Merleau-Ponty for Clinicians: Restorying/Restoring the “Body” and Incarnation of Narratives

September 13, 2023 - June 12, 2024 | 5:00-6:30pm (ET) - Fully Online Learning Group

Description:

What is “experience”, and how does it imprint upon me? How do we interpret “bodies” - and what does society story as “healthy”, “safe”, “attractive”, and “right”? How do we bridge the mind/body relationship central to psychotherapeutic praxis? Particularly in our current American context - where patients endure the gaze of the objectifying psychiatrized body - what does it mean to be a subjective living body or “flesh”? How does this inform our approach to healing the wounds of others therein?

This workshop series will explore the embodied subject and re-think our psychological understanding of the “body” and “experience”. We will explore the significant works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961): a French psychologist, philosopher, and public intellectual. Merleau-Ponty expanded phenomenology towards embodiment and incarnation challenging the mind/body dualism of his predecessors. In a society that splits between a person as an “unseen spirit (or mind)” - or a person as only what can be observed and measured - Merleau-Ponty opens up a flesh that is porous, alive, creating, and united. Put quite simply, we exist as an “I can” rather than an “I think”.

This learning group will explore the radical implications of lived embodiment - of personhood as a creating “I can” - especially as we think and practice therapeutically. During our 10-session learning group, we will explore concepts of body, sense experience, spatiality, temporality, and the like. While mainly focusing on Merleau-Ponty's work, we will connect this to other thinkers (i.e., Husserl, Foucault, Bergson, etc.) and other fields (i.e., trauma studies, neuroscience, narrative theory, etc). Participants will be invited to relate the course study directly to their therapeutic practices and lived experiences through synchronous (recorded) discussions and learning. Most importantly, we will grapple with the implications these questions might have for how we might engage with our world, especially the suffering Other.

Learning Objectives:

At the conclusion of this learning series, the participant will be able to:

September 13 – Contextualizing Merleau-Ponty's Corpus

1. Discuss Merleau-Ponty's psychological and philosophical French, war-torn context
2. Describe the method of "phenomenology" and the focus of the "action" for Merleau-Ponty
3. Compare and contrast "empiricism" and "rationalism" - and Merleau-Ponty's stance on the two

October 11 – Problem of Perceptual Consciousness

1. Discuss the mind-body dualism split and the ways it permeates current psychology
2. Describe the facticity and transcendental quality of perception via phenomenology
3. Assess the effects of mind-body perceptions in modern psychology/psychiatry

November 15 – The "Body"

1. Describe Merleau-Ponty's "problem of the body" and understanding of the psychology of the body
2. Compare and contrast the body as object, subject, synthesis, and expression/speech
3. Critique reductionistic formulations of medicalized/psychiatric/neuroscientific "body"

December 13 – Sense Experience

1. Describe Merleau-Ponty’s formulation of “sense experience” and critique of Cartesian scientism
2. Discuss the body’s relationship to the world as “pre-reflective unity” and “synthesis”
3. Compare forms of trauma-based psychotherapies that interpret sense experience

January 10 – Space

1. Describe Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of space as a perceived lived-space with action-potentials
2. Critique understanding of Euclidian objective space as disembodied and spatialized
3. Compare perceptional space with Gendlin’s spatial-based psychotherapy

February 14 – Objects

1. Describe Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of objects as non-neutral and imprinting in proximity
2. Critique analysis of objects as a combination of distinct properties or qualities
3. Discuss sensory objects and ways of organizing our therapeutic space/rooms

March 13 – Other Subjects

1. Describe Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of the Other as living organic beings and subject/objects
2. Discuss the “historicity inscribed upon bodies” and other’s body as “expression of psychological states”
3. Analyze patients not only from spoken verbal cues but from their embodied expressions

April 10 – Time

1. Describe Merleau-Ponty’s framework of time as a field of presence and network of intentionalities
2. Compare Merleau-Ponty’s time with Bergsonian time as “durational” and “interpenetrative”
3. Apply phenomenological time to frameworks of memory, narratives, and trauma

May 8 – Freedom

1. Describe Merleau-Ponty’s framework for freedom as engagement with the world, as an “I can”
2. Compare understanding of freedom (and free will) with historicity, sedimentation, and semideterminism
3. Apply the “I can” stance of Merleau-Ponty’s freedom with value-actions in narrative therapy

June 12 – Chiasm and Flesh

1. Describe Merleau-Ponty’s conception of flesh and structure of chiasm as intertwining between sensing body and the living world
2. Discuss the implications of the “flesh of the world” toward treatments through lived experiences rather than primarily insight and conceptualization
3. Apply concepts of “flesh” toward creativity and new possibilities in the living world

Timeline and Requirements:

The learning group will take place from September 23, 2023 - June 12, 2024. This series is presenter-led and is a fully online experience. Sessions will be conducted synchronously online via Zoom from 5:00 pm-6:30 pm (ET) the second Wednesday of each month.

CE Sponsorship: 

University Counseling Services of Boston College is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. As a co-sponsor of this program, University Counseling Services of Boston College maintains responsibility for this program and its content. Participants will be eligible to receive 15 CE units from University Counseling Services of Boston College.

This program has been approved for 15.0 Social Work Continuing Education hours for relicensure, in accordance with 258 CMR. NASW-MA Chapter CE Approving Program, Authorization Number D92152-2.

The Lynch School of Education and Human Development is providing sponsorship for CEUs for Licensed Mental Health Counselors (LMHC). Participants will be eligible to receive 15 CE units. These credits are accepted by the Massachusetts Board of Registration for Licensed Mental Health Counselors (Category I contact hours in Content Area I).

Participants must attend the workshop in full and complete the post event survey to be eligible to receive CEs. This workshop does not offer CEs for other clinicians not listed above, and we can only grant CEs for synchronous attendance of events. 

Fees & Policies:

Payment is due by credit card at registration. Refunds will be granted only up until registration closes at 5pm on September 13th. No refunds will be granted for registration or technical errors on the participant's part (such as incorrect name/email, login failure, etc.).

Additional offerings from the Lynch School Professional & Continuing Education Office can be found on our website.