You are bound to fail as a facilitator if you get trapped in the client's character This is Part 2 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 [...]
You are bound to fail as a facilitator if you get trapped in the client's character This is Part 3 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 [...]
Finally, after about 9 months' work since our wonderful WordPress webdesigner finalised the basic framework, the new site is ready to launch. We are very happy with it for now, although some options are not implemented yet. At last, all the resources are in one place, and they are easily accessible and it is fairly [...]
New Books in Psychoanalysis are making available 1-hour long interviews with writers and scholars on their recently published books. Adam Phillips, “Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst” (Yale UP, 2014) Steven Kuchuck, ed., “Clinical Implications of the Psychoanalyst’s Life Experience” (Routledge, 2013) R. D. Hinshelwood, “Research on the Couch: Single-Case Studies, Subjectivity and Psychoanalytic [...]
We are hearing therapists becoming frustrated and disenchanted with the current CPD culture in the profession: repetitive input, endless lectures, overly theoretical PowerPoints and discussions. We will organise a mini-survey soon, to establish some facts on this. In contrast: just had some properly evaluated feedback from recent workshop in Brighton - have a look here [...]
Preparing a workshop for a new group or organisation that I have not worked with before can be useful, taking me back to first principles. On Saturday I will be running an experiential workshop for the foundation year of the Society of Analytical Psychology. Here is the workshop description I came up with and the [...]
IARPP Annual Conference 2015 June 25-28, 2015 The Relational Pulse: Controversies, Caricatures & Clinical Wisdom Intercontinental Toronto Centre Toronto, Canada Conference Chairs: Hazel Ipp, Margaret Black, Spyros D. Orfanos iarpp.net
A series of 10 interviews by Psychotherapy Excellence, starting with the question: What is Psychotherapy? (Michael's interview is session 8 in this series ... there will be a free webcast of the interview on Monday, July 21st) "At first sight, this may seem quite a basic opening question for a new series of interviews with [...]
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.There are also interviews - on the same page - with Michael’s colleagues Margaret Landale and Nick Totton. Here is the link: www.confer.uk.com/livesupervision.html This interview is in preparation for [...]
The more I am developing, the more impossible it gets? When counselling, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and associated disciplines are called 'impossible professions', this is often understood as a tongue-in-cheek conversational quip, a collective exclamation of mock exasperation: "What can you do? It's impossible!" - and then we continue as before. But I have come to think [...]
In an impossible profession, the therapist needs to fail In the last entry, I suggested that psychotherapy's depth, impact and effectiveness would increase dramatically, if we took the notion of the 'impossible profession' not as a quip, but as an essential reality - as the paradoxical foundation of our work. Today - without yet delving [...]
In this interview, Nancy Eichhorn was asking about Michael’s background and contribution to the Relational Body Psychotherapy Panel at the EABP/CABP International Conference coming up in September 2012 in Cambridge. Here are some headlines from the content of the interview: Do we have a shared understanding of what we mean by ‘relational’? Relational Body Psychotherapy [...]
How do we further continuing development in an 'impossible profession'? In the last two entries, I described the crisis point in professional development that therapists can experience when they are getting in touch with the inherent impossibility of the therapeutic endeavour, and how wrapped up this can become with a disturbing sense of professional failure [...]
To those of us in mid-life, James Hollis has written several relevant and highly recommended books (see list below). This is from the back cover of his book "Creating a Life: Finding Your Individual Path" (2000) Were therapists required by “truth in advertising” legislation to tell their reality, then virtually no one would enter therapy. [...]
If you have not seen that particular episode of Derren Brown's work, here is the link to the full program on 4oD. (You may need to register - for free- and can then watch the full episode). I am sure that many therapists will have misgivings about the programme, about how it was made, about [...]
Features of our courses: offering up-to-date, clinically relevant information and skills content and process are in line with and drawing on modern neuroscience integrating the whole spectrum of therapeutic approaches whole-person and experiential learning aware of embodiment and bodymind processes focussed on working with ‘what is’ theory emerges from practice and is actually helpful, not [...]
It's an important question, as it is the nebulous catch-all phrase increasingly used to capture the essential factor which apparently makes therapy work - or not! But when we probe a little deeper what people actually mean by the innocuous phrase (which is easily accepted as consensual - we all want quality of relationship, don't [...]
