Portfolio – INTEGRA CPD

Zoom Recording: Working with the Breath in Psychotherapy

MM — Sun, 10 May 2020 11:14:00 +0000

You can find the original workshop description for this CPD event here.

As you can see from that description, I had originally suggested to run a series of 5 days (a weekend and 3 follow-up days), because past experience suggests that it takes at least a weekend to introduce the basic principles and the four recurring pitfalls, and several further days for people to become familiar with ways of addressing and navigating these pitfalls. This all depends, of course, how much experience you have with the technique to begin with.

This particular session was scheduled for 3 hours, and could only be an introduction to the general principles, rather than the detailed experiential exploration and practice proposed for the workshop series (which is necessary for anybody to become thoroughly acquainted and confident with the technique).

Preparatory Materials

In preparation for the session, I suggest you read the following long paper, written many years ago (1995), on Working with Polarities / Dialogue / Two-chair work. In many places, this paper is quite laboured, somewhat repetitive and obviously written by a German, but the basic principles and distinctions still seem sound to me after 25 years, and will form the basis and starting point of the teaching.

Here is an edited transcript of an interview, addressing some key questions in anticipation of a past CPD workshops on two-chair work; same interview as an mp3 audio file.

If you want to do more detailed preparation (especially if you are not that familiar with the technique), you can watch the following online videos, by a variety of Gestalt therapists, demonstrating two-chair work. I suggest you watch them with both an appreciative and critically enquiring attitude, experimenting internally with identifying both with the client and therapist. I suggest you watch for charged and significant moments in the interaction, and pay attention especially to the issue of spontaneity versus performance (how natural & emergent versus contrived & instructed does it seem). One of the main stumbling blocks in using the technique is that it very obviously is a 'technique', a therapeutic exercise and tool, that requires the client's collaboration and can therefore become artificial and contrived.

Gestalt Therapy Role-Play - Two-Chair Technique with Work Perfomance Issue

Gestalt Therapy Role-Play - Two-Chair Technique with the Internal Critic

Dr Peter Pearson Demonstrates Two-Chair Work

Two Chair Work -TA Therapy Explained

Materials

Agenda/Overview for Zoom call
Working with Polarities / Gestalt Dialogue / ‘Two-chair’ work © 1995 by Michael Soth
Summary: The Technique of Two-chair work © 1995 by Michael Soth

To gain access to the full resource, please log-in if you are a member already (and then re-fresh this page after log-in), or to become a member of the site register here (it's free).

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Zoom Recording: Mastering the Creative Therapeutic Technique of Two-chair Work

MM — Sat, 02 May 2020 13:32:45 +0000

You can find the original workshop description for this CPD event here.

Preparatory Materials

Here is an edited transcript of an interview, addressing some key questions in anticipation of a past CPD workshops on two-chair work; same interview as an mp3 audio file.

Gestalt Therapy Role-Play - Two-Chair Technique with Work Perfomance Issue

Gestalt Therapy Role-Play - Two-Chair Technique with the Internal Critic

Dr Peter Pearson Demonstrates Two-Chair Work

Two Chair Work -TA Therapy Explained

Materials

Agenda/Overview for Zoom call
Working with Polarities / Gestalt Dialogue / ‘Two-chair’ work © 1995 by Michael Soth
Summary: The Technique of Two-chair work © 1995 by Michael Soth

To gain access to the full resource, please log-in if you are a member already (and then re-fresh this page after log-in), or to become a member of the site register here (it's free).

The post Zoom Recording: Mastering the Creative Therapeutic Technique of Two-chair Work appeared first on INTEGRA CPD.

Towards embodied-relational therapy by (re-)integrating psychoanalysis & humanistic Body Psychotherapy

Michael - Handouts — Fri, 02 Aug 2019 15:31:42 +0000

By bringing together the bodymind expertise of the body-oriented tradition and the relational expertise of both humanistic and psychoanalytic traditions, we can develop a 21st century embodied-relational way of working that views the whole client-therapist relationship as a complex bodymind intersubjective system. Rather than a meeting of minds, we are involved in an encounter between two bodyminds, both with spontaneous/involuntary and reflective/voluntary impulses and faculties, creating a dance and dialogue across the physical, emotional, imaginal and mental dimensions of experience.
The following graphic attempts to summarise the re-integration of these traditions, towards a paradoxical position which remains relationally fluid, flexible and aware of transference-countertransference entanglements.
In simple practical terms that means: I want to be aware that any body-oriented intervention can be made or received through:
1. an objectifying one-person psychology stance,
2. an attuned and regulating one-and-a-half-person psychology stance, or …
3. as a two-person psychology intersubjective response.
In my view of relationality, all three stances each have their partial and limited validity – it is the therapist’s capacity to be aware of the enactments which occur via these stances and fluidly move between this diversity of relational spaces which is conducive to providing a relational container.

This re-integration lends the powerful techniques of the body-oriented approaches the relational depth and containment which makes them interpersonally and intra-psychically transformative rather than merely utilising the body as an objectifying therapeutic tool in an effortful, goal-oriented top-down strategic fashion.

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Sharpe, Christina (2016) In the Wake: On Blackness And Being

Michael - Recommended Books — Thu, 27 Sep 2018 12:53:09 +0000

Book Review:

Sharpe, Christina (2016) In the Wake: On Blackness And Being

Book Review to be completed. Please feel free to submit your own comments below to be included in the review.

Reference: Sharpe, Christina (2016) In the Wake: On Blackness And Being. Duke University Press.

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Relational complications in current trauma therapy (Morit Heitzler & Michael Soth 2018)

Michael - Articles & Papers — Mon, 23 Jul 2018 14:31:18 +0000

Trauma therapy, aided by revolutionary neuroscientific understandings, has been very successful over the last 20 years or so, and has expanded enormously. New trauma therapies have proliferated, new tools, techniques and methodolgies have been developed, the reach and scope of treatable conditions has been extended and public and scientific acclaim (NICE guidelines) as well as financial success have followed (Ecker, 2012; Levine, 1997; Kalsched, 1996; Rothschild, 2000; Schore, 2003; van der Kolk, 1996).
Having extended their reach beyond the traditional focus on critical incident debriefing and single-event trauma, the modern trauma therapies, however, have reached a threshold. Increasingly, trauma therapists come into supervision distraught, frustrated and despirited because it is not working as it ‘should’.
Supervisees report that clients who initially present with circumscribed single-event trauma either cannot or do not respond well to standard trauma techniques like finding a safe place, body scans, mindfulness, or learning techniques for self-soothing. Many clients, although apparently desperate, fail to cooperate or exhibit active resistance. Some push and test the boundaries of therapy (e.g. demanding contact in between sessions), question or criticise the therapist, and generally create an atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust. Or they just fail to get better in terms of the reduction of trauma symptoms.
In response to these unexpected problems, therapists report confusion or incompetence, shock or frustration, or - when more intense - feeling powerless, used or worthless. Occasionally therapists make sense of their response in terms of vicarious traumatisation.

This paper is a collaboration between Morit Heitzler and Michael Soth from our shared vantage point as supervisors. Morit has been practising a variety of trauma therapies since the mid-1990s, integrating Babette Rothschild’s Somatic Trauma Therapy, E.M.D.R, Sensorimotor Therapy, Somatic Experiencing, Trauma Constellations and various other trauma therapies. Michael is known for integrating humanistic and psychoanalytic traditions to bring a more comprehensive embodied understanding to the relational vicissitudes of therapy (Soth 2005a).

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Perel, E. (2017) The State Of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

Michael - Recommended Books — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 23:39:19 +0000

Book Review:

Perel, E. (2017) The State Of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

Book Review to be completed. Please feel free to submit your own comments below to be included in the review.

Reference: Perel, E. (2017) The State Of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity. Yellow Kite.

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Book Review: “Somatic Experience in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy” by William F. Cornell (2015)

Michael - Articles & Papers — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 10:33:44 +0000

This book review was written for the journal Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy, and you can find the 1500-word version there. But I got so engrossed with the book and the issues it raises, I wrote a whole discussion, plus I also included lengthy key paragraphs from the book. This piece here is therefore significantly longer than a book review, about 13000 words.

Abstract:
This is a long, long book review, which will probably become a separate article, as it goes way beyond commenting on the book itself. It became that long because I felt so inspired by the book that I seriously engaged with its substance. It is a book at the cutting edge of somatic psychology, and at the forefront of re-integrating the psychoanalytic and body psychotherapy traditions. Anybody interested in these topics needs to read this book.
For those of you interested in this integration, the book prompted me to engage with it for a whole week's worth of writing, i.e. expanding the book review that was required into a serious and comprehensive response (and I didn't, as Bill pointed out, even include commentary for what are arguably two of the most important chapters at the end of the book). For the first time in many years (since my chapter on embodied countertransference, really, 12 years ago), this book review therefore includes some ideas and notions which I have been teaching for quite a few years now, but have not set down in writing.
It addresses these ideas on a fairly abstract level, not readily applicable to the nitty-gritty of our practice, but it does address the question in some depth what might be required to get beyond switching and oscillating between the paradigms of the two traditions and get closer towards some integration.

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Mcgilchrist, I. (2012) The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

Michael - Recommended Books — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 10:24:50 +0000

Book Review:

Mcgilchrist, I. (2012) The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

Book Review to be completed. Please feel free to submit your own comments below to be included in the review.

Reference: Mcgilchrist, I. (2012) The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. Yale University Press; 2nd edition.

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Cornell, W. F. (2015) Somatic Experience in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy: In the expressive language of the living

Michael - Recommended Books — Wed, 23 Aug 2017 10:18:26 +0000

Book Review:

Cornell, W. F. (2015) Somatic Experience in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy: In the expressive language of the living

Book Review to be completed. Please feel free to submit your own comments below to be included in the review.

Reference: Cornell, W. F. (2015) Somatic Experience in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy: In the expressive language of the living. Routledge; 1 edition (14 April 2015).

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Body Psychotherapy and the Body in Supervision – Interview for CONFER (2013)

MM — Wed, 08 Feb 2017 06:25:41 +0000

In this interview, Jane Ryan from CONFER was asking Michael about Body Psychotherapy, the role of the body in our emotional lives, and the body in supervision, in preparation for the upcoming event in the series ‘LIVE SUPERVISION – THE BODY’ which Michael has entitled: ‘The Fractal Self in Supervision’.

“Live supervision is an ideal context for illustrating a key feature of enactment: like a bar of soap in the bath, it is elusive. It shape-shifts between multiple self-states, different people, various levels of experience and awareness (somatic, emotional, mental). The harder I grasp and try to pin it down, the more likely it is to slip from my grip. But in the group context, it is then likely to slip into somebody else, and specifically into somebody else’s bodymind process. By attending both to the relational and the bodymind field in the group context, there may be a way in this session to demonstrate the following principle: ‘The more levels of parallel process can be held in awareness in the here and now, the more likely it is that transformative containment of enactment can occur’. Michael will illustrate how he extends the notion of parallel process to both interpersonal (transference-countertransference) processes as well as intra-psychic (body-mind) processes.”

Listen to the audio-file (.mp3)

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