with Cassio Campello, MD, LPC

Wednesday, May 13th, 2026 | 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM EST

On Zoom Only – 1 CE

Participation is FREE

$17 Admin Fee for each CE

Registration closes MAY 13TH at 10:00 AM EST

In clinical practice, symptoms are often treated as problems to eliminate. Modern Psychoanalytic and neuropsychoanalytic perspectives suggest something different: symptoms may be organized, adaptive efforts to regulate internal experience and preserve psychological balance.

This presentation examines how symptoms, resistance, and aggression function both within the patient and the therapeutic relationship—and how therapists may inadvertently reinforce the very patterns they hope to transform. Through clinical vignettes, we will see how familiar interventions such as reassurance, clarification, or even silence can sustain dynamics like ambivalence, dependency, and narcissistic transference—often serving as the patient’s attempt to manage overwhelming or destabilizing feelings.

Drawing on contemporary theory and clinical process, this talk reframes resistance as protective, aggression as organizing, and the therapist as a steady, responsive partner in the patient’s capacity for self-regulation. Emphasis is placed on working patiently with symptoms, supporting rather than disrupting defensive structures, and fostering the conditions for deeper, more sustainable change to emerge.

Course Objectives – Participants will be able to:

• Identify symptoms as regulatory processes that sustain psychic balance, not just as pathological issues.
• Explain the role of aggression in organizing intrapsychic and interpersonal dynamics.
• Describe resistance as a possible protective mechanism that preserves the patient’s existing regulatory system.
• Recognize ways in which therapist interventions may inadvertently maintain or reinforce symptomatic patterns.

Meet your speaker: Cassio Campello, MD, LPC

Cassio Campello, MD, LPC, is a psychoanalytic clinician and educator with extensive experience integrating neuroscience, affect regulation, and psychotherapy. He is an Advanced Psychoanalytic Candidate at the Academy of Clinical and Applied Psychoanalysis (ACAP) and a Licensed Professional Counselor in New Jersey. Dr. Campello’s office is in Livingston, NJ. He is also is on the clinical staff at the North Jersey Consultation Center (ACAP), and serves as an Adjunct Instructor of Psychology at Caldwell University. His prior career as a board-certified anesthesiologist informs his neuropsychoanalytic approach to addiction, trauma, and emotional regulation.

Email: cassio.mze@gmail.com