Sunday, February 28, 2010

Updated:

 

The SEA Forum is an opportunity for members to engage with existential and phenomenological issues presented by a variety of speakers.  Subjects of discussion may range from the speaker’s personal therapeutic practice, to the arguments of a particular philosopher, to current debates between different therapeutic approaches or styles.  

 

Speakers are often themselves members of the SEA presenting perhaps their own work, research or philosophical interests and welcoming discussion of them.  Sometimes speakers come from other therapeutic traditions but have a desire to engage with SEA members informed by existential-phenomenological ways of working.   

 

The forum is held two or three times each academic term usually during the last week of the month.  They commence at 7:00pm and, typically finish around 8:30pm after having the chance for discussion with the speaker and refreshments. Entrance charges are made to cover costs: £5.00 (SEA Members), £8.00 (Non-Members). Check out the Forthcoming Events page for a full list of SEA Events, venues and charges.

 

The organiser of forum events is Meghan Craig. Members are heartily encouraged to make suggestions for future speakers or topics, and to give feedback on our forum events.

 

For more information about Forum events or to be included on the e-mail list to be notified about forthcoming forum events contact:

 

Forum Organiser:

Meghan Craig

forum@existentialanalysis.co.uk

 

 

 

 

Forthcoming SEA Forum:

 

Check out our forthcoming Events page for a full list of what is happening in the world of Existential Analysis in the near future.

 

 

More Forum will be organised shortly

 

 

 

 

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Further details of forthcoming Forums

will follow shortly...

 

 

Events contact details:

 

If you would like to find out more information about SEA Forum and Discussion Group Events - please feel free to contact the following members. You will also find more information about on the Forum and Discussion pages.

 

 

Forum Organiser:

Meghan Craig

forum@existentialanalysis.co.uk  

 

 

 

 

Previous SEA Forum:

 

Friday 26th February 2010:

 

Forum - Organised by Meghan Craig

 

Existentialism

to Post-Existentialism

 

With Del Loewenthal

 

‘Post-existential’ is taken to mean ‘after’ Heidegger yet looking to retain as a starting point aspects of existentialism and phenomenology, together with developments in, for example, psychoanalysis, postmodernism, structuralism and feminism, following the existential-analytic tradition of Laing and Wittgenstein’s critique of theory. Post-existentialism will be explored in relation to individual and group psychological therapeutic practice theory and research. An attempt is made to offer a place where we might still be able to think about how alienated we are, through valuing existential notions such as experience and meaning, whilst questioning other aspects such as existentialism’s inferred narcissism and the place it has come to take up with regards to such aspects as psychoanalysis and the political.

 

Professor Del Loewenthal is Director of the Research Centre for Therapeutic Education, Roehampton University where he also directs the doctoral programmes in Psychotherapy and Counselling and in Counselling Psychology. Del is an existential analytic psychotherapist, counselling psychologist and psychotherapist working in London and Brighton. Recent books include: ‘Childhood, Wellbeing and a Therapeutic Ethos’ (Karnac 2009) and ‘Against and For CBT’ (2008, PCCS Books), both co-edited with

Richard House. He is currently writing ‘Post-existentialism and the Psychological Therapies’ (Karnac, forthcoming). His various other professional roles include: founding editor of the European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling (Routledge) and founding auditor of the Society for Existential Analysis.

 

Venue: The Club Room, October Gallery

24 Old Gloucester St, Bloomsbury, WC1N

(nearest tubes: Holborn, Russell Sq)

 

Entrance: £8.00 (or £5.00 for SEA Members/Students)

 

Download Poster

 

Forum Organiser:

Meghan Craig

forum@existentialanalysis.co.uk

 

 

 

 

Friday 29th January 2010:

 

Illness as a Path – A Journey to the Dark Places of Wisdom

 

With Gabriella Otty

 

This forum is adapted from a paper presented at the SEA conference in October 2009. It will explore and conceptualise the profound psychological and spiritual transformation experienced by the presenter as she witnessed her father suffering illness that would eventually lead to his death. Gabriella will discuss this experience as an existential crisis. By confronting an individual with their own mortality and forcing them to re-evaluate the assumptions and beliefs on which they have based their life, illness can become a turning point, a life opening experience. She will also explore how those who choose to accept rather than fight their physical illness are led to a path of self-discovery, self-acceptance, and spiritual healing. The challenges posed to us in the work we do with clients affected by illness or terminal disease will be considered, and the ways in which we sustain them as fellow travellers, we are enriched and transformed ourselves.

 

Gabriella Otty began her professional career as a conference interpreter and lecturer on the PG Diploma in Conference Interpretation Techniques at the University of Westminster in London. Since 2003 she has worked as a voluntary bereavement counsellor for Cruse Bereavement Care and is currently retraining as a psychotherapist at the School of Psychotherapy and Counselling Psychology at Regent’s College. Her other interests include acting, theatre, cinema, reading, Bikram Yoga and dance.

 

 

 

 

Friday 27th November:

 

Forum - with Emmy van Deurzen, Sarah Young and authors

of a new book on existential supervision.

 

Existential Perspectives on Supervision

 

We hope to generate an open discussion about supervision in general and existential supervision in particular. In what ways can an existential perspective on supervision widen the horizon of psychotherapy? How is existential supervision distinctive?

 

There will be an opportunity to browse and even buy (with a 25% discount) the new book, Existential Perspectives on Supervision, which contains chapters by members of the Society several of whom will be present and speaking at the Forum.

 

The discussion will be followed by drinks and nibbles generously funded by Palgrave.

 

 

 

Friday 30th October 2009:

 

Forum - Diana Mitchell, Bernie Joy & David Tassell

 

Three Personal Encounters with the Beliefs, Assumptions and Aspirations of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

 

 

 

The aim of this forum is to generate an open discussion about CBT which is not only taking over therapy in the NHS but seems to be moving into existentially orientated courses of psychotherapy.  One of the strengths of the existential approach is to question our assumptions.  We hope to show how our exposure to the beliefs, assumptions and aspirations of CBT might have reaffirmed for us the value of Existential Phenomenological Therapy (EPT).

 

 

Friday 19th June 2008:

 

SEA Forum - with Manu Bazzano

 

A true Person of No Status: Zen & the Art of Existential Therapy

 

A ‘true person’ was how Daoists defined a wise person. The Zen tradition called an accomplished practitioner ‘a true person of no status’ (mui shinnin). ‘No status’ indicates the existential uncertainty of being thrown in the midst of an impermanent world where working for power, wealth and prestige is futile. A true person escapes these trappings and is able to respond to life directly. A true person is able to say: here I am.

 

Both Zen and existential therapy are at variance with the discourse of manipulative authority that constitutes mainstream therapy today. A creative synthesis of these two approaches provides a viable alternative to the demands of the market and the philistine pragmatism that dominates the current zeitgeist.

 

Manu Bazzano is a philosopher, counsellor and psychotherapist in private practice in North London and a tutor at the NSPC (New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling). He has been a practitioner of Zen Buddhism for many years and was ordained in 2004. He edited two best-selling poetry anthologies: Zen Poems and Haiku for Lovers. His latest book is Buddha is Dead: Nietzsche and the Dawn of European Zen. The Speed of Angels: Love, Insomnia & Information Technology will come out in the winter of 2009-10

 

Venue: October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester St, Bloomsbury, WC1N

(nearest tubes: Holborn, Russell Sq). Entrance: £8.00 (or £5.00 for SEA Members and Students) Starts at 7pm.

 

visit: www.manubazzano.com

 

 

 

Thursday 21st May 2008:

 

Forum - with Samuel Klein

A Leaping the Abyss: Existential Responses to Therapeutic Challenges.

 

What is Existentialist Theology? What are authentic responses to religious crisis within an existentialist framework? With reference to the writings of Miguel De Unamuno, Paul Tillich, Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Buber, we will explore the need for congruence between private faith and action in the public square, between modes of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’, and the impact of a personal crisis of faith on a client’s self-actualisation. This session will consider empathetic responses to religious crisis incorporating existentialist principles, which address a client’s self-concept directly, openly and genuinely, as well as practical measures to provide an environment where religious growth and self-development is possible within an existentialist framework.

 

Samuel Klein is Academic Director of the Birkbeck Forum on Religion and Public Life, Community Director of the Saatchi Synagogue and Executive Director of The Coexistence Trust, an international parliamentary interfaith network, based in the House of Lords.  Samuel received an MA in History of Art from University College London following a degree in Theology & Philosophy of Religion from Jesus College, Cambridge.  Prior to Cambridge, he attended The Yavneh Rabbinic Seminary in Israel, and subsequently studied at the Shapell College for Contemporary Jewish Thought in Jerusalem.  A father of three, Samuel recently completed the Foundation Course in Psychotherapy and Counselling Psychology at Regents College.

 

More about Samuel Klein

 

 

 

Friday 24th April 2008:

 

Forum - Mary Lynne Ellis

 

‘Time In Practice’.

 

In this talk Mary Lynne Ellis will focus on the importance of the theme of time in the psychotherapy relationship. She will explore the clinical relevance of phenomenological perspectives on time through the work of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty as well as the autobiographical writing of Eva Hoffman. In the light of these Mary Lynne considers the limitations of the emphasis on spatial metaphors in psychoanalytic theory. She will reflect on how our assumptions about time affect our conceptualizations of memory, forgetting, language, embodiment and identities. Her talk will be illustrated throughout with clinical vignettes.

 

Mary Lynne Ellis is a member of SEA. She is a qualified analytical psychotherapist and art therapist with twenty-five years’ experience. She is in private practice in North London. She has an M.A. in Modern European Philosophy and has lectured and published widely on phenomenological perspectives in psychotherapy. She is also a practising artist. Mary Lynne’s book, Time In Practice, Analytical Perspectives on the Times of Our Lives (Karnac) was published in 2008.

 

October Gallery (2nd floor), 24 Old Gloucester Rd, London, WC1N.  Nearest tubes: Holborn, Chancery Lane and  Russell Square.

 

Entrance:    £8.00  (or £5 for SEA members and students)

 

 

Friday 28th November 2008:

 

Forum - presented by Martina Leeven

 

"Fleeing in the Face of It: thoughts and dialogue on our inescapable reminder of being toward death - our changing appearance."

 

What do you see when you look in the mirror? Do you dare to engage with the meaning of your changing appearance or do you 'flee in the face of it'?

 

What looks back at us, changing day by day, is our very own existential limitation - the embodied manifestation of our being-towards-death as reflected in our ageing appearance. Today's appearance and youth obsessed western society pushes this reality away at all cost, and existential writing has had surprisingly little to say about it. What is our collective fleeing from ageing about? Does an acceptance of ageing hold an opportunity for a more authentic being?

 

Martina is an existential counselling psychologist, trained at Regents College. She began her training with a strong interest in older people, but has since been working in the area of appearance and in particular, disfigurement. She is currently a therapist at the national charity, Changing Faces. She wrote her dissertation on women's ageing appearance, and is a member of the Centre for Appearance Research based at the University of the West of England in Bristol.

 

This Forum will be at the October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street,

London, WC1N. Forum begins at 7pm.

 

 

Friday 27th June 2008:

 

Forum - Jyoti Nanda

Venue: The October Gallery (Second floor), 24 Old Gloucester Street, Bloomsbury, WC1N. Nearest Underground Stations, Holborn and Russell Square. Entrance: £8 (SEA Members and Students £5). Time: 7pm.

 

Both the practices of mindfulness and existential-phenomenological therapy are concerned with exploring human existence. Both acknowledge change, impermanence, uncertainty, suffering/existential anxiety and death, as givens of existence. Both see self and reality as relational, without rigid or permanent substance. Both recognize the inter-related nature of body/mind, subject/object and self/other/world.  Existential-phenomenological practice explores and examines the client’s lived experience of being-in-the-world with self and others through dialogue and in the immediacy of the therapeutic relationship with the therapist.  Mindfulness is a dedicated contemplative practice of deeply looking into the nature of self and reality by bringing our intention to be present non-judgmentally to our unfolding experience moment by moment.  Both practices have their strengths.  What if the practices of mindfulness and existential-phenomenological therapy came together?

 

Jyoti Nanda is a Chartered Counselling Psychologist, UKCP Registered Existential Psychotherapist and MBACP (accred). She is on the Visiting Faculty at Regent’s College and is in Private Practice. A long-term practitioner of meditation in more than one tradition, Jyoti’s research interest is on the effect of meditation on the ‘being qualities’ of the therapist. She has previously published in Counselling Psychology Review and Existential Analysis. She runs workshops and short courses on Mindfulness and its relationship to therapy.

 

 

Thursday 22nd May 2008:

 

Forum - with Carmen Joanne Ablack

 

‘The Bodymind of Identity - Existential  and Phenomenological  Endeavours.’

 

Venue: The October Gallery (Second floor), 24 Old Gloucester Street, Bloomsbury, WC1N. Nearest Underground Stations, Holborn and Russell Square. Entrance: £8 (SEA Members and Students £5). Time: 7pm.

 

In this seminar Carmen will draw upon her journey as a practitioner, trainer and supervisor working ith issues of diversity and identity. Her intention is to set out both the existential and phenomenological challenges and discoveries she has made in this aspect of her work. Carmen will use non-ascribed client and supervision encounters to illustrate. She hopes to present enough material to stimulate a collegiate dialogue about existential and phenomenological underpinnings of the bodymind of identity.

 

Carmen Joanne Ablack is an Integrative Body Psychotherapist. She teaches and presents on relational body psychotherapy, including diversity, trauma, and embodied transference and counter-transference. Carmen offers supervision, training, coaching, and mentoring. Her Publications include ‘Introduction to Body Psychotherapy’ and ‘Body Psychotherapy, Truma and the Black Women Client’. She recently completed a chapter for a book on contemporary body psychotherapy. She created the Centre for Integral-Relational Learning. Carmen is Chair of the Standards Board of the UKCP.

 

 

Thursday 24th April 2008:

 

Forum - with  Fran Middleton & Paul Swift

 

‘Is Coaching the acceptable face of therapy in the workplace?

Some observations on the possibilities and limitations for existential coaching.’

 

Venue: Institute of Family Therapy, 24 - 32 Stephenson Way, NW1 (Nearest Underground Stations - Warren Street, Euston Square and Euston.  Entrance: £8 (SEA Members and Students £5). Time: 7pm.

 

Coaching is in ever increasing demand in organisations. For some clients, a coaching relationship at work may be the nearest experience they have ever had to therapy. The Forum provides the opportunity to explore the experience of working as coaches in organisations working from an existential Perspective. The Forum will explore the mass demand for coaching at work and pose some observations on both the possibilities and limitations of working existentially as a coach.

 

Fran Middleton (MA, FCIPD, UKCP) runs her own HR consulting and coaching business, Potential Unlimited, and practises as an existential-phenomenological psychotherapist.  Since 1980 Fran has worked in senior HR roles with Sun Life Assurance, JP Morgan and Penna Holdings.  In recent years her executive coaching and consulting clients have included BofA, BNP Paribas, CIBC, HSBC as well as voluntary and governmental organisations.  At Regents College, Fran helped to launch the coaching programme for leaders in 2005.

 

Paul Swift (MA, UKCP, MCIPD) is an existential psychotherapist who also runs his own business coaching corporate executives.  He works primarily from an existential perspective in his coaching. He has over 25 years experience of working with corporate organisations including most recently Group Head of Learning and Development for BAA at Heathrow Airport.  Paul has also worked at Regents College supporting the Coaching for Leaders programme.

 

 

 

 

Friday 14th March 2008

 

A Very Special Forum

In Celebration of

The ‘Existential Poet’

 

Hans W. Cohn

1916 - 2004

 

An evening of Poetry & Music

 

 

 

 

 

Friday 22nd February 2008

 

Forum - with Professor Ernesto Spinelli:

 

Practising Existential Psychotherapy: The Relational World.

 

This Forum will provide the opportunity for participants to hear Professor Ernesto Spinelli introduce the key ideas and themes in his new book and then to present their comments and queries for discussion.

 

Professor Ernesto Spinelli, PhD is a Fellow of both the British Psychological Society (BPS) and the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) as well as a UKCP registered existential psychotherapist and APECS registered executive coach and coaching supervisor. In 1999, he was awarded a Personal Chair as Professor of Psychotherapy, Counselling and Counselling Psychology. His authorship of numerous specialist articles and several highly respected and widely-read books dealing with the theory and practise of existential psychotherapy has earned for Ernesto a BPS Counselling Psychology Division Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Advancement of the Profession as well as an international reputation as a leading figure in the advancement of contemporary existential psychotherapy, and coaching. As well as maintaining a private practice as a psychotherapist, executive coach and supervisor, Ernesto is Senior Fellow at the School of Psychotherapy and Counselling, Regent’s College, London and Director of ESA Associates.  Ernesto was Chair of the SEA from 1994 to 1999.

 

 

Download flyer

 

 

Friday 23rd November 2007

 

SEA Forum - with Marian Lebanon:

 

Using Art Therapy to Explore Conflict and Anger

 

Entrance: £5.00 (SEA Members), £8.00 (Non-Members) - 7 - 8:30pm.

Venue: 120 Belsize Lane, London NW3

(nearest tubes: Swiss Cottage, Finchley Rd)

 

Marian Liebmann looks at the contribution that art therapy can make to working with issues of anger and conflict. Art therapy has particular benefits to offer in work on anger management: (1) it provides another way to communicate for people who find it hard to articulate verbally why they get angry; (2) the process of doing the artwork slows clients down and helps them to reflect more on what is going on.

 

The session is based on workshops run by Marian, including groups for clients with mental health problems. It follows case studies showing how participants were able to make changes over a fairly short period. The presentation is illustrated by slides of client work and will be of interest to therapists of all approaches, no matter how they practise.

 

Marian Liebmann works as an art therapist for Bristol’s Inner City Mental Health Service and also as a Restorative Justice and Mediation practitioner and trainer in the UK and abroad.  She has developed her own ways of working with anger using art therapy as well as conventional methods and has incorporated them into her work with young people, offenders and clients with mental health problems.  Marian also provides training for Youth Offending Teams.  She has written/edited 9 books on art therapy, mediation and restorative justice, and is currently completing Art Therapy and Anger, (forthcoming 2008, Jessica Kingsley Publishing)

 

 

Download flyer

 

 

Friday 26th October 2007

 

Noreen O’Connor: An Introduction to Levinas’ Notion of Self Identity and its relevance to Psychotherapy.

 

Dr. O’Connor reflects on the originality of Levinas' theorizing on the relationship of self and other and its relevance to us as practising psychotherapists.  In focusing on two commonly presenting 'symptoms', namely anxiety and depression, she elucidates Levinas’ notions of insomnia and fatigue.  Dr. O’Connor raises questions about how such analyses of experiential states affect the way in which we conceptualise our sense of 'self' and its 'identity'.

 

Dr. Noreen O'Connor B.A. M.A. Ph.D (Contemporary French Philosophy), Dip. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, has been a practising psychotherapist for over twenty years.  She works with individuals and couples and has, for many years, been a trainer in different psychotherapy organisations. Her philosophical background is intrinsic to her perspective on psychotherapeutic practices.

 

Dr. O'Connor's publications include: "Who Suffers?" in Re-Reading Levinas eds. Bernasconi & Critchley, Indiana University Press; and Wild Desires and Mistaken Identities: Lesbianism and Psychoanalysis, with Joanna Ryan, Virago (1993), reprinted Karnac 2003

 

Monday 25th June 2007

 

Simon du Plock: Bibliotherapy and Beyond: An Existential-Phenomenological Approach to Therapeutic Use of Literature in Clinical Practice.

It has long been an accepted ‘fact’ among existential therapists that our perspective offers a powerful way of critiquing other approaches, and the notion of therapy per se – but what happens when our approach is brought together with a very different way of working, one which is enthusiastically embraced by many NHS trusts?

NHS ‘bibliotherapy’ – the increasingly popular use of CBT-based self-help manuals – owes much to a North American tradition of non-fiction ‘therapeutic reading’. Existential therapy, in contrast, has a strong link with existential fiction from writers including Dostoevsky, Kafka, Camus, Sartre and de Beauvoir. The two appear, at first sight, to have little in common.

This forum will tell a story about bringing the existential literary tradition into a world of NHS bibliotherapy dominated by demands for brief cost-effective ‘treatment’. It does so in the context of phenomenological inquiry undertaken with a group of existential therapist co-researchers. A number of surprising findings emerged in the course of the research journey – both about the importance of research for the future of our approach, and about the extent to which an ‘existential bibliotherapy’ can find a home in the NHS.

An opportunity for voluntary participation in an experiential exercise will be included.

Dr Simon du Plock - is Head of Post-Qualification Doctorates at the Metanoia Institute, London. He leads the Doctorate in Psychotherapy by Professional Studies and the Doctorate in Psychotherapy by Public Works, both joint programmes with Middlesex University. An existential therapist and counselling psychologist, he has edited Existential Analysis, the journal of the SEA, since 1993.

 

Thursday 24th May 2007

 

Daniel Sousa: ‘Bridging The Gap Between Therapy and Research’. Why is there a gap between therapists and researchers? Although research into psychotherapy has developed significantly over recent decades, many psychotherapists do not find a great deal of value in research results. Nor do therapists discern significant ideas or information enabling them to improve their clinical practice or therapeutic abilities. Can therapists themselves be more involved in psychotherapy research? Can research be designed to give outcomes relevant for the practising therapists? Why do research into existential - phenomenology therapy at all? If we should, why, in what subjects, and using what methods? Daniel addresses theses questions during this presentation and explains his own belief in the importance of research for developing of existential - phenomenological therapy.

 

Daniel Sousa - is and existential psychotherapist (SEA, UKCP) working in private practice and a lecturer at the Higher Institute of Applied Psychology in Lisbon, Portugal. He is founder member of the Portuguese Society for Existential Psychotherapy. Daniel is currently undertaking Doctoral research at The School of Psychotherapy and Counselling, Regent’s College, London, UK.

 

 

 

 

For more information about Forum events or to be included on the e-mail list to be notified about forthcoming forum events contact:

 

Meghan Craig

Forum Organiser:

forum@existentialanalysis.co.uk

 

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