5th biennial Andrew Samuels Lecture
This unique and innovative conference is the first to openly celebrate the fact that Humanistic Psychotherapy and Jungian Analysis have many features in common. For example, the idea that all elements in a dream are part of the dreamer’s personality or psyche is found in Fritz Perls and also in Jung. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Jung’s ideas about individuation have similarities. One could go on and on about it.
As far as therapy work is concerned, common features include trust that the patient/client knows at depth what is needed from the therapy, a recognition that the therapist is in the process as a person, and that therapy needs to struggle to maintain a distance from the conformist and materialist values that are present in contemporary society. Both traditions have pioneered the exploration of a variety of collective approaches to psychology, ranging from the transpersonal and spiritual to the socio-political.
Yet both traditions have had to revise and develop the seminal insights of their founders, and problems of mourning – for Jung, Rogers, Berne, Perls, Maslow, Reich and others – are freely acknowledged still to be there.
Many practitioners have or have had had a foot in both camps and, in selecting the speakers, CAP has tried to include as many of these as possible. So there will be external dialogue between the traditions and internal dialogues within the speakers. And, of course, we hope that there will be similar dialogues taking place amongst the participants. We do not for one moment think that there are no differences – even sharp differences – of perspective between these two invaluable therapeutic heritages.
The conference will be of interest to all working in or studying the fields of analysis, psychotherapy, counselling, psychology and education – not just to Jungians and Humanistic Psychotherapists.
[…] This unique and innovative conference is the first to openly celebrate the fact that Humanistic Psychotherapy and Jungian Analysis have many features in common. For example, the idea that all elements in a dream are part of the dreamer's personality or psyche is found in Fritz Perls and also in Jung. Maslow's hierarchy of needs and Jung's ideas about individuation have similarities. One could go on and on about it. The conference will be of interest to all working in or studying the fields of analysis, psychotherapy, counselling, psychology and education – not just to Jungians and Humanistic Psychotherapists. […]