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WORKSHOPS

Sara Bridges, University of Memphis
Elaborating and Exploring Sexual Meanings

In a changing world that is becoming more open about sexuality in general, new ways of understanding sexuality and the ways in which clients embody their sexuality need to be created. However, because of diverse backgrounds and personal ways of making meaning, we come to experience sexuality in many different ways. This workshop is designed to assist both counselors and their clients in understanding and communicating more clearly about sexual meanings from a constructivist perspective. Various constructivist and systemic techniques will be presented (i.e., sexual genograms, holonic mapping, sexually oriented laddering) and opportunities will be provided for workshop participants to practice these techniques. These techniques are designed to bring about greater personal and relational understanding for clients and for the counselors who endeavor to work with them.

Anthony DiLollo and Walter Manning, University of Mississippi
Talking Back to Stuttering: Resisting the Dominance of Disfluency Through Narrative Therapy

A Personal Construct understanding of relapse from successful treatment for stuttering suggests that a primary problem for many persons who stutter may be the lack of meaningfulness of the fluent speaker role. Further research has indicated that a more basic problem may involve the "dominant" nature of the stutterer role. It has been proposed that a narrative approach to therapy may facilitate the deconstruction of the stuttering-dominated narrative and reconstruction of a narrative that is more conducive to the maintenance of fluent speech. Personal accounts of journeys from stuttering to fluency are used to illustrate the application of the narrative metaphor to working with persons who stutter.

Jay Efran, Temple University
A Rapid Context-Centred Group Treatment For Social Phobia

This workshop describes a rapid context-centered group therapy for shy, socially phobic individuals. Its semi-structured format can readily be adapted to other settings and problems. Context-centered therapy is an acceptance-based approach with roots in Eastern philosophy and constructivism. It emphasizes gaining mastery by "noticing" the structure of suppositions that control one's life. The format to be described has been found to be at least as effective as, and perhaps more efficient than, traditional Western approaches that require changing behaviors, modifying cognitions, and teaching social skills.

Jerald Forster, University of Washington
How to Construct Positive Self-Identities

Participants will sample a process designed to increase their constructions of positive self-identities. After hearing a rationale for positive self-identities, they will be asked to identify a number of past experiences characterized by enjoyment, pride and a sense of well-being. They will tell two other participants about these positive experiences and receive assistance in articulating the names of several strengths that were used during the experiences. They will then consolidate and prioritize their positive self-constructions, and develop self-descriptions emphasizing these strengths. They will plan future activities that optimize the use of these strengths and anchor their self-identities to these strengths.

Brian Gaines and Mildred Shaw, University of Calgary
Using WebGrid in Your Research and Teaching

WebGrid is a freely available web service for repertory grid elicitation and analysis that may be used by anyone with access to the Internet through a web browser. It is in use by thousands of people world-wide, including professionals who have made it an integral part of their research and teaching. This workshop is designed to demonstrate WebGrid in use, to show potential users how they may use it effectively, and to ensure that experienced users have full access to all its capabilities.

Donald Granvold, University of Texas at Arlington
Promoting Long Term Sexual Passion

A majority of couples that present for treatment report sexual dissatisfaction. This paper addresses the treatment of couples who do not suffer from sexual dysfunction (e.g., pre-orgasmic functioning, erectile difficulty, premature ejaculation, or pain during intercourse). The focus here is on those who are unhappy with the frequency and/or quality of love play, intercourse, and orgasm along with the ways sexual behavior (or lack of it) is deleteriously affecting the quality of their relationship. Sensual/sexual intimacy has long been recognized as a powerful bonding agent in coupling. Couples therapists are obligated to develop their knowledge of sexual treatment both conceptually and methodologically.
This presentation will address: 1) the meanings of sexual intimacy (sex is more than penis/vagina); 2) initiating sex play; 3) common sexual myths; 4) talking openly about sensual/sexual desires; 5) boredom: its bases and antidotes; 6) frivolity in life and love; 7) sexual skill building; and 8) sensate and fantasy innovations. Along with a knowledge base, therapist comfort with the topic is a necessary ingredient for effective sexual treatment. Participants should come prepared to discuss meaning making as it relates to human sexuality and its expression. Constructivist sexual treatment strategies will be described and discussed and specific ways of enhancing sexual pleasure will be considered.

David Mills, Performance School
Bodily Meaning: Kinesthetic Experiments with Conductive Thinking

Personal meanings are not only constructed; they are embodied. Kelly's Fundamental Postulate has a physical complement, which may be stated as: "A person's processes are physically chanalized by the ways in which anticipations are embodied." This workshop session is an opportunity to explore dimensions of kinesthetic meaning in personal experience.

R. Vance Peavy, Victoria, BC
Toward Wisdom-based Helping Practices

This workshop include a brief lecturette on the meaning of "wisdom-based helping" together with guided dialogue between participants and between workshop leader and participants. The remainder of the workshop consists of short practical learning activities designed to acquaint participants with various concepts and practical procedures in wisdom based helping.

Richard Watts, Baylor University
Adlerian Theory/Therapy: A Precursory Exemplar of Relational Constructivism

Robert Neimeyer suggests that an integrative bridge between cognitive constructivist and social constructionist perspectives might be usefully labeled "relational constructivism." This presentation addresses points of convergence between Adlerian and Constructivist and Social Constructionist theories and therapies to demonstrate that the mature Adlerian theory and therapy is a precursory model of relational constructivism.

Marvin Westwood, David Kuhl, and Hilary Pearson, University of British Columbia
Therapeutic Enactment: A Group Based Therapeutic Model for Facilitating Personal Change

Therapeutice Enactment (TE) is a brief multimodal change method which incorporates aspects of several counselling systems, including group counselling, self psychology and object relations, script theory and gestalt approaches. The primary process is to assist clients to make personal change by carefully enacting critical events in their lives which have caused injury or trauma to the self. Guided reenactment process enables participants to reach a sense of resolution and greater personal integration. This approach has been successfully used with a range of client problems including: interpersonal conflict, family or origin, workplace related trauma, grief, loss, sexual/emotional abuse and shame. Recent research is showing that changes in awareness, insight, meaning and behaviour occur quicker and tend to be personally more transformative in applications of TE than in conventional, unidimensional verbal therapy appraoches which tend to extend over a longer period of time. This presentation will give a brief overview of the TE model with a demonstration to enhance learning in the session.

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