2024 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
Keynote Speakers

Shirley Rivers

Ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou. Ko Ngāi Takoto, ratou ko Ngāpuhi, ko Te Kawerau-a-Maki, ko Te Waiohua, ko Waikato-Tainui ngā iwi.

Shirley's work experience includes Community Development, Iwi Social Services, Counselling and Tertiary Education.

Her interests include unpacking the impact of colonisation and re-connecting with traditional Māori concepts of wellbeing as key to transforming Māori wellbeing in the twenty-first century.

Karangarua – Standing in a Double Relationship

Traditional Māori society engaged seamlessly in the physical and the metaphysical realm of being. Both were natural environments to their wellbeing. Navigating these realms required knowledge of traditional Māori cultural constructs that guided engagements for Māori with each other and the wider environment. Understanding these constructs is fundamental for all practitioners working with Māori whānau. The impact of colonisation for Māori has seen the fracturing from traditional engagement in these two realms culminating in serious consequences for their health and wellbeing. Karangarua – how do I stand as a practitioner and navigate these two realms in my work with Māori whanau? This keynote speech will present and explore a number of constructs that are essential to navigating the physical and the metaphysical realms of being.

Jo Stuthridge

MSc, NZAP, Jo is a Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst and a registered psychotherapist in Aotearoa, New Zealand. She maintains a private psychotherapy practice in Dunedin and is director of the Physis Institute. She has published several articles and book chapters on transactional analysis, with a special interest in trauma and is a past a co-editor for the Transactional Analysis Journal.

Currently she juggles professional interests with an enduring love for the mountains and bush, attempts to grow fruit trees and the wonders of grandchildren.

Goosebumps: Moments of Truth in Psychotherapy

My reflections on karanga led me to the heart of the psychotherapy endeavour: an encounter with the other. Karanga involves an encounter between people in the physical realm and also an exchange between the physical and spiritual realms. A relational approach to transactional analysis involves a meeting between self and other and an exchange between conscious and unconscious realms. The alchemy of this encounter can produce transformation for the client in moments of truth, sometimes heralded by goosebumps: a prickling sensation at the back of the neck. This keynote speech will address some fundamental questions: ‘How do we invite the client to meet their own unconscious?’ ‘What is this mysterious realm?’ and, a perilous concept these days, ‘What is truth?’

Keith Tudor

PhD, MSc(Psychotherapy), CTA(P), TSTA(P), Keith is Professor of Psychotherapy at Auckland University of Technology where he also co-leads Moana Nui – Research in the Psychological Therapies.

Keith has been involved in TA for over 35 years, in which he is also a well-published author.

He has a strong interest in the racial psychiatry tradition within TA and a strong commitment to bicultural and cross-cultural engagement.

Karangarua – Being Analytic and Transactional, Psychological and Social, International and Local

Eric Berne founded transactional analysis (TA) in response to psychoanalysis, and referred to TA as a social psychiatry and, by implication, a social psychology, a perspective taken up by some early transactional analysts. Yet Berne himself focused his theory and practice primarily on transactions between therapist and patient in the clinic. Similarly, and notwithstanding the radical psychiatry tradition in TA, and presence and contributions of colleagues in the fields of education and organisations, transactional analysts in the fields of psychotherapy and counselling generally privilege the psychological over the social. Finally, as it was founded in the Western – and Northern – intellectual tradition and, specifically, that of American ego psychology, it needs to consider whether its theory and practice applies to and in other cultures and contexts. This keynote speech will consider various aspects of these double relationships.