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office (847) 866-7879
fax (847) 328-1212
NarrativeTherapy@sbcglobal.net

Workshops and Training

To register online, go to the Online Store.

To register offline, or for further information, complete the Contact Us form, write, call, or fax.

Level I Five-Day Intensive Workshop

With Jill Freedman & Gene Combs

Monday, July 26th - Friday, July 30th, 2010   WORKSHOP FULL            (Early Registration by June 18th)

Tuition: Early Registration, $600; General Registration, $675; Student Registration, $500 

Limited to 12 participants.

This small-group intensive workshop immerses participants in narrative ideas and facilitates experience with narrative practices. The format is interactive, with opportunities to practice the ideas. Videotape and live interviews are used to demonstrate the work. Our focus includes:

  • Thinking in terms of the narrative metaphor

  • Situating problems in larger political and cultural contexts

  • Engaging in conversations that externalize problems

  • Asking questions to generate experience

  • Developing alternative, thickly described life stories

  • Working as a member of a reflecting team/outsider witness group

  • Using documents, letters, and teams to spread the news of preferred developments

Level II Five-Day Intensive Workshop

With Jill Freedman & Gene Combs

Monday, August 2nd - Friday, August 6th, 2010       WORKSHOP FULL         (Early Registration by June 25th)

Tuition: Early Registration $650; General Registration $725; Student and Repeat Participant Registration, $550

Limited to 10 people who have completed a Level I Intensive or Year-Long Training.

This workshop is designed to help people take the next steps in using narrative ideas and practices in their particular contexts. In this 5-day experience, we collaborate with participants in sharing the joys and difficulties of narrative work in a variety of settings. Each participant will have a block of time that we will organize and shape according to his or her own special interests and projects. We imagine that during this week of collaboration we will interview each other; look together at videotapes, transcripts, documents, or other records of our work; and participate in skill-building exercises. We will consider ways to apply narrative practices in participants' particular work contexts.

Each level 2 workshop is a unique experience. Because of the improvisational and collaborative format, we are always extending each other’s narrative skills and understanding. This means that many people have found it valuable to attend more than one level 2 intensive.

Advanced Intensive in Tuscany, Italy

With Jill Freedman & Gene Combs

Monday, October 4th, 2010 - Friday, October 8, 2010    WORKSHOP FULL

Location: Ponte a Nappo, a bed and breakfast just outside San Gimignano, Tuscany, Italy

Tuition: Early Registration $625 (before July 4); General Registration $700

We plan to join together with up to 15 experienced practitioners of narrative therapy from October 4th through 8th 2010, just outside San Gimigmano, Italy for a 5-day intensive workshop under the Tuscan sun. Our friends, the Rossi family, have made their highly-rated bed and breakfast, Podere Ponte a Nappo, exclusively available for this workshop. We will not have to share the space with anyone else.

We plan to meet from 9 to 12 and from 4 to 7 each day, leaving a long siesta period for walks in the town or countryside, excursions to Siena, the Chianti country, or other points of interest, or just luxuriating in the beautiful surroundings.

 

Year-Long Training

With Jill Freedman, Gene Combs & Klaus Boettcher

2010 Dates Currently Being Developed

Limited to 12 people.

4 days every other month, 20 days total: [2010 - 2011 dates not set yet. Contact us if you desire more information]

Tuition: Early Registration, $2000; General Registration, $2,250

The training group will meet in four-day blocks (Friday - Monday) approximately every eight weeks. This format offers the advantage of four days of intensive experience followed by time for reflecting, reading, and trying out the ideas between meetings. The small group size insures supervised practice and makes it possible to tailor our program to fit participants' interests and work contexts. Our focus will include:

  • Learning narrative practices and gaining skills through exercises and
    consultation interviews

  • Understanding the theoretical and philosophical positions that support narrative work

  • Appreciating the people we work with as the privileged authors of their own stories

  • Exploring the role of culture, both in problematic stories and in preferred stories

  • Appreciating the importance of communities in which alternative stories can circulate and take on meaning

  • Thinking about ethics as ways of being that we embody rather than as rules we must follow to avoid punishment

  • Focusing on particular problems and applications of the work tailored to the interests and contexts of group members

Completion of the year-long training qualifies participants for alumni events, such as presenter conferences.

2nd Year Training: Live Supervision

With Jill Freedman & Gene Combs

Limited to 6 people who have completed the year-long training

16 days total: by arrangement

Tuition: $2000

The second-year training meets one Saturday and Sunday, every other month in a very small group. This is a chance for therapists who are engaged with narrative ideas and practices to have an ongoing team tailored to their specific concerns, interests, difficulties, and growth. During each two-day meeting, each participant will have a block of time devoted to his or her choice of experience and focus. The format can include live or videotaped supervision, exercises designed to work with particular skills, consultation, coaching, and collaboration, and interviews about participants ongoing stories of their development as therapists.

Group and Individual Supervision

We offer both group and individual supervision by personal arrangement. Contact us if you are interested.

Consultation

We offer consultation to individuals and to agencies. This, too, is by individual arrangement.

Housing/Accommodations

Click here for information about where to stay while studying at EFTC