Creativity in Psychotherapy:

An Adaptive Function of the Right Brain Unconscious

Online: March 21 - April 3, 2016

This one-hour online presentation is taught by Allan N. Schore, PhD, a faculty member in our Luminary Series, and represents a distillate of his cur­rent thinking about the interface between psychoanalytic constructs and the application of those theoretical concepts to the clinical situation.

Neuroscience authors are now contending that the capacity of humans to be creative is revealed whenever we generate original ideas, develop novel solutions to problems, or express ourselves in a unique and individual manner. A large body of studies now shows that the right brain is central in these functions. Dr.Schore will offer an interpersonal neurobiological model of creativity in the psychotherapeutic context, in both patient and therapist. As examples he will describe the critical role of the clinician’s right brain creativity when working with affects, especially in joint enactments, in spontaneous play and co-creativity in the processing of novel interpersonal information within the therapeutic alliance, in the patient’s expanding tolerance for interpersonal novelty and psychotherapeutic change, and in the development of therapeutic expertise. 

Specific learning objectives:

• Current definitions of creativity common to a number of disciplines.
• Early clinical studies of creativity within psychoanalysis, including Kris and Reik.
• Recent studies on the role of the right brain in creativity processes.
• An interpersonal neurobiological model of creativity within the psychotherapeutic context, in both patient and therapist.
• Differences between pathological and creative re-enactments of early relational trauma.
• How creative therapeutic processes alter both the therapist’s and patient’s right brains.

LS16-1 | 1 CE Credit | $45

Allan N. Schore, PhD, is on the clinical faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, and at the UCLA Center for Culture, Brain, and Development. He is the author of four seminal volumes: Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self; Affect Dysregulation and Disorders of the Self; Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self; and The Science of the Art of Psychotherapy, as well as numerous articles and chapters.