Character Structure: Revisiting a Controversial Concept Central to Bioenergetic Analysis

There has been considerable interest in the upcoming professional workshop on Character Structure Revisited by folks who cannot attend in-person.  The NY Society will present an online version of the workshop on Saturday, December 3. Details will be available later this month, please check the website.

Workshop Description

Human beings are meaning-making creatures. We organize experience using matrices, often unconscious, of experience, theory, learning, and, often, indoctrination. Psychotherapists do this also, even those who espouse a theoretical approaches. Organizing somatic information to correlate with psychic and emotional information is a demanding task. Bioenergetic analysis offers a set of principles and constructs for that task that includes the recognition of durable forms of somatopsychic organization, which we call character structure, and which forms a basis for understanding psychotherapeutic process.

This workshop will explore that framework, its application and usefulness. The therapist persona will be offered as a working ‘character structure’ designed for a purpose. Subsequently, participants will be offered an experiential encounter with their own and others somatopsychic organization to illuminate the meanings and uses of this conceptual tool for understanding people and the psychotherapy process.

The NY Society is a provider of continuing education hours for NY State psychologists, clinical social workers, and other licensed mental health practitioners.

Instructional Objectives

1. Participants will be able to identify somatic and psychic patterns that go into the designation of ‘character structures.
2. Participants will be able to recognize enduring character patterns and practice psychotherapeutic interventions suited to the dynamics of the patient’s character structure.
3. Participants will embody and practice working with somatopsychic structures related to specific character organizations.
4. Participants will embody and observe elements of their own character structure, and describe the countertransferential effects of their own character structure on their work as therapists.