Two-Way Therapy seminar

Image: Queenie McKenzie, Dreaming Place – Gija country,1995

We were honoured to have CASSE’s ‘Shields for Living, Tools for Life’ program nominated as the recipient of proceeds from the Sydney Institute of Psychoanalysis webinar series, ‘Two Way: Learning from each other’.

Held during October and November, the series of six webinars brought together First Nations thinkers with psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in the spirit of Two Way.

Ken Lechleitner Pangarte, CASSE board member, and Pamela Nathan, CASSE Director, joined Dr Craig San Roque to present the fifth webinar, in the series: ‘Two Way’ and presented a joint seminar titled ‘Two Way Therapy’, which was Kenny’s idea.

“One cannot do justice to the powerful paper ‘Ground Grounding’ presented by Craig in a sentence but he spoke to Japaljarri Spencer’s vision in his paintings-and his warnings of the power of the toxic red snake and of the importance of the black snake for intercultural healing,” Pamela shared.

“One cannot also do justice to Ken’s thoughtful paper which discussed the importance of Aboriginal cultural knowledge and revival in the face of losses as “many men don’t know who they are” and how important it is to share the dream between Aboriginal and Whitefellahs.” she continued.

In her paper –Two Way Therapy on Ancestral Lands – Pamela spoke about the monstrosity of trauma,  CASSE’s ‘Shields For Living, Tools For Life’ program for the youth in Central Australia and the psychoanalytic tools which inform the work.
These papers will be published in Psychoanalysis Downunder in a special series.

“The other papers in the series were all very powerful and the series gathered momentum and a life of its own over the 6 weeks, opening intercultural spaces and relations and thought-provoking psychoanalytic work,” Pamela explained.

“Zoom enabled over two hundred people to be reached and seen in all parts of Australia. The images of front-line workers in their spaces was hauntingly moving. It was an honour to participate in the series.”

Thank you to the Sydney Institute of Psychoanalysis for hosting this important event and for ongoing generous support for CASSE’s work.