A seminar/workshop for experienced psychotherapists and counsellors interested in inquiring into and questioning the premises of their evolving practice.

Facilitated by Farhad Dalal

Limited to 6 participants

Saturday, 28^th February 2009

Totnes, Devon.

Cost: £70

The Purpose of the Workshop

It is not unusual for therapists to find themselves doing or saying things that deviate from established norms of good practice. We tend to do one of two things with these ‘slips’. We either keep these lapses to ourselves because we feel ashamed of having done something wrong, or we take them to supervision where they are treated as ‘enactments’ on the part of the therapist, which when understood, sheds light on the patient’s psychological processes.

The focus of the workshop will not be so much on the transgressions as ‘errors to be corrected’ (which might well be the case), but as opportunities for inquiring into and questioning the taken for granted premises of the theories and ways of thinking that the therapist subscribes to.

The Rationale for the Workshop

Supervision tends to be used in two ways: as a means of better understanding the patient/client’s state of mind, and as a means of catching and correcting deviations from established norms of good practice. These norms vary from school to school. For example, to be non-judgemental; not to teach, to avoid self-disclosure, to only take up the transference, to be abstinent, and so on. In the main, supervisee and supervisor both tend to accept a particular theory (say, that of Melanie Klein or Carl Rogers, etc.), which they then ‘apply’ to the clinical process. Each school has its own view of what constitutes a lapse on the part of the therapist.

But whatever one’s school of allegiance, the vicissitudes of day to day psychotherapy work continually test established conventions, and one inevitably finds oneself breaking one or other of the ‘rules’. Over time, some of these deviations become consolidated as new norms; they come to constitute ‘my way of working’. Consequently, one can come to feel increasingly at odds with the ways of thinking in the community one trained with. But are these really new ways of working and thinking, or are they just lapses on the part of the practitioner born of drift and a lack of rigour?

The workshop will provide an opportunity for therapists not only to explore and give voice to their evolving beliefs regarding clinical practice, but also to have them engaged with by peers in the field.

This seminar/workshop will critically use the ‘slips’ in technique to test and question not only the rationales for established norms of good practice, but also the new norms emerging within the therapist’s own evolving practice. In other words, it is not the intention of the workshop to provide a free pass to legitimate any and every kind of practice.

In sum, the workshop will not be so much about ‘applying’ a given theory to understand and correct ‘mistakes’ in technique. Rather, it will be more about using the ‘mistakes’ to question the theoretical premises according to which those acts were conceived of as mistakes in the first place. The intention is to help practitioners become more aware of the rationales for their evolving practice, and so to be able to speak with more confidence into their communities of practice regarding the reasons for the shifts in their professional identities.

Some Questions of interest

The questions that I am particularly interested in are based on the following premises:

If one conceives of human beings as intrinsically relational and social (rather than as differentiated individuals), then it follows that the therapist cannot be outside the clinical process, and that clinical phenomena must be co-created by both, patient and therapist.

Some of the questions of interest then are: What will good (ethical) practice look like in this paradigm? How is the notion of clinical responsibility to be understood in such a scenario?

Participants will bring their own questions of interest to the workshop.

Methodology

Membership will be limited to no more than six participants.

Group discussion will be the primary mode of engagement and learning.

Participants will be required to prepare for the workshop by a) doing some prescribed reading, and b) by bringing some case material for discussion, material pertinent to the questions and themes of the workshop.

Participants are invited from all kinds of contexts (institutional, private practice, etc.), whatever their primary modality (individual, group, family, etc.), and whatever their primary theoretical allegiance (cognitive, psychoanalytic, humanistic, etc.). The hope is that the range of perspectives will usefully bring different kinds of challenge to the table.

Timetable

9.30 am to 11.00 am  Session 1

11.00 am to11.30 am  Break

11.30 am to 1.00 pm  Session 2

1.00 pm to 2.00 pm Lunch (provided)

2.00 pm to 3.30 pm Session 3

3.30 pm to 4.00 pm Break

4.00 pm to 5.30 pm Session 4

Session 1

This will be an orientation session consisting of a facilitated group discussion around the prescribed reading. This will give participants an opportunity to get to know each other, and also to give voice to their interests, issues and questions.

Session 2-4

These sessions will be used as supervision in the manner previously described. Each participant will have an opportunity to present their case material and engage in a conversation with the group in order to tease out problems and issues of interest.

Dr. Farhad Dalal initially trained as an individual psychotherapist and then as a Group Analyst. He has been in private practice as psychotherapist and supervisor for about twenty years. He is a founder member of the South Devon Psychotherapy and Counselling Service. He is a clinical supervisor and training group analyst for the Institute of Group Analysis, (London). He also works with organizations. Until recently he was an Associate Fellow at the University of Hertfordshire’s Business School. He has published numerous papers on psychoanalysis, group analysis and racism, as well as two books - Taking the Group Seriously (1998 Jessica Kingsley) in which he argues against individualism and for the relational nature of human life, and Race, Colour and the Processes of Racialization (2002 Brunner-Routledge) in which he draws on diverse disciplines to form his understanding of some of the causes of the hatred of Others in general and racism in particular.