Group Intensive by Claire Bowers Thursday 13th May / Friday 14th May 2027
A Group Intensive in Cocreated Symbolic Meaning Making
This intensive is open to psychotherapists and psychotherapists in training, with the exception of students currently enrolled at the Psychotherapy Institute — this is to protect the safety of the therapeutic space and avoid dual relationship difficulties given my role as academic tutor.
Overview
This intensive offers participants the rare opportunity to experience group therapy as participants — not as students studying a method, but as people doing the work. Drawing on the theoretical framework using Role Play on group therapy (Bowers, 2026) and the creative group methods developed in The Playful Therapist, the intensive uses cocreated symbolic meaning making, character work, shared world-building, and collaborative narrative as the primary medium of therapeutic engagement.
This is not a training course. It is a therapeutic experience informed by theory, held by a facilitator experienced in working this way, and grounded in the principles of TA psychotherapy.
Who Is This For?
Qualified TA psychotherapists, psychotherapists in training, and psychotherapeutic counsellors. Participants do not need prior experience of gaming, role-play, or creative methods — only a willingness to enter a shared world and see what becomes possible there.
Theoretical Foundations
The intensive is grounded in Berne’s theory of script and group stages; Winnicott’s transitional space; Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development; role play in group work (Bowers, 2026); Žvelc and Žvelc’s subject-subject relating and shared conscious presence (2021); Erskine, Moursund and Trautmann’s contact-in-relationship model (1999).
What Participants Can Expect
This intensive will ask something of you. It will invite you to create, play, imagine and be seen — and to sit with the discomfort that sometimes brings. It will also offer you the experience of genuine group contact, held safely and ethically. What emerges in the shared world is yours: to take forward into your practice, your personal therapy, or simply to sit with.
A commitment to attend both days in full is essential to the integrity of the group process.
