THE WASHINGTON SCHOOL OF PSYCHIATRY
GROUP PSYCHOTHERAPY TRAINING PROGRAM
announces the seventh presentation of
THE NATIONAL GROUP PSYCHOTHERAPY INSTITUTE
2010 – 2012
The National Group Psychotherapy Institute is a two-year, intensive learning program designed to enhance and deepen the participants’ understanding of group process and dynamics in psychotherapy groups. The Institute is designed to meet the training needs of group therapists at all levels of experience. Six weekend conferences guide the participant through the process of forming a group, developing a cohesive, working group culture, and terminating a group.
The Institute
From birth to death we live our lives in groups, but group life is complicated and sometimes difficult to navigate. We often find ourselves repeating old, dysfunctional ways of relating, learned in our earliest group experiences, which can leave us feeling ineffective, isolated, and alienated.
Group psychotherapy offers us an opportunity to learn and enhance the interpersonal skills required for intimacy, mutuality, and more rewarding interpersonal relationships. Inside the group, we members bring our unique and often problematic ways of relating to the relationships we form in the group, and through those relationships, learn ,how to understand, and ultimately relinquish the various obstacles and resistances we erect that thwart relational and emotional maturation.
The Institute offers a two-year program of six intensive group weekends, focusing on contemporary approaches to dynamic group psychotherapy, with each weekend offering multiple opportunities within the faculty/member community for didactic and experiential learning. The Washington School of Psychiatry has been training group therapists since 1962. The National Institute was added to our offerings in 1994. The program has been recognized internationally for its excellence.
Membership: Participation in the Institute is open to mental health practitioners, clinicians-in-training and professionals in related fields. There are two categories of membership. Full Members attend the entire cycle of six conferences and belong to the same small group throughout. Weekend Members attend on a per conference basis, are assigned to a small group formed only for that weekend, and may return for future conferences. Full members with an advanced degree in a mental health field may also apply for the Certification Training Track. (Details below)
THE FORMAT
The Institute focuses on group development, paying special attention to the way different theoretical orientations deal with such issues as the role of the leader, group composition, transference and countertransference, resistance to immediacy, cultural differences, subgrouping, boundary issues, and controversies in technique. Participants will explore these perspectives through readings, lectures, panel discussions, demonstration groups, and large and small group experiences.
Small Groups: Each participant will be a member of a small group of 7 – 10 participants. These groups are led by one or two faculty members and meet several times during the weekend to integrate the didactic material presented in the conference with observation of their small group process as it unfolds in the here and now. Those enrolled in the two year institute will be in the same small group for the entire two years.
Large Groups: All institute members will participate in a large group which meets several times each weekend. The large group helps participants understand societal and subgroup dynamics, and looks at such issues as race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, class, professional discipline and status, and their impact on group process and communication. Faculty members will serve as consultants to assist participants in understanding their experience and the large group process.
CONTINUING EDUCATION
Each conference provides 12 hours of continuing education credits.
FACULTY
Faculty members are accomplished teachers, writers, supervisors and consultants in the field of group psychotherapy. Many have also achieved prominence as guest presenters at national and international conferences.
Chair: John Thomas, MSW, CGP
Dean: Mary Ann Dubner, PhD, CGP
Stewart Aledort, MD, CGP, FAGPA
Maryetta Andrews-Sachs, MA, CGP
Mary Dluhy, MSW, CGP, FAGPA
Molly Donovan, PhD, CGP
Macario Giraldo, PhD, CGP
Beatrice Liebenberg, MSW, CGP, DFAGPA
Hallie Lovett, PhD, CGP
Leon Lurie, MS
Farooq Mohyuddin, MD
Leon Paparella, MSW, CGP
Sy Rubenfeld, PhD, CGP, Founding Director
George Saiger, MD, CGP, FAGPA
Bob Schulte, MSW, CGP
Rosemary Segalla, PhD, CGP
Michael Stiers, PhD, CGP
Harriet Swankin, MS, CGP
Steve Van Wagoner, PhD, CGP, FAGPA
Ayana Watkins-Northern, PhD, CGP
Barry Wepman, PhD, CGP, FAGPA
Thomas Wessel, PhD, CGP
Emeriti:
Gladys Kraft, PhD
Morris Parloff, PhD
Gail Polsby, MSW
Charles Seashore, PhD
Isaiah Zimmerman, PhD, CGP, FAGPA
From Fragments to a Mosaic:
Systems Theory at Work
We begin our NGPI 2010-2012 cycle with a weekend on Systems Theory, a set of foundational concepts which informs the thinking of all who work with groups. Systems concepts such as task, boundaries, and role, as well as group development, will be examined through the lens of a fact-based Italian film, It Can Be Done. It tells the story of a group of psychiatric patients who transform themselves from marginalized ‘others’, alienated from society, from each other and from themselves, into a successful artisanal collective, with reverberations throughout Italy’s mental health system.
September 24-25, 2010
Co-Chairs: John Thomas, MSW, CGP
Ayana Watkins-Northern, PhD, CGP
Into the Abyss:
The Power and Terror of Group Psychotherapy
Bottomless, chaotic, creative, transformative, a source of deep wisdom, peering into an abyss. These are all ways of describing the experience of being in a psychotherapy group, a place where we often witness moments of terror and moments of courage. The task of this weekend will be to look at the process of group membership–from the introduction of the idea of group to an individual psychotherapy patient, to becoming a group member, to the way a patient uses the group to work in depth. We will consider the resistances of patients and therapists, as well as the pressures on the group therapist to peer into his/her own abyss.
January 21-22, 2011
Co-Chairs: Molly Donovan, PhD, CGP
Barry Wepman, PhD, CGP, FAGPA
Working with Intense Affect in Group Psychotherapy:
Facilitating Emotional Communication and Mature Attachments
This weekend conference examines how emergent and intense feelings are contained and worked through in ongoing group psychotherapy through the use of the therapist’s countertransference, the exploration of resistances to immediacy and emotional communication between members and the leader, the fostering and examination of lateral transferences, and meeting the maturational needs of the group and its members.
May 13-14, 2011
Chair: Steve Van Wagoner, PhD, CGP, FAGPA
Being a Group Therapist: A Journey Through Life
Foulkes considered the personality of the therapist to be of singular importance in determining the development of the therapy group and its outcomes. This conference will explore how personal and biographical facts, especially the sum of experience in groups across the life cycle, influences the professional development of the group therapist. Participants will have an opportunity to consider the impact of the person-of-the-therapist on the therapy group, including his/her valences to particular theories, counter- transference patterns, personal style and creativity. September 23-24, 2011
Chair: Bob Schulte, MSW, CGP
Guest Presenter: Morris Nitsun, PhD
Ethics and the Unconscious: Lacanian Perspectives on the Direction of the Treatment
The role of the therapist is inscribed in an ethical register. For the group therapist this means that ongoing attention must be paid to two kinds of mediation: the mediation of the other (little other) or ego and the mediation of the Other (big Other) or law of the father, the guarantor of the social link. Participants will have the opportunity to examine the central consequences for the human in moving from the world of nature to the universe of culture, and how the TRUTH OF THE SUBJECT is revealed by the unconscious.
January 20-21, 2012
Chair: Macario Giraldo, PhD, CGP
Difficult Topics: Models for Dealing with Non-linear, Transcendent and Spiritual Themes in Group Therapy
This conference will explore group processes that tend to inhibit or facilitate the emergence and investigation of the varied interpretive schemes group members and group leaders use to deal with the universal attempt to make meaning in our lives. Whether formally spiritual, or more poetic or artistic, such material can be difficult for groups to access and tolerate. We will examine issues of difference, defenses against group cohesiveness, the impact of loss and termination as seen through Relational, Intersubjective and Existential perspectives.
May 4-5, 2012
Chair: Hallie Lovett, PhD, CGP
CERTIFICATE TRAINING TRACK
The WSP Group Psychotherapy Training Program offers an intensive training track that meets the requirements of the National Registry of Group Psychotherapists for certification (CGP). Requirements include:
- Interview with Dean or Faculty Representative
- Completion of the two year institute
- Completion of a 12 hour Basic Principles of Group Psychotherapy didactic course
- Weekly supervision with a faculty member (minimum 75 hours over two years)
- Personal group psychotherapy with an approved group psychotherapist (minimum 75 hours over two years)
FEES/REGISTRATION
(Pre-registration required)
Annual registration: $1000 (3 conferences)
Two year registration: $2000 (6 conferences)
Per conference registration: $360
Contact WSP for scholarship assistance information.
THE CYCLE
From Fragments to a Mosaic:
Systems Theory at Work
Co-Chairs: John Thomas, MSW, CGP
Ayana Watkins-Northern, PhD, CGP
September 24-25, 2010
Into the Abyss:
The Power and Terror of Group Psychotherapy
Co-Chairs: Molly Donovan, PhD, CGP &
Barry Wepman, PhD, CGP, FAGPA
January 21-22, 2011
Working with Intense Affect in Group Psychotherapy:
Facilitating Emotional Communication and Mature Attachments
Chair: Steve Van Wagoner, PhD, CGP, FAGPA
May 13-14, 2011
Being a Group Therapist: A Journey Through Life
Chair: Bob Schulte, MSW, CGP
Guest Presenter – Morris Nitsun, PhD
September 23-24, 2011
Ethics and the Unconscious:
Lacanian Perspectives on the Direction of the Treatment
Chair: Macario Giraldo, PhD, CGP
January 20-21, 2012
Difficult Topics: Models for Dealing with Non-linear, Transcendent and Spiritual Themes in Group Psychotherapy
Chair: Hallie Lovett, PhD, CGP
May 4-5, 2012