The Last Workshop - Balaban, Richard M

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Résumé :
The Last Workshop is a journey of exploration into the stuck places and foibles of everyday life that bring five strangers to a storied West Coast retreat center hoping to heal, to find a better way, to make sense of their lives and in at least one case simply to have a good time. Two of the leaders bring years of professional experience but the third leader is just starting out and unsure of his way. Yet all of them have more in common with the participants and their dilemmas than they want to admit. Progress depends on the cohesiveness of the group and a shared sense of safety and openness but will the issues brewing under the surface interfere with the leaders ability to pull off the five-day miracles they have come to expect from hundreds of prior workshops. Each group is different and this time they face a uniquely challenging group that threatens their objectivity, their authority and their practice. Gil is young, sober, gifted but unsure of himself and needing reassurance. Rae is in full mid-career stride, masterful in group and confident in her experience but is currently distracted by trouble at home and unaware of a fatal blindspot within herself. David is brilliant but at the end of his career and though confident and enjoying himself is occasionally out of touch with the effect he has on others. Their five participants bring alcoholism, codependency, childhood trauma, fear of aging, denial, sex addiction, and self-centeredness. They all know something's not right and they have five days to come together, find trust, open up and discover through the work of others, through exercises and processing, and through the unique support of a fully functioning group and the receptivity to intervention what needs to be done. Like an aging rollercoaster overloaded and wobbling, the workshop rattles along threatening to come off its tracks unless the leaders can rise above the challenges presented and their own limitations to complete the ride giving each member the experience they need. Just as they tell the participants, the leaders' power is limited and they must look to the power of the group and beyond to find their way. ?Though the story is fictionalized, the issues, the challenges and the solutions are real. There is the magic we know in the work and the magic that we sense but cannot name in the constellation of a group, in the power of the land itself and in that which is undefinable that holds it all.