In spite of having had enough of the recent political shenanigans surrounding Westminster political decision-making I still switched on the BBC Politics Live show the other day. I was glad I did. On it, I heard Thomas L. Friedman discuss his latest book; Thank You For Being Late – An optimist’s guide to thriving in the […]
The world of psychotherapy can represent a highly splintered profession. There are hundreds of different models of psychotherapeutic practices, all claiming to represent the truth when seeking to apply solutions to the great human sufferings. Perhaps it is due to genetics, as people tend to want to outdo each other in competitive rivalries and that
I have been reading the excellent new book from Stacey Millichamp entitled Transpersonal Dynamics; the Relational Field, Depth Work and the Unconscious and I have resonated with a lot of the material presented. A sign of a good therapy book, for me, is the rate and quality of these resonances to my own journey both at a personal
In classic Freudian therapy, psychological ill health emerges when the balance between the id, ego and super ego is distorted. “Patients” will present for counselling in an egodystonic state – when thoughts and behaviours are in conflict, or dissonant, with the needs and goals of the ego, or, further, in conflict with a person’s ideal
Last week we had the first of two lectures on the transpersonal ideas of Ken Wilber, author of the Spectrum of Consciousness. This week we heard all about his integral theories of consciousness. To recap, for Wilber there are three stages of development. 1 Pre personal This is the primitive (unconscious) stage, before we know who we
This week we started the first of two lectures on the transpersonal ideas of Ken Wilber, American author of the Spectrum of Consciousness and an integral theorist. Wilber was not, and is not, a therapist but a theorist and his ideas are often criticised for being hierarchical, masculine focused and representing a ladder like course
We are now returning to the more transpersonal focused material on the course. We had a strong taster in the first year during a week of creative imagination, which I personally found very powerful and transformative. Perhaps that week, upon reflection, was the foundation of the whole course for we had learned the fundamentals about