Midwest Astrology Conference (MAC) 2008
June 21 & 22, 2008
Double Tree Hotel
6200 Quarry Lane
(off of Rockside Road)
Independence, OH
(216) 447-1300
For more information, visit the Midwest Astrology website or contact Louise McCombs.
More details & list of speakers for MAC conference will be posted at a later date.
Human Dimension of Psychotherapy Conference
When: July 18th – 20th, 2008
Where: Toronto, Canada
The conference will be in downtown Toronto at Hart House, which is a historic building at the University of Toronto near Bloor and St. George Ave.
Friday
7 – 7:15 pm – Introduction by Caroline Mardon: The Culture of Psychotherapy, Psychotherapy for our Culture.
Psychotherapy is situated within a cultural context, which has been a part of the psychodynamic, humanistic, existential and transpersonal traditions since their inception. What are the values that underlie this and what is their place with the cultural evolution that is taking place in Western culture.
7:15 – 9:30 pm - Keynote address: Linda Page: Is Psychotherapy a Profession?
In most parts of the world, psychotherapy is practiced by members of other professions (medicine, psychiatry, psychology, social work, counselling) although it meets most of the benchmarks of a profession on its own. Recent legislation in Ontario sets up a regulatory body for the profession of psychotherapy. The experience of international associations and practitioners from countries including the rest of Canada suggests possible scenarios for the development of psychotherapy. These scenarios have implications for how and where psychotherapists will be educated and trained.
Saturday
9:30 – 12 Kirk Schneider: Existential-Integrative Therapy: An Emerging Cross-disciplinary Paradigm
We live in a fervent time for existential-humanistic therapy. Increasingly, mainstream therapeutic approaches are recognizing the value of key existential themes—holism, presence, and the significance of the personal both within the client and between client and therapist. At the same time, however, there is an equally intensive trend toward short-term, solution focused approaches. Dynamic and exploratory therapies are increasingly considered a luxury which few need, and even fewer can afford. This talk will examine Existential-Integrative (EI) Psychotherapy, the approach featured in my new edited book (as well as in a recent review in APA’s Psyccritiques), in the light of these trends. EI therapy elucidates one way to understand and coordinate a variety of therapeutic approaches within an overarching existential context. After addressing the basics of this approach, I will touch upon the potential for EI therapy, not only to revitalize the profession, but the culture at large. I will pose urgent questions, both about the value of EI (or an EI oriented) therapy, as well as its accessibility to a diverse and growing clinical population.
12 – 1:15 Lunch
1:15 – 2:15 Student poster presentations (solicited from many schools)
2:30 – 5:00 Rae Johnson: The Embodied Psychotherapist: How We Teach Must Embody What We Teach.
Graduate training for a new era demands an integration of the latest knowledge in neuroscience, attachment theory, trauma and mindfulness in the service of prevention and mental health. And our research methodologies must incorporate body knowing. Infusing somatic psychology within the mainstream is both our challenge and our opportunity.
5:30 – 7:30 Cocktails, food and collegial conversation (Jim McNamara to MC)
Sunday
9:30 – 12 noon David Lukoff: Transpersonal Psychotherapy and the Integration of Spirituality.
Transpersonal psychotherapy draws upon both psychology and spiritual traditions to create a bold new vision of a psychologically-informed spirituality and a spiritually-based psychology. Perhaps the core assumption of transpersonal psychology is that individuals are essentially spiritual beings rather than simply a self or a psychological ego. This perspective has profound implications for both diagnosis and therapy. Transpersonal therapists must be prepared to distinguish healthy spirituality from spiritual problems, and from psychopathology with spiritual content. Very similar mental and behavioral states may be designated mental disorders in some cultural settings and spiritual experiences in others. Studies have also shown that clients bring a wide range of spiritual experiences and problems into psychotherapy. This talk will present behavioral and phenomenological factors along with good prognostic signs that can be used to distinguish healthy from unhealthy spirituality without pathologizing clients’ experiences or beliefs. For many people, having a relationship with a higher power is the foundation of their psychological well-being. This presentation will address how to provide spiritually-oriented psychotherapy and support for a client’s spiritual journey in recovery from mental disorders and spiritual problems.
12 – 1:15 Lunch
1:15 – 2:15 Founding meeting of Ontario AHP/ATP chapter (all welcome)
2:30 – 5:00 Dan Merkur: From Psychotherapy to Mysticism: The Scope of psychic Integration in Psychoanalysis
Working description: Where I've been going in my thinking is an increased emphasis on the principle of integration, with "mystical experience" at the ASC level, and the "synthetic function of the ego" at normal sobriety level, and Eros in the unconscious. Fixation, repression, etc., are seen as interruptions of or resistances to integration, so that therapy (in Maslow's sense of deficiency-repair) is not a topic in its own right, but rather is a subdivision of the larger topic, which is integration. In this way, (and agreeing with Grotstein, Eigen, Rubin & other contemporary mystic psychoanalysts) I can see deficiency-repair and the meditative (and/or entheogenic) mystical as different but partly overlapping subdivisions of the integrative.
Sponsored by:
The Living Institute
Contact us: info@a-ctapes.com
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