Larry Brooks, PHD

The Therapist’s Journey: Deepening Personal Understanding and Increasing Therapeutic Effectiveness

October 2, 2010

9 AM – 4 PM

The workshop will facilitate a process of professional self-examination. Through a combination of lecture, discussion and practical exercises this course will examine the relationship between one’s professional practice and personal life. It will look at critical experiences that influenced participants to become therapists and those experiences that shaped their professional development.  It will look at the factors that contributed to the development of one’s professional style and theoretical orientation. It will examine how participants structure their clinical work, focusing on how clinician’s set up rules and procedures that define the structure and tone of their practice and what emotional factors influence this decision making process. It will examine how an individual’s practice impacts his or her personal life, how his or her personality impacts practice and the tension in balancing the personal and professional aspects of life. This workshop will draw on contemporary psychoanalytic thinking including the work of Christopher Bollas, Stephen Mitchell, Judy Vida and Gershon Molad to help think about the tensions between the personal and professional aspects of self. It will delineate a model of professional Identity development based on how one deals with the wounded aspects of the self.

9:00 – 10:50    Formative experiences: How one became a psychotherapist

A) Introduction        

1. Framing the workshop
2. The Itinerary

B) The reasons one became a psychotherapist

1. Exercise: Critical experiences
2. Research Findings
3. The Wounded-healer

10:50-11:00      Break

11:00 – 12:45   The Growth of a Psychotherapist: A  Model of Professional Identity Development

1. Exercise: How one has developed as a psychotherapist
2. Four Stage Model of Professional Identity Development

12:45 – 1:30      Lunch

1:30 – 2:50        The Personality of one’s Practice

1. Relational theory and unconscious organizing principles
2. Examining the Psychotherapy frame as a representation of the Self

2:50-3:00            Break

3:00 – 4:00        Professional Self Examination: Integration of the  Personal and the Professional

1. Exercise: Accessing the preferred and non-preferred versions of self
2. Professional Self-Examination:
3. Integration: Stirring the seeds of change

Learning Objectives

1 – Participants will increase their understanding of how personal issues affect their clinical work and how their work impacts their personal life.

2 – Participants will have a better understanding of the multiple factors, conscious and unconscious that influence the way they developed as therapists and the way they structure their practice.

3 – Participants will make more explicit the incidents that shaped their development as a therapist.

4 – Participants will increase their understanding of the sources of stress and conflict in their work and ways to cope with this stress.

5 – Participants will identify strengths and weaknesses and aspects of their practice that could benefit from change.

6 – Participants will learn a model of Professional identity development that will identify the emotional challenges in becoming a psychotherapist

7 – Participants will explore specific aspects of the psychotherapy frame to understand how their emotional needs influenced its construction and to assess its impact on clients.

Registration Information

Continuing Education: This conference is approved for 6 hours of continuing education for Psychologists, Social Workers and Marriage and Family Therapists and meets the requirements for Supervisory Experience.

Fees: $140.00

Payment: You can pay online by clicking the Buy Now button at the bottom of the page or by check. Please make the check out to Larry Brooks Ph.D. and mail to 138 N. Brand # 300, Glendale CA 91203.

Refund Policy:  You will be refunded the fee minus $15.00 if cancellation occurs prior to 9/18/10.

Location: The workshop will be held at 138 N. Brand #300 Glendale, CA  91203.

Contact Information: Larry Brooks Ph.D.  (818) 243-0839 or drbrooks@drlarrybrooks.com