Ecopsychology
an emergent training at re•vision
"What is the pain we feel - and desperately try not to feel - in this planet- time? It is pain for the world... It is the pain of the world itself, experienced in each of us..." Joanna Macy
It will cast a psychological eye on green matters and a green eye on the therapeutic genre.
We invite those in the helping professions who want to integrate a practical means to understand and frame our clients' difficulties. We will explore such questions as:
What do we split off and project onto nature?
Where is the cut we make between ourselves and the world?
How is our hidden dependency on the planet and animals play out within a therapeutic setting?
The training takes place over six months with a Friday afternoon and evening and Saturday once a month. We will start with two introductory modules in the spring of 2010
Themes will include:
- Consuming the Earth: unconscious processes and environmental crisis
- Cultural narcissism and collective rites of passage in client symptoms
- Ecological unconscious and dreaming the change
- Dreams, projection and ‘nature’ as alchemical transformation
The following introductory module is strongly recommended for entry.
For the Love of the Earth
with Mary-Jayne Rust and Chris Robertson
Only in reciprocity with what is Other do we begin to heal ourselves. David Abram
What place do we give the intense experiences of connection with the Earth?
How might we understand our current 'disconnection from nature'?
Ecopsychological inquiry brings us back in touch with the immense beauty and love for the world around us; it also brings into awareness our fears of, and fight against, nature (including our own nature) which western 'civilisation' has been engaged with for so long.
This week-end will be a chance to explore areas such as: pleasure and bonding with the non-human world; our sensitivity to increasing trauma in the world; early experience and the facilitating environment; earth related spirituality; the influence of cultural frames on our relationship to the non-human.
We will discuss how these issues come into our therapy practice and how we might respond, such as framing erotic transference in terms of longing for reconnection with Earth and we might re-vision current notions of transference and projection are based on anthropocentric assumptions.
Date: 26/27 June 2010: Sat 10-5; Sun 10-1
The natural world is the larger sacred community to which we belong. To be alienated from this community is to become destitute in all that makes us human. To damage this community is to diminish our own existence. Thomas Berry
Location: Re•Vision, 97 Brondesbury Road, NW6 6RY
Fees £145