Intuition is an invaluable asset for a clinician. Coupled with empathy, intuition helps the therapist to sense accurately the nonverbal messages of the client and to respond sensitively and appropriately to these cues.
The aim of this workshop is to help participants understand and nurture their clinical intuition through the study of symbols, keeping a personal journal, using painting and guided imagery techniques.
Why do we fall ill? Why do we get the specific disease? This seminar will provide answers to these questions based on different theoretical perspectives: psychoanalysis (Franz Alexander, Francoise Dolto, Joyce McDougall) alternative medicine ( acupuncture and homeopathy) and contemporary research findings with patients.
The following diseases will be explored from a psychological perspective: coronary heart disease and hypertension, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, ulcerative colitis, ulcer migraine headaches and cancer.
The participants will also have the opportunity to explore experientially their personal symptoms.
Many individuals, because of difficult neonatal and infantile experiences, have not been able to ‘enter’ their body. Their physical ego, the kernel of the self, has been formed in a problematic way lasting till adult life and appearing as body dysphoria, physical distress, organic disease or psychosomatic disorders.
In this workshop we will examine the formation of the invisible membrane embracing the psychosoma during the first months of life and we will reflect on the negative outcome of an inadequate body-mind integration during childhood and adult life.
Some psychotherapy schools emphasize and explore the therapeutic relationship while others take it for granted. In this workshop we will find out how a transference relationship develops early in the therapeutic process independent of the theoretical perspective espoused by the therapist and the conscious feelings of the client for the therapist. Transference reactions which are not recognized as such block the therapeutic process, so it is useful for a therapist to be able to understand and work with these reactions as well as his/her own countertransferance feelings to the client.
We often believe that all people who ask help are suitable for psychotherapy. However, in many cases, the problems confronting the person cannot be resolved through therapy alone. How do we investigate the suitability of a prospective client for psychotherapy?
What other resources should we look for to help this client? Are we the right person to help the specific client? What are the common mistakes made by therapists as they endeavour to help people?
In this workshop we will investigate the archaic Oedipus complex according to Klein’s theory focusing on the composite parental figure and Meltzer’s claustrum concept.
Then we will discuss the myth of the Minotaur as described by Grotstein and will search our own infantile deamons through experiential activities .
Relaxation techniques are often used in cases of severe anxiety as well as in stress management and physical problems, i.e. headaches, hypertension, pain etc.
In this workshop participants experience 4 different methods of relaxation and receive instructions about the advantages and disadvantages of each.
