Jan Freeman MSW, LCSW-C

 28th Annual ISSTD Conference
Complex Trauma & Dissociation Across the Life Span: Core Competencies in Training and Research
November 6-8, 2011 / Preconference Institutes, November 4-5, 2011

Hilton Bonaventure Hotel, Montreal, Canada

ATTEND cutting-edge clinical and research presentations on complex trauma and dissociation.
LEARN from master clinicians during case consultation sessions.
NETWORK with clinical and research colleagues from around the world.
EXPERIENCE the warmth and inclusiveness that is ISSTD.

   I will be chairing a Symposium on the use of Dreams in psychotherapy with dissociative and complex trauma patients, including DID. I will present on the history of the major theories regarding dreams and update with contemporary dream theory. I also will present the latest, cutting edge information from both clinical and research domains on the neurobiology of sleep and dreaming, what we know, what we don't know, what we are still studying and researching, and the controversies.

   Two colleagues will join me in the symposium with their presentations of clinical material of complex trauma/dissociation cases.

   Dr. John O'Neil, a Montreal psychoananalyst, and Co-Editor of the latest major publication on dissociative disorders, "Dissociation: DSM V and Beyond," will present clinical material on the types of dreams presented by complex trauma patients and how to make use of the dream material in psychotherapy.

   S. Ami Berkowitz, M.A., a psychoanalyst from Philadelphia, will also present dream material through case material.

   Participants will learn how to work with trauma patients and the range of oneiric phenomena encountered in the dreaming patient with a dissociative disorder, including DID. These range from garden-variety dreams, posttraumatic flashbacks and other revivification experiences while dreaming and hypnogogically; recurrent dreams (from childhood as well as adult life), alters' 'leaked' dreams or posttraumatic flashbacks, 'real historical' events in the patient's inscape or internal landscape, and dreams in which dream characters become prototypes for alters (or alternative self-states). 

   This  conference offers over 250 different papers, workshops, and symposiums on a wide variety of topic areas relevant to complex trauma and dissociative disorders and the range of treatment approaches available to the aftereffects of trauma. Also,

Pre-Conference Institutes in special topic areas are offered:

• "Basic Workshop in Complex Trauma Treatment and Dissociation" - Led by senior ISSTD faculty - Joan Turkus, MD; James Chu, MD; Richard Loewenstein, MD
• "Advanced Hypnosis Techniques with Dissociative Disorders" - Richard P. Kluft, M.D., Catherine Fine, Ph.D.
• "Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy - Sue Johnson, MFT
• "Comprehensive Treatment of Complex Trauma and Dissociative Disorders: Internal Family Systems Therapy" - Richard Schwartz PhD and Mark Schwartz ScD
• "Dissociative Children and Adolescents: Pathways Causing Disintegration and Pathways Leading to Integration" - Sandra Wieland, MA; Frances Waters PhD 
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