Bion’s Emotional Links: Love, Hate, and Knowledge
with Judy K. Eekhoff
In this five-session seminar, based on her book, Bion’s Emotional Links: Love, Hate, and Knowledge, Judy Eekhoff will explore emotion as a bridge between unrepresented and represented states. As the link between body and mind, emotion serves as a motivator for learning from experience.
The seminar will focus on the importance of both internal and external relationships in the development of the mind. Emotional links are broken when a patient has suffered early trauma and does not have the more sophisticated defenses, such as repression or splitting and projecting to protect them from the overwhelming stimulation trauma induces.
The focus of the seminar is on the therapist. Using chapters from the book, Judy will describe how the therapist learns about the patient by paying attention to themselves paying attention to the patient. This model is informed by Bion’s focus on analytic technique. We will explore somatic processes used as defenses against relationship. Judy places the individuality of the therapist at the forefront, eschewing a dogmatic approach to method while carefully nurturing and respecting traditional psychoanalytic theories.
Learning Objectives
- Participants will learn to differentiate primitive mental states evoked by early childhood trauma from mimicry.
- Participants will learn to recognize symbiotic relationships, both those in patients’ personal lives and in their relationship with the therapist.
- Participants will clarify their own personal approaches to working with traumatized patients.
Participants will be required to purchase Judy’s new book, Bion’s Emotional Links: Love, Hate and Knowledge, which will be discussed during the series.
Course Details
Online via Zoom
Sessions will be Recorded
Saturdays at 9:00 – 10:30 am (Pacific/Seattle)
Class dates: 9/12, 10/10, 11/14, 12/5, 1/9 [2026-27]
CEUs: 1.5 per class, 7.5 total
Fee: $412.50
Member Fee: $350.63
Instructor
