Wilna van der Walt Psychology Practice

Dr Wilna van der Walt Psychotherapy Practice

Medical Practitioner and Creative Facilitator

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 gradually opens up the pattern of one’s deeper life.  The connection to this deeper life grows slowly, like a tree.

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.

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 analysing it intellectually, but learning to relate to the world of images in a meaningful way.

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 felt 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 and the Inner Other

12 – 14 July 2019, CG Jung Centre, Cape town

Theoretical aspect: Creativity can be an indispensible tool in therapy, and in dealing with resistant pockets of trauma within the psyche.

In this workshop 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.

Medicinal stories from around the world will be used to illustrate examples of the mechanisms of the creative process. In the work of David Blum, spanning 35 years of inner and creative work, we will trace the unfolding of the process. Blum was a famous conductor and writer from New York who drew the images from his dreams and visions. (For more information on his work, please visit https://aras.org/ )

Practical aspect: Participants will have the opportunity to engage under guidance with creative media in 4 one hour sessions, and to experience the effects and difficulties of this approach.

Jung, in the Tavistock Lectures:

“But [the therapist] should leave the originals with the patients, because they want to look at them and they become enchanted. The suggestive influence of the picture reacts on the psychological system of the patient and induces the same effect which he puts into the picture. That is the reason for the use of idols, for the magic use of sacred images, of icons. They cast their magic into our system and put us right, provided we put ourselves into them.” (Chodorow, 1997, p. 152)

Price: R2200 pp, only 8 places available (Creative materials and Saturday lunch included)

To book, please contact Lynda at 021 689 6090

This workshop can also be done as a short individual course. An initial assessment will be required. For more information, please contact me.

Creativity Workshop Program

Friday 14 July: 18.30 – 20.30: Jung’s views on fantasy and creative play

Saturday 15 July: 9.00 – 12.30: The creative space as temenos, the unfolding of the content and meaning-making

Saturday 15 July: 13.30 – 17.00: Jung’s transcendent function in creative work. Learning from the work of David Blum

Sunday 16 July: 9.00 – 13.00: Objectivity and relating in symbolical creative work; conclusion and feedback