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ADHD and Relational Trauma
A psychodynamic reading
Clinical compendium, 49 pages, PDF and EPUB, instant download.
On Etsy it is listed as “ADHD and Relational Trauma, A Psychodynamic Reading, Clinical Compendium PDF + EPUB for Therapists, Instant Download”. After payment the file is in your Etsy purchases, and Etsy emails you the download link.
This compendium does not dispute the diagnosis of ADHD, nor try to replace it with trauma. It asks what happens in the consulting room when the map we have been handed does not cover the whole territory of the person in front of us, and it moves the clinical question from what is failing to what this pattern of attention is doing, for this person, here. Bion, Winnicott and Khan supply the frame, and three composite vignettes show it at work.
Abstract
Read the abstract
Research on adult ADHD has recently moved from a deficit-based description toward strengths-based readings, while largely remaining within a neurobiological frame in which personal history appears, if at all, as a modulating variable. This compendium neither disputes the diagnosis nor replaces it with trauma. It shifts the clinical question from what is failing in attention to what a given pattern of attention is doing for the person, and what it was trained to do. Drawing on Bion, Winnicott and Khan's notion of cumulative trauma, it describes attention as a psychic function, hyperactivation as an adaptive solution and the clinical picture across a year of weekly work. It discusses psychodynamic differential diagnosis, identification with the diagnosis, specific transference configurations, adaptations of technique and the place of medication, with composite vignettes and an observation grid.
Who it's for
Therapists working with adults whose attention difficulties sit alongside an unpredictable early environment, and who want to hold both readings without choosing between them.
Contents
- Opening premise: why this theme, and why now
- Neurobiology or relational history: a debate that is badly posed
- What we mean by relational trauma, and what we do not
- Attention as a psychic function: Bion, and what attending actually costs
- Developmental origins: holding, disorganization, mentalization
- Hyperactivation as an adaptive solution
- The clinical picture in session
- Psychodynamic differential diagnosis
- "I am ADHD": identification with the diagnosis, and what it costs
- Transference and countertransference: the specific configurations
- Adaptations of setting and technique
- Medication and the therapeutic work
- Clinical vignettes and common errors
- Operational appendix: an observation grid
Format and license
- Format
- PDF and EPUB, 49 pages
- Delivery
- Instant download from your Etsy account once payment clears
- License
- For one therapist's own clinical practice; worksheets may be printed for your clients
- Status
- Educational material for clinicians, not a validated instrument and not clinical advice
Included in
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