66th Annual Conference
Friday, February
20
Afternoon
Workshops
2:30
- 5:00 P.M.
Workshop
52
The
Group Odyssey: A Voyage into the Unknown
Chair:
Lawrence
Malcus, Ph.D., Psychologist, VA Palo Alto Health Care System,
Menlo Park, California
Can we be
cruel enough to withhold answers and potentially false assurances in
the face of longing and despair? How far and how honestly do we
enter our therapeutic relationships? Homer’s Odyssey provides a
touchstone to explore these and other questions,
deepen
the voyage and build empathy and true connection.
didactic-sharing of work experiences-experiential-demonstration
Learning
Objectives:
The attendee will be able to:
1.
Specify their role as
container for the fragile hope and disappeared memory (that life can
be different/better) for patients plunged in despair.
2.
Evaluate the value of
resisting the pressures operative in all therapy relationships, and
amplified in groups, to offer answers and (potentially false)
reassurances.
3.
Analyze the power of
cultural givens and rituals to anchor persons in the throes of
hopelessness and despair so prevalent in the time of Odysseus, and
so dissipated in our postmodern age.
4.
Conduct therapy as an
intersubjective voyage into a co-created, unknown world estimate the
benefits of consciously including myth in the therapeutic
relationship and more generally in our own lives.
Course References:
1.
The Odyssey by Homer
(1996). (R. Fagles: translator). New York: Penguin.
2.
Calasso, Roberto (1994).
The marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. (T. Parks: translator). New
York: Knopf/Random House.
3.
Rubenfeld, S. Dluhy, M.
(2005). The social dreaming matrix: Major features and some uses.
Group, 29, 337-349. |
