Advevntures in Postmodern Collaborative Practices:
Therapy, Oranizational Development, Education and Research

INTERNATIONAL SUMMER INSTITUTE 2007
June 16-17, 2007

Pre-INTERNATIONAL SUMMER INSTITUTE WORKSHOPS 2007
June 17-22, 2007

Expand your Possibilities & Revitalize your Practice Across Cultures

Mayan Riviera
Hotel Las Palapas, Playa del Carmen, Mexico

What Others Have Said

"Best training event I've ever attended! . . . truly a collaborative and dialogical experience."

"Harlene and her colleagues walk their talk."

"What an inspiring and respectful learning environment."

"I learned more in this week than in any graduate course or other program that I have ever attended."

"I am so surprised about how much I grew personally from this experience."

 

COLLABORATIVE THERAPY

Stephanie Head
University of Kentucky, Louisville, Kentucky
Student Representative, Kentucky Association for Marriage and Family Therapy

It is becoming more and more clear to me.  Who I am is as critical in being an effective marriage and family therapist as the skills I acquire.  I have recently returned from a week-long intensive International Summer Institute with Harlene Anderson in Cuernavaca, Mexico.  Her model is called Collaborative Therapy and is a postmodern approach to family therapy.  As the workshop progressed, I began to realize that this humanistic approach will not only help me as a marriage and family therapist and social worker but also as a person in my daily living.  Collaborative Therapy teaches one to attend to daily interactions as well as how to practice marriage and family therapy.

Postmodernism is skeptical of theories that speak in grand generalities and that universalize their conclusions. Translated into clinical practice this means that the therapist works to avoid dogmatic posturing about the "Truth" of the client's situation.  The therapist attends to the experience of clients while encouraging and facilitating a conversation that generates ideas that doesn’t necessarily result in consensus. Rather than attempting to build consensus around some grand statement of the “Truth,” the therapist adopts a deliberate "not-knowing" approach to therapy.  Alternative perspectives are encouraged and arise in the spontaneity of the therapeutic conversation.  This is unlike many traditional therapies whereby the therapist attempts to steer the conversation toward some predestined insight, goal or therapist-preferred discourse.

Harlene Anderson and her associates modeled the postmodern Collaborative Therapy approach with workshop participants.  They did this in a variety of ways and contexts including live consultations, clinical stories, small conversational groups, experiential exercises, readings, and cultural events (even visiting an Internationally known artist in his home). The totality of the experience had a profound effect on me.  I felt free to move beyond my usual comfort zone.  This was invited by not only the manner in which they interacted with us but by their making themselves available to us during “free” time such as dinner.  Although I am only a student, I felt honored by Harlene and her associates and imagine that clients would experience the same inspiration of being attended to by their therapist if she/he practiced Collaborative Therapy."