The Biology of Love and the therapeutic relationship
Saturday 13th March and Saturday 17th April 2010
10am to 5pm
Peter Afford
£180
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Two one day seminars for counsellors and therapists to get up to speed on neurobiology and how it can help us to clarify our ideas about love, attachment and what happens in the therapeutic relationship.
We will begin with an introduction to the biology of brain and body, and some of the relational and emotional things they come equipped to do. The second seminar will build on this base to explore attachment and how it plays out in the therapeutic relationship. My aim is to break fresh ground by re-visiting our understanding of important phenomena from a neurobiological perspective.
Seminar One: A Nervous System - Brain & Body
A clear and concise introduction to the brain and the rest of the nervous
system, the sort of a thing it is and the principles on which it works:
> what the nervous system is and how it works
> what the nervous system is for: love, memory, consciousness, emotional
'regulation' etc.
> attachment and… anxiety, stress, trauma, dissociation and integration
> thinking in the head and felt experiencing in the body
Seminar Two: Attachment - Its Failures and Its Triumphs
An exploration of key ideas in psychotherapy, seen afresh in a biological
light:
> attachment and the therapeutic relationship
> empathy, transference and countertransference, projective identification
> attachment problems: narcissism, borderline, depression, addiction
and psychosis
> the healing power of love and the transpersonal
The seminars will mix slide presentations, experiential exercises, reflection
on clinical work and discussion. I will synthesise the ideas of both neuroscientists
and therapists who write about neuroscience.
The days are spaced apart to enable some digestion and reflection in
between. You are invited to bring some case material.
Peter
Afford is a counsellor and therapist in private practice, and a graduate
of the Psychosynthesis & Education Trust.
He has pioneered the teaching of neurobiology there in recent years, and enjoys the challenge of distilling comprehensible things from an alarmingly complex subject.