Amigdala Centre offers continuing professional development for its alumni and current participants, as well as other interested professionals working in psychotherapy and related helping professions. Our professional development programmes explore topics that bring together professional knowledge, practical work, and reflection on professional experience. Through workshops, seminars, and other learning opportunities, we create space for participants to deepen their existing skills, exchange experiences, and explore issues that arise in their everyday work with people.
Gifts and other objects that appear within a professional relationship are rarely just things. They may express gratitude, attachment, a need to reciprocate, an attempt to establish a closer connection, or a way of communicating something that is difficult to put into words. In this workshop, we will explore what happens when a client, service user, or course participant brings a gift, what this may mean for the relationship, and how to distinguish a spontaneous and appropriate gesture from situations in which a gift raises questions about professional boundaries, expectations, power, or reciprocity. We will also consider the wider role of objects in psychotherapy and educational rehabilitation: objects that are brought to sessions, given as gifts, kept, declined, or invested with particular meaning within the relationship. Through examples, discussion, and practical scenarios, participants will have the opportunity to reflect on their own reactions and develop clearer criteria for responding to situations in which there is often no single, predetermined “right” answer.
The workshop is intended for psychotherapists, counselling therapists, psychotherapy trainees,
educational rehabilitation professionals, and other helping professionals whose work involves
questions of boundaries, relationships, and the meaning of gift-giving.
Find out more about the workshop.
The date of the next workshop will be announced.
