2015 Seminars
Toward a Psychotherapy of Depth:
Psychodynamics and the Interactional Unconscious
~Amelio A. D'Onofrio. PhD
The model of depth psychotherapy taught in this seminar integrates core insights of psychoanalytic theory regarding implicit and unconscious processes with elements of the existential-humanistic tradition that honors the intersubjective nature of therapeutic experience. This model appreciates both the power of unconscious dynamics and the patient’s own deep wisdom and capacity for integration and healing. Growth in psychotherapy begins to take place as the therapist is able to make contact with, tolerate, and contain the patient’s enacted traumas and difficult inner contents and create the kind of holding environment wherein new and healthier forms of relatedness can unfold.
This seminar offers training for clinicians who understand that there are rarely quick fixes to life’s complex problems and that the work of therapy is about co-creating new attachment bonds within the therapeutic dyad that allow the patient to earn more secure ways of being in the world. This view, of course, implies that the nature and demands of insight-oriented therapeutic work—where patients are received and known through the therapist’s own inner spaces—requires that we therapists have access to and understand not only the patient’s inner life, but our own.
This training is intended for therapists who wish to work at greater depths with their patients and who want to better understand the ever-present unconscious-to-unconscious dialogue transpiring between patient and therapist. Utilizing clinical examples and participants’ own case material, the seminars are designed to help therapists deepen their clinical understanding, expand their empathic horizons, work more proficiently with patients’ complicated dynamics and primitive processes, and refine their technical capabilities in responding therapeutically in the moment. Participants will learn to practice from a more mindful, intentional, and theoretically grounded stance and will emerge from the experience with a more refined and integrative approach to patient care.
This seminar is intended for clinicians who have at least a basic familiarity with psychodynamic or psychoanalytic thinking. Maximum enrollment: 12.
This seminar offers training for clinicians who understand that there are rarely quick fixes to life’s complex problems and that the work of therapy is about co-creating new attachment bonds within the therapeutic dyad that allow the patient to earn more secure ways of being in the world. This view, of course, implies that the nature and demands of insight-oriented therapeutic work—where patients are received and known through the therapist’s own inner spaces—requires that we therapists have access to and understand not only the patient’s inner life, but our own.
This training is intended for therapists who wish to work at greater depths with their patients and who want to better understand the ever-present unconscious-to-unconscious dialogue transpiring between patient and therapist. Utilizing clinical examples and participants’ own case material, the seminars are designed to help therapists deepen their clinical understanding, expand their empathic horizons, work more proficiently with patients’ complicated dynamics and primitive processes, and refine their technical capabilities in responding therapeutically in the moment. Participants will learn to practice from a more mindful, intentional, and theoretically grounded stance and will emerge from the experience with a more refined and integrative approach to patient care.
This seminar is intended for clinicians who have at least a basic familiarity with psychodynamic or psychoanalytic thinking. Maximum enrollment: 12.
Cultivating the Therapeutic in Clinical Supervision
~Amelio A. D’Onofrio, PhD
Learning to be therapeutic—to help others heal from traumas and wounds that run deep—requires that one engage not only in cognitive learning but also in the development of one’s deeper capacities to come face-to-face with human suffering. Developing one’s sensitivities to suffering, cultivating the ability to make contact with that suffering, and endeavoring to be an instrument of transformation, requires great courage. We find this courage not simply through the mastery of the knowledge and methods of our discipline—the development of a professional self—but we find that this courage takes shape as we are able to make contact with and understand the suffering in our own depths. That is, in the authentic movement toward becoming therapeutic we are implicitly engaged in the often subtle but disruptive shift from being the person of good will who desires to help others, to becoming one who by necessity must embark on his or her own inner journey of personal transformation.
If taken seriously, this journey can be one of great self-discovery. It can be a sometimes frightening journey filled with encounters with unknown parts of self and with unfelt pain but it can also be a journey that can lead to profound personal integration and healing. It is through this journey that we therapists discover our own deepest sensitivities for human suffering and it is here where we are not only able to find our skills and abilities to be therapeutic but we can also find the courage needed to be so. Simply put, to become truly therapeutic—to become a healer—the psychotherapist is required not only to work to develop a professional self—to learn and master external knowledge—but it requires that the committed therapist be engaged in the practice and cultivation of his or her inner life and personal self.
To this end, the primary intent of this seminar is to explore the dynamics involved in the psychotherapist’s movement from being a helper to becoming a healer. As such, the seminar is intended to provide a broad conceptual model for how those of us who supervise other therapists may accompany and help those in our charge along this journey.
The model of supervision (and by analogy, therapy) I present in the seminar concerns itself, fundamentally, with the encounter with and capacity for depth. By this I mean that a psychotherapy that offers the possibility for deep healing for patients requires of therapists (and, by necessity, the supervisors who teach them) to be able to encounter the darker and shadowy side of that which is most profoundly human in the other—the pain, the tragedy, the trauma, and those most primitive parts (which we all possess) that may, at times, overwhelm, engulf, and even destroy. It is in the encounter with these parts of our patients (and in ourselves) and in our ability to engage, contain, and help make sense of them that we are able to bring relief to our patients’ suffering and help them become more themselves.
The driving assumptions behind the approach offered in this seminar are rooted in the psychoanalytic and existential traditions. This seminar, therefore, would be most helpful to those individuals who have at least a rudimentary familiarity with those traditions and who desire to refine their ability to supervise accordingly. Maximum enrollment: 12
If taken seriously, this journey can be one of great self-discovery. It can be a sometimes frightening journey filled with encounters with unknown parts of self and with unfelt pain but it can also be a journey that can lead to profound personal integration and healing. It is through this journey that we therapists discover our own deepest sensitivities for human suffering and it is here where we are not only able to find our skills and abilities to be therapeutic but we can also find the courage needed to be so. Simply put, to become truly therapeutic—to become a healer—the psychotherapist is required not only to work to develop a professional self—to learn and master external knowledge—but it requires that the committed therapist be engaged in the practice and cultivation of his or her inner life and personal self.
To this end, the primary intent of this seminar is to explore the dynamics involved in the psychotherapist’s movement from being a helper to becoming a healer. As such, the seminar is intended to provide a broad conceptual model for how those of us who supervise other therapists may accompany and help those in our charge along this journey.
The model of supervision (and by analogy, therapy) I present in the seminar concerns itself, fundamentally, with the encounter with and capacity for depth. By this I mean that a psychotherapy that offers the possibility for deep healing for patients requires of therapists (and, by necessity, the supervisors who teach them) to be able to encounter the darker and shadowy side of that which is most profoundly human in the other—the pain, the tragedy, the trauma, and those most primitive parts (which we all possess) that may, at times, overwhelm, engulf, and even destroy. It is in the encounter with these parts of our patients (and in ourselves) and in our ability to engage, contain, and help make sense of them that we are able to bring relief to our patients’ suffering and help them become more themselves.
The driving assumptions behind the approach offered in this seminar are rooted in the psychoanalytic and existential traditions. This seminar, therefore, would be most helpful to those individuals who have at least a rudimentary familiarity with those traditions and who desire to refine their ability to supervise accordingly. Maximum enrollment: 12
Yoga and Mental Health: Healing from the Inside Out
~ Zsuzsa Kiraly, PhD, RYT
Emotional distress is a painful experience and it limits us in fully living our lives. While it is part of the human condition, it has become one of the leading causes of the most prevalent psychiatric conditions: anxiety, depression, and eating disorders, self-injury and other self-destructive behaviors. We live in a society that, paradoxically, presents ample occasions for triggering stress for us while offering distractions to counteract that same stress. We are also caught up in underlying feel good social expectations: “How are you?” is generally understood by most people as a request for reassurance – “I’m fine” – rather than an inquiry into the person’s genuine situation. This creates a vicious cycle, in which we move further and further away from both the causes of our distress as well as adaptive ways of coping with it. The end result is chronic stress that impacts our physical and mental health, and our relationships. When emotional pain sufficiently afflicts our lives, in one or all these arenas, we often turn outward for help: to medication, psychotherapy, 12-step programs, to something or someone to “fix” it.
There is a famous saying from the epic Mahabharata, “What is here, is elsewhere; what is not here, is nowhere.” There is no reason to search for anything outside ourselves because if it is not within, it is found nowhere. We ourselves are and have the solution to our distress. This is not to say that interventions (therapy, medication) are of no value, or even not necessary, at times. It is to say that we also need to look inside of ourselves. Fear, anxiety, trauma, and depression live inside of us: in our body and mind. But the very body that holds our suffering is also the most intelligent and powerful instrument for our healing. Observing, investigating, and understanding the body helps us open ways for self-care as well as support and augment the benefits of other forms of therapeutic interventions.
Ancient meditative practices, including yoga, developed systems of physical and mental disciplines to attain control of the body. These meditative practices offer a means of integrating aspects of ourselves (body, mind, spirit) and lessen the sense of separation between ourselves and others and the world around us. According to yogic philosophy, the integration and synchronicity of self and environment are the foundation of physical and mental health. Thus yoga offers a holistic healthcare approach in which we are the agent and have the agency to achieve physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
Meditative practices present a shift from doing to being because physical power and mental stability rise from a relaxation, not from force. Contemporary science has validated many of the reported and observed benefits of yoga and other meditative practices and thereby legitimized their application in many venues of the mainstream culture, including medicine, psychology, education, business, and the military.
This seminar will discuss how to utilize yoga, breathing exercises (pranayama), and other forms of meditation to relax and center the body and the mind in order to help us to experience and manage emotional distress with more equanimity and, in the process, heal ourselves. Specifically, the activation of the sympathetic nervous system in the stress response/distressed mental states will be discussed and practices to evoke the relaxation response (activate the parasympathetic nervous system) will be offered.
In addition, this seminar will give attention to the application of these techniques to counseling children and adults as well as to the self-care of the practitioner. This is an experiential seminar: each session will consist of a combination of lecture/discussion and practice of yoga poses, breathing exercises, and other forms of meditation.
This seminar is intended for practicing counselors, psychologists, and school psychologists, and graduate students. Participants are invited to bring yoga attire (comfortable clothing) and a yoga mat. Prior experience in meditative practices is helpful but not necessary.
There is a famous saying from the epic Mahabharata, “What is here, is elsewhere; what is not here, is nowhere.” There is no reason to search for anything outside ourselves because if it is not within, it is found nowhere. We ourselves are and have the solution to our distress. This is not to say that interventions (therapy, medication) are of no value, or even not necessary, at times. It is to say that we also need to look inside of ourselves. Fear, anxiety, trauma, and depression live inside of us: in our body and mind. But the very body that holds our suffering is also the most intelligent and powerful instrument for our healing. Observing, investigating, and understanding the body helps us open ways for self-care as well as support and augment the benefits of other forms of therapeutic interventions.
Ancient meditative practices, including yoga, developed systems of physical and mental disciplines to attain control of the body. These meditative practices offer a means of integrating aspects of ourselves (body, mind, spirit) and lessen the sense of separation between ourselves and others and the world around us. According to yogic philosophy, the integration and synchronicity of self and environment are the foundation of physical and mental health. Thus yoga offers a holistic healthcare approach in which we are the agent and have the agency to achieve physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
Meditative practices present a shift from doing to being because physical power and mental stability rise from a relaxation, not from force. Contemporary science has validated many of the reported and observed benefits of yoga and other meditative practices and thereby legitimized their application in many venues of the mainstream culture, including medicine, psychology, education, business, and the military.
This seminar will discuss how to utilize yoga, breathing exercises (pranayama), and other forms of meditation to relax and center the body and the mind in order to help us to experience and manage emotional distress with more equanimity and, in the process, heal ourselves. Specifically, the activation of the sympathetic nervous system in the stress response/distressed mental states will be discussed and practices to evoke the relaxation response (activate the parasympathetic nervous system) will be offered.
In addition, this seminar will give attention to the application of these techniques to counseling children and adults as well as to the self-care of the practitioner. This is an experiential seminar: each session will consist of a combination of lecture/discussion and practice of yoga poses, breathing exercises, and other forms of meditation.
This seminar is intended for practicing counselors, psychologists, and school psychologists, and graduate students. Participants are invited to bring yoga attire (comfortable clothing) and a yoga mat. Prior experience in meditative practices is helpful but not necessary.