Online IOP for College Students and Emerging Adults in MA

CE/CME Courses

The Dynamic Interplay of Adult Development and the Treatment Process

1.0 CE/CME credit
Instructor: Steven D. Axelrod, PhD
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In this presentation Steven D. Axelrod, PhD, elaborates two perspectives on the psychology of adulthood–a developmental scheme of tasks and emerging capacities and the drivers for individual growth and vitality.
The developmental framework Dr. Axelrod described in the recently published paper “Growth in Adulthood: A Revised Psychoanalytic Framework for Adult Development” (2024, The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 77(1), 126–142.) is a modification and expansion of Erikson’s original epigenetic scheme that incorporates what we have learned from others’ observations and theorizing. Dr. Axelrod then describes how this developmental perspective can inform and improve our clinical work and will illustrate this with some case material.
Dr. Axelrod's discussion of the drivers of individual growth includes, but is not limited to, object finding and object usage in both treatment and “in the wild.” He pays special attention to what has been called the “developmental object” by Anne Hurry and others following the child analytic work of Anna Freud.
A consideration of follow-up data from psychotherapy outcome studies can give us a special window into the processes of growth in adulthood more generally. Some research evidence points to the existence of a group of psychotherapy/psychoanalysis patients who show continuing improvement and better adjustment over time post-termination. One instance of this has been called the “sleeper effect.” Exploration of the factors in treatment and the processes post treatment that sustain these kinds of gains comprises the final portion of this presentation.