Psychotherapy’s Epic Pilgrim: The Inside Story of the Analytic Client
July 18-22, 2016
Course Description
The focus of this advanced seminar is on the lived experience of the analytic client by utilizing epic’s literary image as an interpretive aperture for the psychotherapeutic process. The primary aim is to renew and deepen an understanding of the client’s profoundly difficult and courageous psychological journey.
Fundamental to this training is the notion that depth psychological work is a soulful pilgrimage characterized by a spiritual and heroic descent to the deep psyche in pursuit of wholeness and the authentic self. Rather than rely on psychological theory to define the client’s process, this seminar turns to the metaphoric other, the epic poem, to describe the interior experience of the analytic pilgrim.
Through the characters, plot and psychological terrain of epic we look anew at the client’s motivation to journey, their images, affects, memories and wounds, the therapeutic bond, the encounter with the unconscious, and the act of story-telling.
Participants will learn about the corrective and healing function of psychological death and rebirth—dis-memberment and re-membrance. Contrary to one of the criticisms of depth psychotherapy, it will also be demonstrated that a client’s epic work is in service to self and others. The instructor will draw upon epic poetry, Jungian Depth Psychology, personal story and case vignettes to encourage participants to re-imagine their clients, their practice and their own psychological pilgrimage. By developing greater attunement to what our clients are suffering in the therapeutic process, we become more empathic and effective allies to psyche’s transformation. In order to enhance learning and engagement with one another, participants are encouraged to read at least one of the following epics prior to the seminar: The Epic of Gilgamesh (any translation), Homer’s Odyssey (any translation), Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, or Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
This seminar offers advanced training for clinicians who are committed to depth psychological work and who have a basic understanding of psychodynamic theory and practice.
This seminar meets 9:30 am – 12:30 pm Monday through Friday at LIBERA ACCADEMIA DI BELLE ARTE~~FIRENZE (LABA).
July 18-22, 2016
