Let's talk about happiness

Lynne Holdem presents another series of winter lunchtime dialogues that aim to enhance our understanding about being human. Drawing from psycho-analytic and psycho-spiritual thinkers Lynne will talk in everyday language and then invite participants to contribute their own thinking. Interested community members and professionals are all welcome.
• August 11: happiness: is it found, made or an inner creation
• August 18: passion, defences against passion and aliveness
• August 25: awareness of hope: conscious and unconscious
• Sept 1: the healing heart –the role of compassion and acceptance
• Sept 8: aggression, shadow and wholeness
• Sept 15: sympathy and empathy: helping or hindering
• Sept 22: freedom - fear and courage in being oneself
• Sept 29: generativity, from consumer to active citizen

Entry is by donation to Supporting Families in Mental Illness in Taranaki. Your donation can be by cash or to SF Taranaki via Give A Little. Coffee and tea provided. Bring your lunch if you wish. Dialogues take place at Lynne’s rooms on the third floor of BNZ building, 50 Devon St on Wednesdays at 12.30 -1.30pm.
http:www.psychematters-lynneholdem@blogspot.com for more information or phone Lynne on 06 769-6050.

Map of the Soul: conscious & unconscious

I'm beginning Psyche Matters Dialogues on Thursday July 16th with a quick look at the history of psychoanalytic thinking about the human mind, more contemporary neuro-scientific discoveries about our brains, and most importantly how this information is applied in counselling and psychotherapy and in general relating.

I'll begin with an introduction to Freud's pioneering work on hypothesizing a part of the mind which is not under our conscious awareness or control, the unconscious.
Freud came to this conclusion after working initially with hypnosis and later with directing his patients to follow their associations. As his hysteric patients remembered traumatic childhood events and spoke about them Freud noticed that their symptoms reduced.

Many people consider that the existence of the unconscious has been debunked by contemporary psychologists and scientists but it remains a useful concept for psychotherapists who use it to explain incongruence in their patients, the sudden arrival of repressed memories and who notice in themselves and others the tendency to act differently than our conscious intention.

Freud suggested that we defend against primitive wishes and urges (id) that oppose the internalized 'civilizing messages' of our parents and teachers (superego) by repressing such thoughts and feelings but that these revisit us through slips of the tongue, our reaction to others, our behaviour and so on.
I will briefly look at his structural and topographical models, Jung's addition to the model of the collective unconscious, and Assagioli's egg diagram which contributes the idea of superconscious, the potential in us that is repressed.

I will also do a quick dive into the work of contemporary neuroscientists and their work on explicit and implicit memory, our new understandings of the structure of the brain, the neocortex and the limbic system. My sources for this is a great book: A General Theory of Love by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon
Vintage Books, 2001



Other Dialogue themes follow this link: psyche matters