"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"
“ Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. ” - George Santayana
"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'.
“ The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt. ” - Frederick Buechner
“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
“The impediment to action advances the action. What stands in the way becomes the way.
” - Marcus Aurelius
"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
“ When I get to heaven, God will not ask me, "Why were you not Moses?" He will ask, "Why were you not Susya? Why did you not become what only you could become?" ” - Susya, a Hasidic Rabbi
"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
“ Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power. ” - Benjamin Disraeli
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".
