Applying gestalt thinking to the drama triangle

Date | Friday 26 June 2024

Duration | 9.30 am–4.30 pm

Location | Elie, Gestalt Centre Training Campus, 27 Royal Parade Parkville, VIC 3052

Fees | $350 (includes GST)

Facilitator | Tony Jackson

The Drama Triangle is a well-known model[1] that maps some problematic interpersonal relationship patterns. It shows how people can fall, or be invited, into three roles: the Victim; the Persecutor; or the Rescuer creating relational ‘traps’ and perpetuating unfulfilling contact.

[1] The Drama Triangle is a social model from Transactional Analysis (TA) first proposed by psychiatrist Stephen Karpman in 1968.

Applying gestalt thinking to the Drama Triangle can help us understand the ways the 3 roles limit us in moment to moment relating, and may also point to our, and our clients, core organising themes. Thus, providing another lens on the work we do together.

Building awareness of the ways these roles are enacted and limit contact, will help us, and our clients, break free of these and choose healthier, more direct, and honest ways of engaging.

In this workshop we will explore:

• Our own experience of the roles of victim, persecutor, rescuer, with a particular focus on the embodied experience of being pulled into each role and stepping out. This will include an exploration of core themes, and a compassionate understating for the ways we might take up the familiar invitations to take up each role.
• How to listen for, and work with these roles in the lives of our clients. What are the ways that clients bring important core material and reveal interpersonal patterns into the work
• Our reactivity to our clients, and how we can get pulled into unproductive modes of relating by accepting client’s invitations to one of these roles, and how we might use the here and now experience to create new relational opportunities. How to use the drama triangle as a way of working with co-transference.

The workshop is interactive. You will practise and apply key concepts through pairs and small group activities.

This program focuses on developing relational gestalt skills and is tailored for therapists, counsellors, other mental health professionals, those who use counselling in their work, and students of these professions.

Tony Jackson, Managing Director, Gestalt Centre

B.Theol, BA.Psych, GradDip.Counselling, AdvDip.Gestalt Therapy, GradDip.Supervision, M.GANZ

Tony is a psychotherapist, facilitator and coach with over 20 years of experience. Tony works with people to support resilience and wellbeing and helps them develop a sense of vitality and choice in their lives. He provides supervision for psychotherapists which assists them to deepen their own personal and professional capacities. Tony also provides training for individuals and groups that focuses on building responsiveness to individual and group needs in emergent situations.

The Gestalt Centre is the heart of Melbourne’s Gestalt community. We offer a four-year psychotherapy training program through Gestalt Therapy Australia, staying true to the experiential roots of Gestalt while embracing cutting-edge developments in contemporary Gestalt thinking and practice worldwide.

We also operate ConnectGround, a community-based counselling and psychotherapy clinic. ConnectGround serves as both a training facility for psychotherapists and a provider of low-cost individual and group therapy for clients. The clinic emphasises the therapeutic relationship between client and therapist as a key support for building awareness and adaptability. Psychotherapy interns and volunteers gain valuable hands-on experience, enhancing their skills and professionalism through client work.

https://www.connectground.com.au/

https://www.gestaltcentre.com.au/

Refunds are available up to 7 days before the event.

In the unlikely event that this workshop is cancelled or postponed, registration fees will be fully refunded. Please note that the organisers are not responsible for any travel, accommodation, or other costs incurred by participants.

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