WBA I Conference: Family in transition

06.12.2024 – Friday

2:00 – 3:00 PM Registration
3:00 – 3:30 PM opening ceremony, introduction, guiding through the program
3:30 – 4:30 PM Paneldiscussions: The normative power of the nuclear family

4:30 – 5:30 PM Break

5:30 – 7:30 PM Nuclear families and their alternatives- what made people look for alternative forms and what evolved from that? 1st+2nd generation of the Mühl commune and former kibbutz child or visiting relatives there regularly in dialogue (Paul Robert, Gitta Verlei) + Dikla Gertel, Lior Lavi Moderator: Johann Kneihs

7:30 – 7:45 PM Break

Optional:
7:45 PM German movie: Meine keine Familie von Paul Robert, Comune member of Mühl Kommune

07.12.2024 – Saturday

Moderation through the day: Imre Remenyi

9:00 – 10:30 AM Paneldiscussions

• Families in Italy; the clash between reality and ideology
• Working with families in Slovenia – overview of family life in Slovenia, ways of therapeutic approaches

10:30 – 11:00 AM Break

11:00 – 1:00 PM Workshops

Topic: Who is family? Obligations, wishes, hopes, shortcomings in family lives and why do less families search for therapeutic help these days? Who are and what is family? What shapes family therapy sessions? Assumptions, prejudice, experiences (with systemic SFU teachers: Imre Remenyi, Barbara Höllrigl, Corina Ahlers, Gerda Mehta, Andrea Schmid, Wolfgang Werzowa, and other presenters: Francesco Tramonto, Franco Della Maggiora, Dragan Pulic, Matej Vajda, Jerneja Hribar Bulovic, Marusa Zalokar)

1:00 – 3:00 PM Lunchbreak

3:00 – 4:30 PM Paneldiscussion

• Blended Families nowadays, State of the art
• Alternatives to traditional family life in the public interest – fostering

4:30-5:00 PM Break

5:00-7:00 PM Workshops

• in english:
• Jerneja Hribar Bulovic, Marusa Zalokar: Demonstration of analogue techniques like the River of Life, role playing, sculpturing, hypnosis.
• Francesco Tramonti: Families coping with chronic illness
• Franco Della Maggiora: Family and disability-levels of meaning
• in german / auf deutsch:
• Imre Remenyi: Konflikte um Themen des Elternseins und Parentifizierung
• Andrea Schmid: Multifamilienkonzepte- wie man die Weisheit der Gruppe nützen kann?
• Elisabeth Brousek: Auf der Suche nach alternativem / Familien ergänzendem Aufwachsen
• online (in german):
• Corina Ahlers: Wie Patchworkfamilien neue Modelle von Familie formen: Resilient trennen und neu zusammenwachsen

7:00 – 7:30 PM Break

08.12.2024 – Sunday

9:00-11:00 AM Workshops

• in english:
• Dragan Pulic: Psychotic experience in the Family and environment…
• Elisabeth Brousek: alternative ways to grow up outside the family
• Andrea Schmid: It takes a village to bring up a child. Mental parental illness, young carers and alternative social support systems
• Gerda Mehta: The quest for minimalism in an ever changing system

• in german / auf deutsch:
• Saskia Drennig: Verwirklichung innerer Wünsche und das Ausbalancieren von Enttäuschen + Gelingen
• Alexandra Sartori, Angelika Radax: Pflegefamilien sein – aber wie? Deutsch
• Wolfgang Werzowa: Was ADHS mit Familien macht

• online (deutsch):
• Robert Koch: Familientherapie mit Erwachsenen – eine Herausforderung auf der passenden Ebene zu bleiben

11:00-11:30 AM Break

11:30 – 12:00 short Paneldiscussion

• How politics shape family ties and structure – or not?
• The Impact of China’s One-Child Policy on family relationships

12:00 – 01:00 PM Fishbowl

• with International students ideas: what do (our) families/ and I need and how can family therapist help with what they/we need more: Young generation talking about their visions.
• with systemic therapists /teachers: Lessons learnt and what transitions are emerging in therapeutic theories and techniques to help families cope nowadays?

01:00 PM Ending

• Wrapping up including Presentation of the installation and farewell, Moderator: Gerda Metha

Corina Ahlers: Psychologist and family therapist and trainer, born and educated in Tenerife (Spain), studying and working as a family therapist and trainer in Vienna, specialized in families in transition. Professor at the Sigmund Freud Private University. Published a book about rebuilding families in German and Spanish, and another in German about working with cultural inequality.

Paul Julien ANXIONNAZ- ROBERT: Studium: Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wien, Klasse für konzeptuelle Kunst, Filme wie: „Egocentric proximity or intercourse & starvation“ ,„Lifegoals – Der spielende Mensch“ – „Meine keine Familie“ , „Der Affe beißt, der Mensch erzieht“ und diverse Ausstellungen, wie„Looking for perspectives“ – „Stray-soccer“ – „UDAR-P (umbau display ausstellung re-position)“ – „just what it is“ „ MI AMOR – Männer in Kolumbien“ – „Zeit danach“

Elisabeth Brousek: Psychologist, social scientist in Viennese child and youth welfare, employee in quality assurance and organization. Content focus: Qualitative and quantitative methods, participatory methods, interpreting family photos, history of youth welfare, foster care, growing up in living communities, hard to reach and outreach family support, evaluation and effect discourse.

Saskia Drennig: Systemic therapist, Lehrtherapeutin in ÖAGG, clinical and health psychologist,
long experience in Psychosomatischen Zentrum Waldviertel, Eggenburg and now private practice and teaching systemic therapy in various organisations

Dikla Gertel: student at SFU for Psychotherapy since, Systemic Family Therapy, and works at ESRA, Psychosocial Health Centre, as a psychotherapist under supervision with children and adults, having wide experience in assisting individuals of different age groups on the autistic spectrum.

Jerneja Hribar Bukovič: is a systemic psychotherapist working with individuals, couples and families in private practice. She is an active member of the Association for systemic psychotherapy of Slovenia. Jerneja also regularly presents her work and views in the media and public events, and is also a vocal advocate for legal regulation of psychotherapy in Slovenia.

Franco Della Maggiora: psychologist, psychotherapist, trained at the Centro Milanese di Terapia della Famiglia. He works in a department of mental health in the public health sector in Italy, teacher at the University of Pisa, where he holds a course on Research and Psychosocial Interventions on Families and Groups

Johann Kneihs: Born 1966, psychotherapist in training under supervision, internships in various institutions, Radio journalist, producer and presenter with the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF Ö1).
Robert Koch: systemischer Familientherapeut, Sozialarbeiter, Ausbildner in tiergestützer Therapie, Lehrtherapeut bei der ÖAS

Robert Koch: systemischer Familientherapeut, Sozialarbeiter, Ausbildner in tiergestützer Therapie, Lehrtherapeut bei der ÖAS

Lior Lavi: living in Vienna, Austria. Married +2 since 2018. Born and raised in a „Kibbutz“ in Israel named Kissufim (memories in Hebrew) – an alternative way of family where kids (2 – 16 years old) are sleeping, eating, studying and sharing life together in a shared kids house“, separately from the parents which visiting them every morning and every night for few hours.
Currently working in the tech area as a data analyst.

Gerda Mehta: psychologist, systemic family therapist, mediator, supervisor. She is head of the systemic programme in SFU since its start and worked 38 years in child protection. The interplay of society, family and individual has been her interest and she worked in many institutions around family life.

Dragan Puljić: psychiatrist and therapist who works in the neuropsychiatric hospital as a consultant and as a family therapist in private practice in Zagreb, Croatia. His main area of interest and work are focused on the sustained recovery of health and well-being.

Angelika Radax: Systemic psychotherapist, clinical and health psychologist, organisational psychologist in national and international organisations

Imre Marton Remenyi: born in Budapest, raised in Vienna. After having sung opera (performing of human catastrophies) he changed sides towards helping to solve by becoming a Coach, trainer, consultant, psychotherapist. Teacher in SFU

Alexandra Sartori: clinical and health psychologist, specialist in crisis intervention, school psychologist, systemic psychotherapist, further training in infant-,child- and adolescent therapy, lecturer in ÖAS und ARGE Bildungsmanagement/SFU, Wien

Andrea Schmid: lives and works as a systemic psychotherapist, coach and supervisor near Vienna. Primarily trained as a sociologist working at the university, she became a manager in different positions (e.g. R&D and HR) for several years. As a next step she founded the systemisches Zentrum wienerwald (szww). Until now she works there together with a psychiatrist and other therapists fostering eg the topic of multifamilytherapy and international projects for Young Carers.

Masha Sohrabi: Worked as a marketing and marketing research consultant in multinational companies, as lecturer and trainer in business, management and communication, as integration coach, she is one of the founders of Chemie Kas GmbH, Member of sustainable computing lab, poet and translator , studying systemic family therapy in SFU
Yichen Song: Born in China. Former psychotherapist at North China Electric Power University. Translated psychotherapy books into Chinese, including „Mind Over Mood“ and „Cognitive Therapy Techniques“, among others. Currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Vienna and a Master’s degree in Psychotherapy at Sigmund Freud Private University. Therapist under supervision in the Systemic Therapy modality.

Francesco Tramonti: psychologist, psychotherapist in department of mental health in the public health sector in Italy, teacher at the Istituto di Psicoterapia Relazionale in Pisa. Among the board members of the International Society for Systems and Complexity Sciences for Health.

Matej Vajda is a sociologist, a systemic psychotherapist working under supervision in private practice and also an assistant lecturer at Sigmund Freud University Vienna – Ljubljana branch and counsellor for students and employees at University of Ljubljana. He is a doctoral student at University of Ljubljana, the Faculty of Social Work, with a research focus on using client feedback in psychotherapy and social work. Matej is also the president of the Association for systemic psychotherapy of Slovenia.

Gitta Verlei: born 1954 in Mainz/Rhein, father bureaucarat, mother housewife, soziology, paedagogics, ethnology studies in Mainz. 1975 first contact with AA Kommune, first visit on Friedrichshof, moving to AA Heidelberg, then Berlin with 70 members,
1979 group leader in Oslo, Stockholm, Wien. 1981 doctorate in philosophy in Vienna.
1986 one of the founding members of Kommune owned company for finance products in München, 1990 dissolving the Kommune, since then in the stirring committee of Friedrichshof Wohnungsgenossenschaft. Since 2014 living again at Friedrichshof.

Wolfgang Werzowa: Originally working in the field of photography and film, he decides to concentrate on a more constructivist, systemic and ideographic approach by studying psychology and switches to psychotherapy. He is familiar with the narrative mindset and enjoys working with families and in multi-person settings. Since 2024 also working as a lecturer at SFU.

Maruša Zalokar is a social worker, a systemic psychotherapist working under supervision in private practice and also an assistant lecturer at Sigmund Freud University Vienna – Ljubljana branch. She is a doctoral student at University of Ljubljana, the Faculty of Social Work, researching narrative approaches, specifically with the aim to help victims of violence, which is a field she has been passionate about and active in for most of her professional career. Maruša is also the vice-president of the Association for systemic psychotherapy of Slovenia.

Ulrike Zartler: is a full professor of family sociology at the University of Vienna. Her research focus is on family, childhood, and youth. She leads projects on transition processes and their impact on families, divorce and post-divorce family lives, normative and legal constructions of families, norms around motherhood, children’s participation, and the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on families. She is particularly experienced in qualitative research methods, multiple-perspectives and qualitative longitudinal studies.

Maruša Zalokar; Jerneja Hribar Bukovič: THE RIVER OF LIFE
Families that come into therapy are diverse and especially when working with non-native speakers and younger children, using verbal communication is just not enough. Besides that, the atmosphere of cooperation and co-creation of the clients’ stories in therapy is an important part of alliance building, promotes approach buy-in and raises hope for change.
The River of Life enables work on two levels: methodological and process level. At the methodological level we construct the client’s River (choose and shape the ropes, determine their length, mark the points in time). At the process level the work is more intense: the client goes into a state of trance, they are simultaneously in the present time and in other places and (past, present and future) periods, or they pass between them. Different images, stories and emotions are interwoven inside the client. The process begins during therapy, however the construction of the River of Life continues even after the therapy session is over, unconsciously moving forward and working on the client’s process in its own rhythm.
The aim of the workshop is to practically demonstrate the use of analogue methods, especially The River of Life, through role playing, sculpturing and hypnosis and foster discussion with participants about psychotherapeutic work that goes beyond the verbal.
Blended Families creating new models of “the family”: resilience in separating and rebuilding: Corina Ahlers
Separation and building of new families is getting more and more. Instead of focussing on the deficits of rebuilt families we want to find the moments of resilience and creativity in these systems and how do they find solutions for their problems.

THE QUEST FOR MINIMALISM IN AN EVER CHANGING SYSTEM: Gerda Mehta
In this workshop we demonstrate a minimalist style working with family, acknowledging the family as such and every individual and his/her wish to live in this group as comfortable as possible. The fun in this workshop can be to enjoy variations of interventions and get feedback by the role players and others.

CONFLICTS AROUND PARENTING AND PARENTIFICATION: Imre Remenyi
Modern family structures and migration bring along that biological parents have trouble meeting their obligations and their role by multiple reasons (language, sickness, trauma, lacking knowledge of bureaucratic structure and local cultures. To distinguish between biological, emotional, functional and cultural parenting seems to help but also cause tensions.

MULTIFAMILY CONCEPTS – A METHOD TO MAKE THE WISDOM OF A GROUP AVAILABLE? Andrea Schmid
Not only one but two or even more high risk families working together on their problems – this was the starting point of multifamily therapy developed in USA and GB. By now this method has found its way into different social fields and has developed further. We will discuss the background, the (new) areas of application and the pros and cons of an interesting approach.

FAMILY: AN EXTERNALISATION OF INNER WISHES AND HOW TO BALANCE DISAPPOINTMENT AND SUCCESS: Christopher Uitz, Saskia Drennig
In psychotherapeutic conversations clients often identify family as a scene of their suffering, either their family of origin or their own family. But is family the place, where suffering is taking place or is it more the discrepancy between expectation and experienced reality in oneself ? And… are there alternative possibilities of managing this felt gap to „suffering“? Is „family“ able to meet these – maybe – increasing expectations at all ?

IN SEARCH FOR ALTERNATIVES TO GROWING UP IN “ YOUR OWN FAMILY” Elisabeth Brousek
The workshop gives an opportunity to deepen the exchange about the public obligation to enable children to grow up according to the children rights. And furthermore – to deconstruct the theses of the presentation in the afternoon.

FAMILIES COPING WITH CHRONIC ILLNESS: Francesco Tramonti
The developments of medical treatment over the past decades have significantly increased life expectancy in most of our societies, with the consequence that many people, all over the world, live with chronic diseases often for a long time. This epidemiological transition also means that many families are burdened by the assistance to those who have medical conditions that imply a relevant impact on physical or mental functioning. For this reason, there is a growing interest, within the communities of clinical psychologists and systemic therapists, in developing proper competencies to help such families coping with chronic illness. Aim of the present workshop is that of building a framework for case formulation and intervention in such situations, starting from the discussion of a clinical case and integrating such discussion with the exposition of relevant models described in the literature.

FAMILY AND DISABILITY: LEVELS OF MEANING: Franco Della Maggiora
The theme of the workshop will be disability (in particular that resulting from neurodevelopmental disorders) and the family, from a systemic-constructivist point of view. Various aspects of the topic will be explored: disability as a critical event that requires family reorganization at multiple levels (expectations, relationships, beliefs, emotions, etc.); disability, parenthood and brotherhood; as a transgenerational event; as a message (to the family, to the world); as a diagnosis (performativity of diagnosis – Austin); the meaning of the diagnosis for the family; disability and the family life-cycle; and family/health services/other services relationships; disability, growth, and the future (disability and time/temporality). The discussion will take into consideration the anthropological, historical and socio-political context of disability.

PSYCHOTIC EXPERIENCE IN THE FAMILY AND ITS ENVIRONMENTS: Dragan Puljic
Psychotic experiences are relatively common worldwide. The most common psychotic phenomena are hallucinations. They naturally occur upon falling asleep or while awakening. Prevalence of hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations varies across studies, from a third of the healthy population up to two thirds. Commonality and transient nature of auditory, visual, tactile or other sensory modality hallucinations call us to explore the dilemma: if hallucinations are so commonplace, why don’t we all develop psychosis? Does the likelihood of psychosis depend on the family member’s response to shared psychotic experience?
This workshop aims to explore these questions experientially.

FOSTERING- BUT HOW? Angelika Radax, Alexandra Sartori
Family life with foster children – growing up together – with children, who have several mothers and fathers, family members, languages, extended families by giggling biological, social, cultural bondings. How can the extended significant others merge, cooperate, coexist etc. How to manage foremost everyday living and help the children handle this complexity and help all deal with expectations of multiple systems?
Familienleben mit Pflegekindern – Begleitung von Kindern, die zwei Mütter/ Familien haben, Herausforderungen und Chancen (zwischen) biologischer und sozialer Bindung und wie zwei „fremde“ Familiensysteme zum Wohle des Kindes zusammenwirken können. Traditionen, Rituale, Feste von Pflegekindern aus anderem Kulturkreis und die Verwurzelung in zwei Welten; Alltagsrassismen und die Stärkung des Selbstwerts der Kinder; Bindung zu Kindern aufbauen, die biologisch fremd sind und das Loslassen von eigenen Erwartungen und Vorstellungen.

DOES IT TAKE A VILLAGE TO BRING UP A CHILD? Mental parental illness, young carers and alternative social support systems. Andrea Schmid
In each single European school class there are approximately four to six children who live with a parent with a mental illness, two of them are Young Carers. Young Carers are children under 18 years whose life and childhood had been affected or restricted as they take care about their ill or disabled parents. Only recently this group of children got some kind of public awareness. But how to address them? What do they need? Are there any adequate social support systems to meet their needs? These and more questions will be discussed during this workshop.

DIAGNOSED WITH ADHS, AUTISM, ETC. AND THEIR IMPACT ON FAMILY LIFE AND FAMILY MEMBERS: INSIGHTS OF A FAMILYTHERAPIST: Wolfgang Werzowa
Frequently families ask for counselling because they suffer from phenomena known as ADHD or autism. Behavioural and perceptual discrepancies between family members and the environment can have severe negative effects on them.
On the one hand, we as therapists need to understand why the families are asking for a corrective intervention. On the other hand, we need to respect the diversity of minds and the complexity of systems. In this workshop we will explore how we can support a constructive development of dysfunctional family systems.

Registration

Online participation: https://weiterbildungsakademie.sfu.ac.at/en/fortbildung/family-in-transition-online/

On-site participation: https://weiterbildungsakademie.sfu.ac.at/en/fortbildung/family-in-transition/