Workshop Abstracts
Workshop Abstracts
The conference will be held from Wednesday, July 9th, 1997, through Sunday, July 12th, 1997. There will be four 4-hour pre-conference workshops available on July 8, 1997. The leaders of the two workshops scheduled from 8:30 AM to 12:30 PM are Fay Fransella and Michael Mahoney. The leaders of the other two workshops, scheduled between 2 PM and 6 PM are Hubert J.M. Hermans and Larry Leitner. All four workshop leaders are well-known, experienced teachers with well-developed constructivist perspectives. To register for a workshop, go to the main registration page for the conference.
George Kelly wrote two theories of how people go about the business of living their lives, the one enmeshed within the other. One is the skeleton. This is made up of personal constructs formed into a system, and used to make the best sense of what is happening around and within us.
The second theory is about our experiencing of the world. Experiencing is related to our construing of it.
Being a physicist, mathematician, and on the way to being an engineer, Kelly set out his theory like a blue-print with a fundamental postulate elaborated by a set of corollaries. His background training also led him to design a way of measuring the relationships between personal constructs - the repertory grid.
This workshop will outline the substance of these two theories and give participants experience of aspects of the theory and methods for eliciting the personal constructs from oneself and others; provide opportunities to design and complete a small personal repertory grid and to complete Kelly's other method of assessment - the self characterization; and lastly, to explore the implications of such theoretical points as behavior being the question we put to nature rather than an answer.
Fay Fransella has been a leader in Personal Construct Psychology for many years. She founded the Centre for Personal Construct Psychology, Therapy and Counseling in the early 1980's and also co-authored Inquiring Man with Don Bannister. Her 1995 book about George Kelly is "must read" for PCP enthusiasts. She is the ideal person to offer a workshop on the essentials of personal construct theory.
In this workshop, participants will try out an abbreviated self-confrontation method as a theory-based, ideographic method, allowing a gradual transition between assessment and change. Working in dyads, they play successively the roles of client and psychologist. Clients are invited to tell a few story parts referring to their past, present, and future, whereas the psychologists help the clients to derive from these stories some personal units of meaning (valuations). Next, their valuations are related to a set of affective terms, some of which reflect self-enhancement (e.g., pride, strength) whereas other terms reflect the longing for contact and union with something or somebody else (e.g., caring, tenderness). Next participants are taught how to analyze the content and organization of their valuation system in qualitative and quantitative ways. Finally, participants continue their conversations in the same dyads, incorporating the experiences and insights from the process of self-confrontation.
Hubert J. M. Hermans, a professor from the Netherlands, has been studying self-confrontation and valuation for several decades. He is the author of many books and articles. He is the co-author of two recent books, The dialogical self: Meaning as movement, in 1993, and Self-narratives: The construction of meaning in 1995. People come from all parts of the world to study with him and participate in his workshops.
This workshop will illustrate the technical principles of psychotherapy from an experiential constructivist perspective. The workshop will begin with a conceptual overview of experiential constructivist therapy, focusing on issues of diagnosis, case conceptualization, and the process and goals of therapy. The use of these concepts for structuring and managing the initial interview will be demonstrated. The workshop then will consider the therapist- client relationship, the most critical aspect of experiential constructivist therapy. The focus of this segment will include issues of transference, countertransference, how clients validate and invalidate therapist interventions, and the experience of optimal therapeutic distance. Issues of client threat, pacing of interventions, as well as client resistance will be covered in the third section of the workshop. Finally, "cutting-edge" issues (e.g., use of the body, levels of awareness, structural arrests) will be considered. Each section of the workshop will integrate conceptual material, technical principles, and care illustrations.
Larry Leitner, a professor at Miami University in Ohio, has also written extensively about personal construct psychology. He co-authored Personal Construct Psychology: Psychotherapy and personality in 1980. He is a dynamic teacher and workshop leader who grounds his ideas about therapy with his own experience as a therapist.
This workshop will focus on the principles of constructivist psychology as they bear on the practice of psychotherapy. After a brief history of its emergence in philosophy, psychology, and psychotherapy, the basic principles of Constructivism will be summarized. Spanning the major theoretical systems, constructivism emphasizes (1) the central importance of human activity in the (2) ongoing creation of "personal realities"--organized patterns of perceived order and meaningful relationships. One of the most important of these dynamic ordering processes is that related to (3) the unique and complexly-organized individuality (identity of self) of the person, which is elaborated within (4) social and symbolic contexts. All of this self-organizing activity reflects the operation of (5) dialectical (contrast-driven) and dynamic developmental processes, which challenge the individual to engage in a lifelong protection, elaboration, and differentiation of themselves and the processes by which they organize their living. Across diagnostic categories and programs of therapy (brief, episodic, and intensive), these principles can guide psychological services. The clinical relevance of these points will be illustrated in discussions of difficult cases, resistance to change, cyclic progress and regress, and the importance and complexity of the therapeutic relationship as a secure base in and from which clients can experience, explore, and experiment with old and new patterns of activity. Among the clinical methods to be discussed will be individualized homework assignments, mirror time, stream of consciousness, and embodiment exercises. The workshop will conclude with a discussion of clients' and therapists' experiences of change processes, and the unique burdens and blessings of life as a psychotherapy practitioner. Recommendations will be made for further explorations and therapist self-care practices.
Michael Mahoney has presented several pre-conference workshops before PCP conferences. His extensive background in philosophy and psychological theory provides a base for stimulating and informative coverage of constructivism and self-organization. He has authored or co-authored numerous books and articles, including Human change processes in 1991, Cognitive and constructive psychotherapies: Theory, research, and practice in 1995, and Constructivism in psychotherapy, which he co-edited with Robert Neimeyer in 1995.
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URL: http://www.lehigh.edu/~aem3/conf/schedule.html
Copyright © 1996
April E. Metzler