PdPP in Perth
Community Programs
Continuing the Sigmund Freud group community work.
Some of Freud's practice was in providing low cost therapy for those in need. PdPP is continuing this practice as part of our community involvement and promotion of the Psychoanalytic therapy option as a choice in recovery.
PdPP will provide community benefit in terms of sustaining an ongoing professional framework - Community Programs - that offers a more affordable long term Mental Health treatment option within an analytic practice.
This service is provided in private practice and at 55 Central Crisis Accommodation Service in Maylands and St Patrick's Community Support Centre in Fremantle.
Group Dialogical Work
Using the Open Dialogue approach in mental health recovery.
PdPP psychoanalytic therapists are now part of a the Open Dialogue Work Group, studying and utilising the principles of a successful Finnish dialogical approach for health recovery in acute and chronic illness;
working together with support facilitators, family therapists and peer support workers with the aim of furthering the knowledge of OD locally, and seeing how it can interface with the current system. In OD practice two practitioners per group meet with the person in need in their home, together with other family or social group members. This is an option that can be offered to the people accessing Partners in Recovery's service, and anyone referred to the group.
Lacan Reading Group
Study group of psychoanalytic interest in Freudian/Lacanian texts.
A Monthly reading group, facilitated by Analytic Psychotherapist Leonard Martin, studies the writings of Jacques Lacan, whose work as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst has been based on, and has extended, the theory and practice of Sigmund Freud's discoveries of the human psyche.
The group meet in one another's homes to read, discuss and sustain interest in ongoing learning in the analytic field. At the moment the group is coming to the end of Jacques Lacan's Seminar III: Psychosis.
Suitable for: Training & Professional Development for analytic, therapeutic and counselling practitioners; health, allied health professionals; and people with an interest in contemporary theory and psychoanalysis.
Art and Analysis
Reflections on Art Making
An Essay by Marie Haass
I came across Susan Kavaler-Adler’s question “is creativity a form of compulsive madness, driving artists by an urgent need for contact with their dark, demonic and usually unconscious selves, or is it an effort to expel or exorcise inner ghosts?" (Kavaler-Adler 1993, p.7).
Let’s start with the hypothesis that “art has the potential to expel inner ghosts”. Long before Freud, Goya‘s artistic representation of the ugliness of war and human basic instincts was in direct relation to the inarticulate, to the “unconscious” (retroactive application of psychoanalysis term). According to Rollo May, “what genuine painters do is to reveal the underlying psychological and spiritual conditions of their relationship to the world.” (May 1975, P.52) and he defines “creativity as the encounter of the intensively conscious human being with his/her world”. Early 19th century art shifted away from its public function towards the pictorial revelation of the artist’s inner world. Goya was a precursor of modern art, bringing forth that, which was within himself.
Let us now inquire into the nature of the creative process. According to Maizel (1995) it is a very complex process that involves many elements simultaneously:
“the artist as a whole being, the process as an internal thought/idea, the making, as a physical act, the creative product as the art object and the world as we inhabit”. Art making brings tension. To try describing what happens during the creative struggle I shall speak firstly about art students and then about my own art practice.
The first thing I notice when presenting unusual material to art groups is the difficulties some students have to adjust to these new experiences. They often express their frustrations by resisting the exercises, complaining about the futility of the task. Some express doubt and annoyance by talking instead of working.
I can do nothing but observe and let them be with their frustration. It’s never easy, I want so strongly to help; I have empathy for their uneasiness, and I have to make a huge effort to resist the temptation to shorten the exercise. If they persevere they will eventually discover that resistance and even annoyance have helped to produce their most interesting work. Deep down I know that they will be satisfied when the process begins to work. The reward is what Rollo May describes as “a sense of satisfaction derived from the experience of actualising one’s own potential” (May 1975, p.22).
“[She] observes Sisyphus forever pushing his rock up the mountain and recognises [herself]” (Buhler and Allen 1972, p.24). As a productive artist with
25 years of creative work behind me, each new creative project is still a trial.
I approach my work in two basic ways. Sometimes I know exactly what I want to paint. On other occasions I have no particular idea in mind, so I start with a blank canvas or sheet of paper and allow my tools and material to lead me. Finding the trust and courage to exploring a vague idea without a particular goal can be testing. The proverbial artist’s block can set in and take the form of a sudden fatigue, a ravenous hunger, or a pressing urge to wash the dishes. I have discovered that if I resist the temptation to stop working and continue to paint/draw through the discomfort, the fatigue vanishes, the hunger dissipates, and finally there is a breakthrough. As Marion Milner writes “The path to the unconscious often presents itself in an unordered and chaotic form, which is hard for most people to accept” (Milner 1977).
Anxieties, the impatience, the fear of the unknown could be part and parcel of what Susan Kavaler-Adler call “inner ghosts”. To allow these unpredictable movements of creation to happen brings a sense of personal satisfaction. It gives creative people the possibility to be more at home with themselves and therefore to feel alive.
Buhler, C. and M. Allen (1972). Introduction to humanistic psychology. Monterey, California, Brooks/Cole Publishing Company.
Kavaler-Adler, S. (1993). The compulsion to create: A psychoanalysis study of women artists. New York and London, Routledge.
Maisel, E. (1995). Fearless creating. New York.
May, R. (1960). Existential psychology. New York, Random House.
May, R. (1975). The courage to create. New York, W.W. Norton & Company. Inc.
Milner, M. (1977). On not being able to paint, Heinnemann.
Stern, D. N. (2004). The present moment in psychotherapy and in everyday life. New York, W.W. Norton & Company.
Open Dialogue
Open Dialogue Recovery Care
In the early 1980s Finland developed a needs-based model of treatment across its Mental Healthcare System. This was in response to a worsening situation with acute psychosis.
The project was built on the recognition of needs of each individual, of involving family members and of early intervention. Later in 1983 the Western Lapland University and Psychiatric Hospital developed an approach to first case psychosis treatment within the needs-based framework, with minimal or no medical intervention and a structured dialogical methodology. It was called the Open Dialogue Approach.
The response consists of a social group being involved in the treatment of one of its members, with two practitioners facilitating the group. With the introduction of ambulatory crisis support in 1990, most of the psychotherapy treatment was held in the family or individual's home. This treatment resulted in a 40% reduction of hospitalisation.
Other results of this approach, in a five year follow-up have shown that 80% of the participants were able to return to work or studies, with only 33% of participants having used neuroleptic medication. A ten year follow-up study showed that these outcomes had remained high (Seikkula & Alakare 2004; Seikkula et al. 2011a).
An Alternative to 'Treatment as Usual'
The Open Dialogue method helps bring people of a troubled social group, back to a social connection where they have a voice; using a specific dialogical method which allows a participant's needs to be heard, responded to, and reflected upon. This leads to a more informed support group growing around the affected member; leading to realizations that can start to form an environment more conducive to a recovery that people can become pro-actively engaged in.
The dialogical process was developed over many years in Scandinavia. It was influenced by Systemic Family Therapy and Psychodynamic Therapy, together with dialogical philosophies of Mihail Bahktin and Valentin Voloshinov, "in which the participants in dialogue become co-creators of a shared reality." (Seikkula et al, 2009)
We Live in Our Language
The importance of language in communication, understanding and wellbeing, is rarely considered. Mikhail Bakhtin has said that the worst thing that can happen to a person, is to not be responded to.
Mikhail Bakhtin and Valentin Voloshinov created the idea of dialogism for describing a specific type of communication and interaction in which the participants in dialogue become co-creators of the shared reality. In family therapy their ideas were transformed into psychotherapeutic dialogue by the Open Dialogue team. (Seikkula et al., 2006, p216). Mikhail Bakhtin believes that "crises are between people", so people need to be involved in the recovery.
Constructing words and establishing symbolic communication is a voice-making, identity-making, agentic activity occurring jointly “between people”. The crisis becomes the opportunity to make and remake the fabric of stories, identities, and relationships that construct the self and a social world. (Seikkula J, Olson M.E., 2003)
In many countries it seems that this integrated support and understanding is only at the level of systematic connections that can be contrary in their functioning, rather than developing a collaborative understanding in the best interests of people in difficulty.
Open Dialogue is unique in that it is a “communal practice organized in social networks.” It is embedded in the larger transformation of public psychiatric sources in Finland, that were associated with a reform called “Needs-adapted Treatment” (Seikkula J, Olson M.E., 2003). In England, Peer-supported Open Dialogue trainings are funded by the National Health Service.