FANTASY, REALITY & VALUES. (A creative interplay)

Sat June 18thJune

at Union Chapel,Wellington Rd,Fallowfield, Manchester. M14 6EQ

9.30 Registration and Refreshments 

10.00 Introductions and Opening Plenary

10.45-12.45 Morning Workshops – choose one from:

'The Art of Interdependent reality'

'Wicked & Tame problems'

'Its never about winning' Working with problem Gamblers.

12.45-1.45 Lunch 

1.45-3.45 Afternoon Workshops – choose one from:

'Fanrasy & Reality' The value of the Bim Bam riff.

‘Creative Interplay of Fantasy, Reality and Values:  An experiential Exploration of Synergy and Loss’

‘Solving Problems Through Fantasy, Reality and Values’

3.45-4.15 Refreshments

4.15 Closing Plenary 

5.00 Close

Keynote Speakers this year are Jim Davis and Robin Hobbes

Wicked and tame problems
Presenters:  Jim Davis TSTA and Anthony Froggett (UKCP Registered Group Analytic Psychotherapist)

Understanding the dilemmas faced by the economist, the politician, the organisational consultant and the psychotherapist. An exploration of the difference between “wicked” and “tame” problems and the consequential difficulties in knowing how to respond (or to evaluate the helpfulness of one’s actions) within a complex, opaque and shifting ‘reality’ – or alternatively, what the …  am I doing?

Description of Presentation Style - Discussion and debate in small and the large group(s)
Theory to be covered - How to think about problems, uncertainty and outcomes
Recommended level of TA knowledge - Basic

Antony Froggett is the director of Thinking Space Consultancy. He is an organisational consultant who trained with the Tavistock Clinic (London) and has experience of helping a range of professionals create “thinking space” for themselves and their teams. He is a senior member of the Institute of Group Analysis (London), with the status of training group analyst, and convenes the IGA training in group analysis in Manchester. He is an expert in group work, and team and organisational dynamics.

Jim Davis is a TA psychotherapist, supervisor and trainer and runs a psychotherapy training programme (Psyche Institute) in Manchester.  He incorporates gestalt, bodywork and relational psychoanalysis in his work, and is an Associate of Thinking Space Consultancy.

It’s Never About Winning……working with problem gamblers

Presenters: Christopher Anderson and Richard Mottram BSc MBACP (Accred)

In this workshop we will briefly outline our work with GamCare, the national charity that provides help for problem gamblers. We will then move on to explore in general terms our ‘addictive’ behaviours.  Do we all have unhelpful behaviours that we think we ought to give-up?  Like the problem gambler, do we jeopardize our well-being in order to protect our vulnerability?  We will explore the reality about this, our fantasy about it and how we might change our values.  Our aim is for participants to learn something new about the way in which we view gambling, addiction and its linked behaviours.
Description of Presentation Style - Experiential, Didactic
Recommended level of TA knowledge - 101

Christopher Anderson completed his four year TA training at the Lakeland Institute, and is preparing for accreditation. He has run a private psychotherapy practice in South Cumbria for five years.  He is one of the original members of the Cumbria Counselling Group (CCG) and has worked with people with gambling problems and their family members since the group was formed in 2008.  He works as a volunteer mediator on behalf of the local council and housing associations in family and neighbourhood disputes.  He also enjoys working from his other ‘office’ as a Mountain Leader, taking clients hiking in the Lake District fells.

Richard Mottram completed his four year TA training at the Lakeland Institute and has worked with clients with addictions for over ten years.  He founded the Cumbria Counselling Group in 2008 which took over the GamCare work in Cumbria in that year.  He has a private psychotherapy practice in West Cumbria and combines this with designing buildings and constructing them. He has a keen interest in the delight, complexities and frustrations of the human condition.

The Art of Cocreating Reality

Presenters:  Hayley Marshall PTSTA(P) and Celia Simpson PTSTA(P)

One way of understanding ‘reality’ is as ‘fantasy’ that is given a concrete form. In this experiential workshop, we will support a process whereby participants cocreate a Mandala in an outdoor space. The Mandala, an ancient form of representation, will have as its focus the values and ethics we hold as therapists. We will incorporate pre-experience grounding, in-the-experience reflection around the Mandala, and after-the-experience reflection and theoretical discussion indoors. We will consider how this workshop experience may inform our understanding of the therapeutic process on embodied awareness, cocreative TA, and the influence of context in relational psychotherapy.

(Please bring rainwear! Unless the weather is very poor, we will be creating the Mandala outdoors.)

Description of Presentation Style – Experiential, dialogic and didactic

Theory to be covered – Importance of grounding, facilitate deepening of embodied awareness, context in relational psychotherapy

Recommended level of TA knowledge – Advanced

Hayley Marshall is a TA psychotherapist, supervisor and trainer based in Buxton, and Stockport. She is a co-founder of Counsellors and Psychotherapists Outdoors, and consultant psychotherapist for the Wilderness Foundation UK. She facilitates residential training and personal development experiences in the natural environment.

Celia Simpson is a TA psychotherapist, supervisor and trainer in independent practice in South Liverpool. She has extensive experience in education, a doctorate in discourse analysis, and has co-edited two books. She is the reviews editor of the Transactional Analyst (formerly ITA News). She has a long-standing interest in meditation and spirituality.

Fantasy and Reality; the Value of the BIM/BAM Hopscotch Riff 

Presenter:  Jon Pearson PTSTA (P)

This workshop seeks to give an experience of the way in which we regularly move from a fundamental Life Position of Body-In-Mind (BIM) to Body-And-Mind (BAM), the latter Position being the fundamental soil from which all Script sprouts and is enacted. Such a powerful and direct experience enables one to see how BAM is pure fantasy whereas BIM is pure ‘dharma’ (a Sanskrit word employed by Yogis and Buddhists, meaning ‘the way things are’). The value of shifting hopscotchlike from one Position to the other will be discussed. This is a mostly experiential workshop drawing upon the wisdom of the participants.

Description of Presentation Style - Experiential, Actionistic, Didactic

Theory to be covered - Life Positions, Script, Games, Racket Theory

Recommended level of TA knowledge - 101

Jon Pearson is Training Director of the Liverpool Centre for Counselling and Psychotherapy (currently applying for RTE status) and has held therapy/supervision practices in Calderdale and at MIP for 14 years.  He has practiced yoga for most of his life and teaches at the ever-thriving Calderdale Yoga Centre which he founded in 2009.

Solving Problems Through Fantasy, Reality and Values

Presenter:  Robin Hobbes BA, CQSW, CTA(P), TSTA(P)

A chance to look at some creative and imaginative ways to solve problems. It is in allowing fantasy (imagination) and values (doing the right thing) that the challenges reality brings us can be effectively responded to - an experiential approach to problem solving.

Description of Presentation Style - Highly participatory

Theory to be covered - None

Recommended level of TA knowledge – None

Robin Hobbes is Director of Training at Elan Training and Development TA training centre based in Manchester.

The creative interplay of Fantasy, Reality and Values: an experiential exploration of synergy and loss

Presenter, Jane Mcquillin TSTA

Once we have agreed a definition of terms, I shall invite you to form three groups to represent, and speak for, Fantasy, Reality and Values. How do you respond to, for example, an idea, a country, an experience, or a person?  Further, what happens if the groups collaborate? What happens if one group is competitively excluded? What does this mean for us as individuals?

I invite you to bring topics to explore in this way; if necessary we shall choose between them by means of a sociogram.

Description of Presentation Style - some teaching, mainly experiential and dialogic

Theory to be covered - Ego States, Systems, Collaboration/Competition, Transference and Countertransference.  Does the micro reflect the macro?

Recommended level of TA knowledge – Basic

Jane McQuillin is Principal Trainer at The Lakeland Institute in Ulverston, Cumbria, where her psychotherapy practice is based and where she has lived for many years. She has even more years’ experience in the mental health field.

For more information contact;

Enid Welford 0161 225 0514

enidwelford@btinternet.com

Mary Wright 0161 449 8910

marywright@roadlesstravelled.co.uk