W28 – Lessons for Young Therapists: Getting Started and Staying on Track in Your Psychotherapy Practice
Saturday, Oct. 21
10:45 – 11:45 (1 hr)
Meeting Room: Port Alberni (4th floor – North Tower)
Vincenzo Di Nicola*, MD PhD FRCPC FCAHS
CanMEDS Roles:
- Professional
- Collaborator
- Communicator
At the end of this session, participants will be able to: 1) Discern the patterns in psychotherapeutic practice based on a survey of the evolution and current practices of psychotherapy; 2) Answer such basic questions as to what to read and how to begin therapy and what motivates both the patient and therapist; and 3) Avoid theoretical riddles and practical traps and focus on the therapeutic relationship and its ethical conduct.
In these seven lessons for young therapists, a practising psychiatrist and psychotherapist with more than 40 years of experience surveys what therapy is about and how it works, from behaviour therapy and family therapy to psychodynamic psychotherapy. Ranging from what to read and how to begin therapy, the lessons cover therapeutic temperaments and technique, the myth of independence and individual psychology, the nature of change, the evolution of therapy, the search for meaning and relational ethics, and finally, when therapy is over.
Overview:
1. People come into therapy in order not to change – When does therapy begin?
2. Therapeutic temperaments – Who conducts therapy and why?
3. The family as a unique culture – Relational psychology and relational therapy.
4. Changing the subject – How does therapy work?
5. One hundred years of invisibility – The evolution of therapy from the 19th-century discovery of the unconscious to the 21st-century values of diversity, decolonization, and change.
6. Making meaning – Making sense, technique, and doing good: relational ethics.
7. And on the seventh day, the Lord rested – When therapy is over: the myth of closure, flow, and slowness in therapy.
This workshop integrates the author’s model of working with families across cultures presented in “A Stranger in the Family: Families, Culture, and Therapy” (1997) and elaborated in his “Letters to a Young Therapist” (2011) with more recent work on trauma-informed therapy in “Trauma and Transcendence” (Capretto and Boynton, editors; 2018), and his “Slow thought manifesto.” (2019)
References:
- Di Nicola V. Letters to a young therapist: relational practices for the coming community. New York, NY: Atropos Press; 2011.
- Mollica RF. Healing invisible wounds: paths to hope and recovery in a violent world. New York, NY: Harcourt International; 2006.