AFTNC Events
11/1-11/2: Interpersonal Problems, Interpersonal Solutions: Understanding
and Treating Women's Depression with Valerie E. Whiffen, Ph.D.
10/10: Coaching the Parents of Oppositional Youth
5/9: Making Better Men4/4: Collaborative Couples Therapy: Starting Out From Different Places...
3/7: Courage After Fire: Family Therapy with the New Generation of Veterans
1/26: West Meets East: Family Therapy with Asian Families
| Friday, October 10, 2008 | |||||||||
| Coaching the parents of oppositional youth | |||||||||
Jim Keim, LCSW This workshop presents a highly effective, caretaker-focused intervention for oppositional defiant disorder. The unusual aspect of this therapy is the focus on the different perceptions of power that oppositional youth and adults have. The intervention has a sensitivity to information processing differences and attachment issues, and there is an emphasis on reintroducing flexibility into a system where the adults are angry, focused on blame, and burned out. An important part of this presentation will be a discussion of customizing therapy to the authority styles of caretakers, especially those who have been abused by authority figures and who have difficulties with balancing nurturance and authority. The concepts of process vs outcome orientation, tagging, two-tiered consequences, and a reinterpretation of hierarchy are reviewed. When: Friday, October 10th, Where: Alliant International University, To RSVP for This Free Event Please Contact: | |||||||||
| Saturday Jan 26, 2008 | |||||||||||
| West Meets East: Family Therapy with Asian Families | |||||||||||
| Mary Cronin, MFT Philip Tsui, LCSW, PsyD Jennie Hua, MFT |  |  | |||||||||
| Immigration, acculturation, and generational issues will be explored in this program that will feature a panel experienced in the field of cross-cultural family therapy. The panel will be open to questions and discussion following their presentations. | |||||||||||
 | When | Saturday, Jan. 26, 12-2pm |  | ||||||||
 | Where | Alliant International University California School of Professional Psychology One Beach Street San Francisco, CA 94133 | |||||||||
| Price | Free | |||||||||
| RSVP | drkeith@drkeithsutton.com | |||||||||
| Mary Cronin, MFT is in private practice in the North Beach area of San Francisco where her clients include families, couples and individuals from various Eastern cultures. For several years Mary worked at Richmond Area Multi-Services (RAMS) where she treated Asian families, couples and individuals. One of her assignments, over a four-year period, was as a group therapist, through an interpreter, for the agency’s Cambodian clients. Mary is an active member of AFTNC, a former Newsletter Editor, and currently serves on the Programs Committee. Philip Tsui, LCSW, PsyD has a history of accomplishments in the area of mental health services that is so lengthy, it is challenging to abbreviate it here. He is an Adjunct Faculty member at City College of San Francisco and Alliant International University. He is a Visiting Lecturer at Hong Kong University. He has served as Executive Director and Clinical/Program Director at numerous agencies. He has published in the areas of cross-cultural psychotherapy and group psychotherapy. Philip has been teacher and supervisor to many therapists now active in the Bay Area. Jennie Hua, MFT is a licensed Marriage Family Therapist and has been working as the Director of Vocational Rehabilitation Services at the San Francisco Behavioral Health Center for the past 10 years. She is also the Interim Director of Therapeutic Activities at the Skilled Nursing Facility. Jennie has over 13 years of administrative experiences in the areas of Day Treatment, Vocational Rehabilitation, and Residential Treatment. Jennie is bicultural, born in Vietnam of Chinese descent, and has spent more than half of her adult life in America. Jennie is multi-lingual in three Chinese dialects and Vietnamese. She has a unique understanding of the challenges faced by many foreign born and/or American born Asians and their families. Jennie has served as consultant to Chinese TV and newspapers on issues relating with Southeast Asian immigrants and refugees in the areas of child development, marriage and family, and acculturation. | |||||||||||
| Friday, March 7, 2008 | |||||||||||
| Courage After Fire: Family Therapy with the | |||||||||||
| New Generation of Veterans | |||||||||||
| Keith Armstrong, LCSW | |||||||||||
Keith Armstrong will discuss his work with the veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom and their families at the VA in San Francisco. He will cover the special needs specific to this population, discuss relevant research, common presentations in treatment, and treatment interventions. | |||||||||||
| When | Friday, March 7, 6:30-9:00 pm |  | ||||||||
| Where | Kentfield, CA | |||||||||
| Price | Free | |||||||||
| RSVP | drkeith@drkeithsutton.com | |||||||||
Keith Armstrong, LCSW directs the San Francisco Veterans Administration's Family Therapy Program, the social workers in mental health services and is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. He is also a member of the SFVA's Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Clinical Team. He is a consultant to the Edgewood Center for Children and Family and the University of California, San Francisco's Intensive Family Therapy program. He received his masters degree in Social Welfare from University of California, Berkeley in 1984. He is author of clinical and research articles and chapters addressing the treatment of traumatized individuals and families. He co-authored Courage After Fire, a self-help book for returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and their families which recently won a silver medal from Foreword magazine. In 2005 he was given his 4th excellence in teaching award by the University of California Psychiatry Residents Association. In 2005 he also won the Excellence in Direct Teaching Award by the Haile Debas Academy of Medical Student Educators. | |||||||||||
Friday Apr 4, 2008
Collaborative Couples Therapy:
Starting Out From Different Places & Ending Up At the Same Point
Dan Wile, Ph.D. and Terry Patterson, Ed.D.
In collaborative couples therapy, we take the fight that is occurring at the moment and, by giving voice to each partner’s experience, transform it into a moment of intimacy. The therapist creates intimate conversations by bringing out the haunting feelings that each partner struggles with alone. Helping partners discover these feelings requires the therapist to feel compassion for both partners—a tall order given some clients’ provocative behavior. That is why a key part of the therapist’s job is to recognize when he or she has temporarily lost the needed sense of compassion and focus and to look for ways to recover it. In this workshop, Dan provides a glimpse into how he does this. In the process, he exposes the rarely revealed inner life of the couple therapist.
Terry’s approach to therapy merges his training and experience with psychodynamic and humanistic methods of understanding attachment and engendering empathy into a social learning model. The couple’s objectives and the therapist’s assessment become a starting point for employing behavioral techniques based on best practices and empirical findings.
The presenters will illustrate how dramatically different theoretical orientations can lead to practically identical therapeutic interventions. They will show, in addition, how having two therapists allows a modeling of direct discussion and the negotiation of differences. The presentation will include co-therapy and a roleplay demonstration.
Dan Wile practices in Oakland, California. He has twenty-five years experience as a couple therapist, gives workshops throughout the country on Collaborative Couple Therapy, and has authored three books and numerous articles on couple therapy and psychotherapeutic theory.
Terry Patterson has practiced family and couple therapy throughout his career, and specializes in couple therapy from a functional orientation in San Francisco. He is a Professor of Counseling Psychology at the University of San Francisco and is the author of books and articles on family therapy, training, and ethics.
When: Friday, April 4, 7pm-9:30pm
Where: University of San Francisco
San Francisco, CA
Price: Free
RSVP: drkeith@drkeithsutton.com
Friday May 9, 2008
Making Better Men
Roger Lake, MFT
Bart Rubin, PhD
Jesus De La Rosa, LCSW/MPH
This evening will be an opportunity to have meaningful conversation about an obvious, but often-elusive subject in Family Therapy: Men. This continues a tradition in AFTNC, by which we examine gender within a values framework. This has been done fruitfully in the past and has contributed to our work. This topic will be discussed for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the profoundly disturbing political context of the wars currently being waged. We live with the impact of the “strong father” model of masculine dominance, and observe it in our own lives, and those of our clients. We will continue to do this as the war comes home. The presenters are men who have many years of experience, but have pursued different careers, and encountered men in many different situations. What they have in common is that there is always a man in the room when they do therapy. This is not a “men’s only” event, but has male presenters because masculine subjectivity in the therapist role will be highlighted.
Roger Lake, MFT worked in public and private sector addictions treatment programs until 1986, and has been in private practice in San Francisco for over twenty-five years. He has been leading a longstanding men’s therapy group and he is the AFTNC’s past president
Bart Rubin, Ph.D. is founder and director of the Family Institute of Pinole, one of the Bay Area’s leading training institutions in child and family therapy. He is also an AFTNC past president.
Jesus De La Rosa, LCSW/MPH has many years of public sector experience doing bi-lingual, bi-cultural therapy and education in the South Bay and Santa Cruz communities. He is an active member of the Circulo de Hombres Latino which celebrates twenty years of existence this August.
When: May 9th, 6:30-9pm
Where: California Institute of Integral Studies
1453 Mission Street (btwn 10th & 11th Sts)
San Francisco, CA
To RSVP for This Free Event please send an email to Mary Cronin, MFT
mary.cronin@earthlink.net