Vitalization Training

Reading Preparation Page

Readings For November 2024

Training Week One

The reading material is directly related to the skills being discussed and practiced for the upcoming training week.  (I’ll do my best to keep the readings reduced to a manageable amount of pages.)  I will be referring back to this material throughout the morning sessions each day.

Personal book notes are included when available that summarize the chapters to be read.  They are more abbreviated and condensed from the chapter content.  They will be posted on the readings page in PDF formatting for easy downloading.

READ:

1.  Chapter 1 -Introducing Dynamic Forms of Vitality – Forms of Vitality – pages 3-16.
   
2. Introduction – Vitalizations in Psychoanalysis – pages 1-3.
3. Chapter 1 – Vitalizing Enactments – Vitalizations in Psychoanalysis – pages 1-3.
4. Introduction – Notes On Being & Becoming – Coming To Life In The Consulting Room – Ogden – pages 1-8. 
5. Chapter 1 – What Do I Want To Be When I Grow Up  – Coming To Life – Ogden – pages 16-29. 
6. Chapter 5 – Creating Space – Essential Psychodynamic Psychotherapy – Quatman – pages 54-63.

PDFs Of Book Chapters

Chapter 1 – Vitalizing Enactment – Cooney

Key Concepts
 1) The ability to think about the conditions and qualities that spark novel experience and can generate contact and movement in the therapeutic encounter.
2) In a vitalizing enactment the action is in seizing the moment and creating something new.
3) In certain moments it is the shared experience of the enactment rather than processing it afterwards that is transformative.

Coming To Life – Introduction – Notes On Being & Becoming – Ogden

Key Concepts
1)  Symptom formation is a means by which people put on hold the problem of growing up, of coming more fully into being.  Individuals for whom symptoms serve this function are at a loss regarding what it means to take the next steps in growing up.  

2) It is of utmost importance to realize, and it is always the case, that the therapist must be able to free themselves up with their client, if the client is to be free to become more fully himself or herself.

Coming To Life – Chapter One – What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up – Ogden

Key Concepts
1) We strive to provide our clients with an interpersonal field in which forms of experiencing, and states of being, come to life in the therapeutic relationship that were previously unimaginable.

2) The most fundamental human need is that of being and becoming more fully oneself, which involves becoming more fully present and alive to one’s thoughts, feelings and bodily states.

Chapter 6 – Creating Space – Quatman

Key Concepts
1) The art of listening deeply requires space big enough and still enough to hold the aloneness of the one, in the presence of the other.

2) Creating space to be listening deeply offers a different space, where there will be more room for the client than they may be accustomed to. We wait in this spacious receptivity with simple openness and a curiosity of spirit.

Chapter 1 – Intro To Dynamic Forms of Vitality – Stern

Key Concepts
1) Vitality is entwined with real human experience.   We live impressions of vitality like we breath air.  We naturally experience people in terms of their vitality.

2). Vitality is a whole, a gestalt consisting of five theoretically different events: movement, time, force, space, and intention/directionality.

Book Notes of Chapters

Vitalization – Introduction & Chapter 1 – Vitalizing Enactments

Essential Psychodynamic Psychotherapy – Chapter 6 – Creating Space – Quatman – Book Notes

(more book notes to be added here)

PUBLISHED PAPERS

Sometimes, when available, you might prefer to read from one of the author’s published papers, instead of reading from their corresponding book chapter.  Most of the time, the content is very similar, if not the same.  It simply offers you another reading style.

What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up – Ogden

Relevant Poems For Week One

You Must Meet The Outer World With Your Inner World – Mark Nepo

 REFERENCED BOOKS FOR THE YEAR

You are not required to purchase all or any of the books referenced below.  You may choose to do so, if you prefer to read directly from these originating sources.  The content for our training lecture/discussions will typically be sourced from these particular books.   For each training week, I will also provide you with PDF files that are copies made from the book chapters themselves, or a published paper, or book notes that I provide taken from the book chapters (a summarized version of the chapter).

VITALIZATION IN PSYCHOANALYSIS – PERSPECTIVES ON BEING & BECOMING – Amy Schwartz-Cooney & Rachel Sopher

This will be a foundational book for the year. Over the three training weeks, I will draw from various book chapters.

Vitalization refers to the process between two people that ignites new experiences and brings withdrawn aspects of the self to life. This book focuses on how process facilitation can be a uniquely creative encounter that can aid the enlivening internal process in both client and practitioner, offering a vibrant new take on the project of transformation.

COMING TO LIFE IN THE CONSULTING ROOM – TOWARD AN ANALYTIC SENSIBILITY – Thomas Ogden

Ogden sets out to move psychotherapeutic processes toward a new sensibility. He reflects a shift in emphasis from ‘knowing’ and understanding to the ‘lived experience’ of being and becoming more human. 

Ogden illustrates his way of dreaming the analytic session and of inventing fresh processes with each client.  You’ll have to muddle through some of the more psychoanalytic concepts and language before resting into the profound humanity to be found in his approach.

ESSENTIAL  PSYCHODYNAMIC PSYCHOTHERAPY – AN ACQUIRED ART – Teri Quatman

This addition to the book list is one of the best I have ever come across that provides a straightforward and foundational framework for going deeper with clients.  It is honest, intimate and practical, and very readable.  It speaks to many key components of the training material, including Listening, Creating Space, Silence, Transference, Counter-transference, and the artistic application process of these fundamental concepts.

INTIMACY & SEPARATENESS –Warren Poland

This supplemental book offers practitioners a very human and personal sense of what it is like to be a person in therapy, and what it is like to the the therapist in the therapy as well.  His unfolding and original observations as a part of and apart from is a key concept for this year’s training – being an active witness facilitates another’s self-experience and self-expression in very particular and essential way.   His chapter on “The Analyst’s Fears’ is a classic.

THE ENIGMA OF DESIRE – Galit Atlas

Another supplemental book introduces new perspectives on desire and longing, in and outside of the psychotheraeutic relationship. This exciting material explores the known and unknown, ghosts and demons, sexuality and lust.  

Galit humanizes her patients and offers worthwhile clinical illustrations of these challenging and intimate topics.

FORMS OF VITALITY – Daniel Stern  

One more supplemental book that introduces vitality as the force or power manifested by all living things.  Stern shows how it is possible to trace vitality to real physical and mental operations – including movement, time, intensity and direction.  He shows how an understanding of vitality can help the psychotherapy process.