Open Evening with Michael Soth

Open Evening with Michael Soth	download leaflet
21st century Psychotherapy - making it work for you ! at Friends Meeting House, St Giles, Oxford (Wed. February 22nd, 7.30pm) Therapy in the public imagination As psychotherapy has spread beyond the treatment of those labelled mentally-ill and has been accepted as a tool of personal development, it has become both fashionable and a media stunt. Michael will assure you tonight that therapy can be and do a whole lot more than talk shows and Hollywood would suggest. Failures of Therapy The burgeoning of therapy has also provoked criticism - therapy has its public adherents and detractors. Some people swear by it and say it has transformed their life, some people come out of it frustrated and disappointed, dismissing it as useless. It’s usually hard to tell whether these failures are down to therapy itself, the therapist’s particular approach, the therapist’s personal style or own hang-ups, the client’s resistance or maybe a mis-match between client and therapist. With more than 400 different approaches to choose from, and hundreds of therapists available in the region, you could spend your life sampling them all until you find the ‘right’ one for you. Dealing with psychotherapy’s own limitations of the past For a century the limitations of psychotherapy were mainly based on two problems: • the field of psychotherapy was itself fragmented into many contradictory approaches and schools, making it utterly confusing to the layperson. • psychotherapy inherited from Freud a collection of 19th century assumptions (especially concerning the relationship between body and mind, and the relationship between client and therapist) which have plagued the theory and limited the practice. The last two decades have seen a shift in regard to these two problems, in terms of an integration of approaches and through a paradigm shift into a more holistic, ecological and systemic perspective. 21st century psychotherapy As a result, psychotherapy is now - more than before - accessible without becoming simplistic. It is more capable of doing justice to the complexity of human life, rather than giving the pat answers of self-help and pop-psychology. This does not necessarily mean that therapy has to remain jargonised, mysterious and serious. Even when dealing with painful issues, it is possible to bring humour and vitality to the process. What Michael is offering tonight is an introduction to a kind of 21st century psychotherapy which promises to be more accessible, more elegant, more relevant, more passionate as well as involving a more generous embrace of human diversity. Taking it beyond insight, mental understanding and discipline makes it more effective and spontaneous and less effort at the same time.	Michael Soth Open Evening - Overview Michael will address questions such as: How therapy is mis-perceived ... • Therapy in the public imagination - how the Hollywood and TV image is misleading ... • The real failures of therapy • Personal development & psychological treatment Psychotherapy’s own limitations • The fragmented field of psychotherapy • 19th century assumptions 21st century psychotherapy - alive, experiential, relevant, passionate, elegant How does it work ? • Doing justice to complexity without being simplistic • Integration of therapies • Going beyond the ‘talking cure’- the body/mind What can and can’t therapy do ?
If you want to explore more personally and experientially for yourself, have a look at our ... Introductory Open Weekend Workshops Life Changes & Transitions Sat./Sun. 25/26 March 2006 Sat./Sun. 29/30 April 2006 Each weekend can be taken separately, as an experience in itself.