What does it mean to be free?

A workshop across 2 evenings direct from the UK – offered online and nationwide

Thur 13 & Fri 14 OCT 2022 – 7.00pm to 9.30pm each day

Introduction

“Recent global events have confronted us with many new moral and emotional challenges, tensions and realities that impact on our work as therapists. It is vital to arrive at a position of clarity that allows us to continue working well with clients who have been caught in these difficult situations. For this we need to take time to reflect on how the global issues affect us as practitioners and as human beings and how we can find a constructive way forward. This means facing up to the paradoxes and dilemmas that human existence presents us with so that we can reclaim our existential freedom”
Emmy van Deurzen

The Workshop

In this workshop, offered across 2 evenings in Australia, we will consider a number of paradoxical realities, including those of sickness and health, freedom and responsibility, self and other, good and evil. The objective will be to recover our flexibility of thinking and being in a world full of obstacles and limitations so that we can live more deliberately. This is the best way to find the courage to stand with our clients when they are confronted with difficult situations in which they feel alienated and estranged.

What we will consider:

Day 1:

What is freedom?
Some philosophical ideas to orientate us
How do you experience your own freedom?
What are the limitations to your freedom?
Discussion

Day 2:

Paradox of Sickness and Health
Paradox of freedom and responsibility
Paradox of self and other
Paradox of good and evil
Conclusions

What you can expect to walk away with:

some cognitive and philosophical concepts to help you make sense of the conundrum of freedom
ways to work through any personal confusion and contradictions that you may have struggled with in relation to freedom
new tools for working with issues around freedom in your therapeutic practice

The Details

Date: Thursday 13 and Friday 14 OCTOBER 2022
Time: 7.00pm to 9.30pm AEDT each day (short breaks each evening will be accommodated)
Location: online via zoom (registrants will receive an invitation to participate and all the details they require in advance of the date)
Cost: $300 (EB flat rate)
CPD Hours: 5

Emmy van Deurzen is a philosopher, counselling psychologist and existential therapist, who has worked with people on transformative life events and experiences for 49 years. She is a visiting professor in psychology and psychotherapy with Middlesex University and the founder Director of the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling and the Existential Academy, in London. She is a fellow of the British Psychological Society, the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy and an Honorary Life Member of the European Association for Psychotherapy, the Federation of Existential Therapists in Europe and the Society for Existential Analysis. Her eighteenth book, entitled Rising from Existential Crisis: Life Beyond Calamity was published with PCCS books in 2021 and she is currently completing a book on Existential Freedom for Penguin Books.