EFTA
TIC Newsletter 11
November 21st, 2006
Dear Colleagues,
As you know in September our Chamber organized
the EFTA-TIC IIIrd Meeting of Trainers “Personal
and Professional Development in Training” on the island of Rhodes in Greece.
Quite a number of members attended with a satisfactory representation
of various European countries. More specifically, 81 members
participated in the meeting representing 48 Institutes from
19 countries.
Workshops and presentations were given by representatives
of the various Institutes. We all left this meeting having
experienced it as being a success, having exchanged both scientifically
and humanly.
We thought
it would be interesting, to the participants and also to
those of you who could not attend, if we brought a “flavor” of
the meeting’s process to you. We, so, send you today,
a report which includes aspects of the opening and closing
sessions, along with the participants’ evaluations1.
We also include the Scientific Program and Book of Abstracts
to our members who were not present.
We are
now in the process of publishing the presentations of this
meeting in various European journals in a special edition
devoted specifically to the theme of the therapist’s “Personal
and Professional Development in Training”. We will inform
you of its outcome in the spring of next year.
As the EFTA-TIC Board, we thoroughly enjoyed working on the
Rhodes event and we look forward to developing further creative
meetings in the future. We are already planning our next meeting
for September, 2008 to be held in Toulouse, France and hosted
by our dear colleague and friend Eric Trappeniers.
We want to thank all the participants for the high level of
professional quality they demonstrated. We hope that those
who did not participate this time shall join us in future EFTA-TIC
events.
We would especially like to thank the Athenian Institute of
Anthropos and its Director, Petros Polychronis, for financially
supporting the organization of our meeting overall and for
setting the context for a warm, collegial and human exchange.
We now look forward to meeting all of you again
at the
6th EFTA Congress
of Family Therapy and Systemic Practice
in Glasgow,
October 4th to 6th 2007.
Sincerely,
The EFTA-TIC Board
1All evaluations received have been included.
IIIrd Meeting of Trainers
“Personal – Professional
Development in Training”
Rhodes,
Greece, September 8 – 10, 2006
Participants’ Evaluations
Questions:
a) My experience of this meeting was…
b)
A “metaphor” of
this experience
1.
a) …excellent,
new knowledge, fun and warmth.
b) “A journey to Ithaca”
2.
a) …interesting,
joyful, very good organization.
b) “The big blue”
3.
a) … meeting
many trainers who use different techniques to actualize a situation
of training or therapeutic process.
b) “Un bouquet de fleurs variees.
Many various flowers with different colors and a few trees in an Athenian Vase”
4.
a) …very
interesting, I learned a lot of things – precious for my
profession. There was a warm atmosphere between all, a respect
to the others and the process. It was wonderful!
b) “A very delicious meal with a lot of different tastes”
5.
a) …space
made for inter-connectedness, presence of sensitivity allowing
for depth.
b) “Roots (A plant that has roots and can be re-planted at home)”
6.
a) …very
positive, one of the best professional meetings I have ever attended.
b) “Being let loose in the candy shop – Many yummy things - had to
choose”
7.
a) …a
wonderful blend of professional stimulation, personal involvement,
collegial connections – and the beauty of the setting.
One of the best conferences that I have attended.
b) “A delight in early September”
8.
a) …enlightening,
warm, friendly, personal. I enjoyed the fact that it was a small
group. I was impressed with the level of presentations and also
enjoyed the social events. Well organized.
b) “A Kaleidoscope”
9.
a) …very
good organization, good workshops, presentations, good and friendly
meeting.
b) “Life is a Meeting”
10.
a) …good
overall. Great organization. Very friendly and welcoming, good
intimate atmosphere.
b) “Fun and work”
11.
a) …like
a home-coming. It is wonderful to meet people again and deepen
the relationships. The topic was important, interesting and relevant.
Most of the workshops were well prepared and presented.
b) “The beautiful beach at Rhodes where people can swim, tan, talk and
meditate”
12.
a) …great,
rich and I learned a lot. Was very friendly because of the small
groups and the active learning.
b) “It’s possible to be creative in the intercultural
connection”
13.
a) …getting
to know more colleagues, learning more of their ways of working
and being enriched with new ides and specific exercises to use
in PPD of trainees and in therapy.
b)“A
beautiful Greek meal. Thank you very much”
14.
a) …very
good for the quality of the participants and their presentations,
not so good for the organizations point of view.
15.
a) …the
meeting was fruitful, the gathering with the other trainers made
me understand that in spite of the differences of nationalities,
there are certain experiential domains and capacities.
b) “A
circle”
16.
a) …to
meet people, to have communications, change and to know other
ways to work.
b) “A
rainbow”
17.
a) …enacting,
awakening, joyful
b) “Wings”
18.
a) …contacts,
communications, good feelings, good beautiful people, new ideas
about my work (family psychotherapy)
b) “The
big family all the world”
19.
a) …a
wonderful organization with great care and attention to all organizational
aspects in great
detail. Great location, great food, activities, very caring! Thank you
so much from all my heart.
b) “Piccadilly
Circus. Very busy, lots of coming and going, very colorful, stimulating
and at times too much activity, too little time to reflect but
a very CENTRAL place to be. Thank you!”
20.
a) …excellent
as far as organization and structure are concerned. Very good
for information exchange and very helpful on technical issues
on the family.
b) “A
chance for meeting, informing, being informed, training and being
trained”21.
a) …enriching
in respect of techniques and exercises to use with trainees
b) “the
babushka gift”
22.
a) …I
had a fruitful and important meeting. I liked very much the possibility
to present my own work. It was good to meet friends again. Very
professional arrangement!
b) “A warm crucible”
23.
a) …culture
of conversation, free, highly associative, curiosity provoking
in an atmosphere of connection
b) “Family
gathering over ‘coming of age’, being an invited
guest in favorite aunt’s summer home”
24.
a) …a
warm and stimulating set of encounters. There was a strong sense
of a shared mission to improve training in family therapy.
b) “A
garden that started off wild, has been worked on for a few years
and is now enjoyable and productive but also capable of offering
surprises”
25.
a) …this
was a very cohesive meeting. The topic interesting and immensely
valuable. Those workshops I attended were of a high quality and
I have taken away new ideas, skills and challenges in my thinking
from every workshop. I like the feedback sessions for the whole
group and want to congratulate on the exercise “Systems
Formation Process”. It worked very well. Also, the deputy/spokeswoman
for the Mayor did a very good introduction and welcome to Rhodes.
The social events were fantastic. The boat trip a life experience.
These cultural events were much appreciated.
b) “Learning
and experiencing to expand horizons”
26.
a) …an
interesting meeting, in a friendly atmosphere, very well organized.
b) “Small is beautiful”
27.
a) …it
was often difficult to understand how technique helps the trainee
to become a therapist, to adopt true thought regarding his being
part of the system and thus how to read the interaction “studying” the
system.
b) “contact, possibility to “approfondir” my work”
28.
a) …I felt welcomed. It was good to meet old friends and make some new
ones. I felt enriched professionally – learned ways of
working with trainees/clients that I am going to utilize in my
practice. Enjoyed the social/tourism parts.
b) “The
word “richness” comes to my mind – presenters,
like the very rich, who can freely give away what they have because
they have so much….”
29.
a) …many meetings and interactions which were favoured by precise organisation
and which allowed for depth in relation to practice via the workshops
b) “A photo camera which zooms in and at the same time allows
for a grand angle panoramic view.
We
entered the dance in twos at the beginning and then in fours,
the orchestration guided us with enthusiasm to the complexity
of forms, each time with more tempo and mastery while the “director” respected
the rythm and the forms of everyone and which enabled the
co-creation of a choreography that was much applauded”.
30.
a) …very
friendly, organized as an effective family
b)“Like a holiday with useful historical and professional experience”
31.
a) …interesting,
stimulating, collaborative.
b) “A rainbow in which the colors are different while
at the same time complementary”
32.
a) …the
meeting was very interesting and stimulating for me – from
a scientific and human point of view – my mind and my heart
have been full of ideas and emotions
b) “The embracing and warm sea of Greece”
33.
a) …an
opportunity to meet and learn from colleagues and teachers. Thank
you for all the effort you invested.
b) “Nourishing Journey”
34.
a) …I
really enjoyed the meeting – a wide and stimulating range
of topics, modalities and speakers. I thought there was enough
time in each workshop to get a flavour of each topic/approach/modality.
b) “A ripe orange”
35.
a) …learning,
self disclosure, friendship, challenge for synthesis of diversity
and acceptance of what can’t change
b) “Open doors”
36.
a) …that
it was well organised, had a very good atmosphere and was full
of interesting things. Thanks to our hosts who made it a memorable
weekend and I look forward to the next one.
37.
a) …warm
and personal atmosphere with high quality of presentations and
smooth organization.
b) “returning to work refreshed, with new ideas and new friends…”
38. a) …a
very special scientifically and humanly stimulating gathering
of colleagues.
b) “Swimming together in the
warm Aegean Sea, learning new movements and diving techniques from one another”
 III
Trainers Meeting
Personal-Professional
Development
Opening
Session
Mony
Elkaïm, Chair of EFTA-TIC, opened the meeting by
warmly welcoming all participants. Mony announced that this
is the first conference ever to be organized around the theme
of the Therapist’s Personal Development – a theme
so central to today’s training.
Rhodes’ Deputy Mayor, Mrs. Lee Minaidi greeted the conference
on behalf of the City Council of Rhodes. Giving an enlightening
overview of the historical and social development of Rhodes,
Mrs. Minaidi set a metaphorical context for our meeting – “a
place where diverse rich cultures encountered one another and
co-created, over a process of time, what is modern-day Rhodes”.
Petros Polychronis, Director of the Athenian Institute of
Anthropos - the hosting EFTA-TIC member Institute - welcomed
conference participants to Greece and Rhodes, wishing for a
creative scientific process combined with an enjoyable social
program facilitating inter-connecting.
Arlene Vetere, President of EFTA, then greeted the meeting.
She congratulated the EFTA-TIC Chamber and its Board for organizing
such important scientific events.
Representatives brought greetings from the other two EFTA
Chambers: Jacques Pluymaekers as Chair of EFTA-CIM and Annette
Kreuz from the NFTO Chamber.
Kyriaki
Polychroni, EFTA-TIC General Secretary, then guided the group
of participants in a “systems forming process”.
Through lively conversations in dyads and in small groups,
participants met each other, and disclosed experiences of their
own personal development. The small groups then presented what
they found as common principles/ themes underlying their positive
training experiences.
They also
gave a metaphorical name to their small group – which,
when all were put side-by-side, were seen as interconnected
aspects of the process developing among the group in the “here-and
now” and also as aspects of the process of training in
personal development of the therapist.
These can be viewed in the enclosed illustrative list and diagram.
Common
Principles/Themes underlying Positive Experiences in Personal–Professional
Development in Training:
- Experiences
of “growing-up” and finding one’s
own personal resources in difficult situations.
- Realizing
why you do what you do – identifying themes
in the past that influence choices.
- Healing old wounds through therapy and training.
- Helping ourselves and our families become better than our
own families of origin.
- Interweaving
personal and professional – many layers
of learning over time.
- Context of safety and feeling accepted.
- Trusting
the training process and one’s own ability.
- Importance
of life experiences and their “training” value.
- Importance of satisfactory private life with personal and
relational meaning.
- Importance
of what we are learning from our clients through resonance
- “the right client goes to the right therapist
at the right time to teach us something”.
- Experience non-threatening horizontal, equal level relationships
in the training group (liberated from prejudice behaviour
determined by hierarchical positions).
- Positive relationships with peers and/or trainers.
- Seeing trainer as human, finding positive commonalities
and seeking encounter with others.
- Modelling
of trainers as persons, as therapists, with “permission” to
develop one’s own style.
- Importance of group work in the training, while confronting
the dilemma between choosing and being forced to participate
in the group.
- Personal
and professional are interconnected – we
all have relationships that connect us to family therapy.
- Travel
to foreign countries and immerse in culture – each
new family is a “new country”.
- Time
of difficult cultural change that requires deconstruction – valuing
this deconstruction.
- Impact
of integrating personal therapy into training – difference
between those who have had personal therapy and those who
have not.
- We learned more from our therapy life than our training
life.
- Issue of requirement to undertake personal therapy as part
of training.
- Interruptions in personal work prevent development.
- Realizing
the qualitative jump from traineeþ therapist þtrainer.
- Personality and spiritually of the trainee beyond techniques
and roles.
- Developing
personality through relating, to afford deconstruction
in order to reconstruct “new” personality and
spirituality.
- Personal work continues many times outside training.
- Sharing pleasure of being together.
- Good
timing of the group process with personal life stage of
each trainee
Closing Session
After 21/2
days of workshops, presentations, discussion and various
social activities …
Mony
Elkaïm: We now welcome everyone
to share their experience of the meeting and to offer any suggestions
for the future.
Alia (Greece): My experience was closeness
and no antagonism, a very friendly gathering with intelligent
presentations.
I’d
like to propose that we have more information on the various
training programs and their theory.
Victoriya (Ukraine): Here
I found a family – uncle
and aunts – I’ll go back home, organize and change
in my own family, a little afraid of how but I do it.
Mony (Belgium): We all had the opportunity
to learn from each other – to see training in different
ways, new stuff that you can use.
Rodolfo (Italy): We
usually say a conference is good if we learn 1-2 new things.
This was a lucky conference for me, I learned 4-5 new things.
It was an opportunity to share with people with no competition.
If I say a type of self-critic, we need more organizing of
inter-workshop exchange. In a large group it is too difficult
to share experiences, feelings and personal needs for change.
We have to think about how to organize it.
Csaba (Hungary): This is the first time I
participated in an EFTA-TIC meeting. I enjoyed it; it was a
very useful meeting.
Perhaps
topics for next time could be to focus on how to balance
clinical practice and training, how to get money – and
have discussion groups on specific topics.
Eduardo (Spain): For
me too, this was the first time I was at an EFTA-TIC meeting
and the first time at a meeting without a presentation. I
was more relaxed and able to learn a lot – how to practice less seriousness
in my teaching. I could think more about change in myself – not
only as trainer, but as a person. Life is this meeting.
Noga (Israel): This was a precious
meeting. It is good to have it only specific for trainers,
directors and directors of training. I’ve been at these
meetings from the beginning – there is always more intimacy,
they are not huge, so different from other conferences.
The Greek
group from “Anthropos” creates a sense
of togetherness - something lacking at other meetings.
Now, since
we are trainers, – it is important not to
rush when presenting – not merely give a taste,because
we are already advanced. So we need to get more depth – we
need more time to make it better.
Each presenter
needs to have 1-1 ½ hours – we
could have more parallel presentations - even if there are
less people in each workshop or maybe we can have an extra
day. We are not in competition as to who has more people attending
a presentation or workshop.
We could
also circulate the presenter’s work over the
internet beforehand, so we would be better prepared. This would
up the quality.Rodolfo (Italy): We need to keep in mind
that having more presentations at the same time means using
more rooms. This means higher cost. All this depends on subscriptions.
So, bring along colleagues to increase funds.
Nikos (Greece): I
am enthusiastic with this meeting. We had intimacy and very
interesting presentations.
I think
this is also related to you, Mony – what you
start is always very important.
If I could
just share what we did in theSystemic Scientific Association.Before
the meeting the presenter sent a “think paper” and
then at the conference we worked in groups to discuss it. Papers
were rewritten after the group discussion.
Helga (U.K.): I
agree with those persons who spoke before me. I thoroughly
enjoyed it personally with much intellectual stimulation.
Practically speaking, in the U.K. we get study leave only
if we present, so people need to present. It is important to
have the space, as we did here, for these presentations.
Also, I think people may get anxious if we have fewer or longer
presentations.Rainer (Germany): This was a very precious
meeting – ideas integrated with showing our work. It
was a deep personal experience and I was very touched personally.
We got a smell and feeling of how other countries do work.
I‘ll definitely kick my German colleagues to join – it
was a precious meeting.
I
would appreciate if I could get a feeling of how people run
their institutes – some of the days of the meeting
could be about running institutes and others about training.
I would also ask that we are given the websites of the institutes.
Luigi (Italy): It was a great pleasure
to be with you. The organizers, Kyriaki and “Anthropos” made
our meeting in a wonderful way.
I increased
my knowledge of what various institutes in various countries
are doing now – Ukraine, Turkey and Bulgaria.
I learned how Family Therapy is increasing in new realities
in Europe – which is an aim of EFTA-TIC.
It was,
for me, a great and exciting experience in a warm atmosphere
of human relationships – even outside the
official program. It is in the character and intuition of Kyriaki
Polychroni to help us be not only colleagues, but friends.
Now, as
Board and Training Standards Committee, we have made out
a questionnaire to find a common platform on training – Please
send your answers.
In the next meeting, we can try to create larger spaces for
discussion on special issues, like training standards.
Mony (Belgium): What Luigi says is very important
- you know that the European Association of Psychotherapists
(EAP) is working very hard on a platform of rules and standards
which it will submit to the European Commission. The aim of
this platform is to enable psychotherapists to circulate and
work within the various countries of Europe. We will keep the
Institutes informed as to the developments.
Rivka (Israel): This is the first time I
am at an EFTA-TIC meeting. I very much enjoyed the generous
Greek hospitality.
I was here
with my husband who is not in the profession, so I felt a
little like a duck – sometime swimming and sometime
walking - not always here with all my heart, but I always felt
well accepted. Thank you for the warm social gatherings.
Perhaps
in the future you could send us a message before the meeting – if
we have something very important to us, dear to our heart,
regarding training we can bring it for exchange. This could
arise in similarities of problems although we are a multi-cultural
group.
For example, we have been discussing here among some of us
from Italy and Israel that trainees seem less knowledgeable
than before. In fact I would like us to share common problems.
Annette (Spain): I am in big trouble because
I am in dept, professionally and personally, and it is not
easy to be in dept, since I lived so well here and I feel at
home, professionally and personally, in Greece and I learned
from colleagues here. Well, I have to do something about it.
Jenia (Bulgaria): This
was a positive experience with Mony’s easiness and the humanness of the Board
and the “Anthropos” Institute, which made it possible
for us to be here.
There was
special care for making space for exchange – the
social program was so much in a human way that it is not right
to call it “social”.
Dionyssis (Greece): I want to express that
I felt your respect in the whole process and in our workshop
- especially in the faces of the younger colleagues - we should
maybe encourage younger colleagues to also present.
I learned
the importance to be open for self-disclosure. So,
I want to say that sometimes I felt Kyriaki was committed more
to you and EFTA-TIC than to us at “Anthropos”.
She was very anxious about caring for all of you – so
we were “jealous”. I am happy though that
you did not feel pressured from too much hospitality and care.
In the land of Zeus, here in Greece, sometimes foreigners feel
pressured.
Mony (Belgium): It’s like the joke
with the blind lady – a father was waiting for his son
who was very late. When he arrived, the father asked “why
are you so late?”. “I was helping an old lady cross
the street”, the son replied. “And it took so long?”,
asked the father. “Well she didn’t want to cross”.
Peter (U.K.): This was definitely “Anthropos” support.
Particularly in carrying costs and risks. I have come to trust
Kyriaki’s and the “Anthropos” group’s
determination to put us in contact also with the culture. Usually
when you live in the Hilton, you leave wondering “which
country were we in?”. You don’t know anything about
the context. Well, here we knew we were in Rhodes throughout.
Now regarding
future meetings, actually in the Board we’ve
discussed the matter of an extra day. But, people don’t
seem to be able to get away for so long.
Also, with
respect to having more time with less presentations, there
is an issue of culture - struggling North/South – in
northern cultures it’s common to not accept a presentation.
In the south, if you don’t accept someone’s presentation,
it may be perceived as an insult. It’s a different balance.
Mony (Belgium): Does
anyone else want to say something?... Ok, so Kyriaki…
Kyriaki
(Greece): I want to begin by saying I am sorry
that, with all the organizational matters that had to be
worked out, I could not participate in many of the interesting
workshops and presentations being given - there was a high
quality of work presented. I am particularly sorry that
I couldn’t
this time participate in my Greek colleagues’ presentations,
or experience the work of colleagues from previous countries
of Eastern Europe – colleagues which have a lot to
say about family therapy in their context. I look forward
to having the opportunity to learn from them in the future.
The colleagues’ workshops
I did participate in, each gave me something special - I
learned, I was moved and I thank them.
I also
want to thank all of you, the participants in this meeting.
Personally, I felt very supported by all of you. I understand
Dionyssis when he says our hosting can be “pushy” at
times to connect. So, I am very grateful to all of you for
your trust and your involvement which very positively contributed
to this process. With our success in together co-creating this
meeting, I am reminded of a foundational principle of our teacher
and mentor, George Vassiliou - “keeping our hearts together
and our thoughts/approaches separate”. Thank
you.
Mony then called in the two secretaries, Panayiota
Dimopoulou – EFTA-TIC and Panayiota
Giannino – “Anthropos”, and thanked
them on behalf of the Board and all the participants with
appreciation for their support and kindness.
In the name of EFTA-TIC and the participants of the IIIrd
Meeting of Trainers, Mony Elkaïm expressed
thanks to the Athenian Institute of Anthropos for the “huge
and superb work it did for the success of the conference” and
gave a gift to Kyriaki, as General Secretary of EFTA-TIC and
to Petros Polychronis, Director of “Anthropos”.
The meeting was closed by applause from all for all.
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