Integrative Psychotherapy
Training Programs and Workshops

Healing the neglects and traumas of childhood requires a professional care worker (psychotherapist, counsellor, educator, or organizational consultant) who is attuned to each client’s levels of emotional and cognitive development. To achieve this form of psychological stabilization, psychotherapists, counsellors and other care givers need to be able to apply Child Development concepts and research findings in their therapeutic and enhancing practice.

This knowledge gained from the field of psychotherapy is useful for professionals in other fields, where the deeper understanding of the personality of the client is important.

Important subjects will be:

• Early childhood memory that is embodied in physiological sensations, entrenched in affect, or unconsciously enacted in relationships. Such memories are not available to conscious thought because they are pre-linguistic, pre-symbolic, procedural, and implicit. However, these neurological imprints give rise to unconscious relational patterns that effect our clients in their adult lives.

• Physiological, emotional and behavioral signs of infant and parent relational disruptions are evident from the first few months of a child’s life and throughout adolescence. We may see subtle versions of these same self-stabilizing dynamics in adult clients when they tighten their bodies, agitate, avoid eye contact, or deflect from their feelings. Such behaviors may signal unresolved relational disruptions in early childhood that continue to create disruptions and conflicts later in adulthood.

• Generating methods that are attuned to an infant’s, young child’s, or school-age child’s particular rhythm, their affect and cognitive level of functioning, and the unique relational-needs at the level of development where an adult client may be fixated. We need to be therapeutically responsive to the withdrawn and silent client, the client who is either hypo- or hyperactive, as well as the client who is resistive or belligerent. Each of these behavioral manifestations may reflect the neglects and traumas that leave a person stuck at an earlier level of development.

This 4-day workshop in Waldkirch, Germany (near Freiburg) will focus on various methods of psychotherapy and other professional fields that are influenced by the theories and research in Child Development. We will explore various child development hypotheses and concepts that are based on the writings of John Bowlby, Eric Erickson, Selma Fraiberg, Jean Piaget, and Donald Winnicott as well as a number of current child development researchers.

Recommended reading to prepare for this workshop :

1) Moursund, J.P. and Erskine, R.G. (2003). Integrative Psychotherapy: The Art and Science of Relationship. Pacific Grove: Brooks/Cole Thomson Learning.

2) Erskine, R. G. (2015). Relational Patterns, Therapeutic Presence: Concepts and Practice of Integrative Psychotherapy. London: Karnac Books.