3 x 90 minute sessions, all at 7pm BST over three Saturdays,  5 /12 /19  June

Professional psychotherapy is an excellent resource for people helping to work out complex and difficult emotional issues. 

This workshop can help deepen the work of professionals, but it is also aimed at the ordinary person who may be called on to help a friend, relative or business associate get through grief, sickness, loss or some other challenge that life offers. People often want to help but feel unqualified and inadequate.

This workshop will help deepen the work of psychotherapists and give the ordinary person a few basic ideas for self-therapy and offering a caring presence to others.

  Week One:    Finding a New Story about your Life

            Originally, “therapy” meant to care for and to serve. One way to be therapeutic is to listen in an especially intense way to the stories of a person’s life. You can help that storytelling go deep and you can bring out the deeper narratives, the mythic layer of daily experience. Through intense listening and deep conversation you find a cleansing (catharsis) and alternative stories for the future. We don’t romanticize storytelling, because it may have several shadow elements. But skill with listening to and working with life stories is one of the foundations of a therapeutic relationship. Society itself could be more consciously therapeutic, responding to the need for meaning and self-acceptance among people.

  Week Two:    Helping Others Deal with Emotional Issues

            Even a non-professional can begin the listening process by establishing a vessel, a space and situation in which a person will feel contained, safe and private. He or she will be serene and basically accepting of the person, in spite of emotional turmoil. He won’t judge or overly interpret experiences. He will see and appreciate the individual and not be too active in looking for change. He will not type or label the person but will affirm the good he sees.  She will evoke the archetypal therapist in herself and let the therapeutic process unfold.

 Week Three:   Complexes, Transference and Dreams

            Complexes are “fragments of the psyche,” according to C. G. Jung that can overwhelm a person and prevent him from being himself. You don’t get rid of complexes, but work with them until the seed of psychological strength is revealed and liberated. Therapy usually involves some form of transference, the shift of familiar fantasies and narratives to the conversation itself. Insightful use of dreams helps spot the complexes and the fantasies and offers direct guidance for dealing with difficult life issues.

Thomas Moore’s new book Soul Therapy comes out May 25th (HarperColllins).

This course is based on material in the book. To see the book preview page, please click the image below.