Preparations for the Conference In a conference dedicated to conceptual clarification with the help of a philosopher, I thought we better make sure that we’ve got our terms straight, and that we all know what we’re talking about. Therefore, in the build-up to the conference, I wanted to prepare the [...]
Morit Heitzler will soon be running a workshop in Oxford on the topic of "The therapist's habitual position". Traditionally, when we describe a therapist's way of working, we think about theory and technique: what kind of concepts, models and theoretical framework underpins the approach? and what kind of interventions and therapeutic responses flow from this? [...]
Sun 26 Apr 2015, 10.00 am to 5.00 pm; Birkbeck College, London Keynote: Prof. Shaun Gallagher With Panelists: Susie Orbach, Nick Totton, Werner Prall, Birgit Heuer & Jean Knox Chair: Michael Soth The notions of 'embodiment' and 'intersubjectivity' are central to the therapeutic relationship and to modern notions of relationality. However, these notions [...]
The following piece was written in preparation for a training day on “First Sessions and Initial Assessments and Dilemmas”. The tension between (inter)subjective and objective aspects of the assessment encounter Whether it is an assessment at school, university or at work, or by a medical specialist or other expert, one question - running alongside the [...]
CPD Workshop: "How to work when therapy isn't working?" ...when the client’s conflict becomes the therapist’s conflict Traditional academic teaching of counselling and psychotherapy assumes that our discipline is similar to any other subject - whether we are learning history or engineering or psychology, there is a body of knowledge and a range of models [...]
The Psychotherapy Excellence webcast series on the topic 'Relational Psychotherapy - Praises and Pitfalls' is now complete. I contributed an interview on: The embodied phenomenology of enactment It is in the area of subliminal, non-verbal and pre-verbal communications between client and therapist that enactments incubate, long before they become noticeable, articulated and problematic. Implicit relational [...]
Applying Terentius’ (180 BC) 'Let nothing human be alien to me!' to the therapeutic space, I can ask myself: how much of human diversity does my consulting room invite, exclude or ignore? How much is structured out by default? What are the assumptions I take for granted – about myself, about therapy, about the client, [...]
Following on from Interview 2 with Tom Warnecke for Psychotherapy Excellence, as it was fresh on my mind, I have written a sequence of 100 bullet points on the question "How does psychotherapy work?" - follow me on Twitter (@INTEGRA_CPD) to catch the whole series, one every day ... The bullet points are not yet [...]
A series of 10 interviews by Psychotherapy Excellence - Interview 2: How Does Psychotherapy Work? Last Monday I completed the second in the Psychotherapy Excellence series of interviews, with Tom Warnecke, on the topic of how psychotherapy works. This is building on the first interview on the question “What is Psychotherapy?” some months ago. The [...]
from: Healthcare Professionals Network | Guardian Professional: http://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/views-from-the-nhs-frontline/2014/oct/06/political-attitudes-mental-health-harm-patients-staff We have become ever more used to hearing reports of a failing NHS in recent years. The NHS is becoming ever more politicised, and with it there are unseen and often unpredicted consequences for patients. While this makes providing compassionate and appropriate care more difficult across the [...]
Have you seen my recent blog postings “Different types of embodiment work”? I was surprised by the responses I received: as the content of the original talk was quite specialised, I assumed that it would have mainly been of interest to coaches and therapists who already work in an embodied way. Instead, what I have [...]
Mindfulness is in fashion – in therapy, business, health. But its promise is already flagging, people are becoming disenchanted with it. It’s not surprising that mindfulness has turned into another fad & can’t possibly live up to people’s desperate expectations & idealisations. Westerners are in grave danger of misreading the Eastern teachings on mindfulness through [...]
Interested in this proposal for an experiential workshop on 'mindfulness'? Mindfulness is all the rage and in fashion everywhere – in therapy, in business, in health. It’s supposed to cure all ills, increase performance, improve your relationships, help you make money, relieve all sorts of pain from physical to mental, and establish a peaceful society. [...]
This newsletter update is mainly to inform you about the proposed purpose and format of our online enquiry, but it also includes a reminder about a CPD event I am helping prepare which is not to be missed: a 1-day conference with philosopher Shaun Gallagher. To subscribe to future newsletters, join our mailing list. [...]
Clarkson, P. (1995) The Therapeutic Relationship. Whurr The working alliance is the part of client- psychotherapist relationship that enables the client and therapist to work together even when the patient client experiences some desires to the contrary. (Clarkson 1994 p. 31) The working alliance or psychotherapeutic alliance is probably first encountered as a concept in [...]
Ralph R Greenson (1967) Technique and Practice of Psychoanalysis Greenson defined the working alliance as: “the relatively non-and neurotic, rational, and realistic attitudes of the patient towards the analyst … It is this part of the patient-analyst relationship that enables the patient to identify with the analyst’s point of view and to work with the [...]
This 2008 paper "Supershrinks - What's the secret of their success?" by Scott Miller, Mark Hubble, and Barry Duncan is one of the inspiration for this enquiry. They claim that therapists DO over-estimate their effectiveness and the working alliance. It's a great read (that does not mean I agree with everything they say, but they [...]
A student submitted this cartoon - here is my response: Nice graphic - did you draw it, or is it copied from somewhere? Some suggestions for clarification: I think the face of the Id looks more like a cynical, demanding parent than a demanding, passionate or even greedy child. The poor Ego looks adequately squeezed [...]
Some key points of the recently published transcript: Different types of embodiment work Attending to the body to make therapy more impactful, we notice that rather than us impacting the client, the client’s character impacts on us. By opening to non-verbal, subliminal bodymind communications, therapists become more vulnerable to the impact of here & now [...]
You are bound to fail as a facilitator if you get trapped in the client's character This is Part 1 of an edited transcript of a teaching talk, given in June 2014 to a training group of facilitators, with a special emphasis on the bodymind connection and embodiment. The main point of this talk is [...]
