‘Doing Psychotherapy' is a reflective job and much time is spent on that in sessions, supervision and alone. Psychotherapists, however, are also members of a group of professionals. This means that actively or passively they are part of a community that has its own concerns apart from the work. In each country where there are psychotherapists working there are member associations to which they belong. Each association has relationships with other psychotherapy associations and the organizations of related professions, not to mention Government. Psychotherapists are also members of a culture, a nation. This stream is an opportunity to be, indeed, reflective but about the profession as organization, as constituent part of a nation, a culture, and to consider, perhaps, what part that is. In the light of the theme of the conference what does psychotherapy have to say about aboriginality and the worldwide concerns of and for First Peoples. The Conference Organizing Committee therefore encourages papers on: the issues to do with psychotherapists being members of a group, a culture, an organization; official recognition by Government and recognition / acceptance by the general public; the various forms of organization and federation that exist to look after the interests of psychotherapists and their art and science; the contribution that psychotherapeutic insights and psychotherapists make to the politics of a country or the world; the registration of psychotherapists whether by government or by self regulation; the ‘cross-cultural' relations between different modalities; and the relationship between psychotherapy and psychotherapists and the bodies that provide funding for their work or training, whether they be government, insurance providers or workplaces.

PHILOSOPHY AND ETHICS STREAM

The very basis of psychotherapy lies in the maintenance of an ethical position in a relationship of trust with a vulnerable other. This is not simply a matter of following rules but, in the case of psychotherapy, depends on an adequate understanding of self development in a system of self and other. This understanding requires a form of knowing based in relatedness and experience and informed by philosophy that speaks to issues of self, other, mind, body, spirit, existence and language. Fact and value cannot be separated in the psychotherapeutic context and notions like the absolute may take on a particular significance in this context of human relatedness. For psychotherapists it is not usually a question of “what I can do on my own” but rather “what we can understand together and do collaboratively”. For groups and communities the ethics of relatedness, and the psychotherapeutic effort, encompass issues of social justice. With respect to the theme of “World Dreaming” the psychotherapeutic challenge for humanity is to find paths to a sense of global community that may transcend the alienation and conflict so entrenched in the world as we know it. Papers will be invited and sought for this stream of the congress, that speak to these issues of understanding and morality as it applies to the psychotherapeutic context.

SPIRITUALITY AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

Traditionally mainstream psychotherapy has lived uneasily with the ideas and experiences of the "spiritual", although William James had firmly anchored religious experiences as a form of human consciousnes worthy of investigation. Spirituality can mean many things - in its broadest sense it can encompass all belief systems from atheism through agnosticism, animism and polytheism to theism, in all their varieties. Spirituality points to something beyond the material, to human potential for a sense of relatedness to others, to the world and even further, to what can be termed the sacred, the numinous or the divine. The spiritual resides in and outside religion, in and outside of specific practices. It involves tradition, can be found in the present, and has an evolving edge in human consciousness. John Rowan talks about the bridging function and metaphor of psychotherapy, which leads from conversation, biology and research into an unseeable future personal experience. The maps for psychotherapy and the spiritual are beginning to be drawn, with reference to recent pioneers including James, Jung, the Grofs, Wilber, Asaggioli and Mindell, as well as invoking the great religious bodies of experience shaped by spiritual masters stretching back to prehistory. It is in this spirit of inclusivenes and regard for the uniqueness of the psychotherapeutic relationship that papers are sought for the Spirituality stream of the "World Dreaming" congress.