2022
Monday 7th March from 7 to 9pm (London)
Prof. Robert Romanyshyn - Psychotherapy for End Times
Death is now the invisible presence haunting our therapy room, reminding us that the world as we have known it is ending and not knowing what kind of world might be beginning.
How do we do psychotherapy in such times when the impending sense of an ending darkens our every word, gesture and mood with fears, anxieties, strategies of denial and fantasies of sheltering in old, familiar patterns?
In his talk, I will show how the myths of Prometheus and Orpheus/Eurydice frame psychotherapy as a grieving process that takes us through the stages of love, loss, descent and transformation. Then, guided by the poets, a brief segment of a DVD film and some stories, I will discuss how the grieving process is a homecoming that heals our broken bonds with nature, with each other and with the larger community of ancestors of which we are a part.
ROBERT D. ROMANYSHYN is an Affiliate Member of The Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts. He has published eight books including Victor Frankenstein, the Monster and the Shadows of Technology: The Frankenstein Prophecies, Leaning Toward the Poet: Eavesdropping on the Poetry of Everyday Life, The Wounded Researcher, Ways of the Heart, The Soul in Grief: Love, Death, and Transformation, and Technology as Symptom & Dream. He has also published poems, numerous articles in psychology, philosophy, educational and literary journals, written a one act play about Frankenstein, and in 2009 he created a multi-media DVD entitled Antarctica: Inner journeys in the Outer World.
In 2015 he retired as an emeritus professor of Clinical Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute. He lives now with his wife, Prof. Veronica Goodchild, in the Aude region of southwest France.
Monday 9th May from 7 to 9pm (London)
Dr. Dina Glouberman - ImageWork: How to work with transformational imagery
In a sense, all approaches to therapy or transformation, including physical healing and pain reduction, can be considered imagery approaches. (Pincus & Sheikh, 2011) This is because our thoughts, feelings, behaviour and wellbeing are all grounded in our imagination. Deeply held pictures of ourselves and the world, emerging from our earliest childhood to the present day, guide our lives – often without our realising it. These pictures come from what I call the “everyday imagination,” our taken-for-granted perspective based on the past, our culture, our family, and the status quo.
Transforming this powerful yet often invisible background imagery and creating a new picture of self and world that is more life affirming must therefore form part of any significant change process. Much of what is referred to as neuroplasticity (Doidge, 2007) could equally be thought of as the plasticity of the imagination.
Over the past forty years or so, I have developed the practice of ImageWork to build on this plasticity of the imagination. It enables us to access the images or templates or memories that are implicitly guiding our lives, which may not be serving us well, or may, indeed, be harming us. It shows us “what we know but haven’t told ourselves”, as one student put it. Once these images become conscious, we can use our “transformational imagination” to allow and encourage them to transform so that they reflect a more balanced, creative and healthy truth – one that leads to a happier, healthier and more fulfilled life.
Because imagery is really another way of thinking about everything you can think about in words, it spans all the human dilemmas and can be used by a wide variety of practitioners from therapists to coaches to supervisors to spiritual directors. I have therefore divided it into Healing, Creative, and Transcendent imagery. I will give one or two examples of working with each category from my clinical practice. I will also offer some important principles of how to work with imagery most effectively.
Typically, when someone is considering a life change, the first step is to use Healing imagery to heal the past and present and thus enable the person to move on. The second step is to use Creative imagery for visioning the future, engaging the will and putting the vision into practice. At some stage, the client also needs to see the bigger picture of how this vision fits in with their life journey, and how to stay in balance once they have achieved the change they have been seeking, and that is where the Transcendent imagery fits in. Of course, all these stages are not really separate and interweave with each other.
Come prepared to do a little imaging yourself and discover a bit of the magic of the world of the imagination.
Dr DINA GLAUBERMAN is the co-founder and co-director of Skyros Holistic Holidays, which has pioneered community-oriented holistic health holidays since 1979. She is the author of the classic books Life Choices, Life Changes; The Joy of Burnout; You Are What You Imagine, and Into the Woods and Out Again, and co-editor, with Yannis Andricopoulos, of Skyros: Sunshine for the soul. Dr Glouberman has been a pioneer for the past 40 years in creating, teaching and practising the use of ImageWork, which harnesses the imagination that guides our lives and enables creative life choices and profound life changes. More recently, she founded and directs the Aurora Centre in southern Italy, where she offers trainings in ImageWork to therapists, counsellors, coaches, consultants and health professionals, and also facilitates ImageWork retreats. She is a course leader on the Faculty of the MA (Clinical) in Psychotherapy of the Tivoli Institute in Dublin, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Humanistic Psychology . Her forthcoming book ImageWork: The Complete Guide to Working With Transformational Imagery is being launched on April 7, 2022 (Britain). Her website is Www.dinaglouberman.com .
Monday 19th September from 7 to 9pm (London)
Prof. Etzel Cardena - Why every clinician should know about anomalous experiences
Anomalous experiences (AEs) can be defined as experiences that are unusual for a particular culture and time (e.g., mystical experiences), or that are not necessarily that unusual but challenge a culture}s mainstream account of reality (e.g., psi or parapsychological experiences). There is considerable evidence that AEs are not necessarily pathological and may, in contrast, relate to personal growth. In this presentation i will focus on what other variables may interact with AEs to make them pathogenic or salutogenic, and what questions should be forefront in clinical considerations.
ETZEL CARDENA was born and raised in México, has advanced degrees from Canada and the US, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. He holds the endowed Thorsen Chair in psychology at Lund University in Sweden, where he directs the Center for Research on Consciousness and Anomalous Psychology (CERCAP). His areas of research include alterations of consciousness and unusual or anomalous experiences (including psi phenomena), dissociative processes and acute posttraumatic reactions, the neurophenomenology of hypnosis and anomalous experiences, and the stream of consciousness during waking and altered states. He has around 400 publications, some in top journals in psychology and related disciplines, and his work has been covered by various media including the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the BBC. Various professional organizations have awarded his empirical, theoretical, historical, and pedagogical contributions, and his research has been funded by organizations in the US, Sweden, and Portugal. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition. He has also worked professionally in theatre as director, actor, and playwright.
Monday 7th November from 7 to 9pm (London)
Dr. Galit Atlas - Emotional Inheritance; Shedding light on how generational trauma affects our lives
This event will focus on ideas from Atlas’ new book Emotional inheritance. It will address silenced experiences that belong not only to us or to our patients, but to their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, and the ways they impact our lives. The clinical cases will focus on emotional material that is passed down from generation to generation. It will discuss intergenerational trauma, the power of attachment and the many faces of our emotional inheritance.
GALIT ATLAS is a psychoanalyst and clinical supervisor in private practice in New York City. A leader in the field of relational psychoanalysis, Dr. Atlas teaches and lectures throughout the United States and internationally. She is on the faculty at NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and faculty at the Four Year Adult and National Training Programs at NIP. Author of The Enigma of Desire: Sex, Longing and Belonging in Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2015) and Dramatic Dialogue: Contemporary Clinical Practice (co-authored with Lewis Aron, Routledge, 2017). She is the editor and a contributor to When Minds Meet: The Work of Lewis Aron (Routledge,2020).
Her new book Emotional Inheritance: A Therapist, Her Patients and the Legacy of Trauma is translated into 14 languages. Atlas serves on the editorial boards of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and of Psychoanalytic Perspectives and is the author of articles and book chapters that focus primarily on gender and sexuality. Her New York Times article “A tale of Two Twins” was the winner of a 2016 Gradiva award. www.galitatlas.com