Process Work

Process Work or Process Oriented Psychology is an awareness and facilitation practice that we use with individuals, couples, families, groups, teams and organisations. Process Work can look and feel like psychotherapy, mediation, coaching, conflict resolution or even like a walk in the park. Both Andy and Pat practice Process Oriented Psychology and organisations, families and individuals employ us as therapists or facilitators to use Process Work methods.

“Process work is a cross-disciplinary approach to support individual and collective change. It developed in the 1970s and 1980s when Dr. Arnold Mindell, a Jungian analyst in Zurich, Switzerland , began researching illness as a meaningful expression of the unconscious mind. Also known as process-oriented psychology (POP) or dreambody work, Process Work offers new ways of working with areas of life that are experienced as problematic or painful.

Physical symptoms, relationship problems, group conflicts and social tensions, when approached with curiosity and respect, can lead to new information that is vital for personal and collective growth. With its roots in Jungian psychology, Taoism and physics, Process Work believes that the solution to a problem is contained within the disturbance itself and provides a practical framework through which individuals, couples, families, groups and organisations can connect with greater awareness and creativity.”

This description from the process work institute, Oregon USA

We are continually incorporating our learning from process work into all aspects of our group work. We also work therapeutically with individuals, families and groups and are supervised by process worker teachers in this work. We are finding that process work is giving us a theory and language to explain some of what happens in person centred planning sessions and in other types of group facilitation.

Process work, developed by Arnold Mindell is used in many different countries and in different ways.

We are particularly interested in the exploration of process work theory and practice in our work with people who are at risk of exclusion and who suffer marginalisation because of labels of disability, particularly learning disability. See our article on rank, health and disability on the resources page of this site.

The Research Society for Process Oriented Psychology in the UK (RSPOPUK) is a member organisation of UKCP (the United Kingdom Council on Psychotherapy) which holds the national register of psychotherapists and psychotherapeutic counsellors.