Invited Speaker Workshop Susi Federici and Gianni Nebbiosi

Morning Presentation:

Miming and Identity: The Value of Unaware Imitation in the Creation and Development of Multiple Selves

This presentation, after introducing the general issue of the day, will explore both theoretically and clinically the differences between the ‘howness’ and the ‘whatness’, crucial in our therapeutic approach, and their implications for dealing with different self states and to determine whether to consider conflict vs dissociation. We will also explore the conceptual differences between identification and imitation blurred in Freud and eventually in all psychoanalytic theory.

Afternoon Presentation:

Mimetic Understanding: the Use of Imitation in the Clinical Encounter

We will explain in some detail the mimetic understanding technique, a therapeutic approach that facilitates and deepens the communicative experience of two ‘acting bodies’ relating with each other. We will present two different vignettes to illustrate the range of new clinical possibilities that mimetic understanding provides in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this workshop, participants should be able to:

1) Participants will understand more about the importance of imitative learning in the first years of development of human psyche

2) Participants will understand more about implicit relational knowing within the clinical encounter

3) Participants will understand more about a specific technique of using mimetic understanding along with other psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic techniques.