Workshop in Athens: Embodied Dimensions of Transference, Countertransference & Supervision

Workshop in Athens: Embodied Dimensions of Transference, Countertransference & Supervision

For the leaflet in Greek, please scroll to the bottom of this page ...

Engaging with therapeutic impasses, breakdowns and stuckness by integrating non-verbal communication, somatic processes and ‘implicit relational knowing’

“How can we use our own embodied awareness and our perception of the client's bodymind to maximise our understanding of the intersubjective dynamics in the therapeutic process?”

This workshop is based on integrating the wisdom and expertise of two diverse and in many ways contradictory traditions: the psychoanalytic tradition and the body-oriented Reichian and post-Reichian tradition. Psychoanalysis has developed incredible sensitivity to unconscious mental processes and relational vicissitudes, but remains limited to the ‘talking cure’.

Body psychotherapy has developed a profound understanding of bodymind processes, and a rich and creative toolbox of working experientially bottom-up towards an integration of physical, emotional, imaginal and mental aspects of being, but remains limited by fixed relational stances on the part of the therapist and a lack of awareness around countertransference (where it is understood as the therapist’s problem only, rather than also containing information about the client’s unconscious).

By bringing the two traditions together, we get the best of both worlds, leading to profound possibilities of deepening the therapeutic process, making therapy more effective, and dealing with otherwise unmanageable impasses and complications.

Theoretical background to this workshop for body-oriented therpists

Whereas recognising and working with the transference has been an essential aspect of the Reichian tradition, working in the transference and with the countertransference has been a neglected part of the therapeutic relationship in body-oriented work. Most humanistic therapists share with Freud the classical assumption that countertransference boils down to the therapist’s own ‘stuff’ or pathology, and is therefore best dealt with by further therapeutic work on one's own process and character as a therapist, towards authenticity or congruence.

As long as we reduce countertransference - in David Boadella’s terms – to an “interference with contact”, our work can not benefit from what the psychoanalytic tradition calls the ‘countertransference revolution’: the recognition that the transference and countertransference “interlock” (in Heinrich Racker’s terms) and that some of our experience in the therapeutic position can give us deep insight into the client’s inner world, including their early relational experiences which contributed to their character formation. This interlocking depends upon ‘somatic resonance’, but goes way beyond its traditional meaning as ‘feeling the client’s feelings’. The ‘countertransference revolution’ helps us recognise how the “client’s conflict becomes the therapist’s conflict”.

The fact that body-oriented tradition has overlooked and ignored the ‘countertransference revolution’ is curious, because it is precisely embodied perception should enable the therapist to be much more acutely aware of the ways in which the client's unconscious experience is communicated nonverbally, subliminally - via empathic attunement, somatic resonance, projective identification - and thus appears in the countertransference.

“Within the Body Psychotherapy tradition … the relational vicissitudes of the therapeutic endeavour are still under-theorised. Thus, a holistic and phenomenological two-person psychology as bodymind process still awaits formulation.”

Workshop format

Michael has been working on re-integrating the Reichian and psychoanalytic traditions since the 1980’s and is an internationally recognised trainer in this field.

In this workshop, we will use participants’ own personal-professional experience and client material to learn experientially and theoretically, using role-plays to work through supervision vignettes in an embodied and experiential way. Michael will interweave the group process with the learning as well as skills practice, to demonstrate and teach, drawing on our shared experience in the group.

Learning Objectives

  • to deepen and enhance our ‘implicit relational knowing’
  • to deepen our awareness of the relational significance of non-verbal communication
  • to apply the insight of modern neuroscience to our practice
  • to integrate ‘one-person‘, ‘one-and-a-half-person’ and ‘two-person psychology’
  • to recognise oscillations in the working alliance in response to unconscious processes
  • to recognise transference and countertransference as bodymind processes
  • to understand the principles and application of the countertransference revolution
  • to recognise the therapeutic potential of impasses and enactments

Biography Michael Soth

Michael Soth is an integral-relational Body Psychotherapist, trainer and supervisor based in Oxford, UK, with 30 years’ experience of practising and teaching from an integrative perspective. He originally trained at the Chiron Centre for Body Psychotherapy in London, where he later worked as a Training Director for 18 years.

Drawing on concepts, values and ways of working from a broad-spectrum range of psychotherapeutic approaches across both psychoanalytic and humanistic traditions, he is interested in the therapeutic relationship as a bodymind process between two people who are both wounded and whole.

He has written numerous articles and several book chapters and is a frequent presenter at conferences. He was one of the editors of the “Handbook for Body Psychotherapy and Somatic Psychology” published in 2015. Extracts from his published writing as well as summaries of presentations and hand-outs are available at www.integra-cpd.co.uk, or find him on Facebook and Twitter (INTEGRA_CPD).

Dates, Times & Venue

Sat. & Sun. 21 & 22 January 2017

10.00 – 18.00

Papanastasiou 20, Neo Psichiko, Athens, Greece

Cost

€100 for the whole weekend if booked before 2 January 2017

€120 for the whole weekend if booked after 2 January 2017

Επιπλέον κείμενο

Ενώ το να αναγνωρίζουμε και να εργαζόμαστε με τη μεταβίβαση έχει υπάρξει ένα βασικό στοιχείο της Ραϊχικής παράδοσης, το να εργαζόμαστε μέσα στη μεταβίβαση και στην αντιμεταβίβαση έχει υπάρξει ένα παραμελημένο κομμάτι της θεραπευτικής σχέσης στη σωματικά προσανατολισμένη θεραπεία. Οι πιο πολλοί ανθρωπιστικοί θεραπευτές μοιράζονται με τον Φρόυντ την κλασσική υπόθεση ότι η αντιμεταβίβαση συνοψίζεται στα θέματα του ίδιου του θεραπευτή ή στην παθολογία του και συνεπώς αντιμετωπίζεται καλύτερα με περαιτέρω θεραπευτική εργασία επί της προσωπικής διεργασίας και του χαρακτήρα ως θεραπευτή, με στόχο την αυθεντικότητα ή τη συνέπεια.

 

Όσο αναγάγουμε την αντιμεταβίβαση σε μια «παρεμβολή στην επαφή» (με τους όρους του David Boadella), η εργασία μας δεν μπορεί να επωφεληθεί από αυτό που η ψυχαναλυτική παράδοση ονομάζει «την επανάσταση της αντιμεταβίβασης»: η αναγνώριση ότι η μεταβίβαση και η αντιμεταβίβαση «αλληλοεμπλέκονται» (με τον όρο του Heinrich Racker) και ένα μέρος της εμπειρίας μας στη θεραπευτική θέση μπορεί να μας δώσει βαθιά επίγνωση για τον εσωτερικό κόσμο του θεραπευόμενου, συμπεριλαμβανομένων των πρώιμων σχεσιακών βιωμάτων που έχουν συνεισφέρει στη δημιουργία του χαρακτήρα του. Αυτή η αλληλοεμπλοκή εξαρτάται από τη σωματική αντήχηση (somatic resonance), αλλά είναι πολύ διαφορετική από την κλασσική έννοια του «νιώθω τα συναισθήματα του θεραπευόμενου». Η «επανάσταση της αντιμεταβίβασης» μάς βοηθάει να αναγνωρίσουμε πώς η «σύγκρουση του θεραπευόμενου γίνεται η σύγκρουση του θεραπευτή».

 

Είναι περίεργο που η σωματικά προσανατολισμένη παράδοση έχει παραβλέψει και αγνοήσει «την επανάσταση της αντιμεταβίβασης», επειδή ακριβώς η ενσώματη ακρίβεια είναι η οποία θα έπρεπε να επιτρέπει στον θεραπευτή να είναι πολύ περισσότερο ενήμερος των τρόπων με τους οποίους η ασυνείδητη εμπειρία του θεραπευόμενου επικοινωνείται μη λεκτικά, υποσυνείδητα δια μέσω ενσυναισθητικού συντονισμού, σωματικής αντήχησης, προβολικής ταύτισης και συνεπώς παρουσιάζεται στην αντιμεταβίβαση.

«Εντός της παράδοσης της Σωματικής Ψυχοθεραπείας… οι σχεσιακές δυσκολίες της θεραπευτικού εγχειρήματος είναι ακόμα ελλιπώς θεωρητικοποιημένες. Έτσι, μια ολιστική και φαινομενολογική ψυχολογία των δύο προσώπων ως διεργασία ψυχοσώματος ακόμα παραμένει να αναπτυχθεί.»

By |2017-03-07T19:53:36+00:00December 30th, 2016|CPD Workshops, Courses & Events|0 Comments

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