Update: EHNW’s “Supervision: An Existential Therapy Perspective” Workshop

This workshop explores what is distinctive about an existential approach to supervision. In attempting to do so, it will address several key aspects in the practice of existential therapy that can be transposed to supervision from an existential therapy perspective. As well as lecture and discussion, participants will have opportunity to take part in a live demonstration of this approach to supervision.

EHNW Lunch-n-Learn: “Future Minds: A Tapestry of Existentialism and Mental Well-being in the Age of AI”

Live True Counseling and via Zoom 333 SW Taylor Street, Suite 200, Portland, Oregon, United States

The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) brings both promise and peril to the core tenets of existential humanism. While AI has the potential to enhance individual freedom, automate mundane tasks, and contribute to a more interconnected society, concerns arise regarding privacy, autonomy, and the erosion of personal responsibility. The collaboration between humans and AI may lead to meaningful synergies or, if mishandled, to a sense of alienation. Ethical considerations in mental health practices, existential anxieties, and the cultural shifts driven by AI further complicate the relationship between providers and clients. Navigating these complexities requires a careful balance between technological progress and the preservation of existing values and methodologies. In this presentation, Arnaud will give a basic overview of AI history and where it might be heading; Christy will discuss the current and potential uses and ethical concerns in the field of mental health.

$10

Core Skills in Existential-Humanistic Psychotherapy 2024 – Online Workshop

An Existential-Humanistic approach to psychotherapy can be a foundation for all therapists seeking to do deep and life-changing work with their clients. The E-H approach is based on core ways of being and working with clients that help facilitate greater awareness, greater sense of choice, increased agency and adaptiveness and a deeper connection to self and others – all in the service of healing and growing. There are core capacities and skills an E-H therapist uses to help clients effectively explore and work through their existential predicaments so they can more fully access what deeply matters to them.

In this 16-hour online training, leading instructors in the E-H field will provide theoretical explanation and experiential opportunities for the development and/or strengthening of skills and capacities that are not only core to the E-H approach but can also support therapists of many other modalities cultivate a foundation for optimizing their technical skills.

$595 – $695

Unleashing Otto Rank: The Creation of Modern Depth Therapy

An International Conference

The most brilliant of Freud's students, Otto Rank had a highly productive life as a lecturer, therapist and writer after leaving Vienna. His work greatly influenced many notable figures, including the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the client-centered psychotherapist Carl Rogers, the existential psychoanalyst Rollo May, the existential therapist Irvin Yalom, and the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker. It was his profound influence on May and Rogers in particular that gave birth to existential-humanistic psychology in the U.S.

EHI is excited to announce the following esteemed presenters:

Marie Becker
Sara Ekenstierna
Matthew Fox
Ludwig Janus
Robert Kramer
Kirk Schneider
Ellen Handler Spitz
Siebrecht Vanhooren

This Conference, unprecedented in the annals of both psychoanalysis and existential-humanistic psychology, will re-introduce the legacy, focus, and implications of Rank's genius for a new generation of Depth Psychologists. Specifically, the conference will focus on Rank's move from Freudian psychoanalysis to here-now experience and its foundational impact on psychospiritual healing...

Recommended: EHNW’s Annual Workshop w/ Dr Nathaniel Granger, Jr

This workshop, "Examining Microaggressions and Building Cultural Empathy through the Historical Lens of the African American Experience" is entirely focused on the American experience for African Americans and other marginalized groups. We will examine the presence of microaggressions which include verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial, gender, sexual orientation, and religious slights and insults which target a person or group. Because of the great diversity among clients in psychotherapy, we are focusing this workshop on importance of cultural empathy. We will examine the historical issue of slavery and its relevance to today's racial tensions, including historical trauma and the long-term effects of slavery. Finally, we will examine poetry's contribution to understanding those of diverse backgrounds.

$75 – $175

The Literary Legacy of Existential Psychology w/ Dr Xuefu Wang

Join EHI for the second presentation in its International Existential Scholars Lecture Series! 

Both Lu Xun and Rollo May are existential thinkers as well as existential literacy figures. They both use metaphors to reflect on human existence. With Lu Xun’s reflection on the Chinese psyche or even the Chinese nation as a whole, he advocates for the destruction of the Iron House to set people free to live as individual humans with respect and dignity. Rollo May, in addressing the perspective of an individual being persecuted by an alienating power, touches on a related fundamental theme of humanity. 

$10 – $20

Recommended: EHNW’s August Lunch-n-Learn w/ Scott Kiser, PhD

This presentation focuses on the experience of “redemptive suffering,” that is, psychological pain and suffering in response to adversity that become constructively transformative and growth-producing rather than only destructive. Through exploring the core dynamics of intentionality and meaning-creation, participants will see how painful life experiences can be transformed into empowering sources of growth by reinterpreting their essential meaning for the suffering individual. Specifically, this involves a critical choice to experience painful adversity in terms of an actively-thriving gratitude rather than a sense of passive victimization.

$10

EHNW Salon – Existential Humility: Strong tests of intellectual humility

This Virtual Reading Salon will focus on Existential Humility (EH) and Intellectual Humility (IH) and are two different aspects of a broader personality structure. IH is most challenging when individuals are confronted with existential threats. EH involves holding cherished beliefs regarding the meaning of suffering and life and death loosely enough to revise in light of evidence.

$10

Lunch and Learn – Change Through Movement

Online via Zoom

Aldous Huxley is quoted as saying “Consciousness is only possible through change. Change is only possible through movement.” Modern dance pioneer Martha Graham said “The body says what words cannot.” As clinicians, how may we bring our and our clients’ attention to their fundamental human agency through movement? What interventions may open possibility towards greater freedom from pain, fixation, and limited choices?

In this presentation Lavinia will introduce fundamental principles of human movement, teach experientally guided cues that can help us as clinicians, as well as clients, to uncover blockages and restore (and re-story) available potential. Lavinia will present a case history demonstrating how restoring movement to a client’s feet and thorax resulted in the cessation of chronic pain which allowed the client to stop using analgesics and anxiolytics.

$10

Salon – Beyond the Individual: The Situation in Therapy

In the therapeutic encounter, the therapist and the client are not self-contained separate
elements, but a configuration of the interacting forces of a field. There is no such thing as a
separate environment or a separate individual. [Or as Winnicott famously once said: “There is
no such thing as a baby, only a baby and a someone”] At every moment a person is part of a
field. His behavior and development is a function of this field.

$20

3rd World Congress of Existential Therapy

Royal Olympic Hotel, Athens, Greece Athens, Greece

Living in the Here and Now:
Embracing our roots
Creating our future

Heraclitus states that "Everything flows and nothing remains". He reminds us that "nobody bathes twice in the same river", explaining not only that the water in the river flows, but that people also change from one moment to another.

Our existence is always present, initiating and encompassing all of our biological and social history. At the same time, and while existence encompasses the past, it is envisioned and moving towards the future. A future in which human beings do not merely move but create, through their inherent freedom.

The 3rd World Congress of Existential Therapy is being held in Athens in May 2023 and offers an opportunity to address the here-and-now while embracing our roots and building a vision towards the future.

$150 – $450

EHNW Lunch n Learn April 2023

In this presentation attendees will identify Sexual Dysfunctions per the DSM as well as common themes in sexual dysfunction, specifically Psychosocial factors.  Participants will eview diagnostic criteria of male and female sexual disorders, desire and orgasm disorders. Discuss sex as a problem, sex as a casualty, and sex as a symptom of an underlying medical or mental health problem. The session will include  common LGBTQ sexual issues and the issues of other specialized populations.

$10