Het eerste en laatste deel van dit verslag is geschreven door Nancy van den Berg-Cook en het tweede deel door Marianne Vijsma. Het symposium werd gehouden op 19 Januari 2008 in Woerden. De voertaal was engels. 

On a very rainy January morning, the distinguished British analysts Andrew Samuels and Renos Papadapoulos arrived to present the NAAP Symposium, "Traumas and Tricksters - Post Jungian Innovations," at a cosy candlelit conference room of the Grand Kasteel Woerden.

Hermes and his patients: the role of the trickster in the psychotherapeutic process (Lecture 1: Prof. Dr Andrew Samuels )
In his morning lecture, Dr. Samuels described the Trickster aspect of human nature, and illustrated it with a lively recounting of the story of the first activities of the newly born Greek god Hermes. In true trickster form, baby Hermes escaped from his crib and directly stole fifty cattle from his highly revered older brother Apollo. He then disguised his deed by making the cows leave ‘backwards’ tracks in the sand that appeared to be coming into the pasture instead of leaving it. This mischievousness, and inventiveness, is an ever-present quality of Hermes.

 Ancient Greek coin: Hermes stealing Apollo’s cattle

But Dr. Samuels also pointed out that the god Hermes performs many “very respectable” and highly valuable functions as a member of the Olympian Gods. As messenger and communicator among the Gods, it was Hermes who convinced Zeus to end the devastating famine that Demeter, the goddess of the harvest, had caused in her grief over the loss of her daughter Persephone.
Accordingly, if we speak of the figure Hermes as a representative of a ‘typical’ or characteristic mode of human behaviour, we must recognize that in addition to the purely tricky qualities, he has reliable, helpful, and unique crisis-resolving capabilities. In fact, his tricky-ness, his novel way of doing things, his willingness to break the rules, are central to his practical ability to resolve crises and create new modes of approaching problems. 
This quirky and ‘tricky’ mode of approaching a problem makes Hermes a kind of patron saint for psychological growth because it brings new energy and a fresh way of looking at seemingly unsolvable conflicts. Dr. Samuels described a case of his in which he as analyst took the stance of a trickster, embodying the process of rejecting the status quo and the client’s accepted ground rules in order to help him get out of a dependent situation at work.

The inner lifes of analyst and client are connected to the political world
Dr. Samuels then pointed out that just as with personal psychology, the trickster stance would breathe new life into the modern process of conflict resolution in the political arena. Because Hermes is flexible by nature and embraces novelty, his ‘breath of fresh air’ and cunning approach would be perhaps especially helpful for negotiations between different cultures, at the national and even international levels. And because Hermes is also “reliable”, his mode should be trusted to be safe in sensitive and gravely important political negotiations.
Dr. Samuels urged us to consider how our work in providing therapy for individuals can also be imbued with an eye to the society at large and political processes. In the afternoon interactive group session, he led exercises that helped us to be more aware of political impulses, meaningful political life experiences, in ourselves, and to recognize events within the therapy that have political meaning for our clients. The message that became clear to me was that Hermes’ trickster energy promotes personal growth and movement through conflicts at the individual level, and should be engaged more deliberately at the level of politics. We as psychotherapists and analysts cam also contribute in the wider social arena by bringing politics into the process of personal growth, for ourselves and our clients.  
Nancy van van den Berg-Cook

Adversity-Activated development: Post Jungian Extensions of the Trauma Discourse (Lecture II Prof. Dr Renos Papadopoulos)
In a clear and well-structured presentation on Jungian contributions to the international trauma discourse,  Renos Papdapolous introduced and explained his concept of “Adversity Activated Development (AAD)” as a new way of understanding our role as therapists in the face of overwhelming personal and collective experience.

He began by moving the discussion of trauma as being ‘event-based’ to being ‘experience-based’. While it is of course undeniable that war and other forms of collective violence are traumatic for people living through them, not every individual experiences these events in the same way. Such differences in what constitutes the experienced trauma for an individual increase the level of complexity and confront us with the unknown, he said. As therapists, he urged us to embrace the unknown not as a problem, but rather as a stimulus for us to get a closer connection to our clients by engaging in joint exploration about the meaning of the experienced events to their lives.

By way of a “Trauma Grid” he showed the four levels in which trauma occurs: the individual, the family, the community, and the society or culture; and three degrees of consequences to traumatic events: negative, neutral, and adversity activated development. A negative result from trauma, ranges from the psychiatric disorder of Post-traumatic Stress (PTSD), through a distressful psychosocial reaction (such as withdrawal or depression), through to ordinary human suffering, which is the pain of loss and relocation that are part of the human condition. A second outcome of traumatic experience and an individual’s response to it, that Papadopolous more controversially labelled as ‘neutral’, is ‘resilience’ – the ability to return to the pre-experience norm on a somatic, social and psychological (or emotional) level after trauma. He stressed that resilience is not to be seen as an individual characteristic but rather as a relational process. He quoted Victor Frankl, “Suffering ceases to be suffering in some way at the moment it finds meaning”.

And finally, he spent some time discussing his own concept of new developments that can be seen as a direct outgrowth of the experience of living through adversity: AAD. Such growth consists of new elements in a person’s personality or new characteristics that did not exist prior to the traumatic experiences, and these new qualities can be known or unknown to the individual. The concept is connected to the idea that the meaning of healing is in transcending suffering. It is at this point that he invoked the symbol of the trickster. 

The concept of AAD is built on the following argument: Adversity exposes limits, and therefore opens up new possibilities, including new perceptions of identity, of relationships, of one’s purpose in life. From these new perspectives in world-view and meaning, a new epistemology—a theory of what is possible or known—can emerge.

Papadopoulos cited three basic implications of Jungian therapeutics that informed his concept: the setting; the phenomena; and the process. Under setting he listed: the importance of the therapeutic vessel; an attitude of creative openness for therapeutic process; and an awareness of the limitations of Eurocentric practices. Under phenomena he cited: the reality of evil; not pathologizing human suffering; and an interest in polarized positions (numinosity). And finally, the following Jungian notions of therapeutic process buttress the concept of Adversity Activated Development: the positive function of regression; the potential for growth as a dimension of suffering; and the teleological functions of the symptom.
Marianne Vijsma

Workshop: Societal Dimensions of Clinical Work 
(Andrew Samuels & Renos Papadopoulos)
In the afternoon workshop, Dr. Samuels and Dr. Papadopoulos challenged us to become much more aware of our own political ‘identities’ and how they influence our therapeutic work. In a large circle, all facing each other, we were asked to sit quietly and try to remember our earliest ‘political’ experience. Not being accustomed to thinking in that way, a mumbling filled the room, and we asked for examples of how a child might have a political experience. Eventually, more and more participants had stories to tell. A Dutch participant remembered becoming aware of the concept of ‘queen’. The presence of the Queen was part of daily life growing up, but suddenly, he questioned how it is possible that an individual could be so special, with special powers. I told the story of being a young child in Phoenix, Arizona, when I went with my family to view the President of the United States as he was driven past on a broad sunshine-filled motorway. I knew “Ike”, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had flown in to Phoenix to play golf, and that he was extremely important, that it was a great honour to have him. This was my first conscious awareness of the powerful status of something like a ‘president’.

In this way, our thoughts were brought into our developmental years when our concept of the world was being formed, to begin to see how the existing political structures formed our beliefs; in other words, how they formed our personal psychology and sense of self in our society. This made for many of us a tremendous impact and opened our eyes to the importance, and the possibilities, of working with political themes in our practices.

In the final part, we were stimulated to discover how politics has already been alive, and gone perhaps unnoticed, in our work with clients. We were asked to remember an example of when a client had reached a new level of development, or new insight, that involved a political theme. This was perhaps a more difficult request than thinking about our own experience because many of us are not accustomed to evaluating our clients’ progress from this angle. However, it was easy for some therapists, such as the participant who recognised his client’s new-found openness about his sexuality in the desire to become politically active in the Gay Rights movement.

Inspired by Dr. Papadapoulos’ and Dr. Samuels’ lectures, and the self-reflection of the workshop, we ended the day with discussing the importance of becoming ourselves more politically aware and taking action in our professional and social lives, as well as supporting our clients’ development in the political sphere. Doctors Samuels and Papadapoulos encouraged us by describing their own activities in both professional and world political processes. Participating in the Symposium had  brought us to an understanding of how it is possible to be committed to the inner world of psychology and at the same time, to promote social awareness and commitment to causes that aim to improve life for all humans.
Nancy van den Berg-Cook