The family therapist in action: Hope, Impasse and Positioning

£85.00

What will we focus on? How will we use the time?

Therapists engaging in conversations with families find themselves in highly complicated situations; in which hope as well as impasse is part of the territory. Authors in the family therapy field have suggested key concepts like neutrality and not-knowing as guiding principles to help therapists deal with these questions. These concepts, however, are usually not very helpful as they are too crude to connect with therapists lived experiences.

In this workshop, we will reflect on the family therapist in action; on the therapist’s vulnerability as well as on some of the potentialities of the therapist’s use of self. We will propose a model of the therapist’s inner conversation that is useful in dealing with complex experiences in family therapy practice.

Detailed analyses of vignettes of therapist reflections will illustrate the model, and implications of this model for training and supervision will be considered.

What will I learn to understand and do better? What will excite me?

The workshop is for those professionals and students wanting to explore and address the full complication of the relational processes of a family therapeutic encounter in practice in a satisfactory way.

Peter Rober, PhD is clinical psychologist, family therapist and family therapy trainer at Context -Center for marital, family and sex therapy (UPC Leuven, Belgium). He teaches family therapy at the Institute for Family and Sexuality Studies (medical school of K.U. Leuven, Belgium). His research interest areas focus on family therapy with children and on the therapy process, including especially the use of self of the therapist and the therapist’s inner conversation.

Peter Rober published several articles in international family therapy journals. Since 1992, he has presented international workshops on family therapy with children and adolescents.

Rober, P. (2005). The therapist’s self in dialogical family therapy: Some ideas about not-knowing and the therapist's inner conversation. Family Process, 44, 477-495.

Rober, P., Van Eesbeek, D. & Elliott, R. (2006). Talking about violence: A micro-analysis of narrative processes in a family therapy session. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 32, 313-328.

Rober, P., Elliott, R., Buysse, A., Loots, G. & De Corte, K. (2008). What's on the therapist's mind? A grounded theory analysis of family therapist reflections during individual therapy sessions. Psychotherapy Research, 18 (1), 48-57.

Rober, P., Elliott, R., Buysse, A., Loots, G. & De Corte, K. (in press). Positioning in the therapist's inner conversation: A dialogical model based on a grounded theory analysis of therapist reflections. (accepted for publication in Journal of Marital and Family Therapy).

Rober, P. (in press). The Therapist’s Inner Conversation in Family Therapy Practice: Struggling with the complexities of therapeutic encounters with families. (accepted for publication in Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies)

At the KCC Foundation, London

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