Description

Clinical intuition is central to every clinician’s repertoire and lies at the heart of effective psychotherapy. When operating in the heat of clinical moments, psychotherapists naturally access a variety of flashes, hunches, and gut feelings to guide perception and response. Intuition remains the best guide towards clinical action with fast and deep, subcortical connections, its fully embodied context and its potential for nuance. Yet, whenever we clinicians “shoot from the hip,” there arises danger of impulsive reactions, countertransference hauntings, and unconscious enactments.

This workshop is designed to help clinicians distinguish between sound vision inspired by grounded intuition and “bad” impulses propelled by ungrounded maneuvers. The day will blend didactic material with internal reflection and group discussion.

We will examine intuition from the perspective of regulation theory and interpersonal neurobiology. We compare clinical intuition with automatic, implicit biases. We highlight how fuzzy relational boundaries set the stage for projection as well as projective identification. Participants will identify their own attachment styles plus accompanying relational impulses alongside other countertransference tendencies.  We will weigh the pros and cons of enactments with patients, while drawing on particularly challenging clinical case descriptions.