Talk for The Analytic Network Bath
Saturday 16th June 2018
Between you and me a new door opened
And someone, still faceless,
Was waiting for us there
Pablo Neruda
In a time when psychotherapy is becoming increasingly prescribed, mapped into evidence based interventions, squeezed by regulation and the fear of hostile litigation, Psyche as Soul needs a place aside from the colonising ego.
‘It’ has a long history that includes Allan Watts (This is it) and Georg Groddeck (Book of the It). In our present culture getting it tends to be understood in terms of possession, whereas this talk will follow a dispossessing process. Drawing on recent work with ‘Therapy as Initiation, I will explore how the paradigm of initiation can bring new eyes to the everyday nature of ongoing psychotherapy. The therapeutic process can be experienced as a ritual movement into another space. This is the liminal space through which we attempt to transit in this talk - opening a door to getting it, not getting it, being got and where we were got.