Sacred Margins: psychotherapy at the interface
11-13 September 2009 with Thomas Moore
This experimental conference has happened. For a conference report please send your request to chrisrobertson@re-vision.org.uk.
If you were a participant, you may also want to go to:
1. the community section of this site
2. Google forum at: http://sacred-margins.socialgo.com/
3. http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=146151846929&ref=ts
and give your feedback or comments
=============================================================
Between living and dreaming
There is something else.
Guess what it is.
Antonio Machado
The theme of this conference is liminality, the borders between worlds, described by anthropologist Turner as betwixt and between and by Winnicott as transitional space. Psychotherapeutic approaches that explore such border territories require the therapist to be able to dwell in this twilight zone where their rational mind has no passport. These sacred margins are the subject of this conference.
Aims
The aim of the whole conference is to celebrate that which is often relegated to the margins and re-vision these margins as potentially sacred.
We intend to explore such questions as:
- How does psychotherapy interface between the inner and outer worlds?
- Can the language of transference adequately describe the subtle phenomena encountered at the borders of consciousness?
- Does regulation weaken psychotherapy's capacity to tune into the undercurrents of the collective?
This conference will be a participatory event open to all counsellors and psychotherapists. It will address the potency of margins in relation to everyday psychotherapy practice. There will be a balance between whole group and small group activity as well as interaction between groups. As each group shares or enacts its findings at the plenary, we will seek to co-create a rite of passage for each other and fresh inspiration for our calling.
Through reflecting on our process, we will give particular attention to the interface between the conscious and unconscious, thereby emphasising the twilight zones of interaction. There will also be a social dreaming group that will amplify patterns emerging from the unconscious of the conference community.
Presenters
Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul and Dark Nights of the Soul is Patron of Re•Vision. He is particularly delighted to be involved in this conference as he has deep concerns about the utilitarian direction in which psychotherapy is currently headed.
Mary-Jane Rust will talk on the Shadow of the Ecological Crisis. See her bio
Dale Mathers will hold the morning Social Dreaming and hold a conversation with Chris Robertson on transiting the border territories in client work.
Group Facilitators and Group Themes
Participants will select a group by the theme that the group will explore and around which they will present at the plenary
Joan Crawford: planetary concerns in the consulting room
Sarah van Gogh: the political and the personal in a therapy session
Deirdre Johnson: dreams as threshold
Ewa Robertson: where psyche and soma meet
Chris Robertson: borderlands and transitional space
Jane Weinberg: marginal relationships