Family mediation is a rapidly growing area of counselling and mental health that fosters exploration and negotiation of human relationships and conflicts at the ground zero of social functioning: the family. A family mediator enables dialogue among individuals, adults and children living in a state of deep conflict and crisis, unable to speak, listen to each other, or think together. Issues and situations that they may be dealing with, individually and collectively, are often multi-layered with complex legal, social and psychological undertones.

In this course, two family mediators with combined experience in clinical psychology, psychoanalysis, and law will offer the participants an opportunity to dive deeper into the keystones of the mediation process from a psychodynamic and psychoanalytic perspective.

The instructors stand by a view that the integrative approach to mental care, captured in the model of “continuous care” by a variety of therapeutic and social means, is an important and necessary element of work with our patients/clients and their families. Accordingly, this Extension Course will offer psychological perspectives on the difficult issues of mediation encountered by professionals of various backgrounds: psychotherapists and counsellors, lawyers, judges, arbitrators, social workers and public health professionals.

The participants will learn, through discussion, play and analysis of real case scenarios, about the following:
Session 1: Assessing readiness for mediation; Mediator’s authority and potential of conflict of interest: how to understand and use them without affecting mediator’s creativity and neutrality.

Session 2: Emotions and impasses in mediation: how to understand, tolerate and productively work with difficult emotional states, resistances and invisible relational dynamics affecting the process.

Session 3: Trauma and violence in marriage and beyond: ways of understanding and addressing these in mediation for transformative results.

Session 4: Parents/child triangle: how to address the complex dynamics presented by the “best interests of the child” model.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

1. Gain a deeper understanding of the mediator’s role and influence on the mediation process;
2. Learn, through a psychoanalytic lens, to discern how basic mental processes (projections, identifications, defences, etc.) underlying human thinking and behaviour guide the communication process into blocks and resistance;
3. Learn to identify and work with intense emotions (anger, envy, guilt, love and so on) to unlock the doors to connection and collaboration;
4. Learn psychodynamic ways of listening to the clients and oneself, to ask better questions and make more precise and insightful interpretations.

Elena Reshetnikova BA, BCL, LLB

Elena Reshetnikova BA, BCL, LLB is a lawyer and mediator with over 20 years of experience in managing complex negotiations and dispute resolution. In the past 10 years, Elena has been an ardent student of psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and neuro-psychoanalysis, training at four psychotherapeutic programs in Canada and internationally, and is currently completing her clinical work with patients at the Toronto Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Hayley MacPhail M.Ed, BACYW

Hayley MacPhail M.Ed, BACYW is an accredited Family Mediator with the Ontario Association of Family Mediators and a Chartered Mediator with the Alternative Dispute Resolution of Ontario/Canada. Hayley has a long history of working within ADR practices and social justice models, including as a child Wraparound facilitator and a Family Group Conference Coordinator. Hayley has a Master of Education in Counselling Psychology with UofT. Her education started as a Child and Youth Counsellor, working to support youth and families in the Mental Health, Child Welfare and Justice systems. Hayley has worked as a Professor in Postsecondary Education for over 20 years and presently as an instructor with Herzing College, Mediation program, and an accredited family mediation trainer.