Salman Akhtar

The Circle of Hope: Understanding and Managing Major Emotions in Dynamic Psychotherapy
August 20-24, 2007

With each successful outcome of the need-appeal-gratification cycle of infancy and childhood, a layer of 'basic trust' is laid down. As further experience accrues, this leads to a confident expectation that one will survive hardships and that the outer world will continue to provide gratification of instinctual wishes and developmental needs. Hope, then, becomes a fountainhead of life. This is indeed salutary. However, some experience with hopelessness is also essential for growth. Excessive optimism can be pathological and a defense against rage. Such rage often manifests itself in the clinical setting where some frustration is built in. When an individual has been exposed to chronic frustrations in childhood however, there is a tendency towards hating others. While pleasurable in a perverse way, this is never entirely free of guilt and remorse. It also diminishes the view of one's self as a good person and causes shame. Psychotherapy, when it works well, and sometimes even the lived experience of life, leads to the emergence of sadness and mourning about such intrapsychic developments. If fixation upon a masochistically idealized mourning can be avoided, the capacity for genuine love (in which affectionate and sensual feelings are deeply synthesized) arises. And, loving others and receiving love from them consolidates the experience of hope. This is, in a nutshell, the 'circle of hope'. Illustrations from clinical work, movies, poetry, and literature, as well as from daily life experiences will be provided to highlight such dynamic ebb and flow. Guidelines for working with excessive or inoptimal presence of these emotions in the clinical setting will also be discussed.

Salman Akhtar

A Family of Shadows: Mothers, Fathers, Siblings, Grandparents, and Others in the Internal World
August 11-15, 2008

While the newborn infant is not a neuropsychological tabula-rasa, it is his relationship with the early caretakers which evokes potentials that contribute to the 'basic core' of his latter adult character. Before arriving to that relatively well-structured state, however, a large number of interactions with caretakers (and others in the interpersonal surround) have to be internalized and amalgamated into a harmonious gestalt. It is in this context that the role of mother and father acquires a profound significance. Contact with their bodies, fantasies about their bodies, real and imagined relations with them as individuals and as a couple (and defenses against all this) contribute to the evolving psychic structure. Patterns of attachment, degrees of separation, and scenarios of oedipal situations all come into play here. Siblings, grandparents, other relatives, and even caretakers, neighbors, clergy, and schoolteachers also impact upon personality development. At the same time, the internalization of these roles and interactions must pass through the crucible of constitution, drives, and culture. Layering of such internal objects and secondary revisions affect their representation in the adult mind as much as retrospective fantasies and distortions of memory do. Such considerations will form the focus of this course with illustrations from day-to-day life, movies, poetry, and fiction as well as from clinical experience with patients in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.

Salman Akhtar

Five Clinical Challenges
August 10-14, 2009

Like all other emotionally charged dialogues, the work of psychotherapy hardly proceeds without awkward, puzzling, and tormented periods. Indeed, these "crises" are so ubiquitious that the quintessentially American psychiatrist-psychoanalyst Harry Stack Sullivan quipped that one ought to be "beware of a smoothly going treatment". While true in general, this perspective does not permit overlooking that some situations and developments during the course of treatment post a greater challenge for the therapist than others. Five such areas are 1) establishment and maintenance of boundaries, 2) negotiating money-related resistances and enactments, 3) working with culturally different and bilingual patients, 4) resolving stalemates, impasses and disruptions, and 5) understanding and managing suicidal crises. These scenarios, along with their psychodynamic roots, phenomenological pictures and technical handling constitute the essence of this course.

Margaret Blaustein

Treating complex childhood trauma: Targeting the building blocks of resilience
August 9-13, 2010

As many as one in four youth will experience a potentially traumatic exposure, and many of these will be multiple or prolonged. Far too many chronic stressors impact youth and families, including familial and community violence; sexual abuse; poverty and homelessness; targeting and discrimination due to ethnocultural or other group status; parental substance abuse and mental health issues; neglect; attachment disruptions and losses; and multiple placements. The impact of these and other stressors is far-reaching, and often repeats across generations as yesterday's impacted children become tomorrow's parents and caregivers. Establishing effective practice for this population is a priority, but is challenging, given their diverse histories, their varied presentations, the multifaceted contextual, cultural, and developmental influences which shape them, and the wide range of systems within which they seek care.

The Attachment, Self-Regulation, and Competency (ARC) framework is a core-components treatment model, developed to provide a guiding framework for thoughtful clinical intervention with complexly traumatized youth and their caregiving systems. Drawing from the fields of trauma, attachment, and child development, the framework recognizes the importance of working with the child-in-context, of acknowledging the role of historical experiences and adaptive responses in current presentation, and of intervening with the surrounding environment - whether primary caregivers or treatment system - to support and facilitate the child's healthy growth and development. Rather than identify step-by-step intervention strategies, the framework identifies 10 key "building blocks", or intervention targets, key skills/goals within each domain, developmental and cultural considerations, and potential applications across settings.

In this course, we will examine the theoretical foundations underpinning this framework; build skills and knowledge in each identified treatment domain; and discuss case applications and considerations across contexts. This course will include didactic lecture, large- and small-group discussion, examination of taped sessions, and experiential activities.

Kenneth Cloke

Into the Heart of Conflict: Resolving Chronic Interpersonal, Organizational, and Political Disputes
July 2-6, 2007

Every conflict we experience is an opportunity to exercise empathy and honesty, strengthen our communication skills, become more open-minded and open-hearted, and increase our ability to find wisdom, clarity, balance, and inner peace under difficult conditions. Each conflict therefore leads us not only to settlement and resolution, but potentially also to transformation and transcendence. How to find and follow this path, and discover the practical techniques and dangerous questions that guide us toward these ends is the substance of this course.

This workshop will present techniques for entering into the heart of conflict, encouraging open-hearted communication, reaching forgiveness and reconciliation. It will explore ways of increasing empathy in the midst of rage, togetherness in the midst of separation, and celebration in the midst of failure. It will assist participants in using conflict to revitalize their personal and work lives and locate the transformational and transcendent power of conflict. It will explore the frontiers and limits of conflict resolution, including internal frontiers of spirituality, and external frontiers of family and organizational systems, and the chronic sources of social and political conflict. It will support participants in finding ways of using conflict as a catalyst for personal, family, organizational and social change.

Janina Fisher

Healing Broken Bonds: Traumatic Attachment and Affect Dysregulation
August 16-20, 2010

In the context of trauma, attachment failure is inevitable and inescapable, leaving behind a lasting imprint on all future relationships, including the therapeutic one. Instead of experiencing therapy and the therapist as a haven of safety, the traumatized client will be driven by powerful wishes and fears of relationship and vulnerable to affect dysregulation and recurrent crises.

In order to address the trauma, therapists increasingly find that they must first turn its effects on the client's attachment patterns. Until the client's disorganized attachment, traumatic transference, and disturbances in the capacity to self-regulate and self-soothe are addressed, the therapy either becomes stagnant or unstable. In this workshop, we will address the impact of traumatic and sub-optimal attachment experiences on affect regulation, exploring how to understand the effects of traumatic attachment from a psychobiological perspective and how to work with both the somatic and relational legacy of attachment.

Using interventions drawn from the neuroscience and attachment research and from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, a body-centered talking therapy tailored to the treatment of attachment and trauma, this presentation will explore a neurobiologically-informed understanding of the impact of trauma on attachment behavior. Using lecture, video, and experiential exercises, participants will learn somatic interventions for challenging trauma-related relational patterns and discover how to become "neurobiological regulators" of the client's dysregulated emotional and autonomic states.

Participants will learn:

• to identify trauma-related attachment patterns
• to describe disorganized attachment behavior and its effects on affect regulation
• to describe the theory and practice of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
• to be able to utilize Sensorimotor Psychotherapy techniques to address attachment and trauma-related issues in psychotherapy
• to describe somatic interventions to address preoccupied, avoidant, and disorganized/unresolved attachment styles
• to employ interactive neurobiological regulation to address affect dysregulation

Edward Hallowell

ADHD Across the Life Span:
A Strength-Based Model of Diagnosis and Treatment
July 12-16, 2010

From childhood through adulthood, ADHD can present both difficult dilemmas as well as unique opportunities for change, growth, and success. Dr. Hallowell defines the goal of diagnosis and treatment as the transforming of ADHD from a chronic liability into an overall asset in life. The purpose of this seminar is to show participants how to do precisely that, as well as to present all the exciting new information we have learned about ADHD in the past decade.

In 25 years of working with people of all ages who have ADHD, Dr. Hallowell has learned that a strength-based approach to diagnosis and treatment leads to the best outcomes. This means from the very first moment the clinician meets the patient or client, he or she looks for talents, skills, and strengths and builds a treatment plan geared to promote those first and foremost. This approach mobilizes hope, excitement, and a cascade of positive energy which drives the treatment to much greater success than is observed in other kinds of treatment.

Interweaving advanced material with introductory information, aimed both at professionals and non-professionals, this seminar will explore the entire world of attention deficit / hyperactivity disorder in its human dimensions as well as its clinical and scientific. The seminar will provide a solid, practical basis in the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD in all ages.

Harville Hendrix

IMAGO: A Theory and Therapy of Couplehood
July 19-23, 2010

If you dread your next appointment with a couple, avoid doing couples therapy altogether but would like to, or love couples and want to do it better, this course is for you. Taught by Harville Hendrix, Ph D., co-founder of Imago Relationship Therapy, makes it a rare opportunity to study with one of the masters of marital therapy and learn a theory and methodology that will help you love working with couples. Not only will you discover a radical new theory of couplehood, you will be immersed in watching demonstrations of the dialogue process and getting some coaching as you practice this transformational process.

Imago Relationship Therapy, a theory and therapy of couplehood, integrates, synthesizes, and extends the insights of the major Western psychological systems, behavioral science, and spiritual disciplines into a uniquely comprehensive and systematic system of love relationships. Imago Therapy translates the theory into practice.

The "Imago" is a composite image in the unconscious of the significant character traits and behaviors of childhood primary caretakers. Our unconscious pairs us with an "Imago match"-an individual who is like our caretakers in significant ways-to recreate our childhood psychological dynamics in an attempt to heal the central wounds we carry. Imago Relationship Therapy uses this context to transform relationships into a therapeutic encounter for each partner's psychological and spiritual self-completion.

This skill-building, week-long seminar will give you the means of getting to the heart of most couples' most profound power struggle - their failure to get each other to meet leftover developmental needs from childhood. Instead, each partner tries to coerce the other to match the distorted inner image of their early caretakers (called the Imago) through blame, shame and criticism. Through Imago Relationship Therapy you'll learn a way of offering couples another option - to create a conscious and committed relationship in which they increase their capacity to offer acceptance and compassion to both themselves and their partner.

The workshop is open to all mental health professionals. It is credited by the Imago International Institute toward certification for anyone who wishes to continue his or her training to become a certified Imago Therapist.

Robert Hill

Positive Aging: A 21^st Century Approach for Transforming the Challenges of Old Age
July 13-17, 2009

As the science of longevity succeeds in helping us live longer, our older clients require therapeutic knowledge and techniques not offered in most training centers. In this workshop, we'll explore a therapeutic approach called "Positive Aging" which helps older clients anywhere along the health continuum draw upon their inherent capacities for happiness.

In this workshop, you'll learn an assessment approach for identifying clients' skills for coping with different aspects of the aging process. This workshop will provide a context for learning transformative strategies that you can teach to your older clientele to help them reframe problems into opportunities for better living. Regardless of how healthy you were when you were younger, the longer you live the more likely you will need to contend with the vicissitudes of aging including physical and cognitive impairment, age-related disability, and loss. Positive Aging was specifically designed as an approach to address issues experienced by all older persons. It is not simply a self-enhancement approach for the healthy, but a powerful set of skills that anyone can employ to find meaning and contentment in later life even in the presence of substantial challenge.

Sue Johnson

Transforming Love and Attachment in Couple Relationships: Emotionally Focused Therapy
August 13-17, 2007

Couple therapy is entering a new era as a scientific discipline. We now know the key factors in marital satisfaction and distress, we can achieve significant and lasting change in distressed relationships, explain how this change occurs, and successfully apply couple interventions to "individual" problems such as depression and chronic illness. One of the pillars of this revolution is the new understanding of adult love articulated in recent literature and research on attachment theory. Attachment offers us a model of effective dependency that provides the couple therapist with a general map and direction in therapy as well as a guide to key emotions and needs and the defining moments in a couple's interaction. Attachment also views partners as the hidden regulators of an individual's emotional and physical health, offering a model that allows couple interventions to be used as a powerful resource in promoting health and resilience.

EFT integrates experiential and systemic interventions to expand both key emotional responses and cycles of interaction. EFT is empirically validated and demonstrates excellent outcomes - 86% to 90% significant improvement in relationship distress after a brief intervention. Research suggests that results are generally stable even in the face of significant life stress. This approach has been used with a variety of couples, including those facing anxiety disorders such as post traumatic stress. EFT for couples appears to translate well across culture and class, focusing as it does on the universals of key emotions and attachment needs and fears. EFT views adult love as a wired in and adaptive attachment response. The process of treatment is set out in three stages: de-escalation, restructuring interactions towards secure attachment and consolidation. The focus in each session is on process, especially the processing of emotions and key interactional moves or patterns as they occur in the present. The therapist is a relationship consultant who offers a safe platform where each partner can distil, expand and transform experience and find new ways to connect with the other. Interventions are systematized (Johnson, 2004) and key moments of change have been studied and outlined. EFT is consonant with recent research on marital distress, the nature of emotion and the nature of adult love. This model is now taught across North America, Asia, Europe and Australia and is at the cutting edge of couple interventions.

Deborah Korn

Ego Strengthening and Resource Development in the Treatment of Trauma Survivors
July 21-25, 2008

This workshop offers a conceptual framework and a practical approach to working with clients in the early stages of trauma treatment. These clients often present with some of the following characteristics:

• suicidality, self-injury, and addictive behaviors
• phobia of affects, somatic experience, attachment, and traumatic memories
• rigid defenses and overdeveloped avoidance patterns
• pervasive fears and blocking beliefs
• strong dissociative tendencies and symptoms
• emotional dysregulation marked by alternating hyperarousal and hypoarousal
• inability to access and stay grounded in an "adult" ego state
• inability to access and maintain resources essential for effective trauma processing (e.g. compassion for self, curiosity, courage)

A broad range of resource development and ego-strengthening approaches/protocols will be introduced through live demonstrations or videotape presentations. Attention will be devoted to assessing the developmental and attachment needs of the client, establishing a useful case conceptualization, and developing an integrated treatment plan with achievable goals. Guidelines for decision-making and evaluating readiness for trauma processing will be reviewed. The model proposed in this workshop acknowledges the strengths, competencies, and survival resources inherent in each person. Interventions are designed to honor and deepen existing resources while simultaneously introducing new skills and resources where developmental deficits or maladaptive patterns are found. This workshop is open to all clinicians.

Bob Marshak

Covert Processes: Exploring the Hidden Barriers to Organizational Change
August 17-21, 2009

Most organizational change efforts focus almost exclusively on "making the case for change." The case for change is invariably a well documented, logical analysis of the compelling reasons why the organization and the people in it must change. Especially for executives, making the case for change tends to be the most central dimension of any change initiative. However, although always necessary, the case for change is rarely sufficient to actually achieve intended outcomes. Instead, there are also "non-rational" dimensions that involve hidden or covert barriers that play a critical role in all change efforts. Unless attended to they become covert traps and surprises that will block or detour intended outcomes.

In this workshop we will explore five hidden dimensions that impact organizational change, including: organizational politics, inspirations, emotions, mindsets, and psychodynamics. All of these hidden processes limit choice, block creativity, and trap individuals, groups and organizations in repetitive and often self-defeating behavior patterns. The workshop will bring together the spoken and the unspoken, the literal and the symbolic, and the conscious and the unconscious in order to help participants learn how to hear what is not said, see what is not present, and feel what is not expressed. The workshop will include presentations, application exercises, small group experiences, and self-reflection.

George McCloskey

Assessment and Intervention for Child and Adolescent Executive Function Difficulties
June 28-July 2, 2010

This presentation will provide a comprehensive perspective on definition, assessment and interventions for child and adolescent executive function difficulties. Among the topics covered will be: (1) a functional, multidimensional definition in the form of a comprehensive model of executive functions; (2) how executive function use varies based on domains of functioning (perception, emotion, thought and action); (3) how executive functions vary based on arena of involvement (intrapersonal, interpersonal, environment, symbol system); (4) the various roles of executive functions in classroom learning and production and everyday behavior; (5) the relationship of executive functions to childhood psychopathology and clinical diagnostic categories; (6) a multidimensional framework for assessing the executive function capacities of children and adolescents; (7) student and teacher classroom observation methods for improving academic production and classroom management; (8) a model for conducting functional behavior assessments and developing behavior support plans that are based on current knowledge of executive functions and cognition and their mediating effects on the connection between antecedents and behaviors; the EF-driven FBA model helps to frame the problem and the intervention in non-punitive, goal-oriented statements that can be monitored for effectiveness of outcomes; (9) intervention strategies that vary based on a continuum from degree of external control to degree of internal self-regulation; 10) the planning, implementation, and outcome assessment of school-, clinic-, and home-based interventions designed to deal with child and adolescent executive function difficulties.

Case studies of children and adolescents demonstrating executive function difficulties will be discussed throughout the presentation.

Esther Perel

Mating in Captivity: The Paradox of Intimacy and Sexuality
July 27-31, 2009

Why does great sex so often fade for couples who claim to love each other as much as ever? Can we want what we already have? Why does the transition to parenthood so often spell erotic disaster? Why does good intimacy not guarantee great sex? This bold, new take on intimacy and sex grapples with the obstacles and anxieties that arise when our quest for secure love conflicts with our pursuit of passion. The story of intimacy and sexuality in committed modern couples is one that often tells of a dwindling desire and includes a long list of alibis, claiming to explain the inescapable weakening of erotic connection. The absence of fantasy, the proliferation of pornography and affairs, the overwhelming expectations placed on adult intimacies as well as a lack of understanding of the nature of erotic desire all contribute to this predicament. Contrary to popular belief, sexual problems are not always the result of relational problems, and improving the emotional relationship may do little to improve the sex. In fact, sometimes the very qualities that nurture intimacy can be sexually deflating. Modern couplehood strives for oneness, yet eroticism thrives in the space between self and the other.

Drawing on the work of Steven Mitchell, we'll contrast two fundamental, yet opposing human needs of safety and predictability on the one hand, and of freedom and adventure on the other.

• Probe the ambiguities of love and desire, the paradoxical relation between domesticity and sexual desire, and explore ways to balance our need for security and closeness, with our quest for separateness and passion.
• Learn how emotional history shapes our erotic blueprints and expresses itself in our sexual fantasies and in the physicality of sex.
• Present a nuanced, relative and multicultural understanding of the differing definitions of love, marriage, and sexual behaviors, and highlight the relation between culture and sexuality.
• Present an original approach to treat the decline of desire during parenthood and show how to grant the body its profound capacities for emotional expressiveness reaching beyond intimacy as mere verbal communication.
• Explore the differences between sexuality and eroticism, show how erotic intelligence is vastly larger, richer and more intricate than the biology of sex and how it stretches far beyond any repertoire of sexual techniques.
• Map the gender similarities and differences and develop the concept of multiple sexualities.
• Discuss the motivations behind affairs, the multiple meanings of infidelity, the choices of truth telling, transparency, and boundaries, and offer a framework to rethink infidelity.
• Plumb the inner workings of the erotic mind and recognize the depth, complexity and healing qualities of our erotic imagination.
• Introduce innovative strategies to unlock erotic blocks and cultivate eroticism between partners, take emotional risks and open up a sexual communication between them.

With an eye on the existential, clinical and ethical aspects involved we will examine how our assumptions, moral values, and personal experiences influence our therapeutic work. This model applies to couples and singles from all sexual orientations. We'll include lectures, exercises, video vignettes and small group discussions.

Ronald T. Potter-Efron

Therapeutic Approaches to Anger, Rage and Domestic Violence Counseling
August 18-22, 2008

The field of anger management and especially domestic abuse counseling emerged as somewhat of a maverick discipline during the 1980's and 90's. It was primarily informed by a male power and control paradigm that was frequently implemented within an anti-therapeutic, anti-couples counseling milieu. This useful but limited model has been gradually challenged because of the need to treat clients who don't fit well into its conceptualization such as violent women, mutually aggressive couples, and those with significant underlying psychological conditions. The result is a stimulating array of approaches, old and new, that can be utilized to help appropriate clients. The goal of this course will be to address a selected number of these approaches while stimulating thoughtful discussion of the underlying conceptual and therapeutic issues.

Teaching methods will include lecture, small group discussion and practice sessions, observation of filmed interviews, handouts, power point presentation, and exercises designed to help participants understand the dynamics of their own anger experiences.

Edgar Schein

The Essence of Change: Brainwashing, Culture Evolution and Organizational Therapy
July 9-13, 2007

This week we will try to make sense of the whole range of learning and change phenomena that occur in individuals, groups and organizations. By reviewing and updating the various research areas I have been involved with over the last 50 years we will analyze: drastic individual change (coercive persuasion), career development, human resource planning, process consultation, group dynamics, organizational culture and the impact of subculture dynamics on critical problem areas such as "safety culture" in the nuclear and health care industry. The concepts will be illustrated by many stories based on my experiences as a researcher and consultant.

Through this analysis we will build a theory of change dynamics focusing on: the elaboration of Lewin's unfreezing, changing, and refreezing model, the role of disconfirmation in initiating change, the management of survival anxiety in relation to learning anxiety, and the creation of psychological safety as the key to adult learning. Particular emphasis will be given to managed culture change, the conceptual issue of how to define health at the organizational/systemic level, what "therapy" for an organization consists of, and what we mean by the increasingly common term "safety culture".

This program is designed both for beginners who want to explore various aspects of the theory and practice of organizational learning, change, and development, and for more advanced researchers and practitioners who want to explore a conceptual integration of individual and systemic perspectives. The program is primarily lectures, discussion, and daily small dialogue groups.

Richard Schwartz

Internal Family Systems Workshop
July 23-27, 2007

The Internal Family Systems Model is a method of therapy which fosters transformation, gently, quickly, and effectively. It views multiplicity of mind as our natural state and our "parts" as sub personalities that may be healed and transformed by bringing the Self into its rightful role as leader of the internal system. The Self, a core of valuable leadership qualities, is our true nature - compassionate and loving. Although IFS has been most widely used as a treatment for trauma, it is a flexible model that provides abundant opportunities for application. IFS advances treatment in several areas: First, by showing respect and appreciation for the client's protective parts, it reduces resistance and backlash. Second, it helps clients fully unburden the extreme beliefs and emotions they accrued from their traumas. Third, affect is regulated in a simple and effective way so that clients are not overwhelmed during sessions. Fourth, because it is the client's Self that is leading in the healing, transference is reduced and clients do much of the work on their own, between sessions. Fifth, IFS gives therapists practical ways to understand and work with their countertransference so they can remain in the open-hearted state of Self leadership with clients. Sixth, it frees therapists from the role of trying to police clients symptoms like suicide, eating disorders, addictions, and self-mutilation. Seventh, therapists are free to be themselves, without having to be clever or controlling, and come to enjoy partnering in the fascinating and sacred process that naturally unfolds as clients heal themselves.

This workshop is designed for therapists who had little exposure to IFS as well as those who know the basics of IFS, but have trouble when clients resist, have particularly difficult parts, or when it comes to using the model with couples or larger systems. We will begin with an overview of IFS and then move onto the deeper exploration of issues that arise during treatment. This course will also provide the opportunity to participants to identify and work with the parts of themselves that interfere in their relationships with clients. The workshop will be a balance of lectures, demonstrations and experiential exercises.

Jette Simon

Imago Relationship Therapy: A Path to Conscious Couplehood
July 13-17, 2009

For many therapists, keeping balance and focus in work with couples is one of the great challenges of practice. Even extensive training as an individual therapist typically does not help most therapists avoid the common missteps in couples work, such as being drawn into taking sides or being overwhelmed by the intense emotionality of relationship conflict. Imago Relationship Therapy offers not only a comprehensive theoretical framework guiding each step of effective couples treatment but also a set of powerful therapeutic skills that can help couples forge a healing, transformative connection with each other.

This skill-building, week-long seminar will give you the means of getting to the heart of most couples' most profound power struggle - their failure to get each other to meet leftover developmental needs from childhood. Instead, each partner tries to coerce the other to match the distorted inner image of their early caretakers (called the Imago) through blame, shame and criticism. Through Imago Relationship Therapy you'll learn a way of offering couples another option - to create a conscious and committed relationship in which they increase their capacity to offer acceptance and compassion to both themselves and their partner.

To achieve these goals you will learn the Imago Intentional Dialogue, a powerful clinical tool for facilitating the core healing experience of the Imago approach: mirroring, empathy and validation. At the end of the week you will also take away a solid appreciation of how to create a safe space for couples and the tools required to help them to both tolerate and learn from their differences. We'll also explore how the insights from interpersonal neurobiology and mindfulness practice can create new possibilities in troubled relationships.

This seminar, which will offer a safe learning environment filled with experiential opportunities, specifically is designed to deepen your personal awareness as you expand your theoretical framework and acquire cutting-edge clinical tools.

Note: This training will be accepted as the equivalent of the first two days of the Imago Clinical Training Program for those who wish to go on to become Certified Imago Therapists.

Martha Straus

All the Rage: Helping Adolescent Girls in Crisis
July 30-August 3, 2007

Millions of adolescent girls are in a crisis of rage and despair. Some try to disappear through starvation, others carve indecipherable symbols onto their arms or run away from home, still others bully and get bullied, hide weeping in their rooms, or attempt suicide. How can therapists become more effective with this volatile population? This highly practical workshop, based in a developmental-relational model of intervention, explores concrete strategies and methods for helping girls in crisis. Participants will learn how to read the subtext of provocative, self-destructive, and confusing behaviors, and what questions to ask to help rally support for the girls from their family and relationship networks. We'll examine the limitations of old standards of care such as self-harm contracts and confidentiality rules, and discuss how to interview and intervene in the most stressful cases including: relational aggression, eating disorders, self-injury, suicidal gestures, and oppositional and defiant acting out. Attendees will also find out about the ten principles of effective practice, and become knowledgeable about a variety of strategies that work, including harm reduction, inviting resistance, and developing a protective circle of adults. By the end of the week, participants will know what it takes to stay hopeful even in the most anguishing cases, and how to sustain connections that will help struggling adolescent girls become competent and independent young women.

Bessel van der Kolk

Frontiers of Trauma Treatment
July 16-20, 2007

The majority of people who seek psychiatric care have histories of trauma, chaos, or neglect. In the past two decades there has been not only an explosion of knowledge about how experience shapes the central nervous system and the formation of the self, but also about what constitutes effective intervention. Advances in the neurosciences, attachment research and in information processing show how brain function is shaped by experience and that life itself can continually transform perception and biology. Overwhelming experiences alter the capacity for self-regulation and memory processing due to changes in subcortical, i.e., "unconscious", levels of the brain. The memory imprints of the trauma(s) are held in bodily states and physical action patterns, which causes the entire human organism to automatically react to current experiences as a replay of the past. While insight and understanding are useful to deal with confusion and secrecy, it rarely is enough to deal with the unspeakable, intolerable and unacceptable nature of traumatic experience.

Effective treatment of post-traumatic problems needs to include addressing the imprint of trauma on the physical experience of the self as helpless and in danger. Recovery needs to incorporate dealing with defensive efforts that helped ensure survival, incorporate physical experiences that contradict feelings and sensations associated with helplessness and disconnection, as well as an effective way of integrating fragmented memories of trauma. Experiencing physical mastery (as in yoga and specific body based techniques) often is necessary to initiate new ways of perceiving reality and promote new behavior patterns. Helping the organism to bring the traumatic experience to an end is the goal of treatment.

This course will present current research findings about how people's brains, minds and bodies are affected by traumatic experiences and, with the help of experiential work and videotapes, illustrate the principles of posttraumatic therapy. We will explore specific techniques that address affect regulation, the integration of dissociated aspects of experience, overcoming helplessness, and the re-integration of human connections.

Amy Weintraub

LifeForce Yoga: Empower Your Clients to Manage Their Moods
August 4-8, 2008

Using the laboratory of their bodies and their minds to work with their moods, Yogis gave us a prescription for maintaining optimal mental health. We'll explore this nearly 5000-year-old prescription, learning aspects of Yoga often ignored in a regular Yoga class, such as body sensing, sound, breath, imagery, meditation, and affirmations that arise from the client's authentic experience of self. And we'll practice ways you can introduce Yogic techniques in the treatment room-neither mat nor touch necessary! You'll learn Yogic strategies to help clients focus, relax, and have greater access to feeling states. These practices can provide an alternative or adjunct treatment for clients who are not responding to medication or have received only so much relief from cognitive restructuring strategies.

Every day, in the process of learning Yogic techniques to help clients manage their moods and increase self-efficacy, you will be practicing tools for self-care. Discover for yourself the physiological changes occurring in the body during Yoga practice that produce the immediate "feel good" affect, and experience the shift in your own outlook as we practice simple exercises that can change your life and the lives of your clients.

This workshop is designed for all level of Yoga practitioners, including beginners. Every day will include easy and accessible movement, yogic breathing, and meditation or guided relaxation. Along with didactic components and practice, the format will include emotional process from a Yogic perspective in dyads and small groups. Yoga mats will be provided. Bring your own props.

David Wexler

MEN: Contemporary Theories and Creative Interventions for Male Depression, Aggression, and Relationship Issues
July 2-6, 2007

Traditional models of psychotherapy and couples' therapy have often fallen short in trying to reach men - and in recognizing patterns of both defenses and strengths that men bring with them into relationships. This workshop will focus on the contemporary and creative perspectives on male psychology and particularly on how to reach men and bring out their best qualities in relationships.

Interweaving popular film clips with some of the latest theory and research about men's psychology, Dr. Wexler will use these scenes to illuminate men's issues from a compassionate, self psychological perspective. Particular emphasis will be placed on the "broken mirror" phenomenon and research about the ways in which men experience women as being powerful and turn to women excessively for validation of the self. The presentation will also focus on learning about language and imagery that make sense to men and helping them frame positive changes as part of a "masculine" narrative.

• Understand the self psychological perspective of "good men behaving badly"
• Recognize and work with fundamental psychological needs of "mirroring" that affect men in their relationships with women
• Understand the latest research about male brain patterns and male psychology
• Identify the most contemporary perspectives on male-type depression and how this affects relationships
• Understand current research about the ways in which males process emotions and often act in dysfunctional ways to defend against dysphoric affect
• Develop a more informed and compassionate perspective about men's emotional struggles in relationships
• Learn specific strategies for helping men deal with emotions and communicate more effectively in intimate relationships

Chris Worley

A New Model of Organization Effectiveness
July 30-August 3, 2007

Most models of organization design and change are over 100 years old; they were born in an age where environments were stable or at least predictable. As a result, we've been designing organizations and change processes with not so implicit assumptions that organizations should be predictable, stable, and in equilibrium. Traditional organizations are characterized by rules, regulations and provisions that limit experimentation, by job descriptions that are rarely revised, by continuous improvement and six-sigma processes that try to control variation, by reward systems that recognize consistent performance, and by numerous checks and balances that ensure that the organization operates in the prescribed manner. Moreover, traditional approaches to change assume stability. The whole notion of "unfreezing" and refreezing implies that an organization exists is some form of equilibrium that needs to be disrupted and then re-established. The logics of alignment, stability, and unfreezing/refreezing were powerful because they supported traditional views of how to be effective. This is a very fragile house of cards when you assume the world is changing more and more rapidly.

The purpose of this workshop is to present and explore a different approach, what we call the Built to Change model. It assumes that organizations are changing all the time. It suggests that organizations need to think about managing dynamic relationships that account for both short and long-term performance and effectiveness. Achieving "critical configuration" and "dynamic alignment" implies that organizations must engage in processes of futuring instead of industry analysis, in processes of strategizing instead of competitive advantage, in processes of creating value instead of capabilities, and in processes of designing instead of searching for the right structure. The whole model challenges the deeply held assumptions of stability and the way they pervade our language and thinking.

Exploring these ideas and their implications are the subject of this workshop. Following an overview of the Built to Change Model, each day explores an aspect of the model, how our traditional logics and thinking are challenged by these new assumptions, and how organizations can move toward a more built to change philosophy.

Polly Young-Eisendrath

The Wisdom of Emptiness: Psychological Applications of Buddhism
August 17-21, 2009

Buddhist principles recognize how self-focus creates tremendous suffering. And yet, Americans have overdosed on the self and problems show up in our restlessness, our poor self-esteem, our parenting, and our organizations. This workshop will offer both didactic and experiential opportunities to engage in the transformative dialogue between psychology - especially Jungian and psychoanalytically-informed practices and Buddhist methods and teachings. Such a dialogue provides a new appreciation for the particular imprint of our individuality and the enduring centrality of our interdependence. The teachings of the Buddha can be a practical resource. They provide a fresh wisdom for knowing ourselves in "the between" rather than "the within." Participants in this workshop will have an opportunity to make a radical shift away from self-focus to a view from the no-self in relation to psychotherapy, creativity, leadership and parenting.

There will be daily mindfulness practice, time for discussion and questions from your own experience, as well as plenty of fun.