We’re delighted to welcome back Professor Mick Cooper to Cornwall this year, with a highly engaging workshop in understanding Therapy & Social Change.
The workshop focuses on the contribution that counselling, psychology, and psychotherapy theory and practice can contribute to progressive social change. Counselling values—like compassion, empathy, and acceptance—are powerfully aligned with a progressive valuing of otherness; and psychological practices like nonviolent communication and social and emotional literacy training can help to develop a more caring and understanding world. There are also striking parallels between the work of therapists to help support marginalised voices in the self, and the work of social justice advocates who fight for the rights of marginalised social communities. The psychological and the political worlds, therefore, have much to learn from each other.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:
Map the ways in which therapeutic practice, training, supervision, and provision can incorporate social justice values
Comprehend the differences between liberal and radical applications of social justice values to therapy
Critically consider social justice informed practices: broaching, bridging, advocacy, indigenous healing practices, and challenging clients’ prejudices
Recognise therapy-informed analyses of social injustices, and the ways in which therapy and therapy-informed practices may contribute to a more socially just world
Schedule
Session 1: Social justice contributions to therapeutic practices I
Session 2: Social justice contributions to therapeutic practices II
Session 3: Therapeutic contributions to social justice theory and practice
Session 4: Parallels between therapeutic and social justice perspectives
Format
This workshop is delivered as a one day event.
The workshop combines self-development exercises, theoretical input, practical exercises, and small and large group discussion.
The workshop is appropriate for training and practising counsellors, psychotherapists, counselling psychologists and other mental health professionals.
Workshop is limited to 30 places
Mick Cooper is an internationally recognised author, trainer, and consultant in the field of humanistic, existential, and pluralistic therapies. He is a Chartered Psychologist, and Professor of Counselling Psychology at the University of Roehampton. Mick has facilitated workshops and lectures around the world, including New Zealand, Lithuania, and Florida. Mick's books include Existential Therapies (2nd ed., Sage, 2017), Working at Relational Depth in Counselling and Psychotherapy (2nd ed., Sage, 2018), and Integrating Counselling and Psychotherapy: Directionality, Synergy, and Social Change (Sage, 2019). Mick’s principal areas of research have been in shared decision-making/personalising therapy, and counselling for young people in schools. In 2014, Mick received the Carmi Harari Mid-Career Award from Division 32 of the American Psychological Association. He is a Fellow of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and the Academy of Social Sciences. Mick’s latest book explores the contribution that counselling and psychotherapy theory and practice can make to wider social progress and justice: Psychology at the Heart of Social Change: Towards a Progressive Vision for Society (Bristol University, 2023).