Short reviews of the Topic Groups:

Others

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Initiation – Awareness – Communication: What Western Society may learn from Traditional Tribal Societies

Andreas Hejj, Prof., Dr.

A survey at a leading German university (Hejj, 1996) has shown, that a large number of student face severe difficulties in life related to their lack of competence in communication, be it in personal, professional or even romantic relationships. Prof. Hejj participated in men’s houses both in Papua New Guinea and in Micronesia. He will demonstrate that the adult education course referred to as initiation focuses on awareness of its participants in order to lead them to a more genuine, responsible and self-governed communication. It is worth while examining why (even weekend) courses on emotional intelligence, many a time offered by individuals with little psychological background, are so overbooked and how western society may benefit from some of the communication exercises offered in traditional tribal societies to individuals wanting to become adults.

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Geréb Ágnes

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Peace

Frank Cardell

How can we create a culture of peace that gives us the tools and resources to practice this everyday and moment in our lives?

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Organizations

Frank Cardell

What do we need to do differently so that the culture, values and attitudes we embrace in the workplace can spread out into our families, friendships and our community experience?

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Conversation about the “conversational group”

Éva Teket

“Why is it good that we have a conversational group? - asked somebody close to the end of the 1^st grade.

“I like it, because I can tell that I love you.”/Vercsi, 7 years old/

…of course, apart from this it is good for many things… let’s find it out together in a conversational group!    

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Being a person-centered person/practioner in Europe

Magda Draskóczy

The Network of European Associations for Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapy and Counselling invites workshop participants to an encounter on the above topic. We would like to talk about our experiences on a personal, experiential level so that we can better understand each other’s position and by that our own, too.  That may help us to support each other when trying to improve the frames of our person-centred work both on national and European level.

(Magda Draskoczy, Polly Iossifides, Andrea Uphoff, Sylvia Rasch-Owald, Gerhard Stumm, Willi Roes: Board of the Network)

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Drama in Romanian prisons

Mónika Suba

The drama, which has a therapy’s effect and helps the development of the personality, is used successfully since 1998 in Romanian prisons. Between 1998 and 2008 many plays were performed, which had a positive effect on the prisoners, who were participating in the program. We will discuss this topic.

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Active Imagination – Internal dialogue

Péter Bálint

C. G. Jung discovered the method of active imagination in 1913. With the help of this method the spiritual moods and other unconscious contents can be processed. 
Unlike dreaming which just happens to someone, during imagination the self faces the internal images and fantasies actively. We could also say that the consciousness and the unconsciousness have a dialogue with each other in order to distinguish the consciousness from the unconscious contents. In this way, the unconscious contents can be deprived from the power with which they can rule the consciousness. 
The workshop is open for a maximum of 6-8 participants due to the technical nature of the method.

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To become mature enough for death

Magdolna Singer

For those who suffer in a fatal disease the last period of time is valuable, and involves the last chance to “become a person”.

In every living organism, so in humans as well, there is motivation that is born with us to become more and more. Albert Szent-Györgyi called this “drive”, while Rogers used the name of “growing potential”. This struggle to “become a person” does not end when we face our incurable disease. We cannot even imagine that the last months, days or even hours may bring the unexpected turn to experience the joy of our incredible growing.

An old lady, who turned to her nurses with hatred at the first months of her disease, said the followings about the turn she had experienced: “In the last three months I lived more than during my whole life. I wish I knew forty years ago what I know now.” Her aggression and her helpless sorrow gradually decreased. Additionally the last months brought her the never experienced feeling of fullness, joy and peace.

A young woman, who was also suffering from cancer and also participated in psychotherapy, said at the end of the therapy that no matter whether she stays alive or dies, the therapy was successful, because she was able to become an adult. “I’m not sure that I would have been able to grow so much at any time without facing the possibility that I will die.”

A French psychologist, Marie de Hennezel has been working since many years with dying people. According to her experiences the patient who is suffering from questions does not really want to know the answers; instead of this, he or she is more likely to seek for the nearness of the people, which helps him or her to experience the mystery of living and love that connects people. This is because a person’s “spiritual drive” actually comes from the knowledge that until the very last moment there is a chance to love and to be loved. The feeling, which he or she longs to get from others, can live in his or her heart until the end.

The dying people look back at their lives. They worry about many questions, like what they have done well, what mistakes they have committed or what they have missed. How can possibly a family member, a good friend or the hospital staff help in spiritual support and in the valuation of one’s life? In this case (like in the case of any other human communication) an understanding, empathetic and accepting attitude would be desired, and also a great trust in the dying person that he or she is the only one, who can answer these questions. So the one who is walking with the incurable patient on the path leading to death, does not have anything else to do, but to help the processes in the dying person with loving presence, inquiring attention and active listening.

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In how far can the Person-Centered Approach serve as a basis for a learning organization and co-actualization?

Renate Motsching and Sonja Kabicher

Peter Senge has proposed 5 disciplines that need to mastered for an organization to develop and move forward in times of ever-present change. These disciplines are: Personal mastery, mental models, team learning, shared vision, and systems thinking. In this workshop we elaborate in how far Carl Rogers's Person-Centered Approach can serve as a theoretical and practical/experiential value- and knowledge-base for a learning organization and what insights one can derive for today's profit and non-profit organizations

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Freedom to learn in the 10's: "Yes, WE can!"

Renate Motschnig & Jef Cornelius-White

In this workshop we aim to facilitate a multi-perspective view on theory, practice, new-media support, and research in Person-Centered education.

This will be accomplished by sharing insights from an extensive meta-study, from more recent practice in using technology in person-centered academic education, and from our own research. We warmly welcome participants to share their experiences and research results, as well as any ideas on further studies. Finally, we will explore the potential of initiating a (web-supported) community for Person-Centered education.

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Demonstration of a group activity with children

Judit Szkubán

I am Judit Szkubán, piano and music teacher. I finished Klári Kokas’s course in January, 2009. The children participating are actually beginners, because formally I only start teaching them with the Klári Kokas’s method from this school year. However, some of the children have already met this method, because I have used it in some of my music classes. The group is made of elementary students (1^st - 4^th grade), but one of them is from kindergarten. The children dance and move for classical music, and they also make up different stories, which we discuss afterwards. During the classes they can experience the power of music: they pay attention to it, and as a consequence they show their emotions with the help of their movements and dancing; in addition, they learn to absorb the music with their own bodies. These dances and movements come from inside, so they have no learned elements.

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Film and lecture about Eszter Demel’s teaching experiences

Eszter Demel

Eszter Demel is a music and orchestra teacher in the Csermák Antal Music School in Veszprém. After finishing Klára Kokas’s course she started an experimental music class for kindergartners, so that the youngest generation can also try what music can give. This group works together with the parents and this is what she would like to talk about in her lecture: in what way is the teaching task different when the parents are present, and how can the parents’ attitudes affect the work?

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Selection of Klára Kokas’s films

Anett Kuszkó

From Judit Osskó’s film, “I Teach with Music” we can learn why and how Klára Kokas uses classical music in her creative activities. The shooting took place in a summer camp somewhere in between the hills of Zala, where at the beginning a white press-house stood… (22 minutes)

From the selection of the old films it will turn out what the children’s imagination can do in an inspiring place. Klára Kokas will personally introduce the different aspects of her method, and through this we can experience the magic of her personal relationship with the children. (10 minutes)

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Person-centered recruitment of manpower

Julianna Kiss

The multinational large companies’ recruitment techniques and the person-centered approach apparently fully exclude each other. In reality the person-centered approach can make the personnel work more “humane” and more effective.

From the beginning of the 90’s, as an employee of the SHL Hungary Ltd., I aimed to make the modern, computer-based, professional systems conform to the person-centered approach. I would like to ask those, who participate in the thematic group, to fill out the SHL Personality Questionnaire whereof you will get a written feedback. Later on we will compare the experiences of the written feedback and the personal feedback (maybe in the form of a demonstration).

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The unconditional positive regard (UPR): unreachable ideal or feasible practice

Iván Török

I offer the following topics of unconditional positive regard, which I believe would be interesting and worthwhile to discuss together: 

For 1 or 2 hours as a therapist the UPR is possible but continuously in a long-lasting         relationship it’s difficult or impossible! 
Willingness and ability to the UPR
Difficulties of the UPR: 
             - different system of values
             - difference in opinions
             - difference in socialization
             - unacceptable acts
             - disgusting actions
             - aggression
             - harms, injuries

             - antipathy (spontaneous)
             - conflict in interests

             - difference in tastes

Recognizing the UPR’s sense  

The separation of the person’s center (core) and his or her attributes

Practices for separation, improvement training

Accepting the center while refusing the attributes

The reflection of the accepting acts (asking for feedback, self-reflection)
Separating also in the self-acceptance
UPR’s supports

      Spirituality

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Joyful learning

Márta Winkler

I used my childhood experiences as models when I created schools. I wanted to integrate happiness, various motions and colourful lifestyle in the school’s everyday life.

I wanted to teach the children the ability to be happy, like my parents taught me. Furthermore, I wanted to strengthen this ability in them throughout the years. Besides that I watch and research the possibilities and the “inducement” found in the children. When I find something good I keep it with great care and I try not to miss the right way on behalf of the children.

In teaching and learning I am strict and consistent to myself and to the children as well. Similarly I make the children accept the policy of coexistence with a peaceful, orderly and very affectionate atmosphere. The establishment and accomplishment of a dynamic school life that suits the children depend on the teacher’s “cultivating” power.    

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To give birth and to be born: Workshop for non-professionals and professionals

Zsuzsa F. Várkonyi

The childbirth’s circumstances not only influence the family’s life and they are not only key experiences for the mother, but also have a great and indelible impact on the child’s farther personality. So the responsibility of those who are helping at childbirth is huge. On the workshop on demand we can talk about our experiences, the researches of this topic, and the Hungarian and the international medical provisions.

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Leslie Simonfalvi

 

Behind this question, there is a very common misconcept, saying that an absolute precondition of efficient, high quality teaching is a class that is homogeneous in every respect. If we consider teaching as one of the helping professions, then the total opposite of the above-mentioned requirement is true since we can best learn how to cooperate, how to give, ask for and accept help in a helping group, and such a group is by definition heterogeneous. In such a helping society we can also learn acquisition as a form of horizontal learning, as well as accepting the other and accepting being different as a first important step towards giving unconditional positive regard.

 

In such a learning environment, there is no risk for the teacher in learning in the presence of their students.

 

A Workshop will try to answer some of these questions in a 16-strong group, in 90 to 120 minutes, in English and / or Hungarian language.

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Conceptualism, personal identity – the roots of our anxiety

Dávid Klein

In one of the last scenes of the film “The Empire Strikes Back” Luke Skywalker finds out that the mean Sith Lord Darth Vader is actually Anakin Skywalker, so his dad. As a result of this at the beginning of “The Return of the Jedi” there is a conflict between Master Yoda and Luke. Yoda claims that Vader is not Anakin anymore, because his body is almost fully made of mechanized organs and his soul became deformed when he changed over to the dark side. Anaki is; therefore, dead. According to Luke there is something that ensures our identity no matter what happens to us. The argument’s main topic is the abstract personal identity and there is much at stake: if Luke accepts that personal identity is only a conception that we project into the world, then Dart Vader must die. If Luke hangs on his existentialist opinion, then the father and his son can reunite. Our identity and our social behaviour are influenced by abstract constructs. We suffer from these conceptions: our anxiety comes from death and the fiction of identity; in our schools we prepare the students to suit these conceptual schemas; and often we only establish relationships to ratify our identity in time. The recognition of this -the conceptualism- will be our group’s main topic.  

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Expressive arts therapy: an art-centered approach

Izabella Klein

We will have hands-on low skill/high sensitivity experience on using our senses and making art in a way that helps in increasing our range of play.

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Ian Fallows

“The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.”
James A. Garfield
President – 1831-1881

In this paper, I look at the impact that lies have on human relationships.
My starting point for the writing of this paper was my assumption that honesty was an important ingredient of a “good” relationship and I believed this was a widely held belief.  The concepts of congruence and transparency in Person Centred ways of being, seemed to involve an honesty with oneself within a relationship which could then be communicated, sometimes with beneficial results.
In an earlier part of my life I had taken on an external view from someone else that honesty was a preferable way to be in relationship. My honesty contributed to the breakdown of my marriage. Lies may have saved it. But what kind of relationship would that have been? And what would the impact of that kind of modelling have had on my children in their adult relationships? I had come across the idea in personal development programmes that problems or blocks in our relationships resulted from withholds (those things we did not talk about). My journey has been in search of a relationship, in which honest communication was valued. And I am still single.
So my putting a high value on truth was coming largely from external sources. I was let down when I found out that my partners hid from me their sexual relationships with others or did not want to discuss sexual issues in our relationship. My expectation of what I considered the foundation stone of a “good” relationship was not there.
Another assumption I had was that sex came out of relationship, and was a deeper form of relating - love. Assumptions, expectations, fantasy, the use of truth in religions and belief systems, research on sexuality by Rogers and others, are all glimpsed at in this short paper.
“Truth is a pathless land”
Krishnamurti
Religious philosopher 1929