Lecture room: Árnagarður – 201. Click for a map.
Working institution
Leader of the Nordic Baltic Organisation, work place: Ambulant Family Section at BUPA Drammen Hospital, Norway.
I have worked with people for 37 years and I am starting to sum up some of the things important to me after all these years. I have an international engagement, especially for the Baltic and Nordic Cooperation. This engagement has lasted for at least 25 years. Our way of working in the ambulant section might be different in the way that it is strictly client directed with the implications this leads to.
Abstract
The lecture is based on a lifelong experience in working with people. It also includes thoughts about what in my early life pointed out the direction for me as a professional. The intention is not only to speak to the brain, but to the heart. Neil Youngs song is what’s used as a disposition for the lecture. It brings us into the mines, searching for the heart of gold. It brings us to Hollywood and to redwood, and crosses the ocean for a heart of gold. It keeps me searching even if I’m getting old.
The experience is from Narrative Practice and an idea to “follow the family”. The principles we have followed during the last 20 years is including the family as co-therapist and as an important actor in searching for gold. We have broken many of the traditional rules in bringing forward a helpful relation and a mutual benefit for both the families and us as therapists. It has helped us to understand that we are totally depended on the clients in our work. It can sometimes bring us to places we have never thought and coming forward with untraditional ways of working. The need of being transparent and have a horizontal relation with the families have been challenging for us (and the families – and other helpers?) During these years the practice brought up some poems that are going to be shared during the lecture, written to explain some of the pain and joy in the search for gold.