General Interest
General Interest · 04. May 2022
IOPT is often forced to think about abortion, and my hope is that this piece of writing will make a good contribution to our thinking
General Interest · 07. March 2022
History of the study of trauma “The study of psychological trauma has a curious history – one of episodic amnesia. Periods of active investigation have alternated with periods of oblivion.” (Herman, 1992) “It is a deplorable fact that each investigator who undertakes to study these conditions [trauma] considers it his sacred obligation to start from scratch and work at the problem as if no one had done anything with it before.” Kardiner & Spiegel (1947) It helps in our...
General Interest · 04. June 2020
ACCREDITATION AND PROFESSIONALISM Originally published in 2015. For those not in the know, back then we called our work Multi-Generational Psychotraumatology, and the method was known as The Constellaton of the Intention. Some people who are considering joining the London training in Multi-Generational Psycho-Traumatology and The Constellation of the Intention are asking me more in depth questions about exams, qualifications, accreditation and professional organisations, so I thought I would...
General Interest · 04. June 2020
ACCREDITATION AND LEGALITY IN THE UK Originally published in 2015. For those not in the know, back then we called our work Multi-Generational Psychotraumatology, and the method was known as The Constellaton of the Intention. Legality in the UK - the legal status of the designations 'psychotherapist', 'counsellor' and 'therapist' At this time there is no legal status for a psychotherapist in the UK: "In some countries, most notably the United States, individual practitioners are required by law...
General Interest · 05. April 2018
This piece is written by Professor Franz Ruppert, and originated in response to a discussion on the IoPT Facebook page. Thank you Franz for your contribution. To call one’s sexuality ‘hetero’, ‘homo’, ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’, ‘trans’, ‘queer’ etc. does not say anything about the quality of one’s sexuality, how I act my sexuality out – alone or with a partner. Also naming it ‘normal’, ‘natural’ or ‘colourful’ is often more an attempt to justify it for public...
General Interest · 30. November 2017
Trauma of Identity The trauma of identity means that I am not able to be myself; I lose my true identity in the moment in which this trauma happens. My survival of this trauma at that earliest time of my life, usually pre-birth, meant that I had to give up on my wants, my identity, and identify with the wants and needs of my mother, with her identity instead. We call this identification. This is the strategy for surviving a Trauma of Identity. To exist is to have needs... and wants. They are...
General Interest · 25. February 2017
In general we tend to think that our life begins at our birth. Our 'birth day' is the day we celebrate each year. And yet there is a whole nine months of life before this that we have already lived that we rarely consider. Our life actually begins at conception. That is the day we really should celebrate, but usually we know little about this day. Our mother may not even know when we were conceived*. In Identity-oriented Psychotrauma Therapy we see this time that we spend inside the body of our...
General Interest · 13. February 2017
Hanna Arendt used the term 'banality of evil' in relation to her witnessing of the trial of Adolf Echimann for crimes against humanity in Israel in 1961.
General Interest · 19. September 2016
Who am I… really? Thoughts on Identity and Identification There's a difference between acknowledging a fact about yourself, and identifying yourself with something. Identification is a substitute for identity, it is a trauma survival strategy. A fact about myself is that I was born in the UK and so have a British passport. This means I am British. Emotional identification with being British, however is a way in which I outsource my identity because of a lack of real identity; this is due to...