Category: Field Notes

Dr. Avraham Cohen’s Field Notes For Therapists and Their Clients January 1, 2025 Avraham Cohen, PhD, RCC-ACS, CCC dr. avrahamcohen@gmail. com  To see me interviewed by Wynne Lacey, on her new podcast, go here: https://www. Read Field Note

I have been crafting my work as a psychotherapist for about 55 years: over a half century. And like all serious and complex arts and crafts, the work—truly a labour of love, curiosity, and excitement—that goes into becoming a knowledgeable and skilled therapist is endless: lifelong dedicated pursuit. And most importantly, I am convinced that such work is not a matter of acquiring a set of knowledge and skills that one can apply to clients. It is more about self-cultivation to become, for lack of a better word, let’s say, an optimally attuned practitioner. Read Field Note

In this Note we will focus on the influence of parents’ ways of being and the relationship that parents have with each other and with their children. The inspiration and motivation for this Note comes from, besides our own personal and professional experience, Carl Gustav Jung’s line: “The greatest tragedy of the family is the unlived lives of the parents.” Read Field Note

I am pleased to introduce you to my very long-time friend and colleague, Larry Green, PhD, RCC (Registered Clinical Counsellor), the author of this Field Note for September 1, 2024. He is the first of a number of guest Field Note authors that I will be introducing to you and who will be appearing from time to time. I am certain you will find his Field Note informative, evocative, and even provocative, and most certainly helpful with your inner work. Read Field Note

The beauty of childhood dreams is their potentially malleable and predictive quality about what is to come in your life and the opportunities to work with this process of discovery and its unfolding. This work can subtly shape and fine tune your self and the path of your life. Here, we are not talking about taking you out of the path you are on already but illuminating the path you are on and, at times, highlighting certain important features of the path so that you can make the best of the possibility’s life is offering you for your self and others. Read Field Note

In this Field Note, I will share my own early childhood dreams and the work I have done as an example of this work. My aim in this sharing is to offer my self-study to illustrate ways of working with dreams. My hope is that what I offer will be of benefit and help to you in working with your own childhood dreams. For sure, I am also benefitting from writing about my dreams in this Note as I get to re-examine my early dreams and see, from ever changing angles of viewing, the emerging and merging layers, and folds and what is newly revealed about myself and life. Read Field Note

The language of ‘regulated’ and ‘dysregulated’ seems to be part of common language these days. And there is an implicit approval for being regulated, and disapproval for being dysregulated. Understandable! Who wants to be dysregulated, let alone be in the company of anyone experiencing dysregulation? Yet, something troubles me here with this regulation/dysregulation way of speaking and describing. Also, consider the incarcerating potential of such powerful labels. Read Field Note

According to Jeremy Rifkin, economic and social theorist, writer, and public speaker, a new civilization is emerging: The Empathic Civilization (this is the book title of one of his 21 bestselling books). It may be so, and I hope so. But looking all around me, I don’t see any strong evidence that we as members of the current civilization are doing very well, in terms of practising empathy. Read Field Note

Dr. Arnold Mindell (aamindell.net), whose work I have referenced previously in my Field Notes, suggested that World War III was already in process: “The war between the sexes!” While Mindell had in mind two sexes, Male and Female, I will, in keeping with today’s cultural context, extend the plurality to more than the two binary categories: to all gender categories. (However, in this Field Note, I won’t address couples’ relationship that goes beyond two-person couples.) Read Field Note

Many of you may see or hear this title and wonder, “Huh? Why would I want to magnify the problem? Don’t I want to get rid of it? Surely, it makes no sense to want to make the problem bigger than what it already is.” Indeed, I cannot emphasize the prevalence of ideas of what might be called common psychology, or common consciousness, strongly enough. Within this consciousness the automatic reaction is to want to destroy the problems we encounter, and as quickly as possible. Read Field Note