Date/Time
Date(s) - Thu 27 Apr 2023
1:00 pm - 3:00 pm
New developments in image-based work with Allan Frater, author of ‘Waking Dreams: Imagination in Psychotherapy & Everyday Life’
Imagination has a valued place in psychotherapy. The images found in memories, relationship entanglements and future fantasies are the raw material of therapeutic work. And yet, faced with a significant dream or transference projection it can be difficult to resist the temptation of a clever interpretation. In this way, imagining is often eclipsed by thinking, turning images into ideas, missing out on the transformative potential of imaginative experience itself.
Instead of treating images as symbols pointing to meaning elsewhere, the workshop will introduce an image-centric approach with:
- A broad understanding of imagination as present in all perceptions, actions and relationships (not just as pictures ‘inside the mind’)
- A ‘waking dream’ method applicable to traditional ‘eyes-closed’ active-imagination and art-based approaches as well as the activity of images in generic therapeutic work, for example with memories and the transference, as an ‘eyes-wide-open’ waking dream.
- A skills base to better notice, validate and respond to the spontaneously irregular, unexpected and seemingly chaotic imaginings that most often point the way to creative change.
- A non-interpretative fractal patterning which links dream work to the on-going story of self and world in everyday life.
The result is an appreciation of image-work, not just as a means to rational insight but as an embodied imaginal sensibility at the heart of human potential and creativity.
Learning Objective Participants Can Expect From This Event
- A practical step-by-step method of working with images as images.
- A theoretical clarification of the principles behind image-based work.
- An appreciation of image work as a healing and creative therapy in its own right.
Who is This Workshop Appropriate For?
- Psychotherapists, Counsellors and Coaches; Art, Drama and Family Constellations therapists; Eco-therapists and anyone interested in an image-centric approach to ecopsychology
How May This Workshop Impact Your Practice?
- Discover greater confidence, creativity and freedom in working with images and imagining.