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UNFORTUNATELY, THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED DUE TO THE PUBLIC HEATH CRISIS.

Peter Blos Sr. Memorial Lecture:

“V is for Vendetta: Exploring the Interference Posed by a Sibling’s Chronic and Debilitating Medical Condition on an Adolescent’s Emerging Psychic Individuation”

Tuesday, April 14, 2020

8:00 – 10:00 pm

Presenter: John Tisdale, D.Min.

Peter Blos Sr. brought the developmental concept of an adolescent’s second individuation into the mainstream of psychoanalytic theorizing and discussion. He proposed this concept, among other things, as a 4th phase of psychosexual development propelling an adolescent toward the emergence of a more complex, rich, and, individualized identity as a sexually mature person. Blos Sr. emphasized the adolescent’s task involved revisiting their inherited identity first established as a pre-oedipal child in order to consolidate a new identity independent from the parents and embraced by the adolescent as his/her own. Typically, the primary focus of this concept has been on the vertical relationship between the parents and adolescent. In two decades of learning and practicing psychoanalysis, Dr. Tisdale has had what he has come to believe is a somewhat unique experience among practicing child and adolescent analysts — almost 70% of his analytic patients, and many more of the total number of his psychotherapy patients over the years, have had siblings with mental and/or medical conditions profoundly impacting their process of psychic individuation. Using close process vignettes from a three-time-a-week adolescent psychoanalysis, lasting three and one-half years, he will explore the influence of a sibling’s chronic medical condition on one adolescent’s psychic development, and specifically, the interference these circumstances posed to his subjective experience of owning for himself this developmental phase of emerging psychic second individuation.

2 CME/CE credits offered. 

John Tisdale, D.Min. holds a B.A. from High Point University, a Master’s of Divinity degree from Duke University and a Doctorate of Ministry degree (D.Min.) in Pastoral Counseling from the Graduate Theological Foundation. He is an ordained United Methodist Minister and a child and adolescent psychoanalyst, graduating from the APsaA member, Psychoanalytic Center of the Carolinas. His first professional job was with the N.C. Juvenile Court. While at the N.C. Court, he took a leave of absence to attend the Harry Wendelstedt Umpire School. Although tempted to pursue a career in professional baseball, Dr. Tisdale answered a higher calling and entered Duke Divinity School; after graduation, he pastored a local congregation for 6 years in rural N.C. and worked on licensing to practice psychotherapy full-time. During his 25-plus year career in clinical practice, he has worked in a variety of settings, including hospitals, a denominationally-sponsored counseling center, a private group practice, and a school-based practice. The last six years he served as the Associate Executive and Clinical Director of the Lucy Daniels Center, a non-profit therapeutic organization serving the social and emotional needs of children age birth to 12 years of age and their families. In September, 2019 he opened a private practice with two offices in Cary and Durham, N.C. Dr. Tisdale most recently presented a case at the 2019 Annual Meeting of Association for Child Psychoanalysis in Miami entitled, “Salmon Falls, One Important Stop in a Latency Age Boy’s Quest to Find a Good Enough Defense!”

Educational Objectives: Upon completion of this activity, participants should be able to:

1. identify at least two factors potentially interfering with an adolescence’s intrapsychic development when the adolescent has a sibling living with a chronic medical condition.
2. define the developmental concept of second individuation.
3. provide an example of how the developmental concept “second individuation” is expressed in one adolescent’s experience through the lens of a psychoanalysis.