Tue, 12 Oct 1999

Biographical counselling training / Ausbildung in der Biographiearbeit

By Margli Matthews

Stroud, 12 October (NNA) - A series of biographical training courses is due to start early in the next year. “Foundations in Biographical Counselling” will be offered at the Centre for Science and Art, Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK, from 10 January to 11 February 2000. This 5-week course provides training in biographical counselling skills for social professions and can also be taken as the first module of an ongoing training to become a biographical counsellor.

Biographical Counselling began 12 years ago when, for the first time, a training in anthroposophically-orientated counselling was offered at the Centre for Social Development in Sussex, UK. The course evolved into what is now known as the Training in Biographical Counselling, which consists of different modules that can be taken over a period of several years.

The training attracts an international group of students. It has taken place primarily in the UK, but in 1998 “Foundations in Biographical Counselling” was offered in New York, USA and in March 2000 a second stage of the training, “Biographical Counselling as a Path of Development” will take place in Brazil. The aim is to make the training available at venues throughout the world where there is a demand and opportunity.

We live in a time when outer supports and securities are falling away, while the inner dimensions of reality rise into daily consciousness. As a result, increasing numbers of people face existential questions that no other generation has had to face with the same intensity. Doors open into areas that have previously been hidden, areas where pathological aberrations and spiritual insights stand next to each other and often get mixed up. As a result healing and development are closely linked in our time.

In the course of their lives, most people will confront events, uncertainties, and moral dilemmas that leave them feeling lonely, bewildered, and confused. They may lose their connection to others, to themselves and their sense for meaning and to the source of their own potential. The problems that arise demand new ways of coping and challenge people to enter into a dialogue with their own life, in order to get in touch with their truth and to find strength and creativity for the future. At such times, a truly human meeting can be a force for healing.

Biographical counselling aims to assist people who are in such life crises.

A biographical counsellor, on a path of inner development, has an understanding of the laws of human biography and the dynamics of human struggle. . She/he understands the relationship between counsellor and client as a new, conscious form of the human encounter in which the counsellor acts as a guide to help the other on their journey to get in touch with their own truth, and in which healing and development can arise out of the meeting from 'I' to 'I'. This provides a basis to create a safe space in which the richness and totality of human life as an interweaving of body, soul and spirit can be worked with and affirmed. In such a space, inner and outer difficulties can be explored and met in ways that allow the underlying forces to reveal themselves and development to take place.

Biographical counselling aims to strengthen the human 'I' by helping people to become a witness to their own life experiences, to gain a new level of awareness that leads to renewed strength and confidence to take up one's tasks and responsibilities. It takes the psychological, social and spiritual dimensions of reality equally into account. It works with the past, present and future, understanding that the past and future reach far beyond one particular lifetime. Ultimately, the process of biographical counselling helps people to awaken to their destiny and the truth of their own being.

Biographical counselling works at the border of healing and development. It takes as a basis the fact that the questions and struggles that we meet in our individual lives are at the same time the developmental questions of our time in which we all share and play our particular part. It aims to work towards social renewal by helping people to read the language of their own life story - the questions and tasks that their biography presents them with - knowing that when this is done, a contribution is made to the whole of humanity.

Anthroposophy, a science of the spirit, offers a path of inner activity that leads to self-knowledge and the spiritual truth, which is the heart of our existence. It awakens a living imagination of the human being and an understanding of the nature of the human encounter, the laws of biography and the challenges in individual development today. This informs and inspires the “Training in Biographical Counselling”.

The “Training in Biographical Counselling” is an initiative run by the Biography and Social Development Trust. The Trust been established to serve individual development and social renewal by providing an international forum for training, research and exchange in the field of biographical counselling, biography work and the human encounter from the perspective of anthroposophy. It is based in England but its activities take place in many different parts of the world. It aims to make biography work and biographical counselling known and available in a cross-cultural context.

ENDS

For further information, write to: Margli Matthews, Biography and Social Development Trust, Tobias, Coombe Hill Rd., East Grinstead, W. Sussex, RH19 4LZ, UK. Tel/Fax: +44 (0) 1342 822907, email: Biogsoctru@aol.com

N991012-01EN Date: 12 October 1999

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