Seminar 7

There’s a Caterpillar in my Hair

Sat October 19th 12;30 pm- 4;30 pm UK time

Seminar leader: Kate Heath, Musician, Music Therapist, Music Teacher and trainee Suzuki piano teacher, UK

UK Time

12:30- 13:00 Coffee and Meet

13:00- 14:30 Interactive Seminar - Kate

14:30 - 15:00 Poem Break

15:00- 16:30 Experiential Group- Mike Tait Group Analyst, Drama Therapist UKCP HPC

We human beings seem to be good at putting things out of place. Things are frequently not where they should be in a more natural world.

The title of my talk, ‘There’s  a Caterpillar in my Hair’’, expresses the multiple experiential dilemmas of finding or, indeed being, something out of place, and experiencing unseen and unpredictable variables. As a personal experience, and as an unpredicted living metaphor, I find it surprisingly expansive.

This talk will mainly be about how a music therapist –or any therapist - can be marginalised and feel out of place within different working environments. This includes ‘care’ homes, hospitals, family work in private practice, community groups, and other settings. Therapeutic environments have become difficult to create, sustain, and maintain.

Considering how mechanistic much of our ‘care system’ has become, can the music therapist, or, indeed any therapist, manage not to be sucked into some of the more powerfully negative aspects of the ‘field of forces’ which influence our external and internal worlds?

My talk will be firmly located in the context of cultural neo-liberal consumerism that treats ‘care’ as a commodity that is bought and sold, often within bureaucratic organisational structures that prioritise market values. The market develops its own values and rationales, which may not be those of the therapist, inconsistent with good therapeutic treatment, and often running counter to what is commonly thought of as simply ‘care’.

I will use music in this presentation to help us experience and explore musically some of the forms and conditions of this contextual field.

The talk will be interactive and you are encouraged to contribute your own experiences.

All cases and references will be heavily disguised to protect the identity of clients, insects, and organisations.

EPIC International Seminars 2024

The Moderator, Protected Space or Thought Police

In a world riven with fear, war, famine, disease, dictatorships, selfish capitalism, torture and human rights abuses, the terrorising, murder, and displacement of populations, the stockpiling and spreading of weapons of mass destruction. All this with increasing unanimity among scientists and environmental experts that our current lifestyles have planted us on the edge of global catastrophe.

In this important series of monthly seminars, we will visit psychotherapists via Zoom from around the globe who will share their own experiences of the conditions in which vulnerable people turn to them for help. Most importantly how they attempt to provide spaces for help under such apparent unfavorable conditions. The seminars are mostly on a Saturday and usually on the third Saturday of each month from 12:30 pm to 04:30 pm UK time.

We will do our best to keep to the advertised program but we may need to make occasional changes

EPIC, The Experiential Psychotherapy Initiative Community works as a cooperative of psychotherapists involved in helping health professionals and others benefit from psychodynamic ways of understanding

Please address any enquiries about this or other EPIC events to series convenor Marcus Price at epicentre8@gmail.com