| Now more than ever, education is truly a lifelong journey. Now more than ever, we live in an interconnected global society. At Pacific Institute, we're committed to preparing you for lifelong learning and for active, knowledgeable participation in today's interdependent world. The Institute offers an array of services and programs with an innovative approach to psychotherapy, education, conflict resolution, spiritual disciplines, community involvement, and life in general. Its practitioners strive to follow human experience with continuum awareness, respect, and dignity.
Pacific Institute wants to help create a society that includes the elderly as vital and important members. We would like to assist with the process of integrating old people into society. We would like to work toward a vision of a society that values each age group and perceives each stage of life as important. We want to elaborate a new model of intergenerational cooperation based on a better understanding of and closer connection between the old and the young, a connection where both groups will learn from each other. In order for such changes to occur, we will prepare and train people in the necessary skills to approach these tasks. These trained people will actively work towards changing the image of aging in our society and create an ongoing intergenerational dialogue and cooperation. This will lead to increased social consciousness and reduction of age discrimination.
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Seminars and Continuing Education Courses
Upcoming Seminars
 June 7 & October 25, 2008 – San Francisco
After the Sweet Bird of Youth: Exploring the issues of aging through Expressive Arts Therapy
Kate Donohue, Ph.D; REAT
6 CEUs, MCEP-BBS
RCFE and ARF credits are also available with this workshop.
10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
$150.00
Venue:
Scholefield Fireside Room
First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco
1187 Franklin Street
San Francisco CA 94109
Download Registration Form in PDF
or
Register online
 
This six-hour workshop will delve into the issues arising from the second half of life, “After the Sweet Bird of Youth”. This image of aging will allow participants to explore the normative and critical issues arising in aging: physically, emotionally, existentially and spiritually through a Jungian expressive arts therapy lens. Originally, Jung's analytical psychology focused exclusively on this stage of life. Jung saw this a time to develop our inferior functions and to confront loss and death. Expressive Arts Therapy, a multi-modal approach integrating all of the arts in a therapeutic framework can provide an array of sensory and imagistic languages to explore aging issues.
Expressive Arts imagery
 can connect to our past resources, open us to aspects of the self not yet explored (inferior functions),
allow us to express our grief over personal losses and failures in a fuller deeper way when perhaps words fail us,
tap into languages of expression when our neurological, cognitive and verbal have deteriorated and
pen us to imagery and ideas that can aid us in grappling with our death.
Through didactic theoretical presentation, case studies, and experiential processes, participants will learn to clinically use Jungian oriented Expressive Arts Therapy to address issues of aging in their clients as well as themselves and their families.
This course is designed for therapists who an introductory and intermediate understanding of Jungian psychology, expressive arts therapy and the issues of aging. For those who are advanced in any of the above areas, this course will present a different approach and application of these ideas to the issues of aging.
Participants will deepen their understanding of these clinical areas and learn to apply these processes in their practices.
ABOUT THE PRESENTER
Kate Donohue, Ph.D; REAT
Kate is a licensed psychologist and a registered expressive arts therapist. She holds a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology and has maintained an active private practice for 30 years. She has also been teaching for 25 years, at such institutions as California Institute of Integral Studies, Institute for Transpersonal Psychology, JFK University and the San Francisco C.G. Jung Institute. She is a cofounder of the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association and CEU provider. Now Kate joins pacific Institute exploration for new approaches to deal with the aging population.
Kate says: “...My work as an expressive arts therapist stems from my own deep and abiding passion for the arts. I am involved in visual arts and dance, having spent 12 years studying indigenous and ethnic dance forms, in particular West African and Afro-Cuban Dance. My visual arts work in painting and drawing has helped me explore an interest in understanding the sacred feminine. I have a background in drama and poetics, and a great appreciation for music. My involvement in arts and culture has made my own life richer, by allowing me to map and understand my own inner terrain...”
May 16 & November 21, 2008 – San Francisco
Validating the Language of Dementia
Doris Bersing, Ph.D and Nader Shabahangi, Ph.D
6 CEUs
10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
$150.00
Location:
Scholefield Fireside Room
First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco
1187 Franklin Street
San Francisco CA 94109
Phone: (415) 776-4580
Download Registration Form in PDF
or
Register online
Join us to explore a different approach to Dementia and Alzheimer. It is the prevalent view that our physical and psychological symptoms represent illnesses. Understood as illnesses, psychological symptoms represent illnesses. Understood as illnesses we ask for professional help in the 'removal' of these symptoms.
Another attitude views symptoms as meaningful, as important expressions of the individual, perhaps even planetary psyche. As such symptoms are forms of communication, which we can try to understand rather than ignore (which often happens through our well-intentioned means of helping and 'curing').
Is there a way of learning to listen to the voice of a symptom? Could it be, for example, that the many forms of dementia, including Alzheimer's, are attempts to speak in a language as of yet unfamiliar to us? Could it be that more than a dis-ease for the person so afflicted, a person's symptom represents a message of sorts?
As Naomi Feil says: Using Validation techniques we offer disoriented elderly an opportunity to express what they wish to express whether it is verbal or non-verbal communication. Validation practitioners are caring, non-judgemental and open to the feelings that are expressed.
How would such a change in attitude and perspective influence the way we 'treat' people with dementia and Alzheimer`s?
ABOUT THE PRESENTERS
 Nader Robert Shabahangi, Ph.D.
Dr. Shabahangi received his doctorate from Stanford University and is a licensed pychotherapist who has been working with the elderly for the past ten years. As a photographer and philosopher, he brings a passion for caring to our elderly. In 2002, he wrote Faces of Aging as a tribute to celebrating who we are at any age. Dr. Shabahangi is the Founder and Board President of Pacific Institute and Pacific Institute Europe and supervises graduate students from San Francisco and the Bay Area, and central and western Europe.
 Doris Bersing, Ph.D.
Dr. Bersing received her doctorate from L'Universite de Toulouse-Mirail in France. She is a clinical psychologist who teaches and serves clients using an existential-humanistic approach. Dr. Bersing has taught and led therapeutic groups and academic cources in Europe, South America, Central America, the Caribbean, and now in the United States. As Pacific Institute's Executive Director, Dr. Bersing works weekly with interns and oversees all Pacific Institute programs. She also teaches at several graduate schools in the Bay Area - she teaches on the topics of Gerontology, Feminist Pschology, Cross-cultural Psychology, Psychopathology and Professional Ethics. She is the author of several books and is currently writing a book about women, agin, and self-esteem. With 27 years of counseling and teaching experience, Dr. Bersing continues her work of empowering people by helping them unfold their own potential.
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