Unit Objectives
Able to perceive the social dimension in personal issues. Able to apply Gestalt theory and practices to social issues and processes. Able to apply intimate skills to larger processes. Able to utilise strategic skills and understand their place in social change work. Able to balance change and existential perspectives. Able to view processes, events, values, issues, from outside one’s own frame. Able to see psychological dimension to social/ecological issues. Able to see social/ecological dimension to personal issues.
Understanding Theory
Theories of power and influence , Theories of oppression , Understand importance of collective power , Understand the approaches to social justice: Individual, reformist, structural, and post structural , Understand the variety of foci of empowerment , Understand the place of policy, political action, and education in empowerment work , The relationship of ecology to psychology , Understanding need in larger community context , Characteristics of community , Dimensions of community development , Understanding the role of field theory in social change work , Understanding the significance of context , Understanding the nature and place of intimate and strategic skills
Personal Development
Awareness of own belief/cultural system , Able to appreciate cultural/racial/gender differences , Willingness to be interestsed in and contribute to the larger social sphere , Sense of accountability to larger society as well as to individual clients , Thinking in field terms , Able to be non-reactive in relation to group conflict , Able to look at all sides of an issue , Able to see the wider context of any event , Willing to take a stand on social issues and confront destructive behaviour , A fundamental appreciation of interconnectedness
Practice Skills
Able to work from an empowerment model, Able to work at the edge/outside the western frame on therapy, Able to facilitate dialogue around entrenched differences, Ab le to work with healing larger systems, Able to work for change and still follow paradoxical theory of change, Able to do change work in the context of I-Thou relating, Able to work with problem/solution analysis at a number of levels, Applying gestalt principles to social transformation work, Able to apply theories of community development and empowerment, Able to use field theory in larger contexts, Able to apply awareness cycle to community processes, Apply phenomenological attitude and approach to community processes, Able to think and act in political/strategic terms, Utilising the natural world in the service of personal development, Able to see the social context of creative adjustments, Able to find leverage points for intevention in systems, Able to look at the whole picture, and move between that and the nested layers of the field.