♦ Start the New Year with Professional Development! Space still available in the Workshop "World of Selfcraft: Understanding and Working with People Who Use Online Gaming." This Workshop is designed for Mental Health Practitioners
859 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA
February 6, 2010
At last count over 11.5 million people worldwide were playing World of Warcraft, and in the US alone has 2.5 million active players. While much research has been done on online gaming in terms of addiction, there has been less attention paid to the meanings and relational needs it has for our patients. This workshop draws on phenomenological and psychodynamic theory to understand how we can assess and explore World of Warcraft with our patients. Case presentations and vignettes will illustrate how to talk with your patients about World of Warcraft, and how to listen for meaning.
The objectives of this workshop are:
• Familiarize yourself with basic terms and concepts in online gaming.
• Assess the qualitative usage of their patients’ gaming.
• Apply general psychodynamic and self-psychological concepts to understand and integrate World of Warcraft content into treatment when indicated.
• Explore and discuss treatment issues of transference, interpretation and self-disclosure through case presentations.
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8:30-9:00 am REGISTRATION
9:00-10:00 am Understanding the basic terms (Q&A)and concepts
• Race, Class, and Gender in player characters.
• A primer of basic terms in WOW.
• Raiding, Instances and other models of play.
10:00-11:00 am Beyond an Addiction Model—Understanding the Phenomenology of Gaming
• When is too much too much? Quantitative vs. Qualitative assessment of use.
• Psychodynamic underpinnings
• Warcraft as selfobject vs. Symptom of understimulated Self
11:00-11:15 am Break
11:15-12:00 pm Case Presentation of work with a young couple with complicated game usage.
• Self-Disclosure in treatment—opportunities and pitfalls.
• Discussion
12:00-12:30 pm Special considerations when working with parents and adolescents around gaming
12:30 pm Course Adjourns
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Mike Langlois, MSW, LICSW is an adjunct faculty member of Boston College School for Social Work and a Teaching Associate in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He received his B.A. from Connecticut College in 1991, and his M.S.W from Smith College School for Social Work in 1994. He has 15 years of experience counseling adults and families. He serves on the NASW GLBT Issues committee, and the Massachusetts Commission on GLBT Youth. He has a private practice in Cambridge, MA.
Enrollment is limited to 40 people, and pre-registration is requested. Social Work CEs have been applied for with the Massachusetts Chapter of NASW. Please call 617-776-3409 or email mike@mikelanglois.com for more information.
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