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Tom Wooldridge Part II
Boys and their Muscles: The Paternal Object in Muscle Dysmorphia
Participation available via Zoom Teleconferencing.
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Seminar Description:
Boys and their Muscles: The Paternal Object in Muscle Dysmorphia
This article elaborates the psychodynamics of the paternal object for a subset of patients with muscle dysmorphia. In many cases, there is father-child object relation in which the father maintains his own narcissistic equilibrium by keeping his son small, vulnerable, and weak. Whereas in optimal development the paternal function facilitates the young boy’s separation and individuation, it instead threatens the child with the possibility of remaining forever lost in the archaic mother-child matrix of helplessness and dependency.Faced with this, the child discovers the possibility of idealizing a particular form masculinity characterized by “bigness” and impermeability that the paternal function comes to represent. The developing boy, his mind’s ability to represent and symbolize the affects evoked by this traumatic theme compromised, takes muscularity as a symbolic equation for masculinity and engages in a frantic drive for muscularity to keep experiences of weakness, vulnerability, and shame, associated with femininity, at bay. These dynamics are illustrated with a clinical case.
About the Speaker:
Tom Wooldridge, PsyD, ABPP, CEDS-S is Chair in the Department of Psychology at Golden Gate University as well as a psychoanalyst and board-certified, licensed psychologist. He has published journal articles and book chapters on topics such as eating disorders, masculinity, technology, and psychoanalytic treatment. His first book, Understanding Anorexia Nervosa in Males, was published by Routledge in 2016 and has been praised as “groundbreaking” and a “milestone publication in our field.” His second book, Psychoanalytic Treatment of Eating Disorders: When Words Fail and Bodies Speak, an edited volume in the Relational Perspectives Book Series, was published by Routledge in 2018, and has been well reviewed. His third book, Eating Disorders (New Introductions to Contemporary Psychoanalysis), will be released in 2022. In addition, Dr. Wooldridge has been interviewed by numerous media publications including Newsweek, Slate, WebMD, and others for his work. He is on the Scientific Advisory Council of the National Eating Disorders Association, Faculty at the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California (PINC) and the Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology (NCSPP), an Assistant Clinical Professor at UCSF’s Medical School, and has a private practice in Berkeley, CA.
DATE:
19th November 2022
VENUE:
ONLINE EVENT