Hand-outs – 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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The Client’s Conflict across the Window of Tolerance (2015)

Michael - Handouts — Thu, 14 Jul 2016 23:00:00 +0000

This handout is a more comprehensive and complicated version of the client's internal conflict, relating this conflict to the window of tolerance. There is a simpler version which only describes the client's internal conflict as occurring between their 'habitual mode' and their 'emergency'.

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The Client’s Conflict between ‘Habitual Mode’ and ‘Emergency’ (2015)

Michael - Handouts — Wed, 13 Jul 2016 23:00:00 +0000

The notion of the client's conflict is foundational in all depth psychotherapy. This hand-out here is a more evolved and updated version of the 1998 hand-out on the client's internal conflict. There is also a slightly more comprehensive and complicated version which relates this conflict to the 'window of tolerance'.

There are many ways to language and conceptualise the client’s internal conflict (Freud’s Id-Ego-Superego, TA’s Child-Adult-Parent, object relations theory, sub-personalities etc.), and over the years I have tried to find a formulation which speaks to therapists from across the traditions, helping us towards an integrative appreciation of the vicissitudes inherent in the therapeutic position vis-a-vis not a monolithic individual [remembering that the word 'individual’ literally means undivided], but systematically opposed and conflicting parts or polarities. Developmental depth psychology assumes that these conflicts are chronic and largely unconscious, habitually frozen and structured into a person's personality and identity. Because the client cannot help but approach therapy - the way they approach much of life - through their wounding, through the lens of the pain and their defences against it (see: The wounding enters) - the client's conflict implies two opposing constructions of therapy (i.e. two mutually exclusive versions of therapy - which then immediately becomes a dilemma for the therapist, too - see: The client's conflict becomes the therapist's conflict).

The best and most generic formulation I have been able to find is to conceptualise the client’s internal conflict as occurring between their 'habitual mode' and their 'emergency' [rooted in the early Gestalt formulation of the conflict between 'acute high-level emergency' and 'chronic low-level emergency']. I have been using this formulation in my teaching since the mid-1990s, but this version of the hand-out makes the therapist's dilemma more obvious.

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The Main 5 Conflicting Aspects of the Supervisor Role (2015)

Michael - Handouts — Mon, 11 May 2015 23:00:00 +0000

This handout was put together after supervision teaching session in June 2015, trying to clarify the various tasks and aspects of the supervisor role, which supervisee's expect or project. They are all in various degrees of tension and conflict with each other, and whilst only two of them may be considered legitimately part of 'supervision proper', in practice they all do come in at times and may support and complement on the one hand or conflict and interfere with the work of supervision on the other. The supervisory role inevitably contains two conflicting aspects which are in constant tension with each other: a) as an elder, it is the supervisorâ€s task to maintain client advocacy and to make sure that the supervisee practices within the responsibilities, competencies, ethics and frames which the general public can expect from a practitioner; b) as an elder, it is also the supervisor's task to champion the supervisee's development towards their full potential, mentoring them, watching over them and protecting as well as facilitating them much as a supportive elder sibling would do. So the supervisor needs to champion the interests and welfare of the client as well as the supervisee, and needs to keep operating with an awareness of that triangle. In situations where there is conflict between client and supervisee, the supervisor cannot be expected to be exclusively on the supervisee's side. In that moment, the supervisor becomes like a guardian of the profession, monitoring and challenging the supervisee's lack of professional competency. If there is a complaint by the client against the therapist, it is precisely because of client advocacy that the supervisor is co-responsible for the supervisee's work. At the far end, the supervisor might need to take a position that they cannot ethically support the supervisee's work. These two conflicting roles are necessarily inherent in the supervisor role. There are other roles which the supervisee may project onto the supervisor, which are not - strictly speaking - part of the tasks and role of the supervisor. However, there are certain aspects of the therapist, the assessor, the tutor, and the colleague/peer which inevitably do come into the supervision. All of these to some extent can inform/complement or conflict/interfere with the tasks of supervision. In some organisations clinical and managerial SV are carried out by the same person (because of the inherent conflict between these two roles, usually not a good idea).

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Different Paradigms of Embodiment Work in Relation to Character (2014)

Michael - Handouts — Thu, 11 Sep 2014 23:00:00 +0000

This handout is a summary of a flip chart for Integration Training (summarising the transcript of my talk on the history and theory of embodiment work). Different types of embodiment of work can be differentiated by how they position themselves in relation to the client's character. Any kind of instructional awareness or mindfulness exercise will have to be received and followed by the client's ego, and will therefore have a tendency to be applied within the established personality structure. Any such practice will eventually have to come up against the habitual bodymind limitations imposed by character. The question then is: what kind of practice can engage with, challenge and transcend character? I proposed that at that point the teacher/therapist/coach will have to become relationally engaged, rather than taking a fixed teacher position.

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How can we Distinguish between Psychotherapy and Counselling? (2014)

Michael - Handouts — Thu, 11 Sep 2014 23:00:00 +0000

This handout in response to an interview by Psychotherapy Excellence is an attempt to clarify the question 'What is psychotherapy?' by distinguishing it from other, similar disciplines, like counselling, coaching and psycho-education. In practice, this is impossible, as these disciplines are hopelessly mixed up, after borrowing from each other, cross-fertilising as well as appropriating and belatedly jumping on prior bandwagons for decades. Most practitioners across these disciplines have little idea about the origins of their work, the traditions which the various approaches draw from, the giants on the shoulders of whom we have the benefit of standing. So no clear definition is possible: there are coaches doing therapeutic work, therapists doing counselling, counsellors doing coaching, much of it in an undifferentiated eclectic mix of approaches, which makes it fairly unpredictable for the average client to know what they are actually signing up for. In addition, the former British Association for Counselling - in a clever socio-political coup and with hardly any external consultation - re-branded itself in 2000 to unilaterally incorporate psychotherapy, changing its name and its claim to the British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy, and calling its flagship journal 'Therapy Today'. If the ordinary public was thoroughly confused before that coup about the possible distinctions between counselling and psychotherapy, they are now positively bewildered (which suits some branches of the field which are seen as more 'accessible' according to polls). So this hand-out is not relating to any of this 'market' reality. Rather, it is trying to propose some possible distinctions if one were to validate all the 'therapeutic' disciplines in a non-partisan way for each providing something valid and essential that serves some people well some of the time. A layperson might well say about each and every one of them that they found it 'helpful' and 'therapeutic'. So together all the disciplines could be considered complementary aspects of a whole package which would require an embracing and comprehensive attitude towards the diverse needs for psychological help which are possible. What are some useful criteria and categories for thinking about these different needs? I am suggesting a possible clarifying definition of the various disciplines based on whether they work within the client's established personality structure, against as well as within that personality structure, or within, against and beyond that structure. We can use the metaphor of a house, and whether we are attempting a re-decoration job or a re-construction (which always needs to involve re-decoration as well). According to that definition, psychotherapy would need to both transcend (i.e. go beyond) counselling as well as include it, as well as coaching and psycho-education. So the tricky thing here is that I am not defining them as peers, next to each other, but more like Russian dolls, one containing and incorporating the other. The downside of that is that people inevitably turn that into a hierarchy of 'better' and 'worse' and 'superior' and 'inferior', which is not at all an implied or necessary consequence: why go and pay a builder for a re-construction job when all you need is a lick of paint in the living room? Yes, the builder would have to know how to paint as well as build walls and knock out windows, but that does not mean the builder is 'better' at painting. Conversely, you would not go and pay a painter for knocking through a wall which may endanger the stability of the whole house. This leads to a comprehensive vision of different stages, phases and modes of change in the bigger, evolutionary scheme of things: years ago Wilber had proposed a distinction between 'translation' and 'transformation', based on the same criterion as (change within the established structure versus change of the established structure) - I am adding a third: 'contradiction: change against the established structure. Wilber's terms are meant to apply to all kinds of systems, not just people, and certainly not just people's psychology. But the closer we follow psychological process, the more we realise that a lot of therapeutic effort is expended fighting against established habitual patterns (which is not a bad thing, unless it is a blind effort denying the need for transformation as well as contradiction). These three modes of change are like different universes where different laws and principles apply: what ‘works’ in translation, stops ‘working’ in contradiction, and is opposite to what ‘works’ in transformation. The same is true for transformation and translation: what ‘works’ in one is profoundly unhelpful, counterproductive or dangerous in the other.

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The 4 Main Countertransference Objects in the Enactment (2014)

Michael - Handouts — Thu, 11 Sep 2014 23:00:00 +0000

This handout is a more detailed description of Contact 3 in the '3 Kinds of Contact' - it describes the 4 objects which are all constellated in the countertransference experience during an enactment - the therapist can experience all of them in different degrees and proportions, and in conflict/tension with each other.

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Psychotherapy Integration – an Integrative Triangle Freud – Reich – Jung (2014)

Michael - Handouts — Mon, 23 Jun 2014 23:00:00 +0000

This handout is a graphical summary of an old idea from 1994 and based on a 2002 presentation: An Integrative Triangle: Freud, Reich and Jung (1994).

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Edge of Chaos (2014)

Michael - Handouts — Tue, 17 Jun 2014 23:00:00 +0000

This handout is a summary of a flip chart which I put together on a CPD weekend I was running with Nick Totton. You can find some traces of some earlier handouts, but this is a more comprehensive formulation for the purposes of this topic.

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Edge of Chaos – Client’s Conflict becomes Therapist’s Conflict (2014)

Michael - Handouts — Mon, 16 Jun 2014 23:00:00 +0000

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