David Brooks once said: “Being a writer is like a beggar telling other beggars where he had found bread. So, if I read or hear something that’s useful to me, I love sharing it.” (1)
I approach the courses I design in a very similar way. I usually begin with questions that are alive for me at that particular moment, whether they emerge from my clinical work or from my personal life. As I deepen my understanding of what has already been written about those subjects and gradually integrate theory with my own experience, I begin to develop a personal relationship with them. In other words, while preparing a course, I myself go through a process of learning and change, which is never entirely straightforward. Over time, as the experience settles within me, I develop my own language for describing the psychological phenomena I am studying. From that point onwards, sharing what I have learned becomes a natural continuation of the learning process.
Here is what Cristina Alexandra Pop, a fellow psychotherapist and participant in my Transgenerational Trauma course, says:
“As with all of Ioana’s courses, I appreciated the way she organised very dense information into something easy to understand, as well as the way she facilitated interaction within the group. The combination of theory, professional examples and personal reflections kept my interest alive throughout the course. Her attitude of genuine respect and openness towards participants also helped me feel that there was room for each of us, with our own experiences, questions and perspectives.”
Adults learn best when they are exploring subjects that already matter to them and have immediate relevance to their lives. This is one of the fundamental ways in which adult learning (andragogy) differs from the way children learn (pedagogy). At the same time, both have something in common: every learning process involves an encounter between something new and something already familiar, and this encounter inevitably creates tension.
For this reason, learning is not simply a process of acquiring information, but also one of internal reorganisation. Sometimes new ideas are exciting, and at other times they are unsettling because they require us to reorganise ourselves psychologically. Maslow beautifully describes this oscillation between the need for safety and the desire for growth: “We grow forward when the delights of growth and the anxieties of safety are greater than the anxieties of growth and the delights of safety.” (2)
I also believe that the fact that I grew up in a post-communist country influences the way I approach teaching, particularly through the heightened sensitivity to authority that such an experience can leave behind. Over time, I have come to realise, sometimes painfully, that adults do not enter a classroom simply with a desire to learn something new. They also bring with them a personal and cultural history of their relationship with authority, mistakes, doubt, and the freedom to think for themselves. These aspects often remain invisible, yet they profoundly shape the learning process.
In this respect, Claude Steiner’s (3) ideas about authority have strongly influenced my practice. He proposes a shift in perspective: from understanding power as the ability to control others to understanding it as the capacity to create change; from relationships based on hierarchy to relationships built on grounding, passion, communication, knowledge and shared values; and from acting upon others to a way of being in which who we are becomes just as important as what we do.
Perhaps this is precisely why, for me, teaching is neither an exercise of authority nor a process of transmitting correct answers. What interests me, instead, is creating a space where people can express both their curiosity and their competence, and where they can think together, out loud, about what they know and what they do not yet know. I am also interested in honouring that internal space between “no longer” and “not yet”, which emerges when something new begins to take shape within us.
Ultimately, I believe this is one of the things I try to model and encourage in all my courses: the courage to think for oneself without losing connection with others.
References:
1. David Brooks – How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
2. Knowles, M. S., Holton, E. F., & Swanson, R. A. (2015). The adult learner: The definitive classic in adult education and human resource development (8th ed.). Routledge.
3. Steiner, C. M. (1987). The seven sources of power: An alternative to authority. Transactional Analysis Journal, 17(3), 102–104.