Richard G. Erskine, PhD held seminar: Transference, Countertransference, Unconscious Communication, and Age Regression in Psychotherapy on December 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th 2022, at 6pm to 9pm (GMT/UTC + 1h).

Outpatient psychiatric practice “Bubera”, Association “Belcounsel”, and National Association for Transactional Analysis of Serbia – NATAS hosted this event.

This is the third consecutive year in which we had the honor to organize an seminar held by Dr. Richard G. Erskine, a world-renowned lecturer and psychotherapist who masterfully explains theoretical and demonstrates practical psychotherapeutic concepts.

There is still great interest of the members of the psychotherapeutic community for his lecturers, so Erskine, PhD, prepared a theoretical and practical presentation of a new topic for which the participants in previous seminars in our organization had expressed interest.

Seminar was designed to provide psychotherapists with a forum to discuss the significance of client’s unconscious communication, transference and countertransference, and the various methods that facilitated a supportive age regression in an in-depth psychotherapy.

Seminar started with defining Transference and distinguishing between reactive and responsive Countertransference. Afterwards we explored various aspects of unconscious psychological functions, the significance of enactments, how the experiences of childhood neglect and trauma were unconsciously relived in every-day life.

Presymbolic experience, implicit memory, and repressed explicit memory all constitute unconscious process that are enacted through transference. In psychotherapy unconscious communication may be expressed though the client’s affect, enacted in the client’s behavior, encoded in the client’s stories and metaphors, and engendered in the psychotherapist’s emotional response. A serious psychotherapy requires the psychotherapist to constantly attend to various expressions of countertransference, transference, and unconscious communication.

Psychological age regression frequently occurs in the process of psychotherapy as well as in everyday life. Sensitive therapeutic guidance is essential to ensure that the regression will be healing of the traumas and neglects of childhood and not reinforcing archaic patterns of psychological organization.

Through formal teaching, discussions, and case-discussion seminar focused on:

• decoding our clients’ unconscious relational patterns;
• distinguishing between transference and transactions;
• enhancing inter-subjective contact;
• identifying domains of unconscious communication;
• translating juxtaposition reactions into full communication;
• exploring the psychotherapist’s physiological, affective, and fantasy responses to the client (countertransference);
• distinguishing between reactive and responsive countertransference;
• the effective use of countertransference.
• identify various forms of age regression;
• formulate developmental images;
• use therapeutic inference;
• use various methods that facilitate the healing of relational disruptions;
• protectively differentiate between re-experiencing and reliving;
• titrate the level of therapeutic support according to the client’s capacity;
• ethically facilitate regressive psychotherapy.

Emphasis was placed on the therapeutic use of attunement to the client’s affect and developmental level of psychological organization, the physical and relational needs of young children, and the interpersonal qualities of the psychotherapist.

This workshop is for psychotherapists and counselors who want to refine their professional understanding and therapy skills in facilitating in-depth psychotherapy.

Participants were encouraged to read both Beyond Empathy: A Therapy of Contact-in-Relationship by Erskine, Moursund & Trautmann; and Relational Patterns, Therapeutic Presence: Concepts and Practice of Integrative Psychotherapy by Richard Erskine.

If you didn’t participate in the workshop, and want to watch the recording (or recordings of any of the workshops organized or co-organized by NATAS) you can order recording. Our recommendation is to participate in person whenever it is possible, because that way you can communicate with a lecturer directly.

This seminar was held in English and Serbian with consecutive non professional translation, by colleagues from mental health field.  (You can read here about consecutive interpreting: what is consecutive interpreting).

Erskine, PhD, insists on consecutive translation, because this is the best way to attune alive with translators and participants – to monitor whether participants understand the content, to monitor participants and their reactions and potentially include them in the discussion.

The seminar was accredited as I category professional meeting under the registration number A-1-741/22 by the Health Council of Serbia, and only participants who had taken part in seminar got certificate with two CME points, and nine hours of education.

Who was eligible for this seminar?

Psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, clinical social workers were eligible to participate in the seminar, but also all other professionals (special pedagogues, andragogues, MDs, nurses…) provided that they were in the process of psychotherapy training, and that they had filled in application form.

Handouts, PowerPoint presentation and video recording of the seminar are not included in the price.

For more information contact:

Zvonko (Zvonimir Ninić); Email: natasrbije@gmail.com

Phone/Text/Viber/WhatsApp +38163249239

Richard G. Erskine, Ph.D., is a Clinical Psychologist and Training Director of the Institute for Integrative Psychotherapy. Originally trained in client-centered child therapy, Dr Erskine also studied Gestalt therapy with both Fritz and Laura Perls. He is a certified clinical Transactional Analyst and a Licensed Psychoanalyst who has specialized in psychoanalytic self-psychology and object-relations theory. His work is an integration of these concepts and fifty years of clinical experience which has included working with disturbed children, inmates in a maximum security prison, borderline and narcissistic clients, post-traumatic stress and dissociative identity disorders. Recently his research and clinical practice have focused on the treatment of the schizoid process and on the psychotherapy of obsession. He is the author of several books and scores of articles on psychotherapy theory and methods. His best-selling book (with Jan Moursund and Rebecca Trautmann) is “Beyond Empathy: A Therapy of Contact-in-Relationship” (1999, Brunner/Mazel).

Richard Erskine on Integrative Psychotherapy:

Richard G. Erskine, PhD – Interview in Montreal 2010:

Richard G. Erskine, PhD – Interview 2017:

Richard Erskine TSTA (Psychotherapy) in the US, develops the 8 important relational needs, EATA Conference 2016. in Geneva: