This conference will feature Peter Fonagy, PhD, and Ed Tronick, PhD — distinguished researchers and scholars who have had long academic careers studying and theorizing about the clinical processes that contribute to human growth and therapeutic change. The clinical processes in the psychoanalytic treatment of adult patients have long been viewed as sharing similarities with the parent-child relationship. While psychoanalysis began with a focus on the patient’s drives and conflicts, the emphasis shifted to intersubjective processes with the emergence of object relations theory, self-psychology, and interpersonal psychoanalysis. With the relational turn in psychoanalysis, we have expanded our interest in infant observations and empirical studies of the parent-child relationship to illuminate the dyadic processes that shape therapeutic change.

In his presentation Epistemic Trust and Trauma: Pernicious Impact and Therapeutic Solutions, Professor Fonagy introduces the concept of epistemic trust—the fundamental human capacity enabling us to learn from others who are trustworthy and collectively establish shared beliefs and ideas, which we recognize as ‘culture’. The talk will highlight emerging evidence underscoring the critical role of epistemic trust in social learning and examine research demonstrating its vulnerability to adversity, particularly during childhood.

Dr. Ed Tronick’s presentation is titled How the Qualities of Infant-Parent Interaction and Meaning-Making Shed Light on the Analytic Relationship. Tronick asserts that the processes driving development of the child, primarily those embedded in the parent-child relationship, are the most striking mechanism of human change.  Therapy, too, works to change the meanings individuals make of themself in the world.  The suggestion is advanced that the qualities of the parent-child relationship that promote change and growth can aid our understanding of the success or failure of the analytic relationship to create change.

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