At the 2018 APA Convention, Dr. Ilene Serlin, a Fellow of Division 10, received the Rollo May Award from APA Division 32, the Society for Humanistic Psychology. This award is “given to an individual in recognition of distinguished lifetime contributions to humanistic psychology.”
In her address, her theme was the importance of the arts for the craft of psychotherapy. She built of Rollo May’s understanding of the arts as a way of seeing and of being in the world, with an added dimension of embodiment. An embodied existential/humanistic psychology would understand dance as a way of, as the theologian David Miller says, seeing the world “with dancing eyes.” Serlin built on Rollo May’s support of social justice by showing video clips of her dance therapy work with Syrian refugees and other international trauma centers. Finally, she built on Rollo May’s self-description as a “Gentle Warrior” by showing art activism in a local context.
Our congratulations to Ilene for this lifetime achievement award!