Four Mediterranean voices advocating for the necessity to listen to our inner selves and to each other attentively, in the face of conflict and other challenging situations

Maria Pirounaki Lioni

During therapy, alternatively to usual ‘graduation’, an elaboration at the deepest levels of the client’s psyche can be processed within the context of systemic therapy group, in combination with individual sessions. It concerns the elaboration of existence and presence, still unrefined, sometimes even mentally, of the inner child inside the client which he approaches and processes, not at the level of connections through awareness or emotional charge. The client is submerged to re-experiencing from scratch emotions of the child back then, which had to be suppressed. Currently they emerge and overwhelm, even conquer the client. This theoretical suggestion is defined, identifying points of proximity and affinity with a series of theories. The therapist’s attitude is depicted as well as techniques and tools such as pieces of art and symbolic objects, enhancing the rewriting of a new functional childhood through ‘family transference’ experiences in the therapeutic group.

---

The work of art as a means of exploring, expanding and enriching our psyche as therapists: Bridging self-reference with the role of the systemic therapy-trainee.

Dimitris Priftis, Maria Pirounaki Lioni, Elena Stolaki, Maria Liakou, Panagiota Papazoglou, Vasiliki Vassara

Under the supervision of our trainers Maria Pirounaki and Elena Stolaki, we experienced at the Museum of Modern Art, the use of a self-selected work of art first in self-reflection as trainees, deepening both our role- and self-awareness, second in a shared common abstracted sequence of all self-reflections, enhancing our bonding. In this workshop we focus on the process of enabling the emergence of each one’s non-conscious emotional state in a simultaneous dialogue with his/her conscious convictions regarding the self and the role ‘trainee’. We emphasize the importance of the recognition and the acceptance for the therapist-to-be, of personal emotions and experiences in distinction to those of the client through means of a work of art. Participants will have the chance of becoming familiar with the use of experiential exercises based on portable art forms and also to tell the difference among the use of art in training, psychoeducation and therapy.