"Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel."
"This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." Both quotations by Polonius in Shakespeare's "Hamlet"
“Do you want to hear my favourite procrastination joke? I'll tell you later.
” - Piers Steel
"Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit." Aristotle
The previous posts in this sequence are 'Psychedelics: a group retreat - initial thoughts' and 'Psychedelics: a group retreat - meeting up, orientation & the ceremony'.
“There isn't any secret formula or method. You learn to love by loving, by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done.
” - Aldous Huxley
“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.” Albert Einstein
“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” Aldous Huxley
“ At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time. ” - Friedrich Nietzsche
"And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been." Rainer Maria Rilke
“ I thank You God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes. ” - E E Cummings
"Today we can walk around together, talk, eat, and be silent together. Later I believe we'll have the opportunity to act and suffer together. All that is necessary to 'make someone's acquaintance' as they say." Pierre Sogol, professor of mountaineering, speaking in Rene Daumal's book "Mount Analogue".
'Breaking Convention' - the fifth biennial international conference on psychedelics - took place at Greenwich University in London from 16th-18th August. There were apparently 1,200 or so attendees for the 6 concurrent programmes - academic, workshop, performance, cinema, entertainment & installations - as well as an art exhibition. I went primarily because it allowed me to hear pretty much all the relevant research groups in the UK present on their current findings. As you can see from the other quite extensive writing about psychedelics on this website, I'm very interested in the encouraging emerging research highlighting potential therapeutic value of psychedelics. Although I focussed on the academic programme, there was much too much even here to manage an ove
“Do not think less of yourself, but think of yourself less.
” - C. S. Lewis
the social identity model highlights the value of group membership (more & less formal) for both psychological & physical wellbeing - are there groups you would like to join (or initiate) and are there helpful ways you can increase the sense of the importance to you of some of the groups you're a member of (for example by increasing your involvement with them).
I run an annual five day training for counselling psychology students on facilitating groups. I'm using this blog post to upload some of the slides. For example here's a collection on the current state of psychotherapy & some suggestions on potentially helpful ways of moving forward.
More to follow! ...
(this blog post is freely downloadable as a Word doc and as a PDF file)
I wrote a post recently called "Truly excellent therapists have 'grace under interpersonal pressure - Fascinating new research".
