WHAT CAN THERAPY HOPE TO ACHIEVE ?

Since its beginnings, therapy has argued with itself over its proper goals and aspirations.
Are we seeking to bring our clients and ourselves to a state of of complete psychological health, in whatever terms the various approaches formulate this, e.g. genital character, enlightenment, primally clear, revolutionary consciousness, authentic selfhood, integrated bodymindspirit, all our issues worked through, ‘analysed right down to the bedrock’?
Or should our ambitions be more humble, seeking only to expose the basic wound, to come to terms with human grief and limitation, embrace ambivalence, reach the depressive position, accept existential pain?
There are moments in our experience as both therapists and clients which encourage us into each of these belief systems. When we identify with something more like the first option, the second seems paltry and compromised; when we identify with the second, the first seems grandiose and narcissistic. Is there a way to reconcile the two? Or a middle way between them? Or do we need to hold one in each hand? Or is it perhaps a matter of what suits our individual personality?
This workshop, conducted by two leading body psychotherapists, will explore all of these problems both experientially and theoretically. We will be entering into it without a prepared solution of our own, and we invite you to do the same.
The workshop is open to practitioners from all therapeutic schools and orientations, interested in exploring these fundamental aspects of our work.
We invite you to bring yourself, as a person and as a practitioner, with your passions and dilemmas, your wounds and shadows, your questions and beliefs, to contribute to the explorations which this weekend group experience seeks to open out.

 

Practical Information For further details, contact: Michael: michael@soth.co.uk Tel.: 01865 725 205 Please contact Michael for any queries related to booking, practical details or special needs you want to let us know about. Nick: nick@erthworks.co.uk Tel.: 01422 886525

Format of the Weekend:

We will meet 10am - 5pm on both days, with a couple of tea breaks during the morning and afternoon session, and one hour for lunch.

Booking & Bursaries:

To qualify for the early booking fee of £180, we need to receive your completed booking form and cheque by 1 Sept. ‘10. After that date, the full fee of £200 will be payable. These payments are non-refundable unless the workshop is cancelled. At any stage we will reserve 10% of the enrolments we receive for our bursary fund. To apply for a bursary, please send a deposit of at least £100 and a concise statement of your situation and the relevant reasons for the bursary application. We will send out confirmation of bookings, details of the venue and directions in March ‘09.

Nick Totton

I am a therapist and trainer with around 25 years experience. Originally a Reichian body therapist, my approach has become broad based and open to the spontaneous and unexpected. I have an MA in Psychoanalytic Studies, and have worked with Process Oriented Psychology and trained as a craniosacral therapist; together with Allison Priestman, I lead trainings and workshops in the style of work I have developed, Embodied-Relational Therapy. I have a 22 year old daughter. I have written several books, including Body Psychotherapy: An Introduction; Psychotherapy and Politics; and Press When Illuminated: New and Selected Poems. There is an extensive website at www.erthworks.co.uk. I live in Calderdale with my partner and grow vegetables.

Michael Soth

I describe myself these days as an integral-relational Body Psychotherapist, trainer and supervisor. Over the last 20 years I have been teaching on a variety of counselling courses and worked as Training Director at the Chiron Centre for Body Psychotherapy. Inheriting concepts, values and ways of working from both psychoanalytic and humanistic traditions, I am interested in the therapeutic relationship as a bodymind process between two people who are both wounded and whole.

I draw on a wide range of psychotherapeutic approaches, including Gestalt, Process-oriented Psychology, Psychosynthesis, Family Constellations and others from the humanistic side; and relational, intersubjective and object relations perspectives as well as Jungian and archetypal psychology from the psychoanalytic end of the spectrum.

I am currently setting up a new training for groupleaders and group facilitators, details of which are available at www.soth.co.uk, along with my published writing, papers and articles. I am married and live and practice in Oxford where I grow vegetables, too.