Workshops
Industry Leading Faculty, Current Topics
Caspersen workshop presenters are internationally-known speakers, authors, therapists and social workers practicing in a range of settings. Attend workshops online from anywhere or view a recording.
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Your Magic Wand Is Ready for Pick-up: Incorporating Narrative Ideas into Your Practice
Friday, October 3, 2025, 9 AM - 12:30 PM Central
Diane Jorgensen, LICSW (Live Online from Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Participate Live Online, On-Site at Caspersen or Access Recording
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Early Registration rate of $85 (ends Sept 26), Regular Registration, $99
Student, Group and Foreign Currency Discounts Available
3.5 CEUs, See registration page for details​
Description:
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Narrative therapy is a post-modern approach to direct practice with individuals, couples, families and groups. The Narrative Worldview affirms that all of us have inherent strengths and abilities. Practitioners in Narrative Therapy assist in determining people's values, hopes, and dreams and enhancing aspects of their lives that support their personal agency and their preferred ways of being in the world. Narrative therapy sees problems as external to people, and works toward understanding how individuals and support systems can work together to fight the negative impact of problems. Narrative therapy is a good fit for those in the helping professions who want to learn compassionate, respectful, non-pathologizing ways to creatively work with people struggling against problems.
Narrative Therapy principles and the narrative therapy worldview are versatile across behavioral health/ mental health, medical, and social work settings and can improve the efficacy of your practice. This workshop will present a summary of the Narrative Worldview as well as some of the primary principles of Narrative Therapy. The workshop is intended for professionals with a wide range of experiences using narrative ideas, from those with a newfound curiosity to this modality as well as those with previous training in Narrative Therapy.
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Objectives:
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Have a good understanding of the Narrative World View
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Be able to identify several key principles of Narrative Therapy
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Be able to incorporate at least one Narrative Therapy technique immediately into your practice
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About the Speaker:
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Diane Jorgensen, LICSW, is a medical social worker, psychotherpist, and clinical social work supervisor in Minneapolis. She has been using Narrative Therapy principles for over a decade and considers the Narrative Perspective to be the foundation of her practice. It resonates with her understanding of people, problems, and systems, and fits well with her spiritual awareness and beliefs. Diane has an Advance Training Certificate in Narrative Therapy from the Caspersen Training Center. She has a passion for bringing Narrative Ideas out of the confines of the private therapists' office and into the broader world of interdisciplinary professionals who work with all kinds of people dealing with all kinds of problems.
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Beads of Life
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Friday, December 5, 2025, 9 AM - 12:30 PM Central
Sara Portnoy (Live Online from London, England)
Participate Live Online or Access Recording
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Early Registration rate of $85, Regular Registration, $99
Student, Group and Foreign Currency Discounts Available
3.5 CEUs, See registration page for details
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Workshop Description:
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This is an experiential workshop. It will give attendees the opportunity to learn about the Beads of Life, which is a metaphoric practice, which can be used with anyone who has a problem dominating their life. This practice can be used with individuals, families and as a group practice. I often say that young people push me to be creative and many adults that I work with appreciate working more creatively using both words and metaphors.
This practice begins by getting to know the person apart from the dominant problem story by encouraging people to choose beads to represent the many stories of their lives that are outside the influence of challenges. Once the person is in a safe place to stand and we have heard their preferred identity stories we then begin to choose different beads to represent stories related to the problem, its effects and the ways they have found to respond during challenging times.
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Objectives:
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1. Experience the Beads of Life Practice.
2. Have an introduction to narrative theory and how it relates to “The Beads of Life”
3. Have an opportunity to practice narrative questioning and being an outsider witness
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About the Speaker:
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Sara Portnoy is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist who has worked with children and their families for more than 30 years. Since 2004, she has worked at University College Hospital in London (UCLH) with children and their families where the child has a complex medical condition. She also works for a Paediatric Palliative Care and Bereavement team, visiting families in their own homes. Between 2016-2019 as part of the Refugee Resilience Collective she worked with refugees and non-governmental organisations in France. In 2023, supported by the Dulwich Centre, she had the opportunity to work with The Armenian Spiritual and Revival Foundation.
Her therapeutic work is informed by narrative practices and mindfulness. She has developed “The Beads of Life”, a metaphoric practice for working with people where there is a challenge dominating their lives. In her clinical work, she uses a variety of collective narrative practices e.g. collective song writing, collective poetic documents.
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​Speculative Imagination: Futuring and Chronotopes in Narrative Therapy
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Friday, February 6, 2026, 9 AM - 12:30 PM Central
Chris Hoff, Ph.D., LMFT (Live Online from Orange County, California)
Participate Live Online or Access Recording
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Early Registration rate of $85, Regular Registration, $99
Student, Group and Foreign Currency Discounts Available
3.5 CEUs, See registration page for details
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Workshop Description:
In times of uncertainty, clients often find themselves stuck in stories that limit their sense of possibility. Narrative therapy has long emphasized how people live through and with stories, yet the question of time and future remains undertheorized. This workshop introduces two vital concepts for contemporary practice: futuring, practices that help people imagine and author futures worth living into, and chronotopes, the time–space patterns that shape how life stories are organized and experienced.
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Drawing from Michael White’s work on liminal space, Pierre Wack’s scenario planning, and Mikhail Bakhtin’s chronotopes, we will explore how therapists can scaffold imaginative practices with clients who face impasses, transitions, or crises of meaning. Participants will leave with practical maps and questions to help clients move beyond the pull of the known past toward more spacious and hopeful futures.
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By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:
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Define and describe the concept of chronotopes and their significance for narrative therapy practice.
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Identify how futuring practices can support clients navigating liminal spaces and life transitions.
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Apply at least two narrative therapy exercises (scenario mapping, chronotope mapping, or “what if” questioning) to clinical conversations.
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Develop strategies for integrating speculative imagination into therapeutic work while remaining grounded in narrative principles.
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About the Speaker:
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Chris Hoff, PhD, LMFT is a narrative therapist, educator, and founder of the California Family Institute in Orange County, CA. He is host of The Radical Therapist podcast and teaches widely on poststructural, relational, and creative practices in therapy. His current work explores chronotopes and futuring as new resources for navigating liminal spaces and composing lives otherwise. Chris integrates philosophy, futures thinking, and Zen practice into his approach, helping therapists expand their imagination and craft practices that are poetic, political, and relational.
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Building a Stronger Sense of Agency
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Thursday, March 5, 2026, 6 PM - 9:30 PM Central
Loretta Pederson (Live Online from Adelaide, Australia)
Participate Live Online or Access Recording
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Early Registration rate of $85, Regular Registration, $99
Student, Group and Foreign Currency Discounts Available
3.5 CEUs, See registration page for details
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Workshop Description:
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How can we respond to people who’ve seemed to have lost their sense of being able to influence their own lives? When depression, grief, violence or oppression have robbed people of a sense of agency, how can we offer something useful? During this interactive workshop, participants will explore ways that therapists can use narrative practices to assist people to build a stronger sense of agency. There will be opportunities for discussion and for participants to try out some of these ideas in an experiential exercise.
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Objectives:​
Participants will:
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Become more familiar with ways a diminished sense of agency can show up in sessions
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Consider which narrative practices assist with building a stronger sense of agency
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Find alternatives to offering praise or advice when people seem to be struggling
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Become familiar with the migration of identity map as one way to support people through difficult periods of change
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About the Speaker:
Loretta Pederson
Master of Narrative Therapy and Community Work; BA (Welfare Studies); Supervision Course
Clinical member of Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia (PACFA)
Accredited supervisor with PACFA
Loretta Pederson has, for 25 years, worked with families and individuals who are responding to complex issues such as mental health struggles, family violence, sexual assault, and drug and alcohol issues. She has managed an Intensive Family Preservation Service and is currently in independent practice offering counselling, supervision and training. Loretta is on the teaching team for Dulwich Centre, Adelaide and has facilitated workshops in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Brazil, Singapore, Qatar, Türkiye and Greece. Loretta also works for Dulwich Centre/University of Melbourne, overseeing and supporting tutors and students in the Masters of Narrative Therapy and Community Work. For several years she volunteered for QLife (LGBTIQA+ phone counselling service) responding to distressed callers and assessing new volunteers.
Narrative ideas have been an integral part of Loretta’s counselling, case management and group work over the past 20 years. Loretta’s article ‘Sharing sadness and finding small pieces of justice: Acts of resistance and acts of reclaiming in working with women who’ve been subjected to abuse’ was published in the Narrative Therapy and Community Work Journal in 2015. In 2024 Loretta’s book, Honouring Resistance and Building Solidarity: Feminism and Narrative Practicewas published, which includes examples from practice and questions practitioners can utilise when working with people facing class, education, race, sexual-identity and/or gender discrimination.