We are honoured that Marina Iossifides and Suzanne Keys have agreed to be keynote speakers. Find out more about them below.
Two further keynote speakers will be selected from the Call for Papers and Workshop Proposals. The deadline for submissions to the call for keynote speakers is now closed.
I am Person-Centred counsellor affiliated with ICPS (College for Humanistic Sciences) in Athens, Greece. I was born in the United States and am of Greek parentage. I was awarded my BA in 1982 in Cultural Anthropology, from the University of Chicago. In 1983 I moved to London completing my Masters (1984) and PhD (1990) at the London School of Economics in Social Anthropology. In 1990 I moved to Greece working as a lecturer of Anthropology from 1990 until 2000 at the University of the Aegean, and Panteion University, Athens.
I re-trained as a Person Centred Counsellor at TCPCA Athens (now ICPS) receiving my Diploma in Counselling from the University of Strathclyde in 2004. In 2017 I completed Natalie Rogers’ program in the Person-Centred Expressive Arts. I work as a trainer, therapist, and supervisor with ICPS and have presented papers and published a few articles in both fields.
Suzanne has worked as a person-centred practitioner since 1997 in private practice and educational settings with young people in London, UK. Over the years she's delivered workshops for person-centred colleagues all over Europe and in 1998 represented the British Association for Person-Centred Approach at the inaugural meeting in Luxembourg of the network now known as PCE Europe. She can also remember staying up late into the night working with colleagues on the first statutes of the PCE World Association in Chicago 2000.
She spent many years as part of the organising group for Psychotherapists and Counsellors for Social Responsibility involved in the political activism of therapy and currently co-facilitates their regular open encounter group on Examining Whiteness.
She has written articles and chapters and edited books and special issues of the PCEP journal on ethics, gender, ecotherapy, young people, disability, spirituality, human rights, idiosyncratic practice and her experience of training. Her taxonomy of love in person-centred therapy was published in BACP's Therapy Today in 2017.
ABSTRACT: This paper has two objectives. The first is to offer a brief overview of how the socio-economic upheavals since 2008 have affected the private person-centred-experiential (PCE) training centres in Greece, focusing primarily on the transformation of the programs offered by ICPS. I will talk about our increasing awareness that the effects of global crises such as climate change, political and social radicalization, and forced migrations are issues demanding our attention as trainers, facilitators, and counsellor/therapists. Secondly, as an Expressive Arts Facilitator I will discuss how I have used my training not only in therapy sessions but also to develop workshops within training programs to help trainee therapists give voice and share their personal, professional, and social concerns. I will share my experiences of offering, with a colleague, PCE/Creative Arts workshops and group encounters both in person and online for the continued professional and personal development of practicing therapists and the creation of communities of practice. In both contexts the common experience of creating and sharing one's work gives participants the space to express subsumed feelings or thoughts, to share resources, experiences and stories, to imagine possibilities, to find common ground and hopefully build a sense of belonging.
ABSTRACT: My school counselling room is messy: full of resources that get used and changed with every young person who comes in. Nothing stays the same, we impact each other and we're in this messy world together.
This talk will explore the mess we're in and how focusing on Rogers' 'definable climate of facilitative psychological attitudes' can 'tap into vast resources', liberating creative energy for change, growth, healing and transformation. This model of abundance rather than scarcity, potential rather than deficiency, incongruence rather than pathology and gift rather than commodity economy defines growth as non-exploitative, emergent, organismic and always relational.
Relationship with self, other, world means understanding how societal conditions of worth (including racialised, gendered, allistic, able-bodied, straight, heteronormative) create incongruence and anxiety. The person-centred approach to relationship is non-directive so egalitarian, non-hierarchical and anti-oppressive. This means a lot of work to decolonise our psyches: being aware of our social positioning and intersectional identities within power dynamics and replacing hierarchies that put humans at the top with an eco-centred model.
Becoming persons is a relational process dependent on certain conditions. As a psychotherapist my primary aim is to be available to people relationally, creating conditions together where we can connect and disconnect, be in and out of contact and become more congruent. This does not mean fitting in with a system which is harmful, where distress is pathologised and individuals need fixing. But rather being honest about the mess we're in, discovering our ecological niches and not being afraid of loving. Young people talk about love in counselling as being seen, heard and cared for. My taxonomy of love is my way of understanding what emerges spiritually, physically, politically and ethically from the interplay of Rogers' 6 relational conditions. Likewise, it helps me understand how harmful and abusive disregard, rejection, exploitation, neglect, domination and appropriation are, inter- and intra-personally as well as systemically.
My talk is based on my work as a therapist, supervisor and trainer (especially the playfulness, creativity and resourcefulness of young people within hostile environments); my experiences in community and encounter groups; person-centred colleagues (especially those who've taught me about the political, spiritual and relational); eco therapy colleagues who've broadened my horizons, black feminist theoreticians who've inspired me on love, liberation and solidarity; Christian spirituality and Islamic psychology where healing heart and soul as well as mind is acknowledged; and finally art and music that sustain me in the mess.