This workshop focuses on the control theory and how it relates to the practice of Reality Therapy. Demonstration with volunteers from the audience who will role-play actual clients they are now working with will be highlighted.
Memories may be treated as one-act dramas, dialogues or dreams, as volunteers use them, incorporate them in new ways and let them return to the past. Demonstration, with audience volunteers, of a single childhood memory to make changes in their current lives will illustrate Redecision Therapy.
The development of the capacities of the healthy real self is described along with the impairments in these capacities that ensue in the Disorders of the Self. A diagnostic system based on the Disorders of the Self is presented, its conceptual basis is explained, and it is compared with DSM IV. A central triadic psychodynamic theme of these disorders, i.e., self-activation leads to depression which leads to defense, is described.
Human problems can be seen as "games without end; " that is, as recurring behaviors based on the continuous application of rigid rules, but devoid of rules for the change of these rules. What are such "meta-rules" and how can they be introduced?
The client's task is to try to be open to his/her inner experiencing, disclosing it to the therapist. A client discovers difficulties in doing so, thus disclosing the resistances which are isomorphic with the client's difficulties in life more generally. The therapist's task is to teach and monitor this process.
The focus will be on the cognitive-behavioral treatment of adults who have been ''victimized'' by natural and intentional design. Specific assessment and treatment interventions will be critically examined and demonstrated.
Those who grow up in chemically dependent families have strong survivorship skills. Unfortunately, for too many, they continue to present to the world a false self often becoming our "closeted" depressed, angry and addicted client. This workshop focuses on 1) treatment orientation and priorities, and 2) core clinical issues. Due to the managed care environment, experiential focus will be on homework assignments.
The human reflex to summarize and animate experiences is a springboard for the formation of selves. Through lecture and live therapy demonstrations, Dr. Polster will show how to identify the population of selves within and how to restore linkage among them, creating a dependable sense of personal identity.
Patients come to therapy because they have problems. These problems range from difficulties in working, in social and sexual relationships and in functioning. Symptoms may be depression, anxiety and fear, or a general sense that life has no meaning. In all cases it can be seen that the body is emotionally crippled by chronic muscular tensions which limit the person's energy and decreases his vitality. In this workshop Lowen explains how one recognizes these tensions and how they can be released.
Szasz considers the role of responsibility in religion, civil and criminal law, medicine and the mental health professions; the differences among existential responsibility, moral blameworthiness and legal accountability; that connections between (mental) competence and responsibility; and relates all of the above to problems in psychotherapeutic theory and practice.