Theories Technq Som Psych I

Catalog description

This course gives in-depth exploration of somatic principles, practices and approaches to psychotherapy. While students will be introduced to some of the historic Somatic Psychotherapy innovators and their lineages, the primary focus of the course will entail embodying and practicing the principles and practices of our field. Fundamentally the course will give students exposure to a range of somatic approaches to working with clients' emotions, feelings and actions through continued work with gesture, posture, facial expression, voice and breath. Issues of somatic transference, countertransference, resistance and projection, as well as various modes of somatic intervention will be central to the inquiry of the class. Movement, dream work, role play and other experiential approaches will be incorporated into a psychodynamic, relational approach to somatic psychotherapy. We will also work with developmental, attachment and trauma issues through somatic psychotherapeutic approaches. Sociocultural understandings regarding culture, sexuality, identity, and emotional expression are integrated throughout the course. We will integrate the clinical application of psychopharmacology and work collaboratively with a client's systems of care. RESTRICTED TO MA SOMATIC PSYCHOLOGY STUDENTS