Gestalt therapy envisions a radical conception of the self as temporal and emergent. This means it is a fluid self, continually changing through creative adjustment to its changing contacts with the world. One could think of the self in Gestalt therapy as an unending aesthetic project: Like all experience, it has to be made and remade as it navigates the passing of time. And it is reflexive, being both creator and created.
Well Being remains, in spite of Covid’s interruption, a plausible personal, corporate and planetary goal. I review the Age of Progress until Covid along with the barriers to continued progress. The belief in individual and collective Agency will determine our future. Efficacy, Optimism, and Imagination, the three parts of agency can be taught in the clinic, the classroom, and the corporation. Juliana of Norwich (1365) will be our beacon.
"Sometime between the years 2030 and 2050 Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) will become a numerical majority in society. It will become increasingly difficult for mental health professionals, and educators not to encounter clients and students who differ from them in terms of race, ethnicity and culture. Difficult dialogues on race and other sociodemographic identities (gender, sexual orientation or identity) have often served to polarize and obstruct mutual understanding rather than to clarify and increase mutual understanding. Most well intentioned people (mental health providers, educators and others) find themselves ill prepared to deal with the often-explosive race or gender related emotions that manifest themselves in interpersonal interactions and in employment and other public spaces.
Verbal conversations alone cannot produce sustainable change: somatic intelligence must be an integral part of sustainable change; verbal conversations are not sufficient. This workshop will experientially explore how to creatively use the related methods of Gendlen's "felt sense" and Gilligan's "relational trance".
This workshop will teach the application of the EFT Tango - and show its use across three modalities - Individual, couple and family therapy. How the Tango process impacts depression and anxiety will be explicated. Clinical sessions will be viewed and experiential exercises offered.
Dr. McWilliams will review ten different psychological lenses through which individual differences have been viewed (temperament, attachment style, observed clinical pattern, defensive structure, affective organization, implicit cognition, motivational tendencies, individual and cultural location on the self-definition versus self-in-relation polarity, central relational theme, level of severity of problem), emphasizing with clinical vignettes the practical value of appreciating each perspective. Intended to be directly relevant to participants' clinical work irrespective of their theoretical orientation or level of experience, this workshop welcomes case material and collaborative problem-solving.
This presentation will discuss ways to bolster resilience across the full life span from high-risk children youth adults and the elderly. It will examine the neurobiological and psycho -social changes that accompany engaging in resilience-engendering behaviors.
We are on the cusp of a new revolution that will change mental health care forever. The End of Mental Illness discards an outdated, stigmatizing paradigm and replaces it with a modern brain-based, whole-person program rooted in science and hope. No one is shamed for cancer or diabetes; likewise, no one should be shamed for depression and other brain health/mental health issues. Based on the world's largest functional brain imaging database, Dr. Amen will give you a completely new way to think about and treat issues such as anxiety, depression, bipolar disorders, ADHD, addictions, OCD, PTSD, schizophrenia and even personality disorders.
"In the United States, the omnipresence of racial bias and bigotry has led many to question the reasons for their persistence in light of widespread public condemnation. Social scientists have proposed a number of reasons for people’s failure to act: (a) the invisibility of modern forms of bias, (b) trivializing an incident as innocuous, (c) diffusion of responsibility, (d) fear of repercussions or retaliation, and (e) the paralysis of not knowing what to do. This presentation is aimed at addressing the last reason by providing participants with a repertoire of anti-bias strategies and tactics to overcome the expressions of microaggressions.