Psychotherapy and the Arts
A Different Kind of Consultation Group: Explorations at the Intersection of Psychotherapy and the Arts.
Group leader: Leslye Russell
This group will emphasize how using the arts—literature, visual arts, movies, poetry and music can deepen and enliven our clinical work. Careful reading, close looking, and focused listening are among the methods that constitute our capacity for the aesthetic experience. This capacity is closely allied with our ability to respond fully to our clients and to “think” psychologically.
In recent years, my writings and presentations at conferences and symposia have all involved how the arts are related to our practice of psychotherapy, individual and group supervision, consultation and teaching. * I hope that this group will build on this interest and create a culture where by thinking outside the clinical box, we will expand our appreciation and understanding of the vast variety of human experience that we meet in our offices.
The group will meet in my Berkeley office on two Monday afternoons each month from October 2011 through June 2012 from 3:30 to 5. The fee for the group is $800 for the year. CEU units are available for MFT’s, LCSW’s, Ph.D.s and other mental health professionals.
For further information please call Leslye Russell at 510 849 4417 or email at lesruslar@sbcglobal.net
* Partial list of recent publications and presentations
The Flaneur and the Analysand: Two Characters in Search…Fort Da, Spring 2004.
The Verities of Astonishment: Close looking/close listening Paper presented at International Association of Relational Psychoanalysis, February 2010. (using paintings)
Freud’s Theory and Trollope’s Depiction of Moral Masochism, to be published in Fort Da, Fall, 2011. (using literature)
Group Mindedness: paper presented at The Psychotherapy Institute Annual Symposium of the Supervisor’s Study Program, 2009. (using film).
Leslye Russell, MFT is a psychotherapist in Berkeley. She is a faculty member and supervisor at The Psychotherapy Institute, Berkeley; Fellow of the International Psychotherapy Institute in Washington, DC,; member of Northern California Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychology and an adjunct faculty member of the Sierra Institute for Clinical Gestalt Therapy.
