Greetings to a New Year!
Artwork by Ilene Serlin
As we say good-bye to 2022, we say good-bye to a year filled with personal and collective threats to our health and families, our democracies, and our ecosystem. I want to start this year with a Welcome to Life, with a quote from Albert Einstein written in a letter to his daughter, Lieserl:
If we want our species to survive, if we are to find meaning in life, if we want to save the world and every sentient being that inhabits it, love is the one and only answer…
To give visibility to love, I made a simple substitution in my most famous equation. If instead of E=mc2, we accept that the energy to heal the world can be obtained through love multiplied by the speed of light squared, we arrive at the conclusion that love is the most powerful force there is, because it has no limits….
I need to tell you that I love you and thanks to you I have reached the ultimate answer! Your father, Albert Einstein.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
New Birth
This new year marks the birth of my new training institute, the Serlin Institute of the Healing Arts, that will continue my trainings in China, Turkey, the US and abroad. I will be partnering with affiliated training institutes and offering trainings in KinAesthetic Imagining, a form of dance movement therapy from an existential/humanistic perspective. Stay tuned for details.
In other news, I’ve been elected to the board of the International Journal of Communal and Intergenerational Trauma, the new journal of the Common Bond Institute and the International Humanistic Psychology Association.
- International Journal of Communal and Intergenerational Trauma webpage: https://cttjournal.org/
- Submissions invited: https://cttjournal.org/submission/
NEW BOOK, COMING SOON:
Pandemic Providers: Psychologists Respond to Covid
Emanating from a working group of the American Psychological Association, this comprehensive volume edited by C. Figley, L. Walker and I. Serlin provides a blueprint for pandemic preparedness for health and mental health professionals. It reviews the actual experiences faced by practitioners during the current Covid crisis, and provides historical context of past health crises, such as the 1918 flu epidemic. Lessons learned from previous health disasters are utilized to provide guidelines and best practices for managing large scale health crises.
The goal of this book is to offer the tools for health providers to mobilize, collaborate and provide effective and compassionate services. Relevant to psychologists, psychiatrists, nurses, social workers and others, this volume is an invaluable resource for the present and for the inevitable pandemics to come.
To be published by Springer.
Presidential Task Force on Culturally Informed Grief and Trauma Recovery
ANNOUNCEMENT:
World Arts and Embodiment Forum 2023
March 10-12, 2023
Early bird registration ends on Jan 31!
Dr. Serlin will present an online workshop entitled “Culturally Sensitive Dance Movement Therapy for Grief and Trauma Recovery” at the Dance Therapy/Movement Therapy (DT/MT) Summit of the World Arts and Embodiment Forum.
- For more information: https://www.waef2023.org/program/dt-mt
- To register for the Dance Therapy/Movement Therapy summit: https://inspirees.glueup.com/event/68250/register/
NEW VOLUNTEER WORK:
First Aid of the Soul
Last month I began volunteer work with First Aid of the Soul, a group providing supervision to Ukrainian therapists. I join a group of supervisors who meet weekly with Ukrainian therapists to hear their cases and provide support for them. This group is mostly school psychologists who are dealing with trauma in children and adolescents. We incorporate expressive therapies into our therapeutic approaches.
Learn more at: https://www.firstaidofthesoul.org
PUBLICATIONS
ARTICLE in The Humanistic Psychologist:
I am my own egg: Reflections on the development of a woman humanistic psychologist
The history of psychology in general and humanistic psychology in particular is often told through the narratives of the prominent men in the field. To correct this imbalance through the lens of cultural sensitivity and cultural humility, this article discusses the importance of the women’s perspective in humanistic psychology by focusing on key themes through the life narrative of one prominent woman in humanistic psychology.
Read the article here:
https://www.ileneserlin.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/I-am-my-own-egg.pdf
ARTICLE in Wondermind:
Is Trauma Actually Stored In Our Hips?
Dr. Serlin was interviewed by Jessie Van Amburg for this article in Wondermind, a new mental health-focused media company co-founded by Selena Gomez.
Read the article here:
https://www.wondermind.com/article/trauma-stored-in-hips/
ARTICLE in Creative Arts Education Therapy:
Dance Movement Therapy in the Time of COVID-19
During COVID-19, Dr. Serlin and another dance therapist and mental health professional from China created “Zoom Tool Kits” to help people express grief and recover resilience. This article discussed these efforts in China and elsewhere to use dance movement therapy for trauma recovery.
Read the article here:
https://caet.inspirees.com/caetojsjournals/index.php/caet/article/view/390/374
ARTICLE to be published in China:
An Existential-Humanistic Approach to Movement: an East/West Dialogue
This article by Dr. Serlin and Chloe Liu, published in the Creative Arts in Education and Therapy journal, has been selected for inclusion in the Chinese language anthology CAET Selected Edition (Volume II). It considers existential-humanistic psychotherapy in relation to concepts in Chinese culture and shows how those approaches are experienced in the body.
Read the article in English here:
https://www.ileneserlin.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/EH-approach-to-DMT.pdf
BOOK REVIEW:
The Person Behind the Psychotherapist
Dr. Serlin has written a review of the book Different Paths Towards Becoming a Psychoanalyst and Psychotherapist: Personal Passions, Subjective Experiences and Unusual Journeys, by Arnold Rachman & Harold Kooden. This review, entitled The Person Behind the Psychotherapist, was published in the Society for Humanistic Psychology Newsletter, August 2022.
Read the review here:
https://www.apadivisions.org/division-32/publications/newsletters/humanistic/2022/08/book-review
Recommendation of the Month:
Your Brain on Art: How The Arts Transform Us
This NEW book by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross shares the new science behind humanity’s evolutionary birthright — to make and behold art and its power to transform our lives. What artists have always known, and researchers are now proving, is that arts in all its forms, amplify physical and mental health, learning and flourishing, and build stronger communities.
We’re on the verge of a cultural shift in which the arts and aesthetics can deliver potent, accessible, and proven solutions for the well-being of everyone. Through the lens of the expanding field of neuroaesthetics, the authors introduce world-renowned researchers, clinicians, and arts practitioners on the cutting edge of science, the arts, and technology who are revolutionizing how we think about, and engage with, the arts.
Purchase here:
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/61358662-your-brain-on-art
PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT:
Integrated Care for the Traumatized: a Whole-Person Approach,
edited by Dr. Ilene A. Serlin, Stanley Krippner and Kirwan Rockefeller
This book presents a model for the future of behavioral health focused on health care integration and the importance of the Whole Person Approach (WPA) in guiding the integration. This book fills a void applying the WPA integration to the traumatized that enables the reader to learn from experienced trauma practitioners on how to assess and treat trauma as humanely and compassionately as possible. This approach of expanding the possibilities of behavioral health by centering upon the whole person is an old idea that is emerging as a modern solution to over specialized practices. Among other things, this WPA approach, complete with spirituality, psychology, medicine, social work, and psychiatry, helps the traumatized and their families function in the social environment.
The book has four sections: Foundations, Interventions for Individuals, Interventions for Communities, and Future of Integrative Care for the Traumatized. Each chapter discusses the importance of working within an integrative and WP approach, with descriptions of integrative models, research evidence and applications that are already working. These chapters can help students, families, and seasoned professionals to improve upon and expand their practice with the traumatized in both the individual and community contexts.
Get more information or purchase here:
https://www.ileneserlin.com/product/integrated-care-for-the-traumatized-a-whole-person-approach/
