2010 PREVIEW - dates to be announced
2-DAY INTENSIVE
The Creative Therapist: The Art of Awakening a Session
(bi-lingual - simultaneous translation)
Presenter:
Bradford Keeney, Ph.D., has served distinguished careers as a pioneer of creative therapy, a university professor, social cybernetician, anthropologist of cultural healing traditions, conversation analyst, improvisational performer, and foundation vice president. He is presently Professor, Department of Transformative Inquiry, California Institute of Integral Studies; Director, Institute for Creative Transformation; Clinical Director, Center for Children and Families in northeast Louisiana; and Honorary Senior Research Fellow, Rock Art Research Institute, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Keeney is the originator of several alternative orientations to psychotherapy including improvisational therapy, resource focused therapy, and creative therapy: the art of awakening a session. He also is the inventor of recursive frame analysis, a research method that discerns patterns of transformation in conversation. As a scholar, his classic text, Aesthetics of Change, was cited by Heinz von Foerster as one of the key texts of cybernetics, the original science of complexity.
He is the author of over 31 books that include numerous titles for the popular press, such as Everyday Soul, Shaking Out the Spirits, Crazy Wisdom Tales for Deadheads, Shamanic Christianity (winner of a Best Spiritual Book of 2006 Award from Spirituality & Health magazine), and Shaking Medicine: The Healing Power of Ecstatic Movement. His radical improvisational work is presented in the CD series for Sounds True entitled, Shaking: The Original Path to Ecstasy and Healing.
Keeney is a licensed family therapist and licensed supervisor in Louisiana; a Clinical Member, Approved Supervisor, and Fellow of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy; a Certified Family Therapist and Advisory Board Member, National Academy for Certified Family Therapists; and a member of the American Counseling Association. He has received the Outstanding Service Award and the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Purdue University. In 2008 he was given the Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award by the Louisiana Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.
Keeney presently is practicing and teaching what he has learned from the arts and sciences across diverse cultural traditions to help individuals, couples, and families transform their challenges and suffering into growth and more meaningful lives.
Course Description
Professor Keeney teaches with clinical cases. He demonstrates how to utilize what comes forth in a session to actively construct and perform an alternative transformational reality. This is a departure from any focus on problems, solutions, or interpretative narratives. It is a radical re-contextualization of therapy as a performing art of creative transformation.
The art of clinical work is discussed in terms of successfully passing through a beginning, middle, and end, so that each session is well formed and resolved. This unique version of single-session whole therapy reframes clinical work as an opportunity to bring forth uncommon experiences that provide transformative rather than stuck ways of being in the everyday.
Keeney’s teaching draws upon an extensive background in the therapeutic arts including systemic family therapy, brief therapy, social cybernetics, the performing arts, postmodern play, and a two-decade long tutelage with diverse cultural healing traditions. His teaching mission is to liberate clinicians from over-reliance upon schooled approaches to therapy and to help them become more creatively responsive to the unique characteristics of each session.
Learning Objectives
1. Proficient observation of the resources clients and therapists bring to a session.
2. A means of detailing and describing the therapeutic movement of a session in terms of a progression of communication frames.
3. Skills in utilizing presenting communications in a way that is transformative.
4. Demonstrate creative ways of inventing unique therapeutic strategies.
Hours:
9:00 AM to 12:00 PM and 1:30 PM to 4:30 PM
12 Continuing Education Credits
Continuing Education Units, approved for MFT’s, LCSW’s, as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, Provider #PCE 14, & by the California Board of Registered Nurses, BRN #2062. MRI maintains responsibilty for the program and its content.
*Cost: $400.00
dates to be announced - stay tuned
