Treatment of Ambiguous Loss Situations: Clinical Demonstrations and Case Presentations

Course Description:

This course deals with the trauma of ambiguous loss, and seeks to map its multiple manifestations in the context of ongoing trauma, uncertainty, and systemic disruption of individual, community, and state life following the events of October 7 and the war that followed. The course will distinguish between physical ambiguous loss - primarily kidnapping and enforced absence - and psychological ambiguous loss, as it manifests itself in situations of severe injury, personality and functional change, lack of emotional accessibility, and life situations that are interrupted but do not end in death.

The course will then present the physical loss as a multi-circuit trauma that operates simultaneously in four main circles: the individual, family members, the immediate community, and the general public. The course will examine how situations of kidnapping, prolonged detention, forced eviction from home, and the lack of a clear horizon of return, produce ongoing experiences of loss without end, and undermine boundaries of identity, belonging, roles, and meaning.

Through a current conceptual and clinical framework, discussion of examples from the field, and elaboration of therapeutic dilemmas, the course will offer tools for understanding how ambiguous loss operates in collective extreme situations, and will highlight principles for therapeutic, community, and systemic intervention in the reality of ongoing uncertainty.

Course objectives:

1. To provide a conceptual and clinical understanding of physical and psychological ambiguous loss, in its various manifestations among populations affected by the events of October 7 and the subsequent war.

2. To develop clinical thinking and therapeutic coping with situations of vague loss in a reality of ongoing uncertainty, through the analysis of clinical examples and processing dilemmas from the field.

About the lecturer:

Dr. Einat Yahana , clinical neuropsychologist and rehabilitation psychologist-instructor. Faculty member at the School of Behavioral Sciences at Tel Aviv-Yafo Academic. Lecturer and instructor at the Mifrasim Institute for Research and Teaching of Psychotherapy and director of "Namal Mivtachim" - a training center for the treatment and rehabilitation of victims of kidnapping and ambiguous loss. Since October 7, she has accompanied families of kidnapped and captive survivors and served as head of the rehabilitation department in the health system of the Abductees' Families Headquarters. She has over two decades of clinical experience in the public and private sectors working with adults, children and families in situations of trauma, bereavement, loss and change (Lewinstein Hospital, Sheba-Tel Hashomer, and NYUMC). She treats October 7 victims in a private clinic and is also involved in training treatment personnel, counseling and continuing education for various organizations. Her research and scientific publications deal with the psychological mechanisms that influence perception and adaptation to loss following life events.

Target audience:

Specialist and intern psychologists, clinical social workers or social workers with a master's degree with experience in therapeutic work, expressive and creative therapists with a master's degree, psychiatrists, clinical criminologists and graduate students in psychology.

Course cost:

750 ₪

The price of the course is subsidized thanks to a donation from an anonymous organization, with the aim of promoting the training of abduction-informed therapists and expanding knowledge and professional tools for dealing with the trauma of abduction and its clinical and social implications.