Attachment, the Therapeutic Dyad and the CM Perspective: tracking self-development and (re)integration

The Bare Essentials of the Conversational Model

The Bare Essentials of the Conversational Model By Tony Korner Selves in Conversation Humans live in a language environment as much as they live in a physical one. Throughout life we are faced with decisions (or ‘motivated selections’) about whether to associate through language or to dissociate through non-communication. Each person’s life gets shaped by these decisions, many of which occur unconsciously under the influence of traumatic experience. Each self has the form of a story, an incomplete one. Dissociation, relating to trauma, is an important reason for this incompleteness.

Trauma in the Workplace: Safework Australia and the Bullying Epidemic

Language and the self

The sense of self is inextricably connected to language, itself an intrinsically collective phenomenon with a life independent of individuals. If feeling provides an internal value system for self, then language can be thought of as providing an external value system, variably appropriated by individuals. Language consists of a network of differences; of relations within its own network; of shades of meaning. Its living qualities provide a gateway to “forms of life”. Communicative exchanges begin within a largely affective, indexical context: the proto-conversation.

Brain Plasticity, Psychotherapy and the Conversational Model

The emergence and development of The Conversational Model of Psychotherapy over the last 35 or so years arose out of a belief that models of psychotherapy ought to have a scientific basis. The key elements of the conversational model are dependent upon some key assumptions. These are that normal development is dependent upon our early infant and childhood relationships being able to meet our age appropriate needs. In time these relational experiences allow us to generate particularly integrated, reflective states of mind that we can call self and identify as health. Disruptions to that development (trauma) prevent the normal development of our cohesive, integrated and reflective sense of self. As a result we and others experience ourselves/us as living in a variety of fragmented, dissociative states that generate symptom clusters that are identified as pathology.

Traumatic Narcissism

To the layperson, narcissism is most often associated with arrogant, conceited, entitled behaviours which are captured by the term narcissistic grandiosity. This is consistent with common expressions of maladaptive behaviour such as self-enhancement and lack of empathy characterised by pathological narcissism. There is an emerging contemporary clinical model of pathological narcissism that combines grandiosity with clinically important regulatory impairment that leads to self, emotional and behavioural dysregulation in response to threats to self or failures of self-enhancement.

No-Self, Self, Not-Self

A clinical discussion of the case ‘Forget me not – My journey through Jungian analysis – A case presentation’ by Toni Woodward from the book Psychotherapy and Counselling: reflections on Practice. Oxford University Press.

In the contemporary world where short-term psychotherapeutic interventions are privileged, it is encouraging to see a consumer’s account of long-term work, in Toni’s case, spanning now over 15 years (though with different degrees of intensity). It is rare in the field of psychotherapy for a client to be so open about their experience, therapy being such a personal and intimate encounter and Toni’s account covers both the positive personal growth she experienced as well as those things she did not like. In this presentation, the reasons Toni sought therapy will be outlined followed by descriptions of the unfolding process and the way her transference projections brought into the ‘here-and-now’ unresolved issues arising from her relationship(s) with early caregivers from the ‘there-and-then’ of her earliest developmental experiences.

Responding to the needs of consumers with complex trauma histories a consumer perspective Copy

This presentation, "Responding to the needs of consumers with complex trauma histories a consumer perspective" focuses on the needs of adult survivors of child abuse, highlighting the frequent

Defining the concept of spirituality among Filipino counselors and clients.

Sport and physical activity in the treatment of refugee trauma survivors of torture and trauma

Community acceptance of refugees in a new refugee resettlement location, Armidale, NSW

Theme and Variations: The way the Complex Traumatic past becomes the Complex Traumatic present

Long walk to health: Working with the survivors of refugee trauma with a history of early childhood abuse

Limits in Neurofeedback Rehabilitation: What we need to know