I just signed up for a Saturday symposium about Asperger’s.   If your wish to sign up here is the link www.vistadelmar.org/continuingeducationunits.

Here is the information sent to me by a friend.

Method for Treating Youngsters Diagnosed with Asperger’s Disorder
Presented by an expert who brings a psychoanalytic understanding and approach to working therapeutically with children and adolescents diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome.

Katharine Gould, LCSW is a faculty member of the Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy program at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis and a recent member of the New Center for Psychoanalysis. She was the issue editor and contributor to Psychoanalytic Inquiry on the topic of psychoanalytic work with patients diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. Dr. Gould also has a private practice in Santa Monica.

Dr. Gould’s presentation challenges the misinformed opinion that psychodynamic psychotherapy is largely ineffective with patients diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS). Using a psychodynamic approach Ms. Gould demonstrates how she was able to uncover the keen longing for attachment that lay beneath one boy’s unrelated and alienating behaviors – behaviors that left this rigid and perseverating six year-old boy trapped and isolated from peers, parents, and teachers. As she introduces first dialog and then characters into his mechanized rituals, the young boy begins to see his therapist seeing him and learns reciprocity as he is guided into play. An unplanned early termination provokes an unexpected demonstration by him of what he has learned. From her clinical material you will gain insight into the deficits that cause the peculiar asocial behaviors typical of the AS character, recognize the extraordinary challenges that an AS child presents for parents and peers, and learn a method of playing with the AS child that teaches reciprocity and the feeling of being found.