Wilna van der Walt Psychology Practice

Dr Wilna van der Walt Psychotherapy Practice

MB ChB (UFS) Pr nr 0681652

Address: Muizenberg, South Africa

Hi, I am a registered medical doctor, and practice within the field of psychotherapy.

A crisis may bring about inner growth, enabling one to acquire a more objective perspective on life’s difficulties and to engage more effectively with the problem at hand.

Together with the therapist one undertakes this search for inner truth and connectedness. The journey of self-discovery is aimed at self-acceptance, the basis of a more fulfilled, better adapted approach to life. It may gradually open up the pattern of one’s deeper life.  The connection to this deeper life grows slowly, like a tree.

Symbolical creative work can be a very useful way to support and contain oneself emotionally on one’s inner journey. Should you choose to work with me, this could be a possibility, but not a necessity.

Creativity Workshops at the CG Jung Centre, Rondebosch, Cape Town

CREATIVITY CLASS 1 OF 3: THE LEGEND OF THE INDIAN PAINTBRUSH: Saturday 19 October 2019 at 8.30 – 13.00

In this series of 3 classes, the creative process will be explored. Each class… (Read more)

CREATIVITY CLASS 2 OF 3: THE MAGIC PAINTBRUSH: Saturday 16 November 2019 at 8.30 – 13.00

In this second class, we will explore the possible function of creative work… (Read more)

CREATIVITY CLASS 3 OF 3: OVID’S PYGMALION: Saturday 30 November 2019 at 8.30 – 13.00

No previous artistic experience is required. The three classes build one upon the other. In this third class, we will explore the role of consciousness in developing a nurturing personal relationship… (Read more)

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Jung, in The Aims of Psychotherapy:”A patient needs only to have seen once or twice how much he is freed from a wretched state of mind by working at a symbolical picture, and he will always turn to this means of release whenever things go badly with him.”
Chodorow, 1997, p. 93

We take special note of our dreams and their messages, for they assist us in restoring the connection to our deep symbolical life. Creative work can be an indispensable tool in this process of inner growth, assisting the therapeutic relationship. This is possible for anyone interested in this subject. No previous artistic experience is required.

The creative process, the act of creative self expression, starts with creative play and fantasy, our imagination.

A conscious relationship to one’s creative work has the ability to nourish, support and contain the personality. Developing a conscious relationship to one’s creative work does not mean analyzing it intellectually, but learning to relate to the world of images in a meaningful way.

Theoretical background: Creativity can be an indispensible tool in therapy, and in dealing with resistant pockets of trauma within the psyche. The creative space is defined and compared to the therapeutic space as temenos. By relating to the content that gradually unfolds within the space, the space and the content may become an inner object or transitional object, as described by Winnicott. Kalsched pointed out that Winnicott’s transitional object and Jung’s concept of the transcendent function of the psyche and its symbolizing capacity overlap in a meaningful way. (Kalsched, 1996, p. 197 – 200) This helps us to understand the potentially beneficial effects of the creative process.

Jung says in Memories, Dreams, Reflections p. 340:

The need for mythic statements is satisfied when we frame a view of the world which adequately explains the meaning of human existence in the cosmos, a view which springs from our psychic wholeness, from the co-operation between conscious and unconscious. Meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life and is therefore equivalent to illness. Meaning makes a great many things endurable – perhaps everything.

The Swiss psychiatrist, CG Jung (1875 – 1961), was the founder of analytical psychology and is known for his exploration and description of processes of the unconscious and archetypal phenomena.

Jung found that the unconscious spoke to us in our dreams by way of symbols. Convinced that dreams offer practical advice, sent from the unconscious to the conscious self, he found that self-understanding would lead to a full and productive life. (Blurp from Man and His Symbols)

In CG Jung speaking: Interviews and Encounters, edited by William McGuire and RFC Hull, Jung says:

Together the patient and I address ourselves to the 2,000,000 year old man that is in all of us. In the last analysis, most of our difficulties come from losing contact with our instincts, with the age-old forgotten wisdom stored up in us.

Creativity Class 1 of 3

In this first class of 3, we will explore the creative process in service of the inner process of individuation; we focus on the creative space as a containing space, as found in THE LEGEND OF THE INDIAN PAINTBRUSH, and the unfolding of content there-in. This containing function of the creative space offers potential support and nurturance.

Previous Creativity Workshops