clients in training workshops

[BARNETT WEISS]

Dear Sylvia:
  I am not at all sure what the position of the examining group is in regard to the questions you pose. In a previous post, I stated my opinions regarding someone in a therapy group moving to a training group and saw no problem with this relying on my clinical judgment as to the appropriateness of such a move for each specific individual.  
  I would like to address your last question about the appropriateness of participants in a one day workshop.  
  There are many approaches all the way from 1) having people sign a specific statement of acknowledgment about the possible intensity of the workshop and their willingness to participate in it and hold no one there either the director of other participants liable for any significant upset that the signing participant may experience; and 2) no requirement at all open to anyone who comes signs up or comes in the door.  While the former is not actually legally binding, it does allow the participant to make a decision up front.  
   
  Upon meeting the people in the workshop, you may find that one of the participants is quite unstable to the extent that you feel they will not adequately benefit from the workshop and will to a large extent occupy too much of the energies of the group as well as your own resources to be dealt with in so short a time. With your clinical skills, you can then invite them to come to see you privately to pursue this if they wish and ask them to leave for the present time and refund their monies. Or you can move ahead and use their situation as a teaching moment. I have in fact done this in the past with no particular difficulties encountered.
   
  In the days when I was a director of the open sessions at the Moreno Psychodrama Stage in New York City, anyone who walked in was accepted. They bought their ticket and entered.  There were numerous very heavy duty situations including one where an audience member who was a returning depressed Vietnam Veteran began to have flashbacks and saw me as his sargent and came forward saying that he was going to kill me as he felt that I was responsible for the deaths of his buddies and for all the pain that he was suffering. That was quite a night which ended with his weeping in my arms as we got to the bottom of it all with the  help of my wife of that time who is one of the finest auxiliaries I have ever witnessed, Bonnie Weiss, and several people who had become regulars at my sessions assisting as fine auxiliaries themselves.
   
  My inclination now is to use some form that people will fill out and sign prior to participating in any extended day long training or workshop. I want people to warm up even prior to arriving or at the very least prior to the workshop beginning as they sign in. Such a form serves to begin that process quite well. 
   
  I would love to begin somewhere having open sessions again where anyone can come in regardless of what they bring. Often therapists would send their clients to my sessions as well as the other directors to work on something in particular that they had been addressing in their therapy. The therapist thought, and rightly so,  that a session might help their client to resolve the issue to the extent that their therapy could move on to the next stage so to speak.  I am looking into making such sessions available in a couple of places in New York City as well as up state where I am nearly every week now with my work with Dr. Malidoma Some and the village that I have been involved in creating there. 
   
  Going to make a presentation at a meeting or convention or hospital is different as those presentations are usually not meant to go into great depth and of course they  may end in doing so none the less. However, these are demonstrations usually lasting no more than a couple of hours at best and are meant in my estimation to open the door for people to come back for more. 
   
  Good luck with your TEP process.  Blessings, Bud Weiss
  

Sylvia Israel <sylvia at imaginecenter.net> wrote:
  Dear Jacob and grouptalkers,
I read Jacob's announcement of the wonderful series of workshops he is 
offering. He writes that they are:

>personal growth and training workshops
>
In regard to the discussion we have been having about clients in 
training groups, I wonder if this is a personal growth workshop for 
trainees, for clients or for both? Our discussion has been very 
interesting to me, as I am the only psychodramatist in my area, and 
taking my TEP exam in a few weeks. So just wondering how they do this at 
the NYC Institute. I some times struggle with who to open one-day 
workshops to.

Any comments--if you have anything new to add to the discussion, would 
be appreciated.
Sylvia Israel


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