COURSE OBJECTIVES
AND METHODS
COURSE OBJECTIVES
The basic training centers thematically on the transmission of existential analytical anthropology and coping with existential borderline situations and crises (the teaching of meaning and existence). It deals with the questions of human nature and personhood. It also deals with existential motivation and the effects and symptoms of existential failure.
The transmission of content is parallel to the development of self awareness in personality and the understanding of existence.
The development of personality has three main points:
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the ability for personal inner dialogue (self distance and detection of primary emotionality) and being able to spread it outwardly (trust, self transcendence).
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the improvement of personal integration skills: acquiring the ability to set the outbreak of emotionality in relation to one’s own substance of life and one’s own positions. A fluid transmission from impressions to a position and expression. Realizing, understanding and possibly correcting conscious or unconscious personal positions and behavioral patterns.
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learning the phenomenological basic attitude and training the perception of one’s own or someone else’s emotionality, motivation, values and fixation of behaviour.
The goal of personal understanding of existence, besides personality development, is to comprehend the process and possibilities of biographic existence.
The practical relevance of the basic training for the profession is in the area of prevention, providing help in life, intervention in crises, psychotherapeutic support and problems of motivation.
In terms of content the second part of the training, the clinical part, has the objective of transmitting an understanding of diagnosis, psychogenesis, psychopathology and phenomenology of clinical disturbances, nosology and individual therapeutic pictures.
In the area of self awareness this part also deals with detection, realization and working with the relevant parts, using the clinical pictures, of their phenomenology and psychodynamics.
The self awareness and the reflection on distortions, as they come to light in the clinical pictures, should lead to a deeper understanding of anthropological and existential basic concepts from an existential analytical point of view.
The third part (supervisional part) deals with the grounding of one’s own work and the personal adaptation of the existential analysis. This part is not so much concerned with learning new ideas but with the training and consolidation through interaction and feedback. The participation in scientific events of the GLE is supposed to generate familiarity with new developments. The active participation in these developments should also be stimulated.
METHODS
The contents will be reached, for the most part, by self awareness (inductive) and completed through lectures and discussions using illustrations of cases. The self aware interaction of personal experiences, coping behavior and points of view concerning the theoretical content generates a special plasticity and promotes a personal, emotional access.
Conversations in large and small group settings, individual talks with the instructors and supervisors of the practical work, as well as constant lectures on the subject literature and their discussion are the means by which the interaction in the training takes place. The training for the psychotherapeutic dealings takes place in via group processes and through the forms of interaction mentioned above, as well as role playing, therapy vignettes and illustration of cases.
The entire duration of training is accompanied by individual conversations. These talks serve as a means to reach basic existential, biographic questions, as well as the reappraisal of personal applications of the seminar contents and group processes. They also serve as a reappraisal of the resulting questions and problems (existential self awareness), as well as the review of issues which are not fitting for the group situation.