The course attempts to introduce students to the world of psychopathology and deal with the spectrum ranging from normal to abnormal. During the course, we will examine mental disorders, study different syndromes based on the psychiatric book of diagnoses and delineate their characteristics. We will explore various theoretical perspectives that relate to the appearance of mental disease and its treatment. The course will be accompanied by interdisciplinary theory from the fields of poetry, literature, art and cinema, which seeks to draw attention not only to the ways in which a mental disorder is perceived from the outside, but also to how it is experienced on the inside.

The course aims to expose students to basic concepts in the field of psychodynamic psychotherapy. Students will be introduced to definitions of and theoretical responses to concepts such as the therapy setting, transference and countertransference, and more. We will discuss the meanings of these concepts and their various expressions in therapy. The format of the course will be based on lectures where students will actively participate, bringing their thoughts on the studied subjects and making the links to phototherapy.

The course will provide supervision for the therapy work that students practice in their place of practicum. Students will bring written and photographed material from the field and receive feedback from the members of the group and the supervisors, in attempt to assimilate and process the therapeutic process of the practice, and enhance the ways in which phototherapy, with a combination of the arts, can be employed.

In this course we will experience, observe and study the processes that take place within a group – group, interpersonal and intrapersonal processes. We will examine what a group is, who I am inside a group and which relationships we sustain in groups. We will follow the evolving group language – in words, picture and live photography – and explore the role of the gaze and the role of the gaze and of listening in a group setting.

The course ties together various practices in therapy through photography, with theoretical aspects that enable students to establish and deepen their therapeutic capacity. Students will be assigned exercises related to processes, while taking part in class discussions on the theoretical background of each exercise, based on a Jungian perspective on dream and shadow, architypes and the potential of human growth and change. Each student will finish the course with a useful and practical package of practices, backed by theory, for their future therapy practice. The exercises cover a variety of possibilities of encounters between the patient and the photographic image, the act of photography, the personal-familial photograph.

The course takes students on a photographic journey inside themselves and their surroundings. They will create personal photographic research, related to and emerging from their own lives, their biography, personal history, relationships, questions, or anything else that may surface during their phototherapy studies and practicum, and requires further observation. We will emphasize a profound understanding of the photographic language and enhance the participants’ ability to read and decipher photography (understanding the photograph as a metaphor, reading personal symbolism). We will also explore possible relationships between image and word.
The course will also constitute a ground for discussion with the medium through an emotional perspective – a search for deep undercurrents and hidden layers (covert and overt). This will be an opportunity to combine perspectives: to be both the research subject and the observer and researcher. We will think about the photographic act and its outcome as an instrument for correction, treating memories, creating personal change or as a therapeutic tool for the artist.

As students near their graduation and prepare to finish their studies, in this workshop they will produce personal writing and creation of a practical work plan towards a photographic event, in the spirit of Ariella Azoulay’s writing. An event that brings together people around and on account of a camera or photograph. Through a series of practical experiences, observation of photography works, reading and group sharing, we will build and improve together an idea for the evet and a work plan for its future execution. The aim of the workshop is to address the world outside the framework of the school, outlining a work plan waiting to be executed, and implement in it a variety of photographic and therapeutic tools, collected throughout the study program.