Clinical Intuition as the Body's Flower of Compassion and Creativity
Clinical intuition is at the heart of effective psychotherapy. With or without touch, clinical intuition breaths and blossoms from the body, and when in full bloom, clinical intuition matures into our therapeutic potential for wisdom. Only clinical intuition, and not conscious deliberation, is flexible enough to consider the full context and capture the full complexity of this person, with this developmental history, in this moment, of this therapeutic relationship. As it emanates from unconscious sources, clinical intuition is a minute-to-minute process and response that fills the gap between theory and practice.
This seminar addresses nonlinear and neurobiological aspects of clinical intuition in terms of bottom-up, sensory, and emotion-based, holistic aspects. We’ll examine evolutionary and developmental roots of intuition in the mammalian CARE and PLAY circuit. We’ll examine brain lateralization as it underlies our capacity for thin-slicing and for broadband attention to what is novel in our relational environment. We’ll examine the importance of intuition in cases without precedent and in unique moments where to be effective, we must work at edges of regulatory boundaries. We’ll see how clinical intuition affords us immediate knowledge, quick responses and creative abilities to think “out of the box” and fly by the “seat of our pants.” Finally, we’ll scrutinize the limits of clinical intuition and multiple ways of safeguarding the integrity of our practice.
Experience how clinical intuition affords us immediate knowledge, quick responses and creative abilities to think “out of the box” and fly by the “seat of our pants.”
Your Instructor
I received my B.A. in psychology from Stanford University and my Ph.D. in clinical psychology from UCLA.
During graduate school, I was trained primarily in cognitive-behavioral work and sought additional training at the Gestalt Therapy Institute of Los Angeles (GTILA), eventually becoming President.
I received training in hypnosis from Jean Holroyd and Michael Diamond at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute, plus studied guided imagery with Muriel Fuller.
I pursued analytic self-psychology from Lynne Jacobs.
For over a decade, I have been studying interpersonal neurobiology and regulation theory with Allan Schore. I have taught developmental neurobiology at the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute and at Reiss Davis Child Studies Center.
I am currently an Adjunct Professor at Pacifica Graduate Institute, a visiting professor at Italian Universita Niccolo Cusano London, and Core Teaching Faculty at the Insight Center in Los Angeles where I regularly conduct continuing education workshops and classes.