Presenter Aoife Martin
Proposition:
To explore how a Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT) dialogic lens can support parent caregivers of children with severe autism to make meaning of their self-experience in the context of this complex relationship.
The literature supports the co-construction of the dialogic self and the consequential negative impact of intrinsic autistic processes on the creation of a relational dialogic space. Over 2 years, 8 mothers attended CAT therapy with depression, anxiety, and complicated grief. Clinical material was explored through a dialogic theoretical lens to identify common reciprocal roles and maintaining problematic procedures.
Discussion:
In reformulating severe autism as a relational disorder and sharing a dialogic understanding of self and other, it was found that CAT tools provided ways of disentangling autistic relational constraints from the diminishing sense of self that may be experienced by parents and carers. Links were made between historical relational patterns and current distress, and elements of the therapeutic relationship were found to provide a reparative dialogical counterpoint to elements of this parental experience.
Implication:
Engaging in CAT offered parents the opportunity to construct a different understanding of their autistic child’s relational capacity and their response to it. Outcomes demonstrated the breadth of application a CAT dialogic frame has as a clinical intervention.
Presenter Information
Aoife Martin works as a Snr. Educational Psychologist in a service for children with severe autism & intellectual disability. She has worked there for 20 years. She realised that when working in a paediatric disability service, the skills she actually needed were more akin to an adult mental health service. She trained as a Cognitive Analytic psychotherapist and supervisor in Ireland and the UK. The Irish association for Cognitive Analytic Therapy (ICAT) is currently running a Level 1 and a Level 2 Practitioner training. CAT is a relational, time-limited and integrative psychotherapeutic approach.
If you have any questions regarding this event, please contact the Division of Psychotherapy at psychotherapy@psychologicalsociety.ie.