The Library of Repair

Course Description

The Library of Repair is Dea Jenkins's participatory installation. In this guided session she leads licensed clinicians through an exploration of repair at three levels — personal, relational, and social or systemic. She opens with the philosophy of repair behind the installation, then guides participants through an experiential creative practice to explore a particular dimension of repair. What participants make can stay in the room for others to build on and learn from. The subject is repair; art is the medium, and no art experience is needed.

The session closes with a facilitated group reflection, inviting participants to consider what repair asks of people, relationships, and communities, as they’ve experienced how creative practices can provide different ways of viewing these questions.

This is self-of-the-therapist training: clinicians engage ideas of repair through their own experience, so they can bring that understanding to supporting repair in their clients' lives and in the therapeutic relationship.

Instructor Information

Educational Goals

1. Develop a working account of repair at three levels — personal, relational, and social or systemic.
2. Develop first-hand experience of what repair asks of a person, through guided experiential creative practices.
3. Develop an appreciation of repair as a shared process, in which what one person makes can add to what others learn.
4. Explore repair as an ongoing process rather than solely an outcome or return to a previous state.

Measurable Learning Objectives

1. Participants will be able to describe three levels of repair — personal, relational, and social or systemic.
2. Participants will be able to identify conditions that support repair, drawn from the session's experiential practices and prompts.
3. Participants will be able to describe how creative practices can provide opportunities for reflection, meaning-making, attention, and participation in processes of repair.
4. Participants will be able to describe repair at the social or systemic level as a shared process of healing self and community.
5. Participants will be able to identify at least one way their understanding of repair has shifted through experiential engagement.

Outline with Main Points for Each Topic (including times)

1. 9:45–9:50 AM · Opening Practice — 5 minutes

   • Orienting to space and topic

2. 9:50–10:00 AM · The Philosophy of Repair — 10 minutes

   • Working theory of repair principles

3. 10:00–10:50 AM · Guided Practice — 50 minutes

   • Three levels of repair: personal, relational, and social or systemic through creative practice and prompts

4. 10:50–10:55 AM · Closing Practice — 5 minutes

   • Synthesizing making process and theory

5. 10:55–11:15 AM · Group Reflection — 20 minutes

   • What participants noticed about repair across the three prompts
   • Conditions that support repair
   • Questions

Total instructional time: 5 + 10 + 50 + 5 + 20 = 90 minutes / 60 = 1.5 CE hours

Signing in and out

• Sign in at the door between 9:30 AM and 9:45 AM.
• Sign out and complete this session’s evaluation at the door when it ends at 11:15 AM.
• Sign-in, sign-out and the evaluation are not part of the 1.5 CE hours.

References

• Mueller, D., Bacalso, E., Ortega-Williams, A., Pate, D. J., Jr., & Topitzes, J. (2021). A mutual process of healing self and healing the community: A qualitative study of coping with and healing from stress, adversity, and trauma among diverse residents of a midwestern city. Journal of Community Psychology, 49(5), 1169–1194. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.22530
• Muran, J. C., Eubanks, C. F., & Samstag, L. W. (2023). Introduction: Rupture in a wicked and wonderful world. In C. F. Eubanks, L. W. Samstag, & J. C. Muran (Eds.), Rupture and repair in psychotherapy: A critical process for change (pp. 3–20). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000306-001
• Park, C. L. (2022). Meaning making following trauma. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, Article 844891. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.844891