Workshop by Peter Brook¹
¹ Brandenburg Medical School, Rüdersdorf, Germany. Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Germany
TIME: Wednesday, 15 July, 14:30 – 16:00
Location: Room 4
Session: 16
Abstract
When therapists perceive their patients as politically markedly right-wing or even far-right, obstacles and difficulties may arise in therapeutic practice that can be hard or even impossible to resolve satisfactorily and may therefore constitute a lasting professional challenge. Such cases do not only challenge therapists individually; they also expose the limits of mainstream psychological approaches and highlight contradictions within dominant conceptions of emancipation. In this sense, they represent instructive problem constellations for demonstrating the relevance of a subject-scientific approach as developed within Critical Psychology (Holzkamp/Osterkamp etc). In response to these challenges, therapists may initially resort to defensive coping strategies that promise ad hoc relief. Alternatively, they may develop a self-determined interest in learning when they judge that they lack the knowledge or skills required to meet the standards they set for their own therapeutic practice. From the experienced discrepancy between one’s own demands and one’s actual possibilities for action, a need may arise for a deeper engagement with the encountered problems. This engagement aims at expanding one’s knowledge, skills, and modes of experience beyond the therapeutic situation – more generally, one’s possibilities for action and control over one’s life conditions (Handlungs-/Verfügungsmöglichkeiten). Through reason-guided learning actions (begründete Lernhandlungen), therapists can separate a learning object (Lerngegenstand) from their initial practical problems and pursue it outside the therapeutic context within a learning loop. Such learning actions may include further training, reflection on one’s own affectedness by current political developments, political activism, or reading political theory and professional literature. With Holzkamp’s theory of learning, these activities can be analysed as forms of learning as an opening up of the world (lernender Weltaufschluss), aimed at overcoming experienced restrictions of one’s possibilities for action and life. The workshop introduces key concepts from Holzkamp’s theory of learning to analyse a case of reason-guided learning and draw conclusions for therapeutic practice. Through reflection on reasons for learning and deeper engagement with the learning object, it demonstrates how defensive ways of dealing with political orientations can be transformed into new emancipatory perspectives for therapeutic practice.