Helena Vissing

Please Note: To preserve and respect both intellectual property rights and confidentiality, the seminar will not be recorded, nor is recording permitted.

Embodied Maternal Subjectivity: Somatic Thinking in the Clinical Relationship

Seminar description:

This seminar will examine the clinical significance of maternal subjectivity as a deeply somatic and relational phenomenon. Drawing from somatic psychology, psychoanalysis, and perinatal clinical work, I will propose that maternal embodiment offers a crucial lens through which to understand transference dynamics—not as abstract relational patterns, but as fully embodied and coregulatory processes. We will explore how attuning to the somatic dimensions of maternal subjectivity is crucial for clinicians to recognize and engage with unconscious communication, enactments, and repair in an embodied way. The presentation will include clinical vignettes and invite participants into an experiential and reflective space.

About the Speaker:

Helena Vissing, Psy.D., SEP, PMH-C, is a somatically and psychoanalytically trained psychologist and Associate Professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She specializes in perinatal mental health and trauma and is the author of Somatic Maternal Healing: Psychodynamic and Somatic Trauma Treatment for Perinatal Mental Health (Routledge). Her work integrates somatic psychology, psychoanalysis, and matricentric feminism frameworks with an emphasis on embodiment and healing.