First Posted on May 11, 2011 by alisonball
Further to my last piece regarding the amalgamation of my own professional association- the Australian Association of Somatic Psychotherapists (AASP) with the Australian Somatic Integration Association (ASIA)- I want to let you know that we have gone an important step further. On May 22nd both associations met at the same venue in Syndey- primarily for our own separate Annual General Meetings and joint meetings before and after. The agenda for each meeting was almost identical with the major business to pass Special Resolutions to amalgamate. This is what has occurred and the bureaucratic process is now in train to make it offical. We should be a newly incorporated body early in July and will have our first Annual General Meeting in Melbourne in September at a joint conference under the new name of the Australian Somatic Psychotherapists Association (ASPA).
Our conference theme and title will be:
“REBIRTH AND RENEWAL: The New Baby is Home – Creating the environment for growth and development within the family of somatic psychotherapy and the wider community.”
The conference this year will be very much an “in house” event where we hope to have quite a few of our members including the “younger generation” present papers that can be an inspiration on which to build our future.
The future of somatic psychotherapy as it is represented by our associations is, I believe, at some sort of cross roads so we need new thinking from our newer members. On the one hand we will now have a new strong constitution and ethical code to set a firm basis for our future growth. We also have an enormously strong belief in the value of the work we do and of the training that we have all had and, as well, the on-going professional requirements that enable us and support us to do the work that we do with our clients.
Additionally, the fact that our associations are founding and constituent members of the Psychotherapy and Counsellors Federation of Australia (PACFA) has been an important factor in giving us substantial legitimacy and the possibility of a “bigger” voice in the community. Now, as well, that membership means that we have the first of some real public recognition. Our clients who subscribe to Medibank Private, will now be able to can gain rebates when they come to see our members who are on the PACFA Register [and who will also be eligible to be on the National Register (ARCAP)]. PACFA expects that other private health funds will also soon accept our members as eligible for rebates for their clients.
The other side of the coin, as I see it, is that our theories and concepts on which our training was based from the 1980′s is now becoming more and more mainstream. My sense is that, unless our members begin to put themselves forward- in producing and presenting papers, research and workshops at conferences and also writing books, then we could easily be seen in future as having “missed the boat.”
The prime interest of most of our members in the past- and I include myself in this- has been simply to do the clinical work. We love the clinical work with our clients. Few of us are academically inclined even though, the likes of myself, have gone off and got an academic Masters’ qualification. We have not been out there promoting our work or ourselves- we have not been lobbying politicians and promoting our “evidence- based” “proof” that our methods work. Psychoanalysts and psychotherapists have traditionally been clinicians and not researchers or academics so we are not alone there.
The difficulties have many aspects. There is a great deal more interest in the somatic ramifications of trauma and so more and more clinicialns are using these terms and concepts that have been integral to our work. Mostly though, as I see it, they believe that the somatic knowledge and work does not require them ever to work “hands on”. With many of our clients we also would not work “hands on” but sometimes it is required to do the “real” work that is needed.
And our training allows us to negotiate that sort of relationship and to think together about the intersubjective or transferential issues involved and to help the client integrate their experience from the past with the reality of the present.
Another aspect that has been a major stumbling blocks to mainstream acceptance of our work, harks back to the very foundation stone of our work. Our training courses are almost always in private colleges and because the training is so long and so difficult only small numbers are attracted and our courses are never money making propositions. And for that and other reasons it is almost impossible to fill the requirements to get colleges officially accredited or their courses approved so that students can get “official degrees” or have their fees subsidised. The amount of work and bureaucratic requirements and money to make that happen means that one needs an independent source of finance.
The option has been to seat the courses in an established University. But that avenue has also proved almost impossible. To find a University that would accept, as a legitimate and essential “subject” of a degree, what we consider to be the prime constituent of the training to become a psychoanalyst or psychotherapist is really difficult. That is, the requirement that, along with the academic learning and the skills practise, the training to be a psychotherapist or a psychoanalyst requires that the “student/ trainee” undergo and participate in their own journey of psychotherapeutic exploration- usually at the very least on a weekly basis and sometimes requiring twice, three or four times weekly in the case of psychoanalytic trainees and- they must continue that over a period of years alongside the academic course. The universities just do not “get it” and anyway would struggle to make such a requirement mandatory much less “assessable” since it is such a private journey.
But this is the essential difference between a psychotherapist/ analyst and another professional with only an academic degree such as psychology. Psychotherapists know that with only an academic and theoretical knowledge one can only go to a certain depth with one’s clients. For many clients this will be adequate but if the client requires us to be able to sit and stay with them in all the depths of their psyche then we ourselves must have explored our own depths. Those who make the choice for psychotherapy choose a very hard journey just as we who are practitioners chose an arduous but life changing journey to do the work.
