Dear colleagues, welcome to Finland!                                                                                  

Professor Peter Rober is holding a two- day seminar/workshop in Helsinki, Finland on 27^th – 28^th November 2023. During the days we are working with themes of the therapist`s inner voices and working with family secrets. 

The seminar is organized by Family and Couple Therapy Association of Finland and we want to welcome the international colleagues to join us! The seminar is held in Botta (Museokatu 10, 00100 Helsinki) which is located in the center of Helsinki city.

You can read the descriptions of the days here:

The Person of the Therapist in Practice: about the therapist’s experiences and the therapist’s inner conversation.

In this workshop the concept of the therapist’s inner conversation is central. We will reflect on ways in which the person of the therapist can become part of the therapeutic process.

Research teaches us that therapists experience a wide range of emotions and have a lot of thoughts while they are engaged with the clients.  These experiences may be distracting, or they may give fresh ideas, or they can be useful to connect with the clients. 

In therapy, the experiences of the therapist may be challenging and confusing (for instance when a therapist experiences irritation). Sometimes the therapist’s experiences and emotions may make him/her feeling stuck and not knowing what to do next.  Such an impasse is often an entry point for reflection on what the therapist experiences in the session but what has remained unarticulated.  It may be interesting to explore how the therapist’s unspoken experiences can contribute to getting the therapeutic process unstuck again for the therapist, as for the family.

Second theme is:

Family Secrecy and Selective Disclosure: About what is said in families, what is not yet said and hesitations to speak.

In family therapy conversations there is always a tension between speaking and keeping silent.  Whatever is said in the session is a selection of what could have been said.  This dialectic of openness and closeness, sharing and not sharing, revealing, and concealing has many forms and guises.  For instance, for the family therapist this dialectic tension is visible in the way family members handle the session together and in their dance-like distribution of positions of speaking and keeping silent. 

This workshop is practice oriented.  We will reflect on the way the family therapist can deal with the dialectic what is said, what is not yet said and the hesitations to speak.  For instance, we will focus on the start of a therapy and on the way in which the dialectic of speaking and keeping silent manifests itself then in couples and in families.  We will also reflect on the complexity of family secrets as dialectic of stories told, covering up the gap left by stories untold.   

The price of the seminar incl. training + coffee with refreshments in the morning and afternoon breaks: 

380€ (408€ with lunch) for non-members of FTCA of Finland.

If you wish to have lunch at the seminar venue, i.e. Botta, please let us know in the registration. The cost of lunch is 14€/day and will be added to the registration fee.

You can register by sending email to sihteeri@perheterapiayhdistys.fi with your billing details and e-mail address.

Deadline for registrations is 31.10.2023 or as long as there are seats left.