Speakers & Abstracts
Speaker Presentations
Presentations received from speakers are available on the Program page.
Final Papers
For your paper to be considered for print in a Monash University Press (for Monash Asia Institute) special publication, a double-blind peer review is required for all papers prior to acceptance. Please submit your final paper of approximately 5,000 words including footnotes and bibliography by 4 May 2010 to Associate Professor Peg LeVine via email Peg.LeVine@adm.monash.edu.au.
Speakers
Further Speaker details yet to be released.
I am delighted to announce that Professor Emeritus Graeme Smith has accepted an invitation to give our Keynote Address at the 7th International Congress on Morita Therapy in Melbourne.
Graeme Smith, MD is Professor Emeritus in the School of Psychology, Psychiatry and Psychological Medicine at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. The combination of those disciplines into one School is unusual in the field, but epitomises a long tradition at Monash University of acknowledging the breadth of thinking required to address adequately issues of the mind and body, in both research and teaching.
Professor Smith established postgraduate courses in psychoanalytic thinking and psychotherapy, and together with colleagues in the Faculty of Arts, a Masters degree in Mind and Society. His research embraced the whole biopsychosocial dimension: from basic neuroscience to psychosocial outcomes of living kidney donation through to the qualitative experience of depressive symptoms during a general hospital admission. He practiced as a consultation-liaison psychiatrist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist with individual patients and groups. He does Balint Group work with general practitioners and currently works with the Multiple and Complex Needs Initiative of the Victorian State Government. His recent publication on complexity stems from that work.
Professor Smith has been a long-term advocate of Morita therapy. He maintains his interest in the historical links between Morita and Freud’s scholarly work at the turn of the last century that led to the development of their culturally unique theories and practices.
Keynote Address for Day Two of the Congress:
Professor Nancy Slater, PhD, (ATR-BC, Registered Art Therapist) is Director of the Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology and Art Therapy Program at the Adler School of Professional Psychology, Chicago, Illinois, USA. She has taught art therapy in the USA, Australia, and Israel, and consults internationally on art therapy practice, education and program development. She has practised art psychotherapy for more than 25 years, and has a strong interest in international and multicultural approaches in art therapy and the effects of interpersonal and political history on health.
Professor Slater will compare Adlerian therapy to Morita therapy, and will provide us with some interesting historical links on the psychosocial-based theory underlying these respective therapies. Professor Slater notes: “Therapeutic art making functions to document an individual's perceptions and experiences, to engage in spontaneous and purposeful expression and to communicate about the effects of distressing life experiences including trauma and life experiences for those surviving violence.” She will discuss the therapeutic role of art and craft in the second and third stages of Morita therapy.
Special Sessions:
Dropping the Ego
Walter Dmoch, MD, from University of Duesseldorf, has spent 21 years following the teachings of Master Shibata Kanjuro XX and XXI. Both have been onyumishi (bowmakers) to the Emperor of Japan. The core of their teachings is that Kyudo (zen of archery) is not a sport, rather it is a meditation in standing position (Ritsu Zen). Kyudo – like Bu-Do, Aiki-Do and Ken-Do – is a ceremonial and meditative art. The purpose is not to hit the target as accurately or often, but "to polish your mind". Dr Dmoch will speak to (demonstrate) the meaning of "one shot, one life" in relation to Morita therapy.
Psychosocial Health Matters in the SE Asian Landscape
Morita therapy is recognised in SE Asia by key psychologists and psychiatrists in the region. In particular, Morita’s stages of treatment tend to accommodate the rural agricultural village settings, while accounting for rest, art, productive gardening and animal husbandry. 
A special session is being coordinated by Didier Bertrand, PhD who is the Director of AFESIP (sex trafficking research and clinical response centre in Lao, PDR) and researcher for the Department of Cultural Psychology in Mirail University in Toulouse, France. At present, Dr Bertrand is designing a lemongrass therapeutic farm environment for children who have been rescued from sex trafficking. Morita therapeutic processes (including rest, art and gardening practices) are informing his project.