A LIVE STREAMED WEBINAR SERIES
PERRIN ELISHA, PhD, PC
Challenging Mind/Body Dualism:
Towards Embodied Practice
with Eating-Disordered Patients
Discussant SARAH SCHOEN, PhD
Friday, January 13th, 2023 from 8:00-9:30PM/Eastern
All of this year’s series is held at the posted date and time, during Eastern Daylight or Eastern standard time.
ABOUT THE EVENING
My research has illustrated how the early views of mind/body dualism shaped the foundational ideas of depth psychology. Further, the bias towards a dualistic view of the mind and body, while dismissed by more contemporary psychoanalytic metapsychology and practice, still remains in our language and implicit assumptions. Building on the research in my book, The Body in Psychoanalysis, I will use two case studies in long term psychoanalytic work to illustrate the sensibility of a holistic view of the mind/body matrix in clinical practice. Both of these cases are patients who presented with eating disorders as their primary concern. I will illustrate, through these two clinical journeys, how I attempted to participate as an embodied analyst informed by a non-dualistic view of my patients’ eating disorder symptoms and psychological experience to inform the clinical work. This case work attempts to be a clinical illustration of a metapsychology which reaches beyond a hierarchical view in which the mind is supposed to arise out of the body, towards a circular model of mind/body integration. These case studies illustrate how an embodied psychoanalysis is necessary to support authentic, gratifying emotional transformation rather than a simple intellectual understanding of one’s symptoms.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Perrin Elisha, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and certified psychoanalyst with a specialty area in psychosomatics, eating disorders and relationship issues. She has published The Conscious Body, A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body in Therapy, a work exploring the mind-body relationship in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. She has taught graduate and post graduate psychotherapy students in the areas of psychosomatics and eating disorders and helped found the Los Angeles Eating Disorders Study Center, which trained licensed therapists to become effective in the treatment of eating disorders. Her passion is clinical work, and Dr. Elisha is most effective helping people overcome barriers to healthy relationships and finding the care, closeness, and satisfaction available in life. She founded Relationships ReWired, which offers psychoanalytically based psychoeducational courses for people wishing to navigate intimate relationships with wisdom, skill and discernment.
ABOUT THE DISCUSSANT
Sarah Schoen, PhD, is Adjunct Clinical Professor of Psychology at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis in the I-H track, and Faculty, Supervising, and Training Analyst at the William Alanson White Institute. She is on the editorial board of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and she teaches and writes about contemporary perspectives on gender, narcissism, and the clinical implications of the relational turn. Her recent edited volume (with co-editors Jean Petrucelli and Naomi Snider), Patriarchy and its Discontent: Psychoanalytic Perspectives is scheduled to be released in the fall of 2022 as part of the Routledge Series, Psychoanalysis in a New Key. Most recently, Dr. Schoen has been presenting a new paper exploring the patient’s experience of the analyst’s physicality. She is in private practice in Manhattan’s Flatiron District.
