What you will receive

• 4 Live Webinar Sessions with Q & A
• 4 Links to the Recordings

This course is designed to awaken creative desire and expand the imagination of the clinician and in turn, her patient. It could also appeal to anyone looking for creative ways to solve every day problems. Many varieties of imagination will be explored — the spiritual, the relational, the dreamworld, the aesthetic, and the adaptive.

Expanding the imagination allows for greater flexibility and access to the unconscious. We are then better able to identify dysfunctional patterns that impede functioning and find innovative solutions. A special form of dreamwork will be discussed which is aimed at solving problems.

Also, the concepts and symbols in our field of psychotherapy eventually become worn out. As clinicians, we need new fresh ideas to address changing concerns. This course may jumpstart clinicians to share their knowledge.

This course is unique in that it is interdisciplinary. We will synthesizes for the first-time research in many fields — including spirituality and Kabbalah, neuroscience, and the arts — to give an original understanding of the current pressing problems in the rapidly changing field of psychotherapy: how do we work with unconscious processes and early memories to help our patients become more imaginative, creative, hopeful and resilient, and in so doing, heal.

This course is ideal if

• You are looking to learn how to break dysfunctional patterns, whether you are a therapist, a client or a person who wants to expand and explore new ideas
• You are looking to conquer creative blocks in a particular field or to become more creative in solving everyday problems
• You are a therapist who wants to contribute to the field but needs inspiration and tools to do so
• You want to learn more about spirituality and how this can be healing both in psychotherapy and in everyday life
• You are interested in a technique of dreamwork that can expand the imagination and help you solve problems
• You are interested in how the experience of arts and architecture can help in the healing of conflict and trauma

Course Overview

CLASS ONE: Using the Arts and Architecture to Address Psychological Conflicts

The arts are inherently transformational, not only for the artist but also for the viewer. They introduce universal problems, helping us to feel less alone and isolated. We also  gain the aesthetic distance to address conflict and ponder possible solutions. The arts and architecture will be explored as to their healing capacities. The use of poetry to help solidify the self and articulate repressed feelings will be discussed. The use of images in The Eel and the Blowfish will demonstrate how visual images aid in healing. The lecturer’s experience in the Jewish Museum in Berlin will show how the physical space of architecture can become potential space and in so doing, heal.

CLASS TWO: Embodied Imagination – A special form of dreamwork

This class presents an innovative form of post-Jungian dreamwork called Embodied Imagination, which is useful not only for clients but for anyone wishing to expand creatively.

In this method, the dreamer enters the dream and embodies key images, that is, feels them in the body. These images are then formed into a composite that is practiced by the dreamer in the days to come. This allows the dreamer to leave his or her “habitual consciousness,” or usual way of seeing the world, and form new approaches and perspectives. The technique will be demonstrated with visuals from my new graphic novel: The Eel and the Blowfish.

CLASS THREE: Our spiritual connection with each other

This class focuses on the spiritual connection we can have with each other in and outside of psychotherapy. Although usually implicit, spirituality is at the heart of the healing process.

Psychotherapy is a sacred act. We bring the client into transitional space – that spiritual space between reality and fantasy where boundaries are loosened and new experiences become possible. The deep listening, empathy and intuition of the therapist creates the therapeutic will explore how to deepen this relationship. This class will also discuss metaphors from the Kabbalah, a contemplative tradition, to help illuminate the healing process, inspire the clinician, and give tools to work with clients.

CLASS FOUR: Unconscious communication and the uncanny

This class explores the resonant/relational imagination: the therapeutic attunement and unconscious communication between client and therapist, sometimes even eerily when the dyad is separated in time and space. Freud and Ferenczi explored the unconscious transfer of thoughts and feelings between patient and therapist, what they termed “thought transference” or telepathy and what we call unconscious communication. Freud wrote that these uncanny phenomena are indisputable and that eventually science will explain them. This exploration continues today, and numerous scientific explanations are offered, including using quantum physics as a metaphor to understand unconscious communication and the discovery of mirror neurons.. Discussion of how therapist can use this information in psychotherapy.

By the End of This Course You Will Be Able To

1. Describe three ways the transpersonal connection between therapist and client contributes to emotional and psychological wholeness and health
2. Explain 4 aspects of a special technique of dreamwork that expands the imagination and helps the client or interested individual break through disabling blocks.
3. Name 3 ways the arts and architecture can be part of integrated therapies and/or used adjunctively for working through anxiety and trauma related symptoms.
4. Describe two ways unconscious communication manifests in therapy and everyday life

Suggested reading

Domash, L. (2021). Imagination, creativity and spirituality in psychotherapy: Welcome to wonderland. New York: Routledge.

Domash, L. and Marks-Tarlow, T. (2022). The eel & the blowfish: A graphic novel of dreams, trauma & healing. New York, NY: IPBooks.

Website:

https://www.eelandblowfish.com/

Optional reading

Bollas, C. (Ed.) (2011). The transformational object. In The Christopher Bollas reader (pp. 1–12). New York, NY: Routledge.

Bosnak, R. (2008). Embodiment: Creative imagination in medicine, art and travel. New York, NY: Routledge.

Bosnak, R. (1998). A little course in dreams. Boston, MA: Shambhala Press.

Bromberg, P.M. (2013). Hidden in plain sight: Thoughts on imagination and the lived unconscious. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 23:1: 1-14.

De Peyer, J. (2016). Uncanny communication and the porous mind. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 26 (2): 156-174.

Domash, L. (2014a). Creating “therapeutic” space: How architecture and design can inform psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 11: 94–111.

Domash, L. (2014b). Intergenerational dreaming: Response to Gerald and Sperber. Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 11:133–137.

Domash, L. (2016). Dreamwork and transformation: Facilitating therapeutic change using    embodied imagination. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 52(3):1–24.

Landy, R.J. (2003). Drama therapy with adults. In C.E. Schaefer (Ed.), Play therapy with adults

(pp. 15–33). New York: Wiley.

Laub, D. & Podell, D. (1995). Art and trauma. International Journal of Psycho-analysis, 76:991–1005.

Marks-Tarlow, T. (2012). Clinical intuition in psychotherapy: The neurobiology of embodied response. New York, NY: Norton.

Marks-Tarlow , T. (2014). Awakening clinical intuition: An experiential workbook for psychotherapists. New York: NY: Norton.

Marks-Tarlow, T., Siegel, D.J. & Solomon, M.F. (2018). Play and creativity in psychotherapy. New York, NY: Norton.

Ogden, T.H. (1998). A question of voice in poetry and psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 67(3):426–448.

Roos, P. (2016). The great listener. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 13(3): 294-299.

Starr, K. (2008). Repair of the soul: Metaphors of transformation in Jewish mysticism and psychoanalysis. New York, NY: Routledge.

Suchet, M. (2016). Surrender, transformation and transcendence. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 26(6): 747-760.

Richman, S. (2014). Mended by the muse: Creative transformations of trauma. New York, NY: Routledge.

Zauzner, T. (2022).The creative trance: Altered states of consciousness and the creative process.  New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

CEC Learning Objectives

• Describe three ways the transpersonal connection between therapist and client contributes to emotional and psychological wholeness and health
• Explain 4 aspects of a special technique of dreamwork that expands the imagination and helps the client or interested individual break through disabling blocks.
• Name 3 ways the arts and architecture can be part of integrated therapies and/or used adjunctively for working through anxiety and trauma-related symptoms.
• Describe two ways unconscious communication manifests in therapy and everyday life

 

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