The Workshop: Applied Existential Psychotherapy (AEP) is an experiential psychodynamic therapy that interlaces the insights of contemporary existential and psychoanalytic/psychodynamic approaches with techniques inspired by Gestalt therapy and other experiential approaches. It was developed by Betty Cannon and her colleagues at the Boulder Psychotherapy Institute over the past 22 years. The Boulder Psychotherapy Institute trains mental health professionals and graduate students in this approach.

AEP takes into account the full spectrum of human experience - body, meaning, emotion, the impact of the past, and the choices that need to be made to create a different future. In this workshop, you will learn to attend to the Here and Now in a way that that produces immediacy and authentic relationship. You will also learn to deepen to emotional states and family of origin issues that move clients to profound change. Body and process are emphasized along with verbal material and content. You will learn new ways to work with transference, countertransference and defenses that rely on action techniques and deep level awareness more than interpretation and intellectual insight.

The workshop includes both experiential and didactic components. Demonstrations, experiential exercises and practice bring provide the opportunity to learn the skills of an in-depth approach that facilitates deep level personal transformation. AEP work can be integrated with other approaches to allow for more immediacy in the therapeutic encounter.

Topics

History and Influences on AEP: Gestalt Therapy, Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Rogerian Nondirectional Therapy, Body Oriented Psychotherapy, Trauma Work, Existential Philosophy

Model of the Psyche: Perls and Sartre - Consciousness as No Thing; Perls - Five Layers of the Neurosis

Direction of Change in Therapy: Spirit of Seriousness to Spirit of Play

Five Pillars of AEP: Un-knowing, Awareness, Contact, Experiment, Choice.

Emphasis on Body Awareness: Mirroring the Body

The Language of Responsibility (Response-ability)

Polarities and the Division between Reflective and Prereflective Consciousness

Typical Stages of an AEP Working: Deepening to Family of Origin Issues and Back Again

Defenses as Boundary Disturbances: Introjection, Projection, Retroflection, Deflection, Confluence, Identification with the Aggressor, Projective Identification, Denial, Dissociation, Splitting, Reaction Formation, etc.

The Cycle of Awareness: Sensation, Awareness, Mobilization, Action, Final Contact, Satisfaction, Withdrawal

“Unfinished Business”: Transference and Countertransference in an AEP Setting

AEP Work with Dreams: Enacting the Dream

AEP Work with Trauma: Meaning and Despair

Psychodynamic Issues in AEP: The Family of Origin and Developmental Conflicts

Existential Issues in AEP: Nothingness as the Ground for Change

The Workshop Leaders: Betty Cannon, Ph.D., Boulder Psychotherapy Institute President and co-founder, is a licensed psychologist and certified Gestalt therapist. She has worked with individuals, couples and groups for over thirty years and trained psychotherapists for over twenty years. She holds doctorates in both literature and psychology. She is Professor Emerita at the Colorado School at Mines and Adjunct Professor at Naropa University and Regis University. Dr. Cannon is a member of the editorial boards of three professional journals: Sartre Studies International, Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry, and Existential Analysis. She is an internationally known author, lecturer and workshop presenter. She is the author of many journal articles and book chapters on existential therapy. Her book, Sartre and Psychoanalysis, is considered a classic in existential psychology. She is the executive contributing editor for the section on Existential Psychoanalysis for the Edinburgh International Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis. She and Reed Lindberg, BPI Managing Director, are currently writing a book on Applied Existential Psychotherapy.

Robyn Chauvin, M.A., L.P.C., is a member of the teaching faculty at the Boulder Psychotherapy Institute. She has 15 years experience and is a Licensed Professional Counselor, certified AEP therapist, and board certified Music Therapist. She has varied experience in hospice, inpatient psychiatric, and private practice psychotherapy. She is adjunct faculty in the Transpersonal Counseling Psychology Master's Program at Naropa University. Her approach and methodologies include Gestalt, Applied Existential Psychotherapy, Psychodrama, and The Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music. Of particular interest is working towards wholeness with persons facing internalized oppression or complicated trauma. Ms. Chauvin is currently writing a book on An AEP Approach to Developmental Issues.

Suggested Readings

Books and Articles on Existentialism and Existential Therapy
* Barnes, Hazel E. "Sartre's Concept of the Self." Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry
27: 41-65, 1983.
* -------------. "The Role of the Ego in Reciprocity." In Sartre Alive, ed. Ronald Aronson and
Adrian Van den Hoven. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
------------. Sartre and Flaubert. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
------------. Sartre. London: Quartet Books, 1974
------------. An Existentialist Ethics. [1967] Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press,
1978.
Binswanger, Ludwig. 1963. Being in the World. Trans. Jacob Needleman. New York and London:
Basic Books, 1963.
Boss, Medard. The Analysis of Dreams. London: Ryder, 1957
-------------. Psychoanalysis and Daseinsanalysis. Trans. Ludwig B. Lefebre. New York and
London: Basic Books. Bowlby, John. 1969. Attachment. New York: Basic Books, 1963.
Buber, Martin. I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970.
Bugental, James F. [1965]. The Search for Authenticity: An Existential-Analytic Approach to
Psychotherapy. New York: Irvington, 1989.
* Cannon, Betty. Sartre and Psychoanalysis: An Existentialist Challenge to Clinical
Metatheory. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991. Sartre et la psychanalyse. French
translation by Laurent Bury in the series Perspectives Critiques by Roland Jaccard. Presses
Universitaires de France, 1993.
* ----------. "Nothingness as the Ground of Change: Gestalt Therapy and Existential
Psychoanalysis." In Existential Analysis l20.2. July 2008, pp. 192-210 (available on Web site).
* -----------. “Applied Existential Psychotherapy: An Experiential Psychodynamic Approach.”
Chapter for upcoming book, ed. Laura Barnett and Greg Madison. To be published by Routledge,
2011. (Available on Web site with password.)
-----------. “Sartre and Existential Psychoanalysis.” In The Humanistic Psychologist (Special
Volume: Understanding Existence: Perspectives in Existential Analysis), vol. 27, No.1, Spring,
1999, pp. 23-50.
* ----------. “Group Therapy as Revolutionary Praxis: A Sartrean Perspective.” Sartre Studies
International, vol. 11, No 1/2, 2005, pp. 133-52. This contribution to the centennial edition of
SSI was also published as a book with contributions from leading Sartre scholars, as Sartre
Today: A Centenary Celebration, ed. Adrian van den Hoven and Andrew Leak, pp. 133-52. New
York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2005.
* ---------------. “Sartre’s Contribution to Psychoanalysis.” In Understanding Experience:
Psychotherapy and Postmodernism, ed. Roger Frie. Brunner-Routledge, 2003.
*--------------. "Nothingness at the Heart of Being: Gestalt Therapy and Existential
Psychoanalysis." In New Perspectives on Sartre, ed. Adrian Mirvish and Adraina van den Hoven,
Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010.
* ---------------. "Existential Psychoanalysis." In The Edinburgh International Encyclopaedia of
Psychoanalysis, Betty Cannon, executive editor for section on EP, wrote overview, solicited and
edited entries. General editor Ross Skelton, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2006.
--------------. "Existential Psychology and Psychiatry." In Dictionary of Existentialism, ed. Haim
Gordon. Greenwood Press, 1999., ed. Haim Gordon.
--------------. "Sartre's Idea of Community," in Hypatia: Essays in Honor of Hazel E. Barnes, ed.
William Calder, Ulrich Goldsmith, and Phyllis Kenevan. Boulder: University of Colorado Press,
1985.
--------------. "Hazel E. Barnes 1915-2008: A Farewell to America's Foremost Sartre Scholar."
Existential Analysis, 19.2, July 2008, pp. 389-414.
Frankl, Viktor E. [1955]. The Doctor and the Soul: From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy. 2d rev. ed. New
York: Vintage Books, 1986.
------------. [l959]. Man's Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy. New York:
Pocket Books, 1985.
------------. [1967] Psychotherapy and Existentialism: Selected Papers on Logotherapy. New York:
Washington Square Press, 1985.
Frie, Roger. Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity in Modern Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. New
York and London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1997.
Gendlin, Eugene. Focusing. Bantam: New York and London, 1982.
* Laing, R. D. [1959a]. The Divided Self. New York: Penguin Books, 1979.
------------. [1959b]. Do You Love Me? New York: Pantheon Books, 1976.
* ------------. [1961]. Self and Others. New York and London: Penguin Books, 1987.
------------. [1969]. The Politics of the Family and Other Essays. New York: Vintage Books,
1972.
------------. [1970]. Knots. New York: Vintage Books, 1971.
Laing, R. D., and D. G. Cooper. [1964]. Reason and Violence. New York: Vintage Books, 1971.
Laing, R. D., and David Esterson. 1964. Sanity, Madness, and the Family. London: Tavistock
Publications.
May, Rollo. The Meaning of Anxiety. New York: Ronald Press, 1950.
------------. [I953] Man's Search for Himself. New York: Signet, 1967.
------------. The Discovery of Being: Writings in Existential Psychology. New York and London: W. W.
Norton and Company, 1983.
May, Rollo, Ernest Angel, and Henri Ellenberger, eds. Existence. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1958.
Rogers, Carl [1961]. On Becoming a Person. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1995.
------------. Carl Rogers on Encounter Groups. New York, Evanston and London: Harper and Row,
1970.
* Sartre, Jean-Paul. [I937]- The Transcendence of the Ego [La Transcendance de I'Ego]. Trans. Robert
Kirkpatrick and Forrest Williams. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1957.
------------. [1938]. Nausea [La Nausee], Trans. Lloyd Alexander. New York: New Directions
Publishing Corp., 1964.
------------. [1939] The Emotions: Outline of a Theory [Esquisse d'une theorie des emotions].
Trans. Bernard Frechtman. New York: Philosophical Library, 1975.
------------. [1940]. The Psychology of Imagination [L'Imaginaire]. Trans. Bernard Frechtman.
New York: Washington Square Press, 1966.
* ------------. [1943]. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenohgical Ontology [L'Etre et le
Neant: Essai d'ontologie phenomenologique]. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Philosophical
Library, 1956.
------------. [I944]- No Exit [Huis clos]. Trans. Stuart Gilbert. New York: Vintage Books, 1955.
.
------------. [1946a]. Baudelaire. Trans. Martin Turnell. New York: New Directions, 1950.
------------. [1946b]. "Preface" to Black Orpheus [Orphee noir]. Ed. Leopold Sedar Senghor
and trans. S. W Allen. Paris: Presence Africaine, 1963.
------------. [1946c]. Existentialism [LExistentialisme est un humanisme]. Trans. Bernard Frechtman.
New York: Philosophical Library, 1947.
------------. [1948]. Dirty Hands [Les Mains sales]. Trans. Lionel Abel. New York: Vintage
Books, 1955.
------------. [1952]. Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr [Saint Genet, comedien et martyr]. Trans.
Bernard Frechtman. New York: George Braziller, 1963.
------------. [1959]. The Condemned of Altona [Les Sequestres d'Altona]. Trans. Silvia Leeson
and George Leeson. New York: Knopf, 1961.
------------. [1960a]. Critique of Dialectical Reason [Critique de la raison dialectique]. Ed. Jonathan
Ree and trans. Alan Sheridan-Smith. London: Verso/NLB, 1982.
------------ [1960b]. Search for a Method [Questions de methode]. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. New
York: Vintage Books, 1968.
------------. [1963]- The Words [Les Mots]. Trans. Bernard Frechtman. New "fork: George Braziller,
1964.
* ------------. [1971]. The Family Idiot [L'ldiot de la famille]. vol. 1. Trans. Carol Cosman. Chicago
and London: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
------------. [1972a]. Between Existentialism and Marxism [Situations VIII and Situations IX].
Trans. John Mathews. New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1979.
------------. [1975]. Life/Situations [Situations X]. Trans. Paul Auster and Lydia Davis. New
York: Pantheon Books, 1977.
*------------. Notebooks for an Ethics, trans. David Pellauer. Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press, 1992.
------------. 1984. The Freud Scenario [Le Scenario Freud]. Ed. J.-B. Pontalis and trans. Quintin
Hoare. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.
Schneider, Kirk J., ed. Existential-Integrative Psychotherapy. New York and London: Routledge,
2008.
Spinelli, Ernesto. The Interpreted World: An Introduction to Phenomenological Psychology.
London: Sage Publications, 1998.
* ------------. Tales of Un-Knowing: Eight Stories of Existential Therapy, 1997.
* ------------. Practicing Existential Psychotherapy: The Relational World. Los Angeles, London,
New Delhi and Singapore: Sage Publications, 2007.
* ------------. The Mirror and the Hammer: Challenging Orthodoxies in Psychotherapeutic
Thought. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2001.
* Thompson, M. Guy. The Death of Desire: A Study in Psychopathology. New York and London: New
York University Press, 1985.
------------. The Truth about Freud's Technique: The Encounter with the Real. New York and London:
New York University Press, 1994.
Van Kaam, Adrian. 1969. Existential Foundations of Psychology. Garden City, N. Y: Doubleday and
Co., 1969.
* Van den Berg, J. H. 1955. The Phenomenological Approach to Psychiatry. Springfield, Ill.: Charles
C. Thomas, 1955.
* Van Deurzen, Emmy. Everyday Mysteries: Existential Dimensions of Psychotherapy. London:
Routledge, 2010.
------------. Paradox and Passion in Psychotherapy: An Existential Approach to Therapy and
Counseling. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1998.
* Yalom, Irvin D. Existential Psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books, 1980.
* ------------. 1989. Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books, 1989.
Books and Articles on Gestalt Therapy
* Clarkson, Petrushka. Gestalt Counseling in Action. London: Sage Publications, 1991.
Fagan, Joel and Irma Lee Shepherd. Gestalt Therapy Now. New York: Harper Colophon, 1970.
Feder, Bud and Ruth Ronall. Beyond the Hot Seat. Highland, New York: Gestalt Journal Press,
1994.
Korb, Margaret P., Jeffrey Gorrell and Vernon Van de Riet. Gestalt Therapy: Practice and
Theory. New York: Pergamon Press, 1989
Latner, Joel. The Gestalt Therapy Book. New York: Gestalt Journal Press, 1989.
* Naranjo, Claudio. Gestalt Therapy: The Attitude & Practice of an Atheoretical
Experientialism. Nevada City, CA: Gateways Publishing, 1993.
Oaklander, Violet. Windows to Our Children. New York: Gestalt Journal Press, 1988.
Passons, William R. Gestalt Approaches in Counseling. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1975.
Perls, Frederick, Ralph F. Hefferline, and Paul Goodman. Gestalt Therapy. New York: Bantam,
1980.
Perls, Fritz. The Gestalt Approach and Eye Witness to Therapy. Science and Behavior Books,
1973.
* -------------. Gestalt Therapy Verbatim. New York: Bantam, 1972.
-------------. In and Out the Garbage Pail. New York: Gestalt Journal Press, 1992.
* Polster, Erving & Miriam. Gestalt Therapy Integrated. New York: Random House, 1974.
Shepard, Martin. Fritz: An Intimate Portrait of Fritz Perls and Gestalt Therapy. New York: E.P.
Dutton, 1975.
Smith, Edward W. L., ed., Gestalt Voices. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Publishing, 1992.
* Stevens, John O. Awareness. New York: Bantam Books, 1976.
Zinker, Joseph. Creative Process in Gestalt Therapy. New York: Vintage Books,