Conference Agenda

This study proposes to shed light on the values guiding life in Greece. A major goal of the Athenian Institute of Anthropos since 1963 has been to understand and facilitate processes in family therapy, training, and prevention. Research became essential for a deeper understanding of the emotions, the behaviours, the relationships, and the social context as it evolved through tremendous sociocultural changes, moving from a traditional society to a globalized world. During the recent pandemic, violence and anger skyrocketed. Families were forced to face each other and their issues in seclusion. Cases of depression, panic attacks, substance abuse, marital issues, loss of jobs flooded our practices. Public opinion was shocked by the cold-blooded, premeditated cases of sexual abuse, rape, suicide, and heinous murders of women within families.The situation begs the question: What are the values that govern our lives? What is it in our society that creates these monstrous behaviours?

This workshop aims to present the systemic, dialectic, multilevel, multifocal model of group therapy as used in the Athenian Institute of Anthropos, influenced by Ericksonian methods and personal additions. The idea is to create a hypnotic script utilizing the group’s therapeutic process analysed as a story sequence. The goal is to reframe what emerged during the session and intervene with a hypnotic induction created as a synthesis at a higher level of abstraction, in order to elicit an emotional shift at a deeper level in each member.

This is a presentation of the method followed at the Athenian Institute of Anthropos for teaching psychological assessment. Personality, projective and intelligence tests are used as diagnostic tools for understanding the individual’s functioning in the system. Results become important in a family system session. Three years of training conclude with detailed feedback from the trainees: “What was your learning experience?” The trainees’ feedback revealed a much more intriguing and interesting outcome, as a new method of teaching emerged from the complex interaction and personal experiences of the group.

In this presentation through a case paradigm, I aim to open the discussion of how community can be or even will be and IS indeed involved in family therapy and how therapist can utilise the power of larger community and social connections in order to help families to increase resilience during crisis. Furthermore, to help families grow through crisis maintain cohesion and achieving autonomy for their members. Honoring the work of George and Vaso Vassiliou, Froma Walsh and Petros Polychronis who believed and employed the power of networks in every opportunity they could find. As George and Vasso Vassiliou founders of the Athenian institute of anthropos said: “Autonomy THROUGH and FOR interdependence”.

We aimed to investigate the relation between basic needs satisfaction of group leader dyads in systemic group psychotherapy and outcomes like innovativeness, meaning, impact and personal engagement. Based on self-determination theory (SDT), all individuals have three fundamental psychological needs (Deci & Ryan, 2000). SDT defines the need for competence as the desire to control the environment, the need for autonomy represents individuals’ demand to have a sense of ownership of their behavior and, the need for relatedness refers to the desire for developing an intimate relationship with others -feeling cared for by others. In this study fifteen senior trainees of Athenian Institute of Anthropos reported on a weekly basis in terms of their experience in the group process. 158 diaries were filled in a period of three months and results provided evidence on how needs satisfaction between trainee and supervisor predicted aforementioned outcomes. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed.

This oral presentation will focus on the process of the experiential program “ comprises the main body of introductory training of professionals at the Athenian Institute of Anthropos. For the first time - due to Covid-19 restrictions - the abovementioned transformative learning, two-year program was conducted entirely online through 54 weekly group sessions, 3 hours each. Using theoretical deductive thematic analysis, we followed the experiential journey of 20 trainees, both in large and small groups’ processes, as they becoming familiar with the basic theoretical notions of the systemic approach and the dynamics and functioning of living systems. Also, utilizing qualitative systems inquiry methods, we will reflect on the parallel group processes of the trainees, of the small group coordinators and of the trainers as they emerged and intertwined over time during the program. Results are discussed in relation to the use of new online formats in experiential transformative learning/training.