Institute: Sensuality and Power in Group

Facilitated by: Blake Davis, LCSW, CGP

Event Description:

Group therapy offers unique opportunities for individuals to relate in ways that are new and unfamiliar, often deepening and expanding participants’ relational abilities.  For most clients, novel interpersonal experiences in group present opportunities to explore aspects of their sensuality, gender identity, and relationship to power. 

Sensuality, as I relate it to the group experience and process, includes all the mental and sensory activation that elicits erotic desires, as well as the impulses and resistances that can manifest in their midst. 

These different aspects of member experience often emerge concurrently in ways that can excite, frighten, enrage, and conflict.  These feelings may compel members toward destructive action or a momentary loss of their “relational self.” As a group facilitator, working with these experiences and the unspoken feelings they engender may offer new pathways to intimacy and authenticity in the group. Doing so provides an opportunity for members to deepen their attachment to one another and to the group as a whole, bringing new life to the group.

In this group experience we will emphasize the immediacy of feelings that emerge between members. We will examine how an enlivened group can lead to the sensual, and how the sensual can awaken experiences with power and gender.

This institute offers brief didactic portions throughout the weekend, but will emphasize experiential training. The process will likely provide ample opportunities to address resistances to the sensual. This will afford us the chance to explore dynamics of power and gender that often coincide when sensuality manifests in group. At the end of each day, there will be time to address questions that emerged during the process.

About the Presenter: 

Blake Davis has been a psychotherapist in private practice since 2010. He has trained at both The Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies (CMPS) and The Center for Group Studies (CGS) in New York, NY. In addition, he has trained in couples therapy with Stan Tatkin. Blake works with individuals and couples, and has facilitated multiple ongoing therapy groups since 2011.  For several years, Blake has maintained an interest in working with resistances to clients’ life force and sensuality in group, learning mostly through trial and error.  Blake Davis resides in Austin, TX with his partner and two children.

What Are Group Institutes?

Institutes are a highly experiential form of small group teaching led by experienced instructors. They are intended to develop therapy skills relevant to leading groups. They often offer a chance to explore a particular theme in greater depth or to experience a different theoretical approach. Institutes are primarily designed for mental health professionals who have clinical psychotherapy experience. While institutes are not therapy, they are process-oriented and it is expected that they may stir feelings spanning the whole range of human experience. Members agree to attend the entire group, to participate actively, and to respect the confidentiality of the other members. The secure environment of these small groups allows for rich cognitive and deep emotional learning about group process and oneself, not to mention a chance for personal and professional renewal.

Objectives:

 Attendees will be able to:

1. Identify three ways that sensuality emerges in group.
   
2. Discover how sensuality in group can stir a host of reactions in the group specifically related to issues of power and gender.
   
3. Name common countertransference experiences when working with this material.
   
4. Identify and manage interpersonal complications that frequently manifest when sensuality is expressed in group.
   

Schedule:

Friday:

1:30pm: Introduction and Didactic

2pm: Break

2:15pm: Process Group

3:45pm: Break 

4pm: Process Group

5:30pm: Break

5:45pm: Q and A

6pm: End

Saturday:

9am: Didactic

9:45am: Break

10am: Process Group

11:30am: Lunch Break

1pm: Didactic

1:15pm: Process Group

2:45pm: Break

3pm: Reflection and Q and A

3:45pm: Survey

4pm: End

Location given at registration. The location is wheelchair accessible.

8.75 CEUs available for social workers, LPCs, LMFTs, and psychologists.