The 2009 CASA Conference was a resounding success according to feedback from over 100 people who attended the event. Big thanks to members and colleagues who participated in the conference. Contributions great and small were much appreciated.

Planning for the next conference has already begun. We welcome your ideas about themes and speakers or your participation on the organising committee, if that’s your thing.

If you have an idea you’d like to pass on, or you think you’d like to be one of the organisers, please let us know via conference@casa.asn.au

For those of you who attended the conference, Dr Stefan Neszpor, our keynote speaker, has provided a hard copy of slides and a bibliography of his presentation.  If you would like a copy, please email CASA at admin@casa.asn.au with 'Conference Slides' in the Subject Line.

Please note that this material is available only to those who attended the conference. If any of the material is to be distributed, acknowledgment of the author must be included and commercial copyright should be respected.

David Hawke
CASA Conference Convenor

US Psychiatrist and researcher Norman Doidge is a name that may not be familiar in Australian counselling circles, but it soon will be.

Doidge was at last month’s Happiness conference in Sydney to promote his new book: ‘THE BRAIN THAT CHANGES ITSELF, Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science,’ a book of enormous importance for counsellors around the world.

It is revolutionary work. Going back to Descartes, the brain was thought of as a machine, sectioned off, each part performing one function from a single location. It was thought to be hard-wired, like a computer. It was assumed that all our brain circuits are genetically predetermined, formed and finalised in childhood.

It was also assumed that anyone with a learning disorder or head trauma had to live with it because machines don’t change or grow new parts. But an astonishing new scientific discovery called neuroplasticity has proved this view not only wrong, but spectacularly wrong.

In his book Doidge describes a woman born with half a brain that actually re-wired itself in the womb and early infancy to work as a whole; of stroke patients recovering their faculties after conventional medicine had given up on them; of children with cerebral palsy learning to control their limbs; and of blind people who learn to see.

Learning disorders that were once thought of as incurable are now being cured.

More pertinent to our community, Doidge shows how cases of severe depression and anxiety can be addressed without drugs or invasive surgery, using certain counselling techniques. He further demonstrates how these techniques cause radical changes in the brain and can now be mapped using the latest technology.

Scientists can now demonstrate that the brain can literally change its shape and function through learning, sensing, thinking, feeling and even, at times, imagining.

He shows how astonishing improvements in severe obsessive compulsive disorders and even lifelong relationship problems can be achieved, and affords insights into how the brain re-maps itself during such therapy.

This is startling – and enormously important – news for our profession.

Curiously, this same brain ‘plasticity’ is shown to be responsible not only for our most flexible, but also our most rigid, behaviours. Doidge calls it the ‘plastic paradox’.

Plasticity is like snow on a hill in winter. Because the snow is pliable and plastic, you can take many paths down the hill, you can be flexible. If you have a good first run, chances are your second run will be close to the first one. If you keep it up, soon you form tracks in the snow. These tracks then become ruts.

But what may serve us in childhood may not serve us as adults, for example. But it is very hard to get out of a rut. However because the brain is plastic it can be trained to form new paths. Neuroplasticity can show us precisely where as counsellors we have the opportunity to retrain even clients with severe childhood trauma or compensations.

If we do it successfully we can actually not only change behaviours, we can actually remould the brain of ourselves and our clients for a more successful and fulfilling life.

Diana Capaldo
Acting Editor

If You Are A Professional Member of CASA …
Then you should be listed as a Provisional Member of the PACFA National Register.  Go to the PACFA website at www.pacfa.org.au and check if you are listed.

If you are not, then apply for Provisional Listing by 30 June 2009 and it is free!  After that it there will be a fee for listing.  Every Professional Member needs to apply!  It is that important! You will find the necessary forms in the Member Area of our web site (see the next news item for login details).

If you are already listed on the Register, then, yes it is renewal time.  Completing the Register Renewal paper work is in addition to your CASA renewal!  Please note that maintaining a listing on this national Register is contingent on your continuing membership with CASA.

We've given our web site a facelift! You have probably noticed that our logo and general colour scheme has been undergoing a change lately. Those of you who attended the PD day in March or the 2009 Conference, would have seen evidence of this in the banners displayed at those events. You can also see the cleaner, simpler look of the header banner in this eNews.

There is now a "Member Area" on the web site which can be accessed only if you log in using your email address and Membership Number. Once logged in, you will see an expanded navigation menu that gives access to information not available to the general visitor. For example, you can easily update your profile and contact details, or download specific documents and forms. We are continuing to add more information for the benefit of members.

Why not take a look and try out the new features? www.casa.asn.au

In the coming weeks we will be launching our new advertising service exclusively for CASA Professional and Registered counsellors as an alternative to the traditional Yellow Pages listing. People searching on the internet for counsellors will be directed to a special directory on our web site, displaying information about counsellors who are subscribed to the service (see image). Your listing can have up to 50 words of descriptive information about your practice, 2 contact numbers and an email address.

Optionally, you can insert a photograph, web site address, and list for multiple suburbs. Unlike Yellow Pages, you can update your details or subscribe at any time throughout the year. Note that this is an additional service to Yellow Pages advertising, not a replacement. You can opt to use either or both forms of advertising.

If you are eligible* and wish to participate, act now by emailing us at admin@casa.asn.au.

* Subscribers must be Professional or Registered CASA members and have current indemnity insurance.