Date/Time
Date(s) - Thu 10 Mar 2022
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Hosted by Allan Frater and The Psychosynthesis Trust
Thursday 10th March £25 – £35
6.30pm – 8.30pm
Online via Zoom
Why this workshop?
To imagine is the ability to create new possibilities. Whether it’s baking a cake, writing a novel or trying to change the world, only to the extent new possibilities can be imagined will the cake, novel, new life and world come into being. In this sense, imagination isn’t just a childish make-believe or silly pretence but an ability at the very heart of creative potential and transformation. And yet, in the very moment when we need it the most, imagination itself is being assaulted. In these turbulent times it somehow seems ever harder to imagine an alternative world that wouldn’t be even worse. But when and why did it become normal for human beings to struggle to imagine a better world and what can we do about this?
This workshop explores the loss and recovery of imaginative life across three connected levels: in the personal, with a tale from the therapist’s consulting room; in the cultural-societal and the myths we tell about the world; and within the underlying metaphors of psychotherapeutic theory. A nexus of imagination, myth and metaphor to help us embrace the challenges and opportunities of these current times in which the old truths are broken but still hanging on, yet to be replaced by new stories.
Who is it for?
The workshop is for anyone interested in cultivating a richer, story-filled and enchanted existence.
It is intended for therapists and also non-therapists – with examples and exercises that include and also go beyond a conventional therapeutic context. No expert understanding is required.
Aims and Learning Outcomes:
After attending the workshop, you will:
– Have a broad understanding of imagination and metaphor as present in all perceptions, actions and relationships.
– Have an appreciation of the myths active and competing within contemporary personal and collective life.
– Have insights into the connection between imagination, myth and metaphor.
– Have ideas and strategies to better notice, validate and enhance the activity of imagination, myth and metaphor in everyday relationships, creative projects and therapeutic work.
Tickets:
At the Trust we appreciate that each person has their own unique situation, so we invite you to select the price point that feels like it represents a fair contribution for attending this event.
There are three options to choose from when purchasing tickets: £25, £30, £35.
What to expect?
The on-line format using Zoom will be a mix of mini-presentations, group discussion and short experiential exercises to try out the material and provide a basis for grounding it in everyday life.
Workshop Sources
The genesis of the workshop is a critical development of Roberto Assagioli’s psychosynthesis, going beyond an understanding of imagination as a merely ‘inner’ or subjective faculty, to provide an experiential and theoretical appreciation of the systemic role imagination, myth and metaphor play in shaping and also helping us respond to the ecological, political and meaning crises of contemporary times. Particular sources include: the post-Jungian psychotherapists James Hillman, Mary Watkins and Robert Bosnak; the ecopsychologists Theodor Roszak, Jerome Bernstein and Nick Totton; the integration of psychotherapy with complexity theory by Terry Marks-Tarlow and Robert M. Galatzer-Levy; the philosophers Mary Midgley, Zachary Stein and Jonathan Rowson; and writers Sven Birkerts and Dougald Hine.
Allan also runs a regular online ‘Waking Dreams’ evening course, the next cohort starts May 2022 click here to find out more.
Hosted on-line by the Psychosynthesis Trust, please book here via eventbrite.