Experiential Immersion

Semester and Year Offered: 3st Semester

Course Coordinator and Team: Honey Oberoi Vahali, Shifa Haq and Ashis Roy

Email of course coordinator: honey@aud.ac.in

Pre-requisites: Interest in engaging with experiential states and preferably, participation in the first Experiential Immersion

Aim: To provide the trainees with a first-hand feel of experiential processes and to enhance their psychoanalytical sensibility.

Course Outcomes:

1. Experientially registering the presence of the unconscious and attending to the articulations from deeper experiential states of self and others.
2. Deepening of the trainee’s capacity to engage with immersive states of experiential phenomena
3. Attending to group processes and empathizing with states of group members

Brief description of modules/ Main modules:

During the third (or fourth) semester students will explore the imaginations around the use and extensions of psychoanalytic ideas in socio-cultural contexts, or the relationship between culture, religion, spirituality, existentialism and psychoanalysis; sensitization to the field of disability studies and practice, queer sexuality, or the field of sexuality and body, in an intensive immersed form. Like the first reflective immersion- the theme for the second immersion too could vary from batch to batch. These could include field visits and/or readings from sites afflicted by war, violence, poverty, conflict and unbearable traumas. Alternatively the immersion could draw in reflections on culturally embedded forms of healing, engagement with spiritual traditions in India, the interface between religion, culture and psychotherapy, body, sexuality, disability etc. especially in the Southern part of the World. The above themes are only indicative and not exhaustive. The themes of the second immersion, like that of the first could vary from batch to batch depending on the needs of the cohort, significant emphases of the programme and the availability of facilitators. The introspective and analytic thrust of the immersion would enable one to feel, receive and work with experience. A focus on listening and sensing human themes would guide this process.

The purpose of the immersion will be to create a dense experiential axis around possibilities of work by going into texts, feeling states, readings done in group context. The 2nd immersion will deepen the work of the first immersion which would have been completed in the first year of their MPhil training. Like the 1st Experiential Immersion, the second experiential- reflective immersion may take place in a field site of mental healing, or any other cultural location, and/or at the university. Students may create a theatre performance or write scripts, make a film, submit notes and reflective accounts at the end of the immersion on themes carrying psychological and self-reflexive import. The above themes are only indicative and not exhaustive.

Assessment Details with weights:

• Students will be given reflective exercises to perform/ observation and reflection based assignments and/or, field notes to write-50%
• Participation in Group Processes-50%.
• The exact nature of assessments may vary in accordance to the central focus and themes around which the experiential immersion would revolve for any given group of trainees

Reading List:

• Buber, M (1937) I and Thou. Reprint Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004,
• Ogden, H. T. (2005) Conversations at the Frontiers of Dreaming. USA: Routledge
• Ogden, H. T, (1997) Reverie and Interpretation: Sensing Something Human. USA: Routledge
• Rogers, C. (1984) On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy. USA: Penguin