May 2024: "On Trauma and Mourning: Après-coup in the psyche-soma", presented by Drew Tillotson, PsyD, FIPA, BCPsa

May 2024: "On Trauma and Mourning: Après-coup in the psyche-soma", by Drew Tillotson A violent sound below his consulting room a gunshot is registered in the author’s psyche-soma. First, the author - then patient running late - stumbles onto the aftermath of a gunshot. The author shields his patient from seeing the traumatic scene. A paper (“Trauma and the Fate of the Angel”) is written after with the theme of the shattering of the fantasy of the analyst’s omnipotence in the face of his being witness to a traumatic experience. The author recounted a series of experiences telescoping trauma related to the violent sound; an après-coup process during which dreams, mourning and memories were evoked in the act of mentalizing-through-writing. Employing the metaphor of an analytic angel, and Bion’s container-contained, the author incorporated memories, dreams and clinical vignettes to form a narrative of a traumatic witnessing and its aftermath, and ideas about the analyst’s fantasies and containing function under duress. A new writing process is offered. Using Laplanche’s spiral as a metaphor for après-coup, the author revisits the old paper, reflecting on the former writing process in writing a new paper: an après-coup of an après-coup. A briefer version of the paper is interwoven into a reflective process inviting the audience to listen to the presentation as a dream, as described in Ferro’s post-Bionian field theory: an experience of après-coup together with the author. Learning Objectives: 1. Participants will acquire an understanding of Laplanche’s ‘spiral’ as a metaphor for apres-coup as it relates to the processing of traumatic experiences and the ongoing-ness of mourning. 2. Participants will be able to apply Bion’s container/contained to learn what is meant by the author’s use of ruptures in the containment process. 3. Participants will acquire an understanding of the concept of psyche-soma through Ogden’s exploration and clarification of Winnicott’s use of the term.