Process Work

Process Work (also known as Process Oriented Psychology) is a rapidly growing school of psychotherapy. It is gaining an increasing amount of attention and recognition in Poland and worldwide.

The founder of Process Work is Arnold Mindell, a Jungian analyst, psychologist and physicist. Together with a group of colleagues and friends he has for the last forty years been developing this unique method and approach to working with people.

Process Work focuses on our human experiences, referred to as ‘our processes.’ These express themselves in the flow of information that reach us at the internal level, e.g. via feelings and thoughts as well as in our encounters with other people and with the world. The crucial aspect of this approach is seeing our experiences as potentially meaningful and useful. For this reason it is much more important to understand them and use them in a constructive way than to judge or pathologize them.

Process Work stresses the interdependence and connection between different aspects and dimensions of reality. This emphasis derives from the sources of Mindell’s inspiration – quantum physics and taoism.

According to Mindell, important information about people and about the world around them can be gathered from the things that they do, as well as from more mysterious experiences, such as dreams, somatic symptoms, recurring relationship difficulties or mental problems. His method offers both a theoretical framework for understanding such phenomena and very practical tools for working with them. They can then enrich our identity and profoundly contribute to a feeling of wellness and fulfillment.

Process Work was in the beginning mainly a school of psychotherapy, but with time its applications have been widened to such fields as: working with groups and organizations, facilitating social and international debates and conflicts, communicating with people near death and people in a coma, supporting and working with creativity and art. This list continues to grow with the development of Process Work itself.

To learn more about Process Work see: www.processwork.org

Read more about psychotherapy and the situations in which it is helpful.