This Wednesday Evening Lecture will be virtual, using Zoom. Please register for more information on how to attend.

1.5 Continuing Education Credits

In this program, Dr. Sarit Lesser will provide an overview of collective trauma and the psychology of pandemics. She will present recent studies and publications about trauma and the psychological impact of the Covid pandemic. Some of the topics reviewed will be virtual countertransference, collective forgetting, vicarious traumatization, virtual mourning, psychotherapists’ sacrifice and self-preservation. Lastly, she will discuss therapeutic implications and ways to augment learning and psychosocial resilience during Covid. 

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

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

1. Review the distinction between individual trauma and collective trauma. 

2. Analyze the psychological impact of pandemics, quarantine, and isolation;

3. Discuss the process of collective memory of trauma and collective forgetting; 

4. Discuss the symbolic meaning of teletherapy: countertransference, virtual mourning, and the body. 

5. Assess psychotherapists’ Vicarious Traumatization During the COVID-19 Pandemic: between sacrifice and self-preservation  

6. Critically evaluate approaches to treatment of contemporary trauma experiences related to the coronavirus pandemic: from managing fear to fostering existential maturity. 

Sarit Lesser, Psy.D is a clinical psychologist in Providence, RI. She is a member of the medical staff at The Miriam Hospital. She completed her undergraduate studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and her graduate studies at William James College in Boston. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship in clinical psychology at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and the Rhode Island Hospital Partial Hospitalization Program. She is an instructor at the Division of Pre-College and Summer Undergraduate Programs at Brown University, where she is teaching a course on trauma and recovery. Her research on the development of caregiving identity in new mothers was recently published as a book chapter in Identity and Lifelong Learning:  Becoming through Lived Experience. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aafjes-van Doorn, K., Békés, V., Prout, T. A., & Hoffman, L. (2020). Psychotherapists’ vicarious traumatization during the COVID-19 pandemic. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 12(S1), S148–S150. 

Adelman, A. (2020). Virtual Mourning. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 68(3), 483–486. 

Békés, V., Aafjes-van Doorn, K., Prout, T. A., & Hoffman, L. (2020). Stretching the analytic frame: Analytic therapists’ experiences with remote therapy during COVID-19. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 68(3), 437–446.

Cole, G. (2020). COVID-19, Limit Experiences, and Undergoing the Situation: Therapeutic Implications for Pandemic Times. Journal of Humanistic Psychology. 1-8. 

Damir Huremovic. (2019). Psychiatry of Pandemics: A Mental Health Response to Infection Outbreak. Springer. 

Davis, A. D. (2011). The forgotten apocalypse: Katherine Anne Porter’s “Pale Horse, Pale Rider,” Traumatic Memory, and the Influenza Pandemic of 1918. The Southern Literary Journal, 43 (2), 55-74. 

Emanuel, L. L., Solomon, S., Fitchett, G., Chochinov, H., Handzo, G., Schoppee, T., & Wikie, D. (n.d.). Fostering Existential Maturity to Manage Terror in a Pandemic. Journal of Palliative Medicine. 

Lombardi, R. (2020). Corona Virus, Social Distancing and the Body in Psychoanalysis. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 68(3), 455-482. 

Schimmenti, A., Billieux, J., Starcevic, V. (2020). The four horsemen of fear: An integrated model of understanding fear experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Clinical Neuropsychiatry, 17 (2), 41-45.

Svenson, K. (2020). Teleanalytic therapy in the era of COVID-19: Dissociation in the countertransference. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 68(3), 447–454. 

Zerbe, K. J. (2020). Pandemic fatigue: Facing the body’s inexorable demands in the time of COVID-19. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 68(3), 475–478.