Experiential methods enliven therapy through dynamic experiences that promote dynamic realizations. We will explore methods that make therapy a visual art, recognizing the visual realizations are neurologically encoded more robustly than words, hence more easily accessed when needed. We will explore the use of gestures, objects, and even sounds to empower change. We will learn the latest advances in therapist sculpting. Lecture, demonstration, and small group exercises will be used
Despite the common framing of depression as a medical illness, there is much more hard evidence pointing to social factors leading to the large and still growing population of depression sufferers. In this presentation, the focus will be on the social factors that lead to and exacerbate depression. How therapy, itself a social process, can make use of hypnotic and strategic approaches to experientially teach skills known to reduce and even prevent depression will be explored.
Gestalt therapy and Ericksonian hypnotherapy are experiential methods of change. In combination they can be synergistic. Psychotherapy is best when clients have a first hand experience of an alive therapeutic process. Such dynamic, empowering experiences pave the way for dynamic understandings. Drs. Polster and Zeig will offer brief introductions to their approaches. They will demonstrate their methods through live therapeutic sessions and they will engage with each other and the participants to examine commonalities and differences in their work.
Gestalt therapy and Ericksonian hypnotherapy are experiential methods of change. In combination they can be synergistic. Psychotherapy is best when clients have a first hand experience of an alive therapeutic process. Such dynamic, empowering experiences pave the way for dynamic understandings. Drs. Polster and Zeig will offer brief introductions to their approaches. They will demonstrate their methods through live therapeutic sessions and they will engage with each other and the participants to examine commonalities and differences in their work.
Patients enter therapy trapped in games far too complicated to solve by themselves. The therapist offers insights by simplifying the double and triple roles in the Drama Triangle, and offers clear choices by simplifying the possible escape routes to use. An experiential exercise is included.
Changing mood and perspective is central in brief therapy. Experiential methods can be more immediately effective than traditional didactic approaches. All art is, by definition, "experiential." Altering mood and perspective is the point of it - whether drama, painting, literature, dance or music. Movies use multilayered methods for change. The viewer is often unaware of the intricate dramatic, experiential techniques that filmmakers use to exert influence. Social psychology studies the way in which people are influenced outside of awareness.
A model of brief therapy incorporating current developments in psychodynamic, interpersonal, attachment, experiential, and systems approaches will be presented. This approach is designed to be of help with the so-called difficult client who has chronically dysfunctional ways of relating to others. Videotaped segments of actual sessions will illustrate formulation and intervention strategies.
An experiential orientation empowers therapeutic change. Dramatic experiential methods can be used by any clinician in every stage of the therapeutic process including assessment, in session treatment and homework assignments. Techniques to be demonstrated and practiced include therapist sculpting, symbolic assignments and analogical tasks.