History and Mission

Originally, the Center for Spirituality and Psychotherapy (CSP) was formed in 1997 in response to the rapidly growing interest in the relationship between spirituality and psychotherapy, and held its first conference in 1998. It was the first center of this kind within a major psychotherapy and psychoanalytic training institute, the National Institute for the Psychotherapies.

After three annual conferences on spirituality and psychotherapy, which drew several hundred participants each time, it gave birth to the international membership organization, the Association for Spirituality and Psychotherapy (ASP) in 2001. Both ASP and CSP (now the Institute for Psychotherapy, Science and Spirituality (IPSS) are committed to the study of how psychotherapy can foster the emergence of the spiritual dimension in our lives, and how spiritual practice may enhance our personal lives and the psycho-therapeutic experience. Drawing from all religious and spiritual traditions, psychological perspectives and scientific theory and research, we emphasize how the individual can awaken to the spiritual traditions and practices. To that end the Association offers:

1. Conferences on various themes related to spirituality and psychotherapy (for professionals and the public and co-sponsored by IPSS)
2. Continuing education workshops and courses on spirituality and psychotherapy (for professionals and the public)
3. Networking Meetings Monthly in New York City
4. Semi-annual “Day of Conversation”
5. Semi-annual Newsletter

The Institute for Spirituality, Science, and Psychotherapy (former the Center for Spirituality and Psychotherapy) has offered training programs for many years for health, mental health, and religious professionals and is currently reworking its training concept for the 21st century.

The Association is a voluntary organization that grows and is sustained by the freely donated time and efforts of its members and its Board of Directors. If you would like to participate in ASP’s future, please contact cspofnip@optonline.net.

http://www.psychospiritualtherapy.org

A Program for Violence Reduction and Increased Academic Performance

We are all aware of the violence in schools today, particularly in inner city schools. Many schools have security guards at the door, while others have had to resort to requiring students to pass through metal detectors in order to remove weapons. What can not be easily screened for is: violence and hostility which the students can bring to the classroom and the teachers are confronted with it daily. It is the teachers who are the first line of defense in confronting and dealing with this overwhelming atmosphere in the classroom. They are often unaware that they may contribute to the problem rather than help to remedy it.

The teacher’s perceptions, thought constellations, and behaviors have an immediate and profound impact on how the classroom functions, how the students deal with this pervasive hostility, and whether the teacher feels helpfully empowered or powerless. The need is for the teachers to learn more effective means of dealing constructively with the growing tide of violence— even at the elementary school level. The need is for the teachers to learn to be able to stay centered in crises, to bring healing to troubled children in difficult classroom situations, and to create an environment more conducive to emotional growth and academic learning.

It is the teacher’s thought constellations, particularly with regard to expectations in achievement and behavior which give rise to much of the lower academic performance of African American and Hispanic students. The Perceptual Shift Empowerment Program (PSEP) for teachers has been developed to respond to these needs.

A Pilot Project (Phase One) is in process for the teachers and administrators of PS 180, a K-5 school located in Harlem which serves an African-American population with a poverty base of 76%.

The Pilot Project (Phase 1) is a necessary step in the development of the PSEP Program. We will be assessing the procedures used for the training and supervision of group facilitators, and evaluating the effectiveness of different styles of leadership for this particular training. Phase I will also help us evaluate the relative effectiveness of the training of teachers when done on a one semester basis. Phase II will help us determine whether two or three semesters of training have significantly greater effects over one semester of training in helping teachers to assimilate more fully and apply more effectively their new learnings in the classroom. And further, we can determine whether the summer break in between the first two semesters of training is helpful or detrimental in the assimilation, as well as to whether it is best to begin a school year with the program or start after relationships and perceptions have already been formed. An optimal length and pattern of training time for full assimilation will therefore be determined. And further, Phase II is an expansion into the middle school level and will help us adapt the program to higher grade levels. Phase III is an extension of the program into additional elementary and middle schools, but will also expand to include senior high school for the first time. We anticipate that certain adaptations may be necessary for the high school setting. In Phases II and III, the number of schools and the geographic locations to which the PSEP program can be expanded is determined largely by the financial support available.

Program Content
The Perceptual Shift Empowerment Program was developed by Henry Grayson, Ph.D. at the National Institute for the Psychotherapies in New York City. It has been used by dozens of his clients in settings ranging from schools (administrators and teachers), corporations (employers and employees), lawyers, physicians, nurses, mental health professionals, policemen, parents, students, and with couples. Dr. Grayson has developed and is refining a training module which can be taught effectively to teachers and school administrators on a more systematic and widespread basis.

A. PSEP Purpose
1. To teach, inspire, provide tools and supervisory support for teachers in an inner city school to identify, continually observe, and instantly change their destructive thought patterns about students, colleagues, parents and administrators.
2. To teach and supervise the assimilation of a “Perceptual Shift Empowerment” module, designed to facilitate the teacher’s making an immediate and/or continual change in the way of perceiving difficult students (colleagues, parents, administrators). It is a shift which enables the teacher to see the fear and the appeals for surface behavior which appears as an attack or as one being difficult in other ways. Such a perceptual shift will therefore result in a compassionate attitude and constructive healing behaviors toward the difficult person, rather than a perception of threat which creates fear and anger, and therefore results in unproductive, demoralizing, or inciting behaviors toward the difficult student (or other persons).
3. To help teachers model and teach caring attitudes and behaviors to children, which they in turn may use toward one another, especially toward children who are being difficult or violent.
4. To help teachers identify stereotypical attitudes and expectations, particularly with regard to minority groups, which result in severely impaired academic performance on the part of the students.
5. To help teachers begin to feel more effective, rather than powerless in difficult classroom situations, and therefore an increased sense of mission and personal fulfillment, as well as joy in teaching, which helps to create a more positive environment for academic learning and emotional growth.

B. PSEP Activities

1. Two half day workshops with teachers and administrators, one in the beginning and one at the end of the school year. (Ideal assimilation would dictate that the workshops be two full days in length at the beginning of semester one and a one day workshop at the beginning of the second semester).
2. Weekly group meetings 1.5 hours in length (3 groups with 5 or 6 teachers per group) to teach, supervise, and inspire teachers in their assimilation and application of the principals of thought monitoring both in and out of school, in making the perceptual shifts in ways which are preventative as well as in crises situations, and in ways teachers can teach caring behaviors.

C. Intended Results

1. A reduction in incidence of violent behavior in the school toward teachers and toward other children.
2. An increased positive learning and growing environment in the classrooms.
3. An increase in problem solving skills by the teachers and administrators, resulting in increased feelings of empowerment and a reduction of feelings of helplessness.
4. An increased joyful attitude about school on the part of the students, teachers, and administrators.
5. An increase in academic learning by the students.
6. A clearer sense of purpose and mission as a teacher.

D. Evaluation of PSEP:

1. Compare statistical reports of violence reported to Principal’s office before and after.
2. Self report of teachers regarding incidences of violence before and after.
3. Self report by teachers through a questionnaire, regarding enjoyment of teaching, as well as perceptions and attitudes about the school, pupils, parents, colleagues, and administrators.
4. Participating teachers taking a locus of power scale before and after the program.
5. Students take a brief “happiness in school” questionnaire before and after the program.

E. Geographic Scope and Time-Frame of the Project

Phase One: A one semeseter, 20 week, Pilot Project at P.S. 180 located in Harlem. Phase One began in January of 1996. The Pilot Project, including the evaluation component, will be completed by the summer of 1996.

Phase Two: A year long, 40 week project in the same elementary school with the same teachers as in Phase One, plus a middle school in the Harlem area. In the elementary school we would include three groups of teachers’ aides. This would increase the total number of group meetings per week from three to 9, and continuing for a total of 40 weeks instead of 20, as in the Pilot Project. (see the last paragraph of the introduction for the rationale of Phase ii).

Phase Three: A minimum of one year long project in a New York City inner city high school with similar demographics, along with another elementary and middle school. Since each school would have three groups of teachers, and the elementary school would have three teachers’ aide groups, totaling 12 group meetings per week for 40 weeks. Additional funds, if raised, would make possible the addition of other schools.

Sponsoring Organization

The National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP), a non-profit organization, is chartered by the Board of Regents of the State of New York as an educational institution. NIP trains psychotherapists at a post graduate level, with specialized programs for working with children, adolescents, and with adults. It also trains agency administrators, teachers, pastoral counselors, and others in the helping professions in applications of psychology to the workplace. In addition, it operates a variety of clinical services at moderate and low cost fees as a service to the community.

The NIP is most qualified to carry out the proposed project at all phases, having a pool of almost two hundred highly trained mental health professionals from which to draw. Their years of previous training and experience make it much easier to train them in the teaching of the specific training modules used in this project, than if a person had to be trained at a beginning level.

G. The Project Director

Henry Grayson, Ph.D., Founder and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the National Institute for the Psychotherapies.