Therapeutic Conversations

Morning Workshops  • 9:30am – 12:30pm

1) Kaethe Weingarten PhD:

Hope in a Time of Global Despair
(respondent:  Vikki Reynolds)

For those who are down and out, hope is as valuable as it is elusive. How we think about hope is key to whether we can help people activate it in their lives. The workshop presents ideas about “reasonable hope” and discusses how we can co-create it with clients. Importantly, the presentation identifies ways we can buffer ourselves from the effects of our clients’ despair. Listeners may experience shifts in both their professional and personal lives.

Kaethe Weingarten is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology in the Harvard Medical School Department of Psychiatry at Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA). She is founder and director of The Witnessing Project (www.witnessingproject.org)

2) PEAK HOUSE with Dennis Dion MA & Allison Rice MA:

Documenting Insider Youth Knowledge
(respondents: David Marsten & Walter Bera)

Allison and Dennis discuss their current narrative group work with youth getting their lives back from drugs and alcohol. The workshop highlights a long PEAK House history to honour and utilize youth wisdom as a key resource in helping young people find freedom from their suffering. The workshop presents a unique method of documenting both young people’s insider knowledge and their parents’ (or community of concern) insider/outsider knowledge through the use of video. In the spirit of youth helping youth, this video resource is a new narrative therapy contribution to the many practices that honour youth wisdom at Peak House.

Dennis Dion & Allison Rice are the senior Family Therapists working at PEAK House – a residential treatment centre for youth struggling with substance use. PEAK House is known internationally for their innovative theoretical ideas and the creation of new narrative therapy practices.

3) William Madsen PhD.:

Sustaining Collaborative Practice in the “Real World”
(respondents: Tod Agusta-Scot, Lorraine Grieves, Sean Spear)

This workshop examines the challenges of bringing narrative and collaborative practices into mainstream institutional settings and highlight ways of sustaining these ways of working in traditional contexts.

William Madsen is the founder of the Family-Centered Services Project in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He provides international training and consultation regarding collaborative approaches to helping and the development of institutional structures and organizational cultures that support family-centered work. Bill has written numerous articles and is the author of “Collaborative Therapy with Multi-Stressed Families” (2nd Edition).

4) Barbara Baumgardner MSW and Brian Williams MA:

Becoming an Insider
(respondent: Alan Jenkins and Christine Dennstedt)

Brian and Barbara run narrative therapy groups and ‘meetings’ with people who have “come inside” after years of “homelessness” Their workshop highlights how homeless people can transfer their skills and knowledge of street living to create a home inside. The workshop demonstrates how persons once marginalized to the “outside” are now reclaiming “insider” status.

Barbara Baumgartner and Brian Williams are counselors with a Housing First ACT Team in Vancouver who work alongside the Canadian Mental Health Commission’s $110 million research grant on the homeless, mental health and substance use. Their work is informed by narrative ideas and they use groups to connect participants to vibrant new stories of themselves.

5) Lorraine Hedtke PhD:

Remembering Practices in Group Work
(respondents: David Pare & Bonnie Elliot)

Bereavement counseling is often conducted in a group setting. How to do this with a narrative and relational emphasis will be the focus of this workshop. This will be an experiential workshop which will also include an explanation of a framework for practice.

Lorraine Hedtke has recently completed a PhD dissertation for the Taos/Tilburg program on the subject of remembering conversations in a group context. She is also the co-author of the book “Remembering Lives” (Baywood, 2004).

6) Devon MacFarlane, Aaron Monroe, Evin Taylor:

Making Space for Ourselves: A conversation on Trans Identities
(respondents: David Nylund & Julie Tilsen)

Devon, Aaron and Evin will talk about their experiences as trans identified people in creating space for themselves and others, both in their personal lives and as service providers. In the context of a pervasive gender system, this session will discuss personal experiences with the fluidity of gender identity and expression, feminism, sexism and other forms of power, privilege and oppression.

Devon MacFarlane focuses on organizational change in support of queer, trans, and Two Spirit communities. Devon usually gets read as a white, middle class, able bodied 30ish gay man. The first three descriptors are accurate; the next three, well, you see…

Aaron Munro is a local advocate/activist working with homeless persons to develop a community project in the Dunsmuir Hotel.

Evin Taylor is a queer tranny. He is also a social worker currently working as a Concurrent Disorders Counsellor in Vancouver, BC. Evin is passionate about drug policy reform, social justice, tomato gardening, and all things whole wheat.

7) Peggy Sax PhD:

Apprenticing to the Craft of Therapy in the Age of the Internet
(respondents: Richard Boyle & Vicki Dickerson)

Many therapeutic practitioners, teachers and students are protective of their time and suspicious of technology. Yet the Internet also has the potential to enhance learning, build international community, and foster dialogue across fields of inquiry, levels of experience and culture. We will examine possibilities and share experiences in Creating a Collaboratory in and beyond university settings.

Peggy Sax is the author of Reauthoring Teaching: Creating a Collaboratory and the originator of the online “Narrative Practice and Collaborative Inquiry Study Group.”

8. Cheryl White & David Denborough:

Narrative Responses to Trauma and Hardship: Stories of psychological and social resistance.
(respondents: Stephen Madigan & Afseneh Sabet & Rosa Elena Arteaga)

When we are responding to individuals, groups or communities who are enduring significant trauma/hardship we are witness to stories of anguish and devastation. But there are always openings to other stories too: stories of psychological and social resistance. Collective narrative practices offer creative and effective ways of working with these multiple storylines to alleviate suffering and at the same time to spark and sustain local social action. How can we contribute to rich story development and enable those with whom we work to make contributions to others? How can we co-develop ways of working that are effective, culturally resonant and easy to engage with so that community members themselves can put them into practice with those they care about? This workshop will outline the key principles of collective narrative practice with individuals, groups and communities.

Cheryl White & David Denborough: Cheryl and David work out of the Dulwich Centre in Adelaide Australia and their recent teaching and community assignments include Kuwait (to Iraqi workers who are establishing a trauma centre in Basra), Israel, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, South Africa, Canada, USA, Uganda, Rwanda and a range of Aboriginal
Australian communities.

9) Ken Hardy PhD:

Teens Who Hurt: Effective Strategies for Working with Troubled Adolescents

This workshop gives special attention to examining the critical intersection that exists between violence, trauma and family impact, and the dynamics of socio-cultural oppression.

This workshop will focus on providing strategies that teachers, counselors, and other human service providers can use in their work with youth who are troubled by circumstances that complicate the negotiation of the “normal developmental struggles” of adolescence. A framework for understanding adolescents who have membership in oppressed groups and who are prone toward angry, aggressive, and explosive behaviors will be presented. Specific strategies for enhancing effective assessment, engagement, and treatment with troubled adolescents will be provided.

Kenneth Hardy is the Director of the Eikenberg Institute for Relationships in New York City and Professor of Family Therapy at Syracuse University. Ken is internationally known for his work in the area of family therapy and diversity. He is the former Director of the Center for Children, Families, & Trauma at the Ackerman Institute. Dr. Hardy is the author of many family therapy articles on trauma, oppression, and racism.

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Afternoon Conversations  • 2pm – 4:15pm

CONVERSATIONS . . . are designed as intimate and interactive discussions on topics most effecting our therapeutic communities.

1. Conversations on: Aboriginal Health

Guests.
Interviewed by: Stephen Madigan and Vikki Reynolds.

2. Conversations on: Schools

Peggy Sax and Jon Winslade.
Interviewed by David Pare and David Denborough.

3. Conversations on: Masculinity

Devon MacFarlne, Dave Nylund, Evin Taylor.
Interviewed by: Julie Tilsen.

4. Conversations on: Poetry and Practice

Scot Lawrance & Colin Sanders.

5. Conversations on: Disordered Eating

An amazing ‘Insider’ Film entitled: NO Numbers.

Director discussion with Dena Ashbaugh and Sonya Ruebssat following.

Interviewed by Vicki Dickerson, Lorraine Grieves and Allison Rice (should be completely awsome!).

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KEY NOTE • 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm

Alan Jenkins

Becoming Resilient: Overturning Common Sense

This presentation invites an ethical exploration of desire “its capture and resistance” and the politics of identity; illustrated by men’s journeys of struggle with violence, sexuality and belonging and the discovery of ethics and generous forms of love in the face of adversity.

Questions considered are: can resilience be possessed by some as a personal quality enhancing their coping skills or might resilience be a vital aspect of living which passes through us? Perhaps resilience bounces back towards us and enables the unsettling of dogmatic beliefs and a stable sense of identity. Inquiry shifts from the moral; What kind of person am I? How should I live? To an ethical position of wonder; What else might there be? What might I be capable of?