Living Institute Psychotherapy Diploma

Program Outline, 2008 - 2009

List of Contents

Overview
The Living Institute
The HEP Method
HEP Psychotherapy
Philosophy, Culture and Consciousness
Program Model
Name
Program Structure and Details
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
The HEP Method Teacher Certificate
Learning Method and Evaluation
Personal Growth
Service
Cultural Activism
Teaching Format
Entrance Requirements
The Psychotherapy Profession
Fees
Note

This three year training program offers theoretical, clinical skills and practicum training, as well as a significant personal growth element and a service component oriented toward cultural evolution.

Overview

The Living Institute

The Living Institute is a teaching centre committed to exploring psychodynamic, existential and mythological themes in individual, cultural and cosmological evolution and healing. The basis for this work is the Holistic Experiential Process Method (HEP). HEP is a model for understanding systemic management and growth that is both social and personal, providing a method for facilitating the evolutionary emergence of self-organizing complexity from apparently chaotic disorder. It provides a container for transformational growth based on dialectic integration of emergent dualities. The HEP view of evolution as existential self organization is applicable to group, business and cultural life, as well as individual development.

The Living Institute recognizes the importance of spiritual and human values in institutional and organizational functions that serve society and culture, based on the interdependence of humans with each other and the natural world, so that our future is not compromised for the sake of short term consumer satisfaction, greed and a desire for power.

The Living Institute Psychotherapy Diploma is a training in the HEP Method as applied to psychotherapy.

The HEP Method

The HEP Method draws on humanistic, existential, transpersonal, psychodynamic, archetypal and somatic depth psychologies, as well as the new sciences of holism, chaos theory and self-organizing systems theory. The Living Institute is also participating in the current re-emergence of spiritual models that draw on ancient cosmologies, from both eastern and western mystical traditions, where nature is seen to embody patterns of integration that link the part with the whole so that everything is understood to be interconnected. In this view, we can see that the world is not a collection of separate 'things', but a pattern of dynamic relationships, as life unfolds in the individual, the culture and the world. This includes a complex understanding of the 'norm of nature' and 'healing power of nature' as expressed in Naturphilosophie, homeopathy and naturopathy. It also includes a focus on Thomas Berry's geocentric theology with its implicit ecopsychological and ecospiritual approach to the study of earth stewardship. HEP also draws on the Romantic and post modern traditions in philosophy and culture, modernist art and literature, and Continental Philosophy as a way of understanding human relationship and the place of individuality in culture and cosmos.

The underlying theme of HEP is the unfolding of individual human nature as soul within the community of World Soul. This may be experienced as a surrender to the self-organizing nature of the authentic, evolving self. The central guiding question is, "What is your experience, what is its meaning and purpose for you, and how is it to be enacted in the world, in the service of life?" The goal of HEP is for individuals to be fully alive and enacting their own unique potential while contributing to the culture, in a respectful and wondrous relationship with nature, responsibly aware of their place in the living cosmos.

HEP is a twenty-first century, embodied, psychodynamic psychology that locates itself in a cultural, ecological and cosmological context. With its roots in the nineteenth century romantic existential tradition and twentieth century humanistic depth psychology, HEP is a model for the facilitation of the evolution of complex, holistic identity. This theme is based in the transgressive drive for personal freedom via the intense, unmediated desire to know one's self and to be known by the other, beyond the boundaries of the socially sanctioned and personally validated self. This gives rise to an awareness of unlimited possibilities for evolution, but also of finitude, limitation, adversity, and death. This is the transpersonal basis of deep, complex individual identity and the evolution of that identity in Western culture, the defining archetypal theme of individuality in HEP.
In the HEP Method, this translates simply as Joseph Campbell's aphorism "I greet you and wish you joy in your sorrows." It also translates, more complexly, as a sobering reflection on the goals and outcome of HEP - not to idealistically strive to go beyond the pain and suffering of life, but to accept it as part of life, an ecstatic limitation through which we realize a unique individuality, the central theme in the apophatic mystical tradition. HEP recognizes this as the hidden mystical theme in the twentieth century post modern tradition of ironic, relativistic, indefinite identity, an identity forever in search of itself, a dérive of never arriving that is paradoxically a "sovereign self consciousness that, precisely no longer turns away from itself... a self-consciousness that does not turn away when it is time to explore possibility to the limit." (Bataille). This 'sovereign self consciousness' is the foundation and the goal in the HEP facilitation of individual evolution.

HEP is a transpersonal psychology that is a "psychologically-informed spirituality and a spiritually-based psychology" (D.Lukoff, F. Lu, "History of Transpersonal Psychotherapy", p1, ATP website). HEP sees the spiritual not as an abstract, idealistic regulatory function, but as a vital part of daily life that expresses a deep part of what it is to be human, including qualities of mind such as compassion and caring, the capacity to bring meaning and purpose into focus and an awareness of the transcendent function. In this, HEP values the conscious capacity to develop through choice and intentionality by responsibly taking up the circumstances of our life and history. This calls for courage, insight, creativity, wonder, skill, wisdom and the willingness to surrender into the complex connectivity of our individual human subjectivity.

HEP draws on the symbolic and metaphoric powers of the human imagination in addressing individual, cultural and planetary evolutionary challenges. HEP recognizes the co-creative evolutionary relationship of nature and psyche, locating the psychological within the natural as an expression of the differentiating tendency of the living cosmos, where creativity and interdependence are the foundation, the process and the goal. In this, individual human nature is seen to be also in a co-creative relationship with the existential divine as manifest in the natural world and in the community of subjects that is human relationships.

HEP Psychotherapy

The application of the HEP Method to psychotherapy is called Holistic Experiential Psychotherapy and written of as HEP psychotherapy. It includes elements of personal growth, life coaching and spiritual counselling. It is holistic in its focus on the body, mind and soul of the individual in the context of culture, nature and cosmos. Clients learn how to access authentic experience and process it emotionally, cognitively and spiritually. Clients also learn how to reflect on what their experience means, and how their actions stem from it in the world. HEP psychotherapy opens up a new way of thinking about oneself and about life. It not only changes people's lives but also facilitates them making a difference in the world around them that is socially and spiritually satisfying. This is not just talk therapy, but a lively, emotionally evocative process of self discovery, leading to living a full life that is an expression of one's true nature. The HEP psychotherapy relationship is not distant and coldly clinical, but a vital relationship with connection, compassion and challenge that provides a model for relationship in the world.

HEP psychotherapy uses established methods such as dialogue, focused reflection, emotional expression, breathing techniques, body work, guided visualization, meditation, yoga, movement exercises, dramatic enactment and expressive art therapy. It includes taking clients into the natural world as part of the healing journey, such as the use of a sweat lodge. Individually selected readings and structured exercises may be suggested for clients to do in their own time. These provide context and grounding and help integrate the session work into everyday life. HEP psychotherapy helps clients to change dysfunctional patterns and heal the wounds that block them from achieving their full potential in life. The work focuses through issues in personal growth, stress management, relationship, sexuality, career, finances, health and creativity. People become stronger by embracing the full intensity of their authentic being. Through experience, meaning and action, people come to understand how they create their life through self-conception in every moment. The life they live then becomes the life they want because they begin from wanting the life they have. This profound self acceptance is true healing.

Many people have created a public self to adapt, but this can get in the way of genuine intimacy and self understanding, preventing people from realizing their full potential in life. HEP psychotherapy helps people get in touch with what's really going on inside and to take that out into the world. The beginning focus might be an issue from everyday life or a feeling in the moment. This is then deepened into an experience of origin, reflection, insight and action. From a felt sense of meaning created through this experiential spiral, a felt sense of purpose emerges. HEP psychotherapy provides a structure of accountability and support to help people generate the life they want in the context of their own evolving nature and the culture of the times. This may bring about a change in how they treat themselves, a lifestyle change or a change in relationship or career, all toward the goal of living a life that is fully one's own and of service. In this process of finding their life calling by surrendering into the call of their life people discover and generate the life they want, and how to be in tune with the life that wants to live through them.

Instead of trying to just control the emotions of painful life events, HEP psychotherapy helps people face them by moving from an anxious holding against to an alive, spirited dancing with these experiences. This opens up the capacity to feel more of everything and to think clearly. There can also be spiritual bliss in accepting all aspects of who one really is. Problems and symptoms become doorways to self knowledge. They can be indicators as to what a person's real identity is asking them to envision and act upon, in the service of life. The satisfaction of living an authentic life is priceless. When we connect to our true self, we find powerful guidance and the energy to manifest full potential in our life. Client's capacity for clear thinking opens up and blocks to planning and follow through are addressed. People discover inspiration, direction, meaning and purpose.

Spirituality fuelled by self-knowledge and focused on contributing something of value to the world adds richness and depth to life. HEP psychotherapy provides a non-religious approach to spirituality that draws on all of who we are - body, soul, spirit, mind, emotions, action. The approach is one of full participation in the dream like nature of life, uncovering the wisdom that is already there. With an intensive, eclectic background in spiritual methods from Western, Buddhist, yogic and shamanistic traditions, HEP psychotherapy helps people through spiritual crises and facilitates mystical experience.

The ongoing committed weekly group is the most intense and rewarding crucible for depth work in this approach. It provides the opportunity for healing and transformation of the deepest life issues that are central to a person's evolutionary soul journey. The HEP core group builds an environment of connection, compassion and challenge, in which it is possible to confront both deep shadow material and our most positive potential. The core group may be a place where incomplete family issues and dynamics can constellate and be worked through in the context of interpersonal relationships. Because of the containment and depth experience in this context, existential, archetypal and transpersonal material also arises. The group can also work as a 'buddy system' to support individuals with personal habit and lifestyle changes, and help people who are going through a difficult time.

HEP couples therapy addresses challenges with closeness, distancing, sharing of responsibility, and communication issues such as negotiation and compromise. It can help people flourish in the fiery challenge of genuine intimacy. With communication tools, support and structure, HEP helps a couple's relationship grow in ways they might not have thought possible. Love and relationship are vehicles for growth and challenge in achieving a life that is an expression of a person's deep soul calling. Working with our authentic, embodied self opens up the erotic dimension of identity. With proper respect for boundaries in place, this can be a powerful, enlivening experience that is not just about sex, but about the radiant openness of being. This includes awareness of the archetypal dimension of eros and the tantric divine-human encounter that is possible.

Philosophy, Culture and Consciousness

Western culture is struggling with having emerged from the twentieth century, the century that exploded, with a relativized, fragemented, self-critical identity. This is an identity crisis which the psychopathic, unreflective part of the mainstream culture responds to with materialistic consumerism and a militaristic neoconservative power drive (both fuelling a global ecological crisis in sustainability), moralistic political correctness and an apocalyptic fundamentalist religious zeal. We now live within a global community that is struggling with issues of social justice, economic equality and the survival of indigenous, local culture. Yet, in the emergent post imperialist model for the regulation of order in the global community, peaceful, self-interested cooperation is becoming a theme, as exemplified, for example, in the European Union. Respect for the multiple meanings of individual human life is becoming integrated into the multicultural model of social relations. These themes of egalitarian, reciprocal cooperation are related to the humanistic, psychodynamic, existential and transpersonal traditions that are central to HEP, and which also offer possibilities for facilitating a successful transition through this explosive evolutionary crisis in the culture.

These themes have undergone a parallel emergence in the corporate world, where business negotiations in a progressive, pragmatic environment include not just a competitive striving for dominance, but also the recognition that the inclusion of mutuality and co-operation, as well as acknowledgement of unconscious psychodynamic factors, brings more effectiveness and productivity. In the general area of conflict resolution this psychodynamic theme also shows itself. Not just striving to defeat 'the enemy' in a militaristic drive for victory over the other, but recognition of mutual self interest and egalitarian co-operation as being fundamentally more realistic and productive. In this way, resources can be directly allocated to problem solving rather than the more immediate and limited goal of achieving dominance, and only then being able to 'fix' things because you are now in charge. The psychodynamic model also highlights the need for addressing contradictory tensions between positivistic social and organizational intentions and the more obstructionist, defensive, emotional unconscious factors that come into play when people try to cooperate.

If we look forward in our own culture toward renewal and reconnection, we have to look beyond the core principle of a transcendental divine that saves and protects to an existential divine that mediates participation. Rather than saving by lifting us above and protecting us through transcendental regulation, the existential divine invites us into a self-arising, self-organizing, self-regenerating world, where relationship is the basis of protection and authenticity is the saving grace. Religion as a social institution and a militaristic drive for security does not serve this model. Psychology does, in its psychodynamic, existential, humanistic, transpersonal and archetypal forms. I will refer to this theme as the existential-humanistic tradition, the basis of the HEP Method.

The fragmentary remnant of the transcendental divine model is consumerism - everyone a little king or queen, the centre of their own universe, ostensibly able to have whatever they want, whenever they want and however they want. This is driving our culture into a mad frenzy, where the watchwords are 'more' and 'faster', fuelling a fatalistic and nihilistic culture of shallow, narcissistic self satisfaction and self aggrandizement. In an idealistic, success driven culture, hypocrisy is inevitable - lip service must be paid to ideals while secret pragmaticist do 'whatever is necessary', spinning the tawdry possibilities of greed and power as the grand achievement of high ideals.

We may look at the existential-humanistic tradition in Western culture and see it as an evolutionary tendency that relativizes monotheistic religion and undermines the prevailing dualism of neo-Victorian moralism and rampant consumerism in liberal, democratic capitalism. Religion as a social institution has become inadequate as a way of understanding human nature and as an inspirational vehicle for how to live. The existential-humanistic alternative involves a move away from idealized goals that one works towards with resolute commitment through skill and means, toward a model of surrender into what is being called forth at the level of individual humanness, in a cultural and natural context. This surrender facilitates the evolutionary drive to manifest our full potential, what Jung calls the process of individuation. While this involves stepping beyond the limitations of received enculturation, it also calls for a return to cultural involvement and contribution. What Paul H. Ray calls 'integral culture'.

Religion, for many, has become inadequate also as a container for aspirations towards wholeness, participation, genuine community, and a meaningful cosmology that isn't simplistic. The mechanistic cosmology of classical science, with its linear cause and effect phenomenology, provides certainty and predictability, to some extent. This is the basis of its technological success. But it doesn't meet the richness of actual human experience, which it reduces to biology and behaviour. Although quantum physics and dynamical systems theory provide more complex and co-creative models, the scientific tradition remains a limited, albeit magnificent, achievement in human understanding of humanity, nature and cosmos.

The existential divine implies an emergent relationship with our own nature, including coming to terms with 'otherness' rather than trying to control or eliminate otherness, whether as unconscious adversity or simply as the 'alien' other. This involves a need to come to terms with complex diversity and the dark, mysterious intensity of our own unknown depths. This move has been marked politically and socially by the change from the militaristic, monotheistic, imperialistic, divine right of kings model of social-organization to the current neo-liberal, capitalist democracy. There has not, however, been a concomitant evolution in the spiritual/religious cosmological model of human nature. We have begun to pass over, instead, into the existential, psychodynamic and transpersonal psychological model, although this has not yet received a wide spread integration and sociopoltical formulation. The Living Institute is engaged in this endeavour - to bring these psychological perspectives to bear on the cultural evolution that is taking place in an unnecessarily dangerous and unconscious manner in Western culture.

The existential divine could also be attributed as the ecological divine. This implies an emergent relationship with (rather than control over) nature, both as the wild ground from which we arise, and in which we have our life. The Living Institute teaches an archetypal phenomenology of a re-enchanted post modern cosmos that is, simultaneously, radically deconstructed and tentatively re-constructed, revealing the world as a co-creative, personified, existential project of inner/outer reconciliation. This includes a focus on Thomas Berry's geocentric theology, Emerson's community of subjects and an experiential-process oriented psychological and philosophical approach to a study of cosmology. In this, the cosmos is seen as a sacred Great Work of unfolding self organization, in which humans carry a particular role as co-creative, self conscious earth stewards. James Lovelock, in his book, The Gaia Hypothesis, proposes a scientific formulation of the earth as a self regulating sentient entity, which this program takes up. The program also draws on the teleological purposefulness implications of the biocosmic model, without subscribing to creationist fundamentalism.

The existential-ecological divine mode of knowing is mystical and psychological. The form of social organization for the existential/ecological tradition is an egalitarian confederacy of locally focused, communally organized small groups, rather than a religious, legalistic, hierarchical, authoritarian, centralized, bureaucratic mode. There is a significant focus on embodied experience in the existential-ecological tradition rather than a prohibitive, regulatory fear of the body with the concomitant priorizing of spiritual and mental phenomenon at the expense of the body that is characteristic of the transcendental divine. There is no 'sin' or 'evil' in the existential-ecological tradition. Rather there is a concern for holism and reconciliation to otherness, and an appreciation of the evolutionary function of adversity and alterity. The model is one of education and healing - providing complex care for restoring the wholeness of the subject, both individually and communally.

Program Model

The Living Institute Psychotherapy Diploma is modelled on a number of psychological and spiritual traditions, as well as the cultural activism that emerged from the 1970's counterculture.

The program draws on a wide field of psychological traditions, some of which have arisen from the so called 'third force' in psychology that started to come into the mainstream in the 1970's, transpersonal psychology recently becoming known as the 'fourth force'. This involved individual practitioners, professional organizations (such as the Association for the Humanistic Psychology, Association for Transpersonal Psychology, US Association for Body-Oriented Psychotherapy) and training programs. Many of these programs have now become free standing accredited graduate schools, granting MA's and Ph.D.'s (e.g. California Institute of Integral Studies, Saybrook, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Naropa, Pacifica Graduate Institute), or integrated into university psychology departments (e.g. West Georgia, Seattle, Sonoma State, Duquesne). There are UK and European humanistic professional associations, and training programs such as at New School and Regents College in existential psychotherapy. Division 32 (Humanistic Psychology) of the American Psychological Association focuses on humanistic psychology, holding conferences and publishing a peer reviewed journal which includes existential and transpersonal concerns. The twentieth century psychodynamic tradition has its basis in psychoanalysis, has been elaborated (along with various other elements) into traditions such as Jungian and archetypal psychology, bioenergetics, psychodrama, and has become broadly integrated into both the 'third' and 'fourth force' streams. This program draws significantly on the psychodynamic model of individual human nature, of psychotherapy and of training, particularly in its Jungian and archetypal forms as taught at Pacifica Graduate Institute.

The Directory of Graduate Programs in Humanistic-Transpersonal Psychology in N.A. (created by the State university of West Georgia Psychology Dept, in conjunction with the Association for Humanistic Psychology and Division 32 [Humanistic Psychology] of the American Psychology Association) lists 42 humanistic-existential-transpersonal programs, over half of which are fully regionally accredited free standing graduate schools or university psychology departments. Although we are not developing a degree program, we want it to be appropriately matched to the general educational standards in the field re course content, clinical skills, personal growth, etc, and to be part of this listing, thus locating this training program in a broad collegial field.

The Living Institute also plans to become an institutional member of the Council for Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychologies (CHTP). CHTP is an umbrella organization that, as a consortium, works toward institutional collaboration between "humanistic, existential and transpersonal academic and training programs and service sites through the facilitation of international resource sharing". They act as a clearing house for CHTP accredited internship sites, transfer of credits, faculty sharing, etc. Caroline and I are hoping to connect to some of the people involved in August when we attend a one day conference in celebration of the reconnection of the Assoc. for Humanistic Psych and Assoc. for Transpersonal Psych in San Francisco. Since it overlaps with the APA Div 32 (Humanistic Psychology) annual conference we will attend that also.

Another very important source of inspiration for this program is the Holistic Experiential Psychotherapy training program of the Psychocultural Institute from the 1990's, of which there are 12 graduates, 5 of whom will be teaching in this program. The Living Institute evolved out of the Psychocultural Institute and this program is a direct continuation of the HEP tradition, although the name has become the Holistic Experiential Process Method to reflect that it is now applied beyond the field of psychotherapy into, for example, life coaching and spiritual counselling.

This three year diploma version is designed toward providing eligibility for licensure in Ontario. Although the parameters for this have not been publicly defined in the ongoing legislative process, as this takes place the Living Institute will be up to date on progress in this area and will respond accordingly. The program is constructed to be congruent with equivalent Toronto training programs, such as the Gestalt Institute, the Ontario Association of Jungian Analysts and Center for Training in Psychotherapy. In the upcoming regulation of psychotherapy in Ontario, it is long standing institutions such as these that will be the local models for the kind of psychotherapy training that will provide eligibility for licensure in Ontario.

Name

The diploma could be called humanistic or transpersonal or humanistic-transpersonal or humanistic-existential (as some in the USA are) or humanistic-psychodynamic (which may be more appropriate for Ontario), or humanistic-experiential (which puts together two currently distinctive but overlapping and competing traditions). We decided on the Living Institute Psychotherapy Diploma, leaving it up to the individual practitioner to decide how to identify themselves in terms of the traditions they wish to highlight in their practice.

Program Structure and Details

Year 1

Year 1 will be focused through a theoretical overview model, drawing on humanistic, existential, transpersonal, psychodynamic, archetypal and somatic depth psychologies, as well as a number of other streams. This will include the philosophical and cultural stream of the Romantic and bohemian traditions, modernist art and literature, critical theory, culture studies, Continental Philosophy and post modernism. A multicultural perspective is integral to this program, as is a general orientation to culture as a contextualizing ground for the psychological and spiritual traditions in the model. The spiritual aspect of the transpersonal tradition will draw on mythology (particularly as understood by figures such as Joseph Campbell and Mircea Eliade), Vajrayana Buddhism, the shamanistic model and Western mystical traditions such as the Hermetic, Gnostic, Sufi, Rosicrucian, Kabbalistic, divine-human union mysticism and the apophatic tradition. The holistic and evolutionary paradigms, self organizing systems theory and dynamical systems theory will also be taught in this year. We will highlight the value of humanistic, qualitative and phenomenological research.

Year 2

In year 2 the clinical skills aspects of these traditions will be the focus, along with basic psychotherapy skills, psychological assessment, ethics and professional relations. This will include an expressive arts component and the theme of integrating the natural world into a psychotherapy model, as well as disciplines such as tantric yoga, Chi Gong and the spiritual emergence tradition. The personal growth focus will continue. In this year, students will start clinical skills training in a video clinical skills class, where one will volunteer to be a client and another the therapist, the interaction being videotaped and then reviewed for discuss. There will also be opportunities to observe qualified HEP practitioners as they lead their groups, and to be involved in clinical debriefing sessions with them. Eligible students will also be encouraged to begin developing their own individual practice under supervision. There is a plan under way to create a Living Institute student clinic, where clients could be treated by eligible students under supervision.

Year 3

In year 3 the focus will be on continuing integration of theoretical and clinical skills, and special topics such as trauma work, energy healing, sexuality, death and dying, grief, couples work, creativity, natural health care, nutrition. Students will be expected to create, in conjunction with colleagues, public workshops and presentations as part of their clinical training, and also to orient them to the need to reach out to the public as part of generating a successful practice. There will be a marketing skills course in this year. During this year there will be an ongoing clinical discussion group where students will be expected to make case presentations for discussion, with faculty and guest presenters supervising. The personal growth focus will continue.

The HEP Method Teacher Certificate

In year 4, diplomates may elect to continue training to become a Certified HEP Teacher. This is a different program from the diploma, though it is a continuation and extension of that program. The fourth year will focus on further academic study, skills development and personal growth in the areas of psychology, spirituality, philosophy, cultural activism, publishing, leadership and contributing to the knowledge community.

In this program, training moves into a mystery school model that emerges from the early HEP years of the 1990's, drawing on the Western mysteries, Vajrayana Buddhism and shamanistic work. However, it is a twenty-first century psychospiritual mystery tradition model that, while it draws on tradition, is not bound by tradition. A key defining feature is an element of continual dynamism, where the tradition, in a sense, emerges out of itself. The organizational model is one that continues to derive from the egalitarian humanism of the existential divine experience. This involves respect for tradition qualified by the authority of immediate experience, teaching as facilitative dialogue emerging from experiential evocation, a social structure that is not rigidly hierarchical but rather flexibly organized around specifics of the task at hand, and a continuation of the diploma model of learning, relationship and personal growth. Graduation as a Certified HEP Teacher will involve consultative dialogue with mentors and peers as to level of achievement, and with the HEP knowledge community as to their readiness to consensually welcome the student as a member.

Learning Model and Evaluation

The Living Institute supports a student centred learning model in which engaging the interest and motivation of the student in meeting the educational and personal challenges of this model is the central organizing principle of the program.

The Living Institute Psychotherapy diploma is a competency oriented model rather than an excellence oriented model. This is the way skills training programs in the health care field are oriented in today's educational climate. The Living Institute program goals are to graduate practitioners who are cometent and confident in the skill set required to be a safe, adequate, beginning practitioner. Each individual has their own definition of, and relationship with, excellence. We will support each student in pursuing this in the program in a way that they will be satisfied with their accomplishments, while not compromising other aspects of their being in the pursuit of perfection. We will also educate and support all students in setting up a life long learning habit oriented toward continuing maturation and evolution.

The Living Institute does not encourage alienating competitiveness, although it does encourage playful, creative, mutually enhancing, self transcending competitiveness. In this program there is no grading system that ranks students. Faculty and peer feedback will be oriented toward facilitating evolution in a supportive and challenging way that shows respect and appreciation for an individual's unique achievements and learning style and highlights areas for further study. This is a narrative, interpersonal style that is modelled more on relationship and guidance than strict evaluation and ranking. Nevertheless, the goal of the program is to facilitate students in achieving a standard of knowledge and clinical skill that will enable them to confidently and competently commence practice on graduation. The curriculum is oriented toward becoming a skilled practitioner who is eligible for licensure in Ontario. An equally important goal is that of reaching a level of knowledge that will enable and encourage graduates to continue to evolve by contributing to the knowledge community from which this tradition has arisen.

Specific evaluation methods in the program will be varied, depending on the subject matter and in the context of the learning model outlined above. Evaluation methods will include class participation criteria, essays, and projects. Clinical skill assessment will be based in the details of the particular skill, as well as participation in VCS, reports from field placement supervisors, clinical discussion participation and reports from case supervisors. Students will be required to submit written clinical material for evaluation.
The HEP learning style is an approach that facilitates openness and anticipation. As with the HEP experiential process, it calls for acceptance of a continuing element of uncertainty. It is a learning style that has a meditative component of being led point by point, moment by moment. In this, it is again similar to the HEP experiential process of personal unfoldment. It is different, however, in that it is not just your own inner experience that is the guiding edge of what is unfolding, but also a set of distilled ideas and themes from the collective experience of Western culture, particularly as it has fashioned itself in the twentieth century in the field of psychology and cultural activism. In this it is transpersonal. Hopefully, your own personal learning leading edge will resonate with this collective cultural leading edge.
The HEP synthesis does not provide a homogeneous, finished model. Like other cutting edge models of twenty-first century knowledge development, HEP is multivalent. It is a tradition in which there is no claim made that internal contradictions have all been worked out and all connections defined. You will be exposed to this multivalent richness, and, by your questioning participation, facilitate the continuing evolution of HEP.

Personal Growth

The personal growth aspects of this training program will start with weekly individual sessions in year 1 and expand to include group participation in years 2 and 3, including the VCS classes. There will be a 4 day summer intensive at the end of each year with a significant personal growth element. There will be a required number of hours for personal growth work and a biannual review to facilitate the smooth process of this. Students will be expected to have reached a certain level of maturity in their personal growth process as part of progress through the various stages of the program (e.g. readiness to take on individual clients) as well as graduation requirements. This is a standard part of any psychodynamic, experiential, depth oriented psychotherapy training model. The practical basis of this is that the core of the humanistic, experiential and psychodynamic models is the therapeutic relationship, in which the person and being of the therapist is fundamental. It also enacts a cultural evolution theme - western culture is so rigidly externally focused that we are rewarded primarily for 'being-out-there' activities and abilities, with consequent alienation from inner activities and being itself. The Living Institute interest is in co-operatively facilitating student inner attunement. A key requirement is an attitude of willingness to engage the evolutionary challenges that each of us face in becoming fully who we really are. There is no expectation for a student to have completed their personal growth process before graduation. There will be a mechanism for appealing any decision that the student is substantively dissatisfied with in this regard.

Service

The service component will draw on the Buddhist bodhisattva model, the Christian ideal of caritas and fellowship and the Romantic bohemian model of communality. This is a well established part of the humanistic and transpersonal traditions, included as part of degree level training programs. Students will be expected to generally support the social service and cultural activism work of the Living Institute, and to generate specific projects of their own which they will then report on.

Cultural Activism

The themes of conscious development and informed understanding leading to effective action, in the larger context of think globally act locally according to your awareness interest and capacity, are the key threads in the Living Institute cultural activism work.

I want to suggest as a model of cultural activism a movement which had an extensive impact on Western culture in the twentieth century. The Frankfurt School, which began in the early part of the century, is an exemplary model of conscious development, informed understanding and effective action. Its areas of interest extend from Western Marxism and psychoanalysis through literature and aesthetics to culture studies, being the originators of critical theory. One of its members, Walter Benjamin, also brought in mysticism. He was a colleague of the Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem, who was part of the Eranos conferences that Jung and Joseph Campbell were regular attendees at. The main activity of the Frankfurt School was writing that inspired others. The impact of this movement on Western culture includes significant contributions to 60's revolutionary theory and rhetoric, feminism, the widespread liberation of eros, elements of post modernism and new ways of looking at literature art and media, as well as the empowerment of the individual and the marginalized, contributing to the relativization of the patriarchal family based power structure of Western culture. Although we may see that some of the liberating aspects of this have gone over into stultifying political correctness, there is no denying the profound impact of this tradition on Western cultural evolution.

The Living Institute is in the process of creating a web site/blog to provide students with a way to communicate about what's goin' on - with each other, and with the culture at large. The ARC (Archetypal Review of Culture) web site/blog, as well as sharing statements of personal passion, would be a way of getting the Living Institute HEP point of view out there and inviting others to join in. This could be an active contribution to cultural evolution, drawing on diverse sources to provide de-spinned information. It could involve movie, music and book reviews, as well as magazine and journal excerpts, and news of other web sites and blogs as manifestations of cultural themes in the key of HEP. Upcoming notice of HEP related events in theatre, poetry, festivals and such could be listed. There could be comments on sociopolitical events and topical themes, such as consumerism as self alienation, the militarization of everyday life, technology as blessing and/or curse, neighbourhood as cultural bioregion, and the evolution from political activism to archetypal activism. Select student papers could be published.

Teaching Format

The teaching format will be 3-4 hours per week from September to May and two 6 hour one-days per month (there will be some exceptions for holiday periods such as Christmas). There will be a 4 day intensive retreat in June, which will combine personal growth and other elements of the learning model.

Entrance Requirements

Candidates should have had some significant life experience and have a high school diploma. There is an application form to fill out. A brief biography and letter of intent is required. Two letters of reference from significant people in the candidate's life are required. These should comment on how long the referee has known the candidate, under what circumstances, the candidate's personal characteristics and capacity for application to the task at hand, as well as a comment on their psychological and spiritual background. These are for orientation purposes, and are not determinative of a candidate's suitability. A work and academic history should be given. Transcripts from tertiary institutions are required, or, if none, from high school. Ideally, a candidate will already have some therapy or personal growth experience. This should be listed, including workshops, lectures, etc. Candidates who follow a spiritual path should give details.

The Psychotherapy Profession

Psychotherapy can be a very personally satisfying and challenging profession. Depth psychotherapy provides a unique workplace opportunity in which who we really are in each moment is actually required of us, albeit qualified by the situational constraints of client needs. You don't have to leave yourself at home as in so many other work situations. It is one of those careers that has the quality of a calling as well as being a job, though it definitely is a job and can have all the draginess of another day at the office sometimes.

You can make a decent living if you are committed to marketing your skills. Building a practice can take time and be frustrating. Marketing is one of the biggest challenges that psychotherapists face. What different practitioners consider to be a full time practice varies from 20 to 30 hrs per week client contact time, though some work up to 35 hrs. The amount of administration varies, but is probably minimum 5 hrs per week. There is an ongoing requirement to pursue continued professional development, but this isn't necessarily onerous. A full time practitioner can make from $60,000 to $120,000 gross per annum, depending on your client base socioeconomic niche and how much of a sliding scale you offer. Net income depends on overheads such as whether you work out of your home (which many do, and which provides significant income tax deduction opportunities) or rent an office, and if this is solo or with a group. Office supplies, bookkeeping, office assistance and professional development costs are variable. Professional membership, licensing and insurance costs are basic. Self care is important in this field and will cost also.

You can enjoy a middle class lifestyle in a very stimulating and challenging career that brings something new and vital to the evolutionary crisis Western culture is undergoing - and satisfies your soul.

Fees

Annual fees are $5,088. This does not include fees for personal growth work or individual supervision fees, which will be negotiated with the practitioners involved. There are currently two internet based learning courses for which the fee is $66.75 US. Fees for practicum placement remain to be negotiated. There will be provision for qualified people to audit various courses. Fees for this will depend on the course.

Note

Courses, course content and fees outlined in this brochure are subject to change according to circumstances, but once enrolment has been completed for each year there will be a commitment on the Institute's part to meet the specific terms of the contract agreed upon for that year.