Much of theory and practice with imagination assumes it to be a personal-historical psychological interiority – for example, with ‘inner child’ and subpersonality work. However, this workshop will show how an ‘inner imagination’ understanding, despite popular usage, is poorly aligned to what therapists most value in experiential work with images.
An alternative ‘transpersonal imagination’ (‘trans’ meaning most simply ‘beyond’) will be presented, effectively turning the conventional inner-imagination view inside out, where instead of images being inside us, it is we who find ourselves surrounded by images – allowing work with imagination as an in-the-moment experiential process rather than standing outside this process, trying to figure out what the image content means.
The result is an experiential and theoretical expansion of the possibilities of image-work, not just as a means to rational insight, but as healing and transformative in itself, spilling over beyond the consulting room into the activity of images in everyday life.
Course Content
Presenter
Allan Frater is a UKCP psychotherapist and supervisor in private practice. He has taught at the Psychosynthesis Trust in London since 2011, on the Foundation and Diploma courses as well as CPD events related to his research interests in imagination, ecopsychology and transpersonal psychology. His book ‘Waking Dreams: Imagination in Psychotherapy & Everyday Life’ (2021, Transpersonal Press) presented a critical development of standard approaches to ‘active imagination’ and ‘guided imagery’, incorporating paradigm shifting ideas and methods from ecopsychology, complexity theory, fractal geometry and transpersonal psychotherapy. He lives in London with his wife and a three-legged dog called Milly.
