Continuing Professional
Development Workshops
Workshops for Counsellors, Psychologists, Mental Health Professionals
Dr Hugo Gonzales is an experienced Clinical Psychologist with a demonstrated history of working in the professional training and coaching industry. He is currently a senior lecturer in Counselling at Murdoch University and worked across Australia for a variety of universities.
Dr Gonzales offers a wealth of knowledge and an extensive background with over 25 years of experience working with a wide range of issues including (but not limited to); anxiety disorders, depression, trauma & PTSD, grief, personality disorders (borderline & narcissistic personality disorder), stress and anger management, cross-cultural counselling, subtance abuse behaviours and child behavioural and emotional problems.
Workshop on Trauma from a Psychodynamic Approach
Early trauma interferes with the development of certain capacities or ego strengths that are important in psychodynamic psychotherapy, e.g., tolerance of affect, especially of a disturbing nature, and the capacity for self-reflection. What do these capacities look like in the clinical situation?
Grief, Loss and Bereavement
There are several models of Grief including Kubler-Ross’s, continuing bonds, Wanganeen’s, dual process, Worden’s and Bowlby’s model. Additionally, Loss and Grief are experienced differently in cross-cultural contexts.
Autism
Autism Spectrum Disorders represent significant neurologically based impairments in mentalisation that disrupt the normal course of development.
Coaching
Psychoanalysis has defined the triad of symptoms as a “disturbance in the synthetic, organising and integrative function of the ego” (Guilmore, 2000).
Coaching
The development of NPD can be traced back to traumas experienced in their childhood. The transference process is critical in managing people with NPD.
Addiction
Psychoanalysis views addiction as a disorder of self-regulation. Individuals with histories of exposure to traumatic childhood circumstances from a physical, sexual or psychological nature.
Borderline Personality Disorder
A psychodynamic approach can help to manage occasions when borderline personality disorder presents in therapy. Using a variety of psychodynamic theories to illuminate participants’ case material, this workshop will deal with the phenomena of boundaries, splitting and difficult feelings the therapist may experience.
Foundations of Psychodynamic Therapy
A majority of this workshop focuses on listening to the patient in psychodynamic treatment. Understanding the nature of the patient’s and therapist’s conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings. Observe carefully for non-verbal expressions and learn to use effectively what we hear and see in the treatment.
How defensive mechanisms are actually applied in psychotherapy
It is important for the therapist to be aware of the patient’s defence mechanisms, and the purposes they serve, and to work empathically with the patient to recognise and identify the mechanisms, improve their self-awareness and gain a new enduring understanding and control of their own behaviours.
Couples Therapy
The clinical presentation integrates classical, object relations and relational models, applying contemporary research in attachment, self-psychology, childhood trauma, “multigenerational transmission”, sociocultural issues related to class, race, religion and other constructions and the “location” of the analyst in a diverse field.
Multicultural Counselling
Identify multicultural competencies required to assist people from diverse cultural backgrounds, Cultural formulation and diagnosis (as recommended by the DSM-5 and describe Psychotherapy techniques for working with people from diverse cultural backgrounds.
Transference / Counter-transference
The workshop will explore the roles of the therapist and the patient. Techniques for listening to the patient, techniques for exploring what experiences, feelings, and memories are unfolding within a session. The clinical concepts of transference and countertransference, how to use them in sessions, and the therapist’s self-revealing versus self-disclosure.
How to treat depression from a psychodynamic approach
This workshop provides awareness of insight-oriented approaches in working with patients experiencing depressive symptoms. This approach focuses on increasing patients’ awareness and insight into problematic patterns and core relational themes related to depression.