Therapeutic Conversations

HISTORY OF CHANGE INTERVIEW  8:15am – 9:15am

Cheryl White of Adelaide Australia’s Dulwich Centre is interviewed by Stephen Madigan on the history and future of narrative ideas and therapeutic practice.

The History of Change Interview honours therapists who have struggled hard to bring new ideas and change to our field. All of the interviewees can be described as doggedly persistent, brilliant, passionate, innovative, and tough as nails. Their personal stories of struggle and triumph take participants on a revealing ‘insiders’ walk through the history of their work and our field.

WORKSHOPS 9:30 am – 12:30 pm

1) Vicki Dickerson PhD & David Marsten MSW:

Narrative Therapy with Couples
(respondent: Stephen Madigan)

Vicki and David address the often daunting task of working with couples who are mired in conflict. In this respectful approach, they will use live demonstration and video to apply narrative therapy concepts with particular attention given to issues of how power and privilege blind couples to what captures them and prevents them from relating to each other in preferred ways. In the spirit of this TC9 conference, there will be ample opportunity for conversation among the participants.

Vicki Dickerson presents workshops and lectures world wide on Narrative idea and practice. She is widely published, including the coauthor of the seminal work “If Problems Talked: Narrative Therapy in Action” and more recently “Who Cares What You’re Supposed to Do? Breaking the Rules to Get What You Want in Love, Life, and Work.”

David Marsten teaches Narrative Therapy at various sites in Los Angeles including Pepperdine University and USC. He is director of Miracle Mile Community Practice (mmcpla.org), a non-profit community-based counseling program, and Narrative Therapy training site.

2) John Winslade PhD:

Re-authoring the relationship story in conflict resolution
(respondents: Susan Gamache & Kaethe Weingarten)

Conventional mediation practice is about resolving a problem and ‘doing a deal’ in order to set the relationship onto a different footing. Narrative mediation is about shifting the relationship onto a different narrative footing as a basis for resolving problems. This workshop will outline the difference and show the process in action.

John Winslade is a professor at California State University San Bernardino and (part-time) at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. He is the co-author of 2 books and various articles on narrative mediation.

3) Vikki Reynolds PhD:

Doing Justice: the Power of Resistance, Witnessing, and Solidarity in Community Work.
(respondents: Cheryl White & Evin Taylor)

Vikki offers a hope-filled response to the question of how we can “do justice” in our therapy and community work by weaving stories of resistance from different contexts including Chile, Tibet and Vancouver, from human rights defenders, survivors of torture, and olympic-resisters. We will connect oppressions and unite resistance, collectively bearing witness and doing justice in a spirit of solidarity. This workshop is built on a social justice/anti-oppression frame.

Vikki Reynolds is a therapist/activist interested in liberating justice, resistance, and solidarity from the margins of our work into the ethical center. She supervises and trains teams of folks working with marginalized folks.

4) Aaron Munro & Sean Spear:

Insider Knowledge: Youth & Homelessness
(respondents: William Madsen and David Denborough)

Aaron and Sean are well known for their print media, CBC interviews and strident support of the homeless. They present their recent narrative work alongside a few ‘shelter insiders’ on their experience at the Granville and Howe Heat Shelters which closed due to public pressure from a relatively small group of neighbours. They discuss a unique community based model which engages people living in shelters to develop their own guidelines on how the shelter should be organized.

Sean Spear is a local leader who has worked in the field of Narrative Therapy and Community work for many years and currently holds a Director’s position with Rain City Housing. Sean has advocated for just services for addictions and mental health in Vancouver and the Fraser Valley and has enjoyed a career as an international touring and recording artist, preferring to compose music with a social justice message.
Aaron Munro is a local advocate/activist and was the program manager for the RainCity Housing and Support Society’s HEAT Shelters. He is currently working with some of the past shelter users developing a community project in the Dunsmuir Hotel.

5) Bonney Elliot RN & David Paré PhD:

Creating Practitioner Reflective Communities
(respondents: Dennis Dion & Afsaneh Sabat & Colin Sanders)

In Ottawa, a growing network of counsellors, therapists and social workers are linked through their participation in six groups of up to ten practitioners who meet regularly, using variations on narrative therapy definitional ceremony/reflecting teams to share their work. The groups have proven to be a powerful antidote to isolation, and a rich source of peer mentorship and solidarity. Bonnie & David will give a brief history of the emergence of the Ottawa’s collaborative practice groups, demonstrate the sharing processes used, and invite participants to try out the practices. Participants will reflect on their own experiences of isolation and connection in their work, learn how to establish and coordinate reflective communities and learn about variations on reflecting processes as applied to supervision

Bonney Elliot is a nurse practitioner and a counsellor working at the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre and in private practice in Ottawa. She does general individual, couples and group counselling work. At her health centre, she’s involved in the use of reflecting team work to bridge intra-disciplinary practice.
David Paré teaches counselling and psychotherapy to graduate students at the University of Ottawa and is director of the Glebe Institute, a Centre for Constructive and Collaborative Practice, in Ottawa. He is the practice editor for Explorations: An E-journal of Narrative Practice and coeditor of a pair of books exploring poststructural/postmodern therapeutic practice, Collaborative Practice in Psychology and Therapy (2004, with Glenn Larner) and Furthering Talk: Advances in the Discursive Therapies (2004, with Tom Strong).

6) Tod Agusta-Scott MSW:

Talking about Women’s Abuse with Men who Abuse
(respondents: Barbara Baumgardner & Alan Jenkins)

This workshop will demonstrate an approach to therapeutic conversations about perpetrating abuse. Tod will illustrate how he uses conversations about women’s responsibility for their choices to increase men’s sense of responsibility for their own choices. His conversations focus on both social and individual responsibility for problems.

Tod Augusta-Scot is known internationally for his work with men who abuse. He is co-editor of and contributor to the book “Narrative Therapy: Making Meaning, Making Lives.”

7) Dave Nylund PhD & Julie Tilsen MA:

Families in Transition: Transgender Youth in Context
(respondents: Devon MacFarlane & Jon Winslade)

This experiential, practice-based workshop will examine the cultural contexts that influence transgender youth, the important people in their lives, and the therapists that seek to help them. Participants will be introduced to practices informed by queer theory that honor a proliferation of identity conclusions, respect the need for therapy separate from evaluation, and that challenge conventional ideas and practices about working with transgender youth and families.

Julie Tilsen is a narrative therapist, consultant, and trainer from Minneapolis who has published numerous narrative therapy articles. Dave Nylund is Associate Professor of Social Work at California State University, Sacramento and author of several key books on narrative therapy.

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CONVERSATIONS ON 2:00pm – 4:15pm

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

1. Conversations on: Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Narrative Therapy Theory

John Winslade.
Interviewed by Stephen Madigan and David Nylund.

2. Conversations on: Alcohol and Drug Use

Colin Sanders and Sean Spear.
Interviewed by: Dennis Dion, William Madsen and Allison Rice.

3. Conversations on: New Ideas on Working with Violence

Tod Agusta-Scott, Alan Jenkins.
Interviewed by: Cheryl White, Peggy Sax and Walter Bera.

4. Conversations on: Refugee Women

Afsaneh Sabet & Guests.
Interviewed by: Vikki Reynolds and David Denborough.

5. Conversations On: Mindful Meditation, Presence and Narrative Therapy

David Pare. Interviewed by: Anne Madigan and Brian Williams.

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KEY NOTE 4:30pm – 5:30pm

Dave Nylund and Julie Tilsen

Resisting Normativity: Queer Musings on Politics, Identity, and the Performance of Therapy

Since the Stonewall riots 40 years ago, the socio-political landscape for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and to a lesser extent, transgender individuals has changed dramatically. Yet, as many supporters of the contemporary gay rights movement applaud the mainstreaming of gay America, we want to pause and consider what these changes mean to those who choose to live outside the conventional norms of gay assimilation. This talk will offer a queer critique of traditional GLBT identity politics. New ways of thinking about therapy that are in service of sexual and gender justice for all will be discussed.