Key details
Dates | 3 & 4 July, 9.30am to 4.30pm (Thu/Fri)
Duration | 2 days
Location | Elie, Gestalt Centre Training Campus, 27 Royal Parade Parkville, VIC 3052
Fee | $700 (includes GST)
Facilitators | Jackie Amos, Joanne Walker, Liz Coventry
About this event
In 2024, Jackie, Jo and Liz introduced us to ‘A map of relational possibilities’ in their workshop Pathways from power to intimacy. The map is designed to support clients understand the ways their developmental history can show up in their adult relationships. This map resonated with all of those present, offering a compassionate and creative framework for addressing trauma and equipping therapists with tools to make an immediate impact in their work with clients.
This year, facilitators Jackie, Jo, and Liz return to take their work further with the Adult Exploration of Attachment Interview (AEAI), a structured therapeutic process designed to reveal and reshape internal working models of close relationships.
The AEAI is a structured therapeutic interview, designed to help parents, caregivers and intimate partners understand the often-hidden internal working models that underlie their close relationships. The AEAI facilitates clients to explore, in detail, implicitly encoded internal working models detailing how parents and children should relate to one another. The therapist and client work together to construct a series of ‘inheritance’ maps to understand the client’s relationship with each significant caregiver. Armed with this knowledge, the client can make new choices about what they would like to keep and what they would like to change. This tool is phenomenological in structure and congruent with Gestalt approaches: fostering trust, insight, and choice in therapeutic work.
The AEAI is a unique tool that can quickly deepen trust early in therapeutic engagement by building a deep and shared understanding of the early origins of the client’s relational difficulties. Given that these internal working models influence not only the parent child relationship but also the quality of adult intimacy, the maps offer a strong foundation for ongoing relational work.
In this stand-alone 2-day workshop, participants will be introduced to the AEAI, and review the theories that inform the AEAI, preparing participants to integrate the AEAI into their existing practice.
Why choose this workshop
The AEAI has many applications:
- Parenting: helps parents understand how their upbringing influences their parenting style.
- Couples: assists partners in aligning parenting approaches and improving intimacy.
- Foster care: supports caregivers working with children whose developmental histories are complex or unknown.
- Individuals: facilitates exploration and resolution of repeating relational patterns.
The AEAI has been used successfully in private practice, reunification programs, foster care programs, CAMHS and intensive family support services to address the intergenerational transmission of trauma.
What can you expect
Day 1: Participants will refresh their theoretical understanding of intergenerational transmission, using A map of relational possibilities, and learn the nuts and bolts of the AEAI. Day one will also include experiential processes designed to support participants to learn the discrete skills needed to successfully complete the AEAI.
Day 2: Participants will choose a peer to practice delivering the AEAI. Participants will use their own histories with key attachment figures in these experiential processes, supported by experienced facilitators. The day will also include regular group discussions.
Who should attend
This workshop is ideal for clinicians working with individuals, couples, and families, including:
- Psychotherapists
- Counsellors
- Mental health clinicians
- Psychologists
- Psychiatrists (including those in training)
- Family and relationship therapists
Join us for this unique two-day workshop and enhance your ability to work compassionately and effectively with relational trauma.
Refund policy
We offer a refund (less Eventbrite fees) for cancellations made 7 days before the event. If you need to cancel within the 7 days before an event, please reach out—we may be able to offer a credit for another event of your choice.
About your facilitators
Dr Jackie Amos
Jackie is a child, adolescent and family psychiatrist, gestalt psychotherapist and clinical academic with more than 25 years experience working psychotherapeutically with adults, children and families caught in intergenerational cycles of neglect and abuse. She has worked in both government child and adolescent mental health and intensive family support service settings. Jackie is now leading the implementation of her doctoral research in Centacare, a large NGO in Adelaide, using her theoretical model to inform the development of therapeutic case workers.
Joanne Walker
Joanne is a gestalt psychotherapist with 10 years’ clinical experience. Joanne has worked in community and organisational settings including to provide clinical services to people effected by complex, relational and intergenerational trauma both in the community and in the child protection sector. Whilst Joanne has worked within heavily traumatised systems, it was within her general practice that she developed the usable map presented in this course which is both relevant as a model for understanding extreme violence and a normal developmental model which has value across a variety of regular therapeutic issues.
Dr Liz Coventry
Liz is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and psychotherapist. They are a specialist in infant mental health and working with parent-child dyads caught in cycles of intergenerational trauma and abuse. They have previously worked in government perinatal and infant mental health services, providing care to women with severe mental illness and their infants. They are currently working with Dr. Jackie Amos to implement her doctoral thesis into a comprehensive therapeutic framework and training package for Centacare. They also provide support to teams in Centacare that work with traumatised families. Liz has a small private psychotherapeutic practice.
About the Gestalt Centre
The Gestalt Centre is the heart of Melbourne’s Gestalt community. We offer a four-year psychotherapy training program through Gestalt Therapy Australia, staying true to the experiential roots of Gestalt while embracing cutting-edge developments in contemporary Gestalt thinking and practice worldwide.
We also operate ConnectGround, a community-based counselling and psychotherapy clinic. ConnectGround serves as both a training facility for psychotherapists and a provider of low-cost individual and group therapy for clients. The clinic emphasises the therapeutic relationship between client and therapist as a key support for building awareness and adaptability. Psychotherapy interns and volunteers gain valuable hands-on experience, enhancing their skills and professionalism through client work.
