Tag Archives: Ira Progoff

Techniques and Approaches for Therapists

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Serenity w creditAn integrated system for ongoing psychological growth
using Dr. Ira Progoff’s principles of holistic depth psychology

Dr. Ira Progoff’s Intensive Journal® method has helped over 175,000 people of different backgrounds to develop more meaningful lives.

The method’s carefully designed writing exercises are based upon Dr. Progoff’s theories and approaches for psychological growth.

Dr. Progoff states the purpose of the method:The Intensive Journal method is not journal keeping, not introspective diary keeping, and it isn’t writing therapy…it is the full scale active method of personal life integration for continuous and cumulative work.

 

Enhance the Therapy Process and Deal with Managed Care

Both therapists and clients can benefit from attending Intensive Journal workshops.

Therapists: Potential Increased Effectiveness

  • Learn fresh processes for human growth to develop and integrate life experiences
  • Broaden perspectives and intuitive abilities

Clients: Greater Participation Possible

  • Uncover and develop issues and experiences
  • Integrate selected exercises into sessions

Therapy Sessions: Help Lower Cost and Duration

  • Sessions can be more productive
  • Clients can work through issues faster

Post-Therapy: A Life-Long Tool for Self-Growth

 

Key Principles of the Progoff™ Approach

As a psychotherapist and university-based research professor, Dr. Progoff formulated his theories of psychological growth that he termed “holistic depth psychology” by which persons are able to: 1

Develop Resources within Individuals for Growth

  • Progoff focused on understanding the processes by which growth takes place and devised procedures to facilitate that growth.

Reconnect with Inner Strengths and Capacities

  • Holistic depth psychology supports the integrative unfolding principle taking place within a person.
  • Focus is on what each life is trying to become, its unique seed potential or inherent nature.
  • Therapy and healing are by-products of the growth process.

Employ the “Whole Life” Approach

  • Working through issues within the context of an entire life provides important benefits of perspective and safety.
  • Greater awareness about a wide range of experiences creates a foundation for more sound decision-making.
  • Viewed in a wider context, issues become more manageable.

Utilize an Evocative / Non-Analytical Methodology

  • The inner integrative process comes forth from an individual’s inner self rather than from an externally imposed method.

Focus on Inner Development

  • The most direct and penetrating insights come from the depths of the psyche and not from intellectualization at the surface.
  • The crucial question is neither what, nor how, but where the work takes place. “Where” means at what depth in the psyche the personality is focused.

Integrate Symbolic Material, the Source of Potential

  • Human personality unfolds by way of images. Participating in the movement of deeper-thanconscious material can provide a rich resource from which ideas and actions unfold.

Offer a Means for Direct Inner Experience

  • Individuals require ways of experience to discover meaning for themselves.

A major part of the meaning of life is contained in the very process of discovering it….The meaning of life cannot be told; it has to happen to a person…”2

 Printable PDF

 

1 The books of Ira Progoff, Ph.D. that discuss the principles of holistic depth psychology are: Death Depth Psychology and Modern Man, The Symbolic and the Real, and The Dynamics of Hope.
2 The Symbolic and the Real, by Ira Progoff, PhD., McGraw-Hill Paperback Edition, pp. 13-14.

Dr. Ira Progoff – founder Intensive Journal® Workshop

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Dr Ira Progroff

Since the 1950’s, Dr. Progoff has devoted his life to the exploration of new ways to encourage creativity and to enhance individual growth. He is a leading authority on C.G. Jung, depth psychology and transpersonal psychology as well as journal writing.

Dr. Progoff completed his doctoral dissertation on the psychology of C.G. Jung from the New School for Social Research in New York City. His thesis was published in 1953 as Jung’s Psychology and Its Social Meaning. After reading Dr. Progoff’s dissertation, Dr. Jung invited him to study with him in Switzerland as a Bollingen fellow. He studied with Dr. Jung in 1952, 1953 and 1955. In addition, Dr. Progoff gave several Eranos lectures in Switzerland during the 1960s, where he presented his theories of holistic depth psychology.

As a practicing depth psychologist and Director of the Institute for Research in Depth Psychology at Drew University from 1959 to 1971, Dr. Progoff conducted research on the dynamic process by which individuals develop more fulfilling lives. As a psychotherapist, he found that the clients who wrote in some form of a journal were able to work through issues more rapidly. Through this research, he then developed and refined the Intensive Journal Method in the mid-1960’s and 1970’s to provide a way to mirror the processes by which people become dynamic and develop themselves…continue reading

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Method of Self-Development

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Progoff Intensive Journal Method of Self-Development

Created by Dr. Ira Progoff, a depth psychologist, the Intensive Journal® program is an integrated system using writing exercises to help you develop your life.

Learn how to work with your experiences and emotions to awareness and insights to give your life greater direction, clarity and purpose.

Intensive Journal® exercises help you overcome preconceived ways of thinking to achieve breakthroughs that were previously not possible.

At our workshops, certified leaders guide you step-by-step through the exercises with the protections of otal privacy. Our program has a 45 year history of helping over 175,000 people.

A Framework for Your Evolving Life

The Intensive Journal® method provides you with a safe and effective framework from which to explore and develop your life.

Practical Ways to Develop Your Life

  • Explore and connect with your unique life experiences to gain a greater sense of the continuity and direction of your life.
  • Work through transitions more effectively. Placing issues within the context of your total life experiences helps you to realize your capacities for moving through to the next phase of your life.
  • Deepen your awareness about personal relationships, health, career, and major events using Progoff’s unique dialogue process.
  • Learn how to revisit prior experiences in a non-threatening way. Your life history becomes a rich avenue from which new perspectives and choices can reveal themselves.
  • Connect with your inner process to help you access and listen to hunches, intuitions and imagery that are important sources of wisdom.
  • Utilize Progoff’s unique non-analytical methods for working with dreams and imagery.

Utilize the Writing Process to Connect to Your Life

  • The process of writing helps you access feelings and experiences to make them tangible for further development. You are not writing your life story. You do not have to like to write or write well; only you will read what you have written.

The Workshop Setting: A Profound Experience

  • The Progoff™ methodogy works best in a workshop setting where you are away from your daily routines over an extended period of time. You can relax and focus inwardly as our leader guides you step-by-step through the exercises.
  • The built-in protections of privacy in the workshop help you feel safe to be honest with yourself, building trust in your own inner wisdom and capacities. No one comments on your life.

Printable PDF

 

1 At a Journal Workshop (rev. ed. 1992), by Ira Progoff, Penguin Putnam, p.8 (affiliate link)
2 Depth Psychology and Modern Man, by Ira Progoff, McGraw-Hill Paperback
3 At a Journal Workshop (rev. ed. 1992), by Ira Progoff, Penguin Putnam.

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Try a Sample Intensive Journal® Exercise

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At A Journal Workshop Sample ExerciseNow you can begin to experience how the Intensive Journal® method works through a sampleexercise. It is important to do the exercise in a setting of complete silence, with a pen and paper (not a computer), when you can relax and take your mind off your daily life. Record what comes to you; do not edit or censor. Write the date at the top of the page and the name of the exercise, “Period Log.” You should allow about 45 minutes to complete the exercise.

  1. Describe the “Now” period of your life; an open ended period that has a beginning but no ending. Examples include: three years since you moved to a new city or started a new job.
  2. Record your thoughts, feelings, memories – whatever presents itself to you. Complete the phrase: “It is a time when….”; record images that describe the period.
  3. Describe more details about this period: people, projects or activities; your health; attitudes about society; important events; dreams or imagery; people who inspired you; and choices or decisions you made.
  4. Read back what you have written and record any thoughts and feelings that you have during this process of writing and reading back.

Through the Period Log exercise, you are beginning the process of reconnecting with the many different aspects of your life from which new perspectives and opportunities can reveal
themselves.

 

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