddhism and Psychotherapy
Mark Epstein

Trauma does not just happen to a few unlucky people, it happens to everyone.  If we are not suffering from a post-traumatic stress disorder, we suffer from a pre-traumatic one. Death, illness and loss eventually impact us all, but even the everyday sufferings of loneliness and fear are difficult to face.  Psychotherapists have described the traumas of early life.  Buddhism has emphasized the inherent precariousness of impermanence.  But both disciplines agree that trauma is a fact of life.  Rather than trying to ‘get over’ our traumas, there is another approach, one that the Buddhist perspective makes possible.  While emotional memory may be forever, trauma seeks a relational home in which it can be metabolized.  The way out is through.

Session Three: Environmental, Inter-Generational and Cultural Trauma
Donald Kalsched, Fanny Brewster, Jeffrey Kiehl and Joseph Cambray

The Presence of Dream-animals and the Non-human World in the Psychotherapy of Trauma
Donald Kalsched

This lecture will emphasize the importance of Nature and its metaphors in recovering access to the implicit self or  “pre-traumatic soul” in the psychotherapy of early trauma.  Dreams from trauma survivors featuring animals will be the focus of this discussion.

Environmental Trauma: Healing Our Split with Nature
Jeffrey Kiehl

Human development has now crossed an historic threshold, in which our activities are, literally, changing the course of Earth’s evolution. We have entered the age of the Anthropocene. Each year brings with it personal and collective trauma emerging from our behaviors towards the environment. We are finding it more and more difficult to psychologically mediate the results of our actions. Environmental disruptions have come home to roost in both psyche and soma. What are we doing to the planet? How has our psychological development led to our disconnection from the non-human world? Why has it been so difficult to work through the trauma of ecological destruction? This session will open us to exploring these questions and developing ways to heal our traumatic split with the natural world.

Intergenerational and Cultural Trauma
Fanny Brewster

The pain of ancestors and their descendants exists not only within the biological intergenerational body but also the archetypal DNA.  In our American society we are aware of artistic, religious, socio-economic and other factors that determine culture. We are increasingly more aware of cultural trauma carried by the group.  Intergenerational cultural trauma travels within the lineage of one family to the next. Psychological suffering as cultural trauma does not originate and end with one selected generation but keeps producing the same repetitive damaging characteristics.  How do we begin to think of cultural healing in the long term—as an intergenerational potential?   Within different cultural groups we can see cultural trauma as an aspect of broader societal issues that remain unresolved.  The result is that we remain trapped in an almost karmic cycle of cultural trauma affecting all American cultural groups.  These two sessions, each on intergenerational and cultural trauma, explore what is possible for changing this cycle.

Session Four: Synchronicity, Spirituality and Anomalous Experience in the Healing of Trauma
Donald Kalsched, Joseph Cambray, Jeffrey Kripal and Elizabeth Krohn

Trauma, Synchronicity, and Paranormal Experiences in Analysis
Donald Kalsched

This presentation provides an overview of the broad field of anomalous experiences as related to a depth psychological model of the psyche and its “spiritual” dimensions.

The Traumatic Secret
Jeffrey Kripal

Trauma can function as an opening or catalyst to anomalous forms of mind and energy in narratives of mystical experience and paranormal ability. The evidence of early childhood abuse and near death experiences serves as an example of this.  It is important, however, not to fall into either/or thinking here – that is, not to assume that once a pathological moment is isolated that this somehow explains the mystical experience or paranormal ability. Both can be true, and often are.

Sexual Abuse and the Near-Death Experience:  Some Possible Links
Elizabeth Krohn with Jeffrey Kripal

Trauma figured prominently into the otherwise happy childhood of Elizabeth Krohn. As a child who had been sexually abused for six years, Elizabeth learned techniques to help herself cope with the trauma at a very young age. Elizabeth and Jeff will explore together the question of whether the techniques she used as a young child in order to survive the ongoing sexual trauma helped her turn what could have been a “death” experience into a “near-death” experience as an adult years later. They will also address the question of whether a later mystical or visionary experience can be psychodynamically linked (but not necessarily reducible) to earlier traumatic events and memories.

Learning Objectives by Session:

Session One:  Mind, Brain, and Body in the Understanding and Healing of Trauma

• Participants will learn non-verbal behaviors that encode the remnants of traumatic memories, and will become acquainted with ways of working that can access the underlying “implicit self” of their patients.
• Participants will become acquainted with a four-dimensional model of dissociation and how this model helps us understand the phenomena of flashbacks, psychic numbing, self-blame and other trauma derivatives.
• Participants will learn how to use grounding skills to regulate the swings of emotion in the activated trauma survivor and how to use mindfulness practices that directly address the physical indicators of the implicit self manifested in the body.

Session Two:  The Inner World of Early Childhood Trauma

• Participants will learn how early trauma and the “implicit self” are encoded in the right hemisphere of the brain and how this fact necessitates relational, symbolic/metaphorical, and body-sensitive ways of working in psychotherapy.
• Participants will see how a system of dissociative defenses develops in certain family systems, how this structure is internalized, and how it can be triggered and worked with in the therapeutic situation.
• Participants will gain an understanding of trauma’s etiology through the lens of Attachment Theory as first formulated by Bowlby, and further elaborated in early infant studies and in the work of Allan Schore.

Session Three:  Environmental, Inter-Generational and Cultural Trauma

• Participants will learn how to distinguish between personal developmental trauma and trauma with its roots in collective inter-generational suffering.
• Participants will learn about “archetypal grief” as it relates to inter-generational child loss in the legacy of American Slavery in the South.
• Participants will become aware of how unconscious destructive behavior towards the environment can find its way into depressive symptomatology on a personal level and how to deal with this difficult problem constructively.

Session Four:  Synchronicity, Spirituality and Anomalous Experience in the Healing of Trauma

• Participants will become acquainted with research in the area of “visionary gifts” and other para-psychological phenomena and how this research is relevant to work with traumatized and dissociative patients.
• Participants will explore and come to understand the ideas of C. G. Jung on Synchronicity and how this concept can be applied to anomalous experiences in the clinical domain
• Participants will learn about near death experiences and the life-changing inner landscapes that they sometimes open up for those experiencing them.

Donald Kalsched, Ph.D., is a Jungian psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist. He is a senior faculty member and supervisor with the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, and teaches and leads workshops nationally and internationally. His celebrated book, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit, explores the interface between contemporary psychoanalytic theory and Jungian theory as it relates to clinical work with survivors of early childhood trauma. His recent book, Trauma and the Soul: A Psycho-Spiritual Approach to Human Development and its Interruption, explores the mystical dimensions of clinical work with trauma-survivors.

Mark Epstein, MD, is a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City and the author of a number of books about the interface of Buddhism and psychotherapy, including Thoughts without a Thinker, Going to Pieces without Falling Apart, Going on Being, Open to Desire, Psychotherapy without the Self, and The Trauma of Everyday Life.  His most recent book is Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself. He received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Harvard University and is currently Clinical Assistant Professor in the Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis at New York University.

Pat Ogden, PhD, is a pioneer in somatic psychology and both Founder and Education Director of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute®, an internationally recognized school specializing in somatic–cognitive approaches for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder and attachment disturbances. She is co-founder of the Hakomi Institute, a clinician, consultant, international lecturer and trainer, and first author of Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy.  Her second book, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Trauma and Attachment (2015) is a practical guide to integrate Sensorimotor Psychotherapy® into the treatment of trauma and attachment issues.  Dr. Ogden is currently developing Sensorimotor Psychotherapy® for children, adolescents and families with colleagues.

Ruth A. Lanius, MD, PhD, is the director of the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) research unit at the University of Western Ontario. She established the Traumatic Stress Service and the Traumatic Stress Service Workplace Program, services that specialize in the treatment and research of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and related comorbid disorders. She currently holds the Harris-Woodman Chair in Mind-Body Medicine at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Western Ontario.  Her research interests focus on studying the neurobiology of PTSD and treatment outcome research examining various pharmacological and psychotherapeutic methods. She has authored more than 100 published papers and chapters in the field of traumatic stress and is currently funded by several federal funding agencies.  She regularly lectures on the topic of PTSD nationally and internationally. She has recently published a book ‘The Impact of Early Life Trauma on Health and Disease’ with Eric Vermetten and Clare Pain.

Allan Schore, PhD, is on the clinical faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, and at the UCLA Center for Culture, Brain, and Development. He is author of four seminal volumes, Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self, Affect Dysregulation and Disorders of the Self, Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self, and The Science of the Art of Psychotherapy, as well as numerous articles and chapters. His Regulation Theory, grounded in developmental neuroscience and developmental psychoanalysis, focuses on the origin, psychopathogenesis, and psychotherapeutic treatment of the early forming subjective implicit self. His contributions appear in multiple disciplines, including developmental neuroscience, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, developmental psychology, attachment theory, trauma studies, behavioral biology, clinical psychology, and clinical social work. His groundbreaking integration of neuroscience with attachment theory has led to his description as “the American Bowlby,” with emotional development as “the world’s leading authority on how our right hemisphere regulates emotion and processes our sense of self,” and with psychoanalysis as “the world’s leading expert in neuropsychoanalysis.” The American Psychoanalytic Association has described Dr. Schore as “a monumental figure in psychoanalytic and neuropsychoanalytic studies.”

Fanny Brewster PhD, is a Jungian analyst and author of poetry and nonfiction. Her book African Americans and Jungian Psychology:  Leaving the Shadows has recently been published by Routledge (2017).  A forthcoming book, Archetypal Grief:  Slavery’s Legacy of Intergenerational Child Loss is forthcoming later this year.  Her poems from Journey:  The Middle Passage have recently appeared in the Psychological Perspectives Journal (2016) in which she was Featured Poet.  Dr. Brewster is a core faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute, the Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts and the New York C.G. Jung Foundation.

Jeffrey Kiehl is a Jungian analyst living in Santa Cruz, California. He is also an adjunct faculty member of UC Santa Cruz in the Department of Environmental Studies and the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences. Jeffrey holds a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences (SUNY Albany), an MS in Theoretical Physics (Indiana University) and an MA in Psychology (Regis University). He received his Jungian diploma from the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts (IRSJA). He is a founding member and senior training analyst for the CG Jung Institute of Colorado and a member of the IRSJA. He is also a member of the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP). He has served on a number of panels and committees for the National Research Council. His main interests are in the areas of ecopsychology, the relations between psyche and matter, and the role of archetypes in cultural transformation. He is the author of the book Facing Climate Change: An Integrated Path to the Future(Columbia University Press), which provides a Jungian perspective on climate change.

Joseph Cambray, Ph.D., is President and Provost of Pacifica Graduate Institute as well as a Jungian analyst. He is Past-President of the International Association for Analytical Psychology, and former US Editor of the Journal of Analytical Psychology. For years he was on the faculty of the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies at Harvard Medical School. His numerous publications include the book based on his Fay Lectures: Synchronicity: Nature and Psyche in an Interconnected Universe; a volume edited with Linda Carter, Analytical Psychology: Contemporary Perspectives in Jungian Psychology; and a two volume compendium on research in analytical psychology co-edited with Christian Roesler and Leslie Sawin currently in publication. In addition, he has published numerous papers in a range of international journals.

Jeffrey J. Kripal, PhD, holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University. He is the author of Comparing Religions (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014); Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal (Chicago, 2011); Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred (Chicago, 2010); Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion (Chicago, 2007); The Serpent’s Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion (Chicago, 2007); Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism (Chicago, 2001); and Kali’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna (Chicago, 1995). He has also co-edited volumes with: Sudhir Kakar, on the history, science, psychology, and analysis of psychical experiences, Seriously Strange: Thinking Anew about Psychical Experiences(Viking, 2012); Wouter Hanegraaff on eroticism and esotericism, Hidden Intercourse: Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism(University of Amsterdam Press, 2008); Glenn W. Shuck on the history of Esalen and the American counterculture, On the Edge of the Future: Esalen and the Evolution of American Culture (Indiana, 2005); Rachel Fell McDermott on a popular Hindu goddess, Encountering Kali: In the Margins, at the Center, in the West (California, 2003); G. William Barnard on the ethical critique of mystical traditions, Crossing Boundaries: Essays on the Ethical Status of Mysticism (Seven Bridges, 2002); and T.G. Vaidyanathan of Bangalore, India, on the dialogue between psychoanalysis and Hinduism, Vishnu on Freud’s Desk: A Reader in Psychoanalysis and Hinduism (Oxford, 1999). His present areas of writing and research include the articulation of a New Comparativism within the study of religion that will put “the impossible” back on the table again, a robust and even conversation between the sciences and the humanities, and the mapping of an emergent mythology or “Super Story” within paranormal communities and individual visionaries.

Elizabeth Krohn experienced a Near Death Experience when she was struck by lightning in 1988.  For decades she spoke about her experience in individual settings, and has only recently decided to go public with her NDE.  She has three grown children and six grandchildren.  Elizabeth’s education and work history have nothing to do with NDE’s, and she was a harsh skeptic before her experience.  She was totally unprepared for what happened to her in 1988, yet it has changed her life forever.

Location

Pacifica Graduate Institute’s Ladera Lane Campus
801 Ladera Lane, Santa Barbara, CA 93108

Continuing Education Credit

This program meets qualifications for 84 hours of continuing education credit for Psychologists through the California Psychological Association (PAC014) Pacifica Graduate Institute is approved by the California Psychological Association to provide continuing education for psychologists.  Pacifica Graduate Institute maintains responsibility for this program and its content.  Full attendance is required to receive a certificate.

This course meets the qualifications for 84 hours of continuing education credit for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and/or LEPs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.  Pacifica Graduate Institute is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists (#60721) to sponsor continuing education for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and/or LEPs.  Pacifica Graduate Institute maintains responsibility for this program/course and its content.  Full attendance is required to obtain a certificate.

For Registered Nurses through the California Board of Registered Nurses this conference meets qualifications of 84 hours of continuing education credit are available for RNs through the California Board of Registered Nurses (provider #CEP 7177).  Full attendance is required to obtain a certificate.

To learn more about Continuing Education Credits please visit our general information section.

Cancellation Policy  

Cancellations 30 days or more prior to the program receives a 100% refund of program registrations and housing.  After 30 days, a 50% refund is available.  For cancellations within 7 days or less of program start, no refund is available.

Disability Service On Campus:

It is the Institute’s goal is to make facilities, programs, and experiences accessible to all members of the community. The Institute works individually with those who are disabled to determine how individual needs can best be met.  For additional information regarding Disability Services, please visit https://www.pacifica.edu/student-services/disability-services/.

For additional information, including travel and disability services please visit our general information section.