Trusting and Trustworthiness in Psychotherapy
Presenter: John G. Allen
Our speaker advocates shifting attention from trusting in therapies, with all their competing brands to trusting in therapists. He integrates developmental research with philosophical literature and ethics. Insights and learning from Kant to Bion and others are utilized to illustrate how trust is the change agent in psychotherapy. This presentation distinguishes among various aspects of trust, including basic trust, epistemic trust, social trust, self-trust and distrust. He examines with us how trust beyond therapy requires a trustworthy and caring social cultural context, and how we must take the challenges of the current social-political strife into consideration in our practice of psychotherapy. His most recent book, Trusting in Psychotherapy, has been lauded as wise, brilliant, remarkable, insightful and full of humanity by several critics.
Bio- Jon G. Allen, Ph. D., holds the position of Clinical Professor as a member of the Voluntary Faculty in the Department of psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Baylor College of Medicine. He retired from clinical practice as a senior staff psychologist after 40 years at the Menninger Clinic where he taught and supervised fellows and residents; conducted psychotherapy, diagnostic consultations, and led research on clinical outcomes. His books include Trusting in Psychotherapy, Restoring Mentalizing in Attachment Relationships: Treating Trauma with Plain Old Therapy, Mentalizing in Clinical Practice (with Peter Fonagy and Anthony Bateman) and several other publications.
We hope you can join us to experience the caring, and wisdom of a remarkable teacher and clinician.
