VIP Friends & Visitors
Dame Ruth Silver DBE
Chair of the Learning and Skills Improvement Service
Social Dreaming Matrix
April 2012
On the 26th of April 2012 Dame Ruth Silver, an honoured friend of this training organisation, Hosted a Social Dreaming Matrix for the students and Associates of LC&CTA.
This was a highly successful experience for all participants. Over time everyone who took part reported coming to ‘new thinking’ about their own dreams or the links made between the dreams shared during the Matrix.
LC&CTA thanks Dame Ruth for providing us with this gift of enhanced understanding.
WHAT is a Social Dreaming Matrix?
Social dreaming is conducted in a Matrix configuration and is a very different space from a group.
Time boundaries are strictly kept and the dreams shared are expanded through free association and guided/interpreted by the Host.
Once a dream is voiced in the Matrix it ceases to be the personal property of the individual dreamer and now belongs to and is shared by, the Matrix. The purpose of Social Dreaming is to transform the meaning of the dreaming by way of free association, to make links among the dreams and facilitate the use of the dreams to make new thinking and thought accessible to the members of the Matrix as a whole.
Professor Mick Cooper from Strathclyde University
held a Relational Depth workshop at LC&CTA, March 2011
What is Relational Depth?
‘Un-planned moments of profound defenceless connectedness between client and therapist that stand out experientially and perceptually, among other moments of connectedness. Moments in which the deep visceral and sensory understanding of the therapist for the client’s perceptual world will bring about a felt sense of organic union within the therapeutic alliance – which in turn will earnestly assist the client in her/his movement toward actualised-self’.
Chris Brown, 2004
Professor John McLeod’s Visit to LC&CTA in November 2011
Professor John McLeod visited LC&CTA in November 2011 to further discuss Chris Brown and Juanita Harriot's research project on the 'Value of Research in Counsellor Training' (Chris and Juanita subsequently presented this Paper on Professor John McLeod's Research Panel at the BACP National Research Conference in May 2012 – the paper is soon to be published).
John also delivered a CPD Workshop to LC&CTA students and tutors on 'Pluralistic Counselling' the psychotherapeutic modality he developed with Professor Mick Cooper (seen above when he visited LC&CTA earlier in 2011); a model of counselling that encompasses innovative ideas yet also appears to be firmly rooted in the Person-Centred Approach.
Our students also benefited from John's research expertise and were able to discuss their own research work with him.
Juanita Harriot, Chris Brown, Professor John McLeod and Tony Taylor (left)