Preconference

Full Day Intensives

1) Johnella Bird • TALK THAT SINGS: EXTENDING THE NARRATIVE TRADITION

We can read about ‘treatment approaches’ for people suffering from ‘post traumatic stress disorder’ or depression, or anorexia, or anxiety states. Yet our therapeutic conversations rarely reflect these descriptions. This practice based workshop addresses the question of how we can use these approaches as guides, while we make discovery with people (clients). The workshop outlines specific ways for therapists to orient therapeutic conversations towards finding people’s resources, strengths and abilities while incorporating their struggles, disappointments and despair.

Johnella Bird is a counseling practitioner and co-director of The Family Therapy Centre in Auckland, New Zealand. Johnella is the author of ‘The Heart’s Narrative’ (2000), ‘Talk That Sings’ (2004) and, ‘Constructing The Narrative In Super-vision’ (2006).

2) Peter Fraenkel • THE WAYS OF ENGAGEMENT: COLLABORATIVE METHODS FOR BUILDING SUCCESSFUL COMMUNITY-BASED PROGRAMS FOR MULTISTRESSED, POOR FAMILIES

Families struggling with poverty and social marginalization need to be engaged as experts who help to shape and evaluate any community based program. In this preconference workshop, you will learn the ten steps of the Collaborative Family Program Development (CFPD) model, used to build a successful, longstanding program for
homeless families and domestic violence survivors in New York City, as well as a program to support first-generation Latina immigrants and their families. With videotape examples from these programs as illustrations, and several hands-on exercises, you will learn how to build a strong, supportive team with all members of the agency; how to make sure the program is culturally sensitive; how to design and conduct empowering and informative program development interviews with family members - and more!

Peter Fraenkel is Director of The Center for Time, Work, and the Family at the Ackerman Institute for the Family; and Associate Professor, Clinical Psychology, The City College of the City University of New York in New York City.

3) Stephen Madigan • THE LANGUAGE OF OUR LIVES: THERAPEUTIC CONVERSATIONS WITH INTERNALIZED PROBLEM DIALOGUES

This workshop investigates and locates the outside influences affecting internalized problem dialogues. We will examine why it is so difficult to escape this internalized chitchat, and why it is so common to most of us living here in North America. We will also explain how problem dialogues belong to none of us in particular, and to all of us collectively. Discussed are the internalized anxieties, couple conflict, etc. The power, politic, and secret codes of internalized problem communications are uncovered through post-structural theory and live therapy demonstrations.

Stephen Madigan is the director of training at Yaletown Family Therapy in Vancouver and the Toronto Narrative Therapy Project. In June 2007, the American Family Therapy Academy will honour Stephen with their Distinguished Award for Innovative Practice in Family Therapy Theory and Practice.