This series of workshops is planned to be organised and run in different locations throughout the UK over the next few years. No specific dates and venues have been arranged yet. At this point I am collecting names and contact details of those interested. I also invite practitioners to become local organisers, to help me set up a series of workshops in their region. Please use the online form to communicate your interest and I will get in touch in due course.

Introduction

Practical Information For further details, contact: michael@soth.co.uk Tel.: 01865 725 205

The ‘quality’ of the therapeutic relationship has been an amorphous and elusive notion, although it is generally agreed to be the main indicator of successful outcome in all helping professions. What constitutes that ‘quality’ ?

Empathy, acceptance and congruence or neutral, but sensitive attunement have been considered the main factors which the therapist can contribute, to some extent deliberately. But we now recognise that the most important therapeutic communications have little to do with the therapist’s conscious intentions, skills or knowledge, but occur subliminally right-brain to right-brain.

The ‘quality’ of relationship must be more than just a good working alliance, because the activation of the client’s patterns in direct relation to the therapist complicates the interaction, disturbs the working alliance and leads to necessary rupture-and-repair cycles.

Modern neuroscience has now shown that the crucial ingredient in generating a productive and helpful therapeutic process is our understanding and capacity to work with enactment. ‘Neuroplasticity’ - the transformation of the client’s habitual and engrained patterns in and through therapy - depends crucially on the therapeutic space being experienced as safe, but not too safe.

What is enactment ?

Enactment is the process by which the relational dynamics at the root of the client’s patterns are being replicated and played out in the therapeutic relationship, often not only in spite of, but via the therapist’s well-intentioned interventions.

Neuro-Psychoanalyst Allan Schore: “... in the heightened affective moment of an enactment, the key to sustaining a co-created right-brain-to-right-brain holding environment is the clinician’s capacity of ‘avoiding closure’ and tolerating ambiguity, uncertainty and lack of differentiation in order to ‘wonder’.”

If not attended to and worked with, continued enactment does eventually become destructive to the working alliance and the therapy, leading to impasses and abrupt or creeping ‘terminations’. But enactment also holds transformative potential.

Traditionally, in the field of counselling and psychotherapy, enactment has not been sufficiently recognised, nor emphasised in training. This leaves many practitioners unprepared for the difficulties of enactment when confronted by it in practice.

The central paradox at the heart of the helping relationship is that the healing of the client’s wounds in and through therapy is inseparable from the enactment of the wounding in and through therapy. The therapist’s conflicted sense of entanglement and trappedness can then be recognised as an avenue into the depth of the therapeutic process.

The transformative potential of enactment

C. G. Jung: “The therapy has not begun until it is problematic for both participants.”

This workshop series attends to participants’ perceptive, reflective and technical skills as well as their personal process to help them recognise, stay engaged in and facilitatively survive enactment, so it then becomes transformative for both client and therapist.

About the tutor

Michael Soth is an Integral-Relational Psychotherapist (UKCP), living in Oxford, UK. As Training Director at the Chiron Centre for Body Psychotherapy, he has more than 20 years’ experience of practising, supervising and teaching. He has been researching and developing the concept of ‘enactment’ since 1995, bringing a unique bodymind perspective to it.

His articles and papers (including contributions to BACP and UKCP conferences as well as ‘therapy today’ ) are available at www.soth.co.uk.

Workshop format

The courses are designed to cater for a variety of learning styles, applying neuroscientific and therapeutic principles to our own ongoing learning process as ‘reflective practitioners’. They combine experiential work via roleplays, skills practice and demonstrations with theoretical reflection and input, according to the unfolding group process and participants’ learning needs.

Who can attend ?

The courses will be suitable for all practising counsellors and psychotherapists, with at least 2 years’ post-qualification experience (about 400 client hours). Other helping professionals are invited, but need to complete an application form to ensure the workshops are appropriate.

The courses are open to practitioners from all approaches, schools and orientations, and we will use this diversity and richness to enhance our understanding of the perennial significance of enactment across all modalities.

A detailed summary of the workshop design and curriculum (including learning objectives and study suggestions) is available.

 

COMMENTS FROM PREVIOUS PARTICIPANTS:

“I felt stretched to my emotional and mental limits, but the more I got involved, the more I gained, both personally and professionally.”

“I found a whole new level of skills and capacities within myself - of perception, intuition and creativity.”

“I did not always find it easy or comfortable, but ultimately rewarding and it had a profound effect on my practice.”

“I learnt more about me and my practice in four hours than in four years of training.”

“My awareness of my counter-transference as well as my understanding of the relational dynamic developed a lot more than I had expected, mainly due to the experiential learning format rather than through theoretical understanding.”

Practical Details

There will be four one-day workshops in the introductory series, taking you step-by-step into the theoretical and practical complexities of ‘enactment’. The course will be supported by detailed hand-outs, reading and references, allowing you to study further in between each session and apply the material to your practice.

The series will cost £90 per day, payable in advance, with a £10 reduction for early booking. Attendance for local organisers will be free. Groups will have between 10 and a maximum of 16 participants, to allow the possibility for intense experiential learning. A CPD attendance certificate will be available on completion of the course.

Bursaries

At any stage 10% of the enrolments received will be reserved for a bursary fund. To apply for a bursary, please send a deposit of at least £50 and a concise statement of your situation and the relevant reasons for the bursary application.

Further information

For any queries regarding the content or practicalities of the workshop series, please contact Michael on:

Tel.:01865 725 205

email: michael@soth.co.uk

or visit: www.soth.co.uk

Local organisers

Potential local organisers, who want to help set up a workshop series in their region, can contact me for a summary outline regarding the requirements and responsibilities involved.