Past CPDs and Events

Key information

Date: Saturday, 27 November 2021
Time: 10am to 2pm
Speakers: Dr Avi Shmueli, Professor Brett Kahr, Dr Damian McCann, Katherine Astill
Venue: This is an online event which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

The Divorce and Separation Consultation Service at Tavistock Relationships offers therapeutic help for couples and individuals going through separation, divorce or civil partnership dissolution, often at times of immense crisis and psychological distress.

In this four-hour online workshop, the approach that has been developed over many years at Tavistock Relationships will be explored. The workshop will be rich in clinical material, including presentations from Dr Damian McCann and Katherine Astill, experienced couple psychoanalytic psychotherapists who work within this service at TR. Attendees are also invited to bring their own experiences of work in this area for discussion in the group.

There will be presentations from Dr Avi Shmueli, psychoanalyst and couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist and head of the Divorce and Separation Consultation Service, and from Professor Brett Kahr, couple and individual psychotherapist and senior fellow at the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology.

Dr Avi Shmueli will present his thinking on the nature of this particular therapeutic intervention, and its inherent stresses, for therapists working in the field as much as for the patients who seek consultation. Therapists are often required to adopt different and sometimes conflicting clinical perspectives simultaneously. His presentation aims to identify the nature of the stresses upon the therapist and how these may be borne and even utilised in the course of working with divorcing couples.

Professor Brett Kahr will explore the pathogenic effect of what he has termed ‘micro-separations’ upon couple mental health. Although many couples suffer tremendous devastation in the wake of explosive events, such as extramarital affairs or bereavements, many others struggle with the almost invisible cumulative trauma which develop in the wake of multiple brief separations such as neglect and misattunement.

Programme

10am to 11am - Dr Avi Shmueli
11am to 11.15am - Break
11.15am to 12pm - Clinical presentations: Dr Damian McCann, Katherine Astill
12pm to 12.45pm - Group discussion
12.45pm to 1pm - Break
1pm to 2pm - Professor Brett Kahr

About the speakers

Dr Avi Shmueli

Dr Avi Shmueli is a psychoanalyst and couple psychotherapist, having initially trained as a clinical psychologist. He has worked in the NHS, the Anna Freud Centre and was a staff member at the Tavistock Relationships for many years. Committed to psychoanalysis as a theory for understanding the mind and as a model of clinical practice, he has pursued its different applications including empirical research and completed a PhD at University College London in the field of Attachment Theory. He now works in private practice, supervises the work of the TR’s Divorce and Separation Consultation Service, and pursues the application of psychoanalysis to the fields of both family and criminal law

Professor Brett Kahr

Professor Brett Kahr has worked in the mental health field for more than 40 years. He is Senior Fellow at the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology in London and, also, Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis and Mental Health in the Regent’s School of Psychotherapy and Psychology at Regent’s University London. Kahr has contributed to many branches of the mental health profession, as a clinician, researcher, teacher, supervisor, author, editor and broadcaster, having held posts ranging from Trustee of the Freud Museum London to Resident Psychotherapist for the British Broadcasting Corporation. A Trustee of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy and, also, the Chair of the Scholars Committee of the British Psychoanalytic Council, Kahr has authored 15 books and has served as series editor for more than 65 further titles. His most recent books include: Bombs in the Consulting Room: Surviving Psychological Shrapnel (Routledge/Taylor and Francis Group, 2020), Celebrity Mad: Why Otherwise Intelligent People Worship Fame (Routledge/Taylor and Francis Group, 2020) and Dangerous Lunatics: Trauma, Criminality, and Forensic Psychotherapy (Confer Books, 2020). His next book, due shortly for publication, is entitled Freud’s Pandemics: Surviving Global War, Spanish Flu, and the Nazis. A Consultant Psychotherapist at The Balint Consultancy, he works with individuals and couples in Central London.

Dr Damian McCann

Damian started his training at Tavistock Relationships in 2008. Whilst training he began working at Tavistock Relationships where he established and co-ordinated the Wellbeing Service for Couples which offered a brief therapeutic intervention to couples. Since then, he has had a number of roles within Tavistock Relationships; as project lead for the delivery of training to senior CAMHS practitioners; Head of Clinical Services with responsibility for Intake and Allocation and Chair of Ethics. He has a particular interest in developing psychoanalytic ideas in regard to gender and sexuality and is also involved in thinking about couples and domestic violence. He holds a Professional Doctorate in Systemic Psychotherapy.

Katherine Astill

Katherine trained at Tavistock Relationships initially as a couple and individual psychodynamic counsellor and psychotherapist and subsequently as a couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist. She is a faculty staff member, working as Clinical Lead on intake and allocations, particularly of low fee cases, and as a seminar leader and academic tutor.

Key information

Date: Saturday, 6 November 2021
Time: 10am to 1pm
Speakers: Dr Judith Pickering, Psychoanalytic Couple and Family Therapist, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist and Training Analyst
Venue: This is an online event which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

Using Bion’s love life to explore the relevance of his life-work to couple-work, this seminar applies his clinical thinking to the area of psychoanalytic psychotherapy with couples. So much of Bion’s oeuvre is relevant to psychoanalytic work with couples, such as container-contained, analytic reverie, alpha function, at-one-ment, emotional links of K H and L, Bion’s negative epistemology, and transformations in O.

We will see how transformations in O are transformations in love and how finding fulfilment of our deepest potentialities takes place within the crucible of relationship. Becoming who we are is a becoming in and through love. We uncover our truest nature and become most authentically real through the difficult and fearful, yet transformative intersubjective crucibles of our intimate relationships. Yet numerous psychological obstacles obstruct such realisation. We will show how couple therapy may enable a couple to work through such obstacles, freeing them to experience transformations in O through love: just as Bion did through his relationship with Francesca.

The seminar also focuses on the vital role of negative epistemology in couple work. Bion’s contribution to such negative epistemology includes his writings on the K link, the psychoanalytic application of Keats’s concept of negative capability, and Henri Poincaré’s selected fact. The paper also describes the interlocking traumatic scene and the conjoint selected fact.

Liberally illustrated with clinical material, this seminar charts the difficult psychological terrain leading towards becoming O in and through love.

About the speaker

Dr Judith Pickering is a is a Psychoanalytic Couple and Family Therapist, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist and Training Analyst, working in private practice in Sydney, Australia. She is the author of Being in Love: Therapeutic Pathways Through Psychological Obstacles to Love (Routledge, 2008) and The Search for Meaning in Psychotherapy: Spiritual Practice, the Apophatic Way and Bion (Routledge, 2019), a 2020 American Board & Academy of Psychoanalysis (ABAPsa) book award winner, as well as numerous peer reviewed articles on analytical psychology, psychoanalytic psychotherapy and couple therapy.

She has lectured and taught widely in Australia, USA and Europe including Tavistock Relationships, Confer and The British Association for Psychotherapy, London; The International Association of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis, Lyon; The Journal of Analytical Psychology conferences in Oxford, St Petersburg, Italy and Berlin; Bion in Boston; Art & Psyche, Sicily; The International Family Therapy Association, Turkey; and The Australian and New Zealand Society of Analytical Psychologists annual conferences, Sydney. She teaches and supervises for both ANZSJA and ANZAP.

She is on the editorial Board of the Journal of Analytical Psychology, London and Couple and Family Psychoanalysis, London. She is a member of The Couple and Family Psychotherapy Association of Australasia, the British Society of Couple Psychotherapists and Counsellors, the International Association of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis, The International Association for Analytical Psychology, The Australian and New Zealand Society of Analytical Psychologists and The Australian and New Zealand Society of Analytical Psychologists.

Key information

Date: Friday, 8 October 2021
Time: 10am to 1pm
Speaker: Susanna Abse, couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist and a Senior Fellow of The Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology
Venue: Hallam House, Hallam Street, London W1W 6JL 

Description

Little has been written about the differences between couple and individual psychotherapy and how these modalities impact on individual development. This workshop will examine some of these differences, and explore why some patients seem to do better in couple work and why some need an individual space.

Research around outcomes from these two modalities will be discussed, together with exploration of the different qualities and capacities therapists need for couple and individual work. Technical issues about the building of a therapeutic alliance, the use of the transference and endings will be addressed. Attention will also be given to issues around those patients who have simultaneous couple and individual therapy.

The workshop, which is suitable for both individual and couple psychotherapists, will consist of theoretical and case presentations and will offer plenty of opportunity for discussion.

About the speaker

Susanna Abse is a couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist and a Senior Fellow of The Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology. She has worked in private practice with couples, parents and individuals since 1991. She is the current Chair of The British Psychoanalytic Council and was CEO of Tavistock Relationships from 2006 to 2016. She recently became a Trustee of The Freud Museum in London.

She has published widely on couple psychotherapy, parenting and family policy and how these areas need to be at the heart of progressive welfare provision. Her many publications include writings for the Journal of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis, The New Statesman, New Associations and for the Open Society European Policy Institute. In 2019, she made a series of Films for Channel 4 news which looked at the psychological aspects of Brexit. She is currently preparing a book on relationships, Tell Me the Truth about Love, for Ebury Press which will be published in the summer of 2022. Susanna works from offices in Queen Anne Street, central London.

Key information

Date: Friday, 24 September 2021
Time: 6pm to 7pm
Speaker: Julia Samuel MBE UKCP, BACP acc psychotherapist
Venue: This is an online event which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

Julia Samuel’s latest book, This Too Shall Pass: Stories of Change, Crisis and Hopeful Beginnings, examines the human struggle to adapt to change, whether prompted by the milestones in life, or by more obviously traumatic experiences. It is made up of nineteen clinical examples, which cover the arc of human development, from first jobs and first loves to children, leaving home and retirement, set against the latest research in this area.

In this early-evening event, Julia will talk about her clinical experiences with patients in which change has proved so demanding, from a new mother struggling with the decision to return to work, to a woman deciding whether to leave her husband for a younger lover, to a man struggling to repair his marriage after the trauma of suffering with Covid-19.

At a time when our lives, and our clinical work, have been so disrupted by the ongoing pandemic, there will be the opportunity to think about the meaning of change in this particular context. There will also be the opportunity for attendees to bring their own comments or questions for Julia’s attention.

About the speaker

Julia Samuel MBE Msc, MBACP (Snr Accredited) UKCP Registered Psychotherapist

Julia is a leading UK psychotherapist. At St Mary's Hospital Paddington, she established the post of psychotherapist for Paediatrics, where her role for 25 years involved seeing families who have children or babies who die, and where she trained and supported the staff.

In 1994 she worked to help launch and establish The Child Bereavement UK and as the Founder Patron was involved in many aspects of the charity’s work, having a key role in fundraising, strategy and training. She has stepped back from active involvement now.

In 2016 Julia was awarded an MBE in recognition of her services to bereaved children and in 2017 Middlesex University awarded her an Honorary Doctorate.

In 2017 Julia published Grief Works which was a Sunday Times bestseller in the UK and has been published in 17 countries. In March 2020 she published This Too Shall Pass: Stories of Change, Crisis and Hopeful Beginnings, which is also a Sunday Times bestseller.

She also has a private practice where she sees families and individuals for many different issues.

Time: 10am to 4:30pm - 6 to 10 September 2021
Trainers: Tavistock Relationships Staff
Venue: This is an Online School which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

This course is open to those interested in learning more about couple relationships and about working with couples from a psychodynamic perspective. It will be useful to individual counsellors and individual, child, family and group psychotherapists, and to those in the helping professions, such as clinical psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers.

The course aims to:

• introduce the central concepts used in understanding unconscious processes in couple interaction
• offer a framework for understanding conscious and unconscious communication in couples that is grounded in theory, clinical case examples and seminar discussion
• enable you to begin to make use of psychodynamic concepts in formulating and understanding the relationship aspect of your work with couples or individuals
• give each participant the opportunity to present some work and learn from the work of others.

Two lectures each day will include:

• transference and countertransference in couple therapy
• working with the sexual relationship
• unconscious processes in the couple relationship
• thinking about the couple in individual work.

There will also be two participant clinical presentations each day, providing an opportunity for attendees to discuss their own material in small groups led by experienced couple therapists.

About the trainers

This Summer School will be delivered by Tavistock Relationships staff.

Key information

Date: Friday, 2 July 2021
Time: 5.45pm to 7pm
Speaker: Narendra Keval, Psychoanalyst, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist and Consultant Clinical Psychologist
Venue: This is an online event which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

Racial preoccupations, whether explicit, subtle or provocative, present us with particular challenges when they emerge in the clinical situation. In this online lecture, Narendra Keval will suggest a dimension of listening that tries to discern patients’ use and misuse of the therapist as a pathway to understanding the many layers of meanings, from a wish to explore and engage with curiosity to a retreat into the refuge of racist thinking and feeling.

Racist moments can have a particular volatility that intends to provoke by creating a regressive pull in words towards the concreteness of bodily action. This presents difficulties in remaining receptive enough to be affected but not infected, and to continue thinking.

Where it is possible to maintain a robust emotional presence, small amounts of thoughtfulness can emerge incrementally. This may turn the tide to help the patient find enough strength to resist the turn to a racist solution for their difficulties, and it can even create an opening for their own curiosity to unfold.

In his paper, Narendra Keval will describe some of the clinical challenges of listening to the racial dimension in our work in ways that could facilitate the movement from the racially provocative to an evocative world of symbolic meaning that has the potential for shaping the destiny of the moment. There will also be the opportunity for attendees to engage in a discussion.

About the speaker

Narendra Keval is a Psychoanalyst, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist and a Consultant Clinical Psychologist. He has specialised in clinical work with patients suffering from complex personality disorders in a range of settings in the NHS and currently works in full-time private practice. He is a visiting lecturer at the Tavistock Clinic, London and has been a visiting speaker in the UK, Cape Town, South Africa, Washington and New York. He is a member of the British Psychoanalytic Society, Tavistock Society of Psychotherapists, British Psychoanalytic Council and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. His book Racist States of Mind: Understanding the Perversion of Curiosity and Concern was published by Karnac Books in 2016.

Key information

Date: Friday, 16 July 2021
Time: 5.45pm to 7pm
Speaker: Deborah Moggach, OBE, British novelist and award-winning screenwriter
Venue: This is an online event which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

Deborah Moggach is a British novelist and screenwriter with 20 novels to her name, most recently The Carer (Tinder Press) and The Black Dress (Headline Review), the latter of which will be published in July 2021.

In this online event, part of our series Relationships in Literature: the Writing Series at Tavistock Relationships, Moggach will talk about her life in writing. She is known for her sharp, witty novels that capture the complexities of family relationships in a variety of forms – most recently in relation to the challenges of later life.

Tulip Fever (1999), her critically acclaimed love story set in 17th-century Amsterdam, established her reputation. She went on to achieve huge success with These Foolish Things (2004), a bestseller that also found success on the screen as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a romantic comedy about a group of elderly people who relocate to India.

Her latest novels find her at the height of her powers. The Carer is a social comedy about care for the elderly, and a nuanced exploration of sibling as well as marital dynamics. The Black Dress is a darkly funny novel about what it means to be alone.

This online event, held using Zoom, will feature Deborah Moggach in discussion with Lorna Robinson, psychotherapist and head of events at Tavistock Relationships. There will also be the opportunity for attendees to ask questions, and for a group discussion to take place.

About the speaker

Deborah Moggach, OBE, is a British novelist and an award-winning screenwriter. She has written 20 novels, including Tulip Fever, These Foolish Things (which became the bestselling novel and film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel), and The Carer. She lives in London.

Key information

Date: Monday 5 to Friday 9 July 2021
Time: 10am to 5pm
Trainers: Tavistock Relationships staff members including Dr David Hewison and Andrew Balfour
Venue: This school will be delivered online via webcam using Zoom

Description

The 2021 advanced couple therapy online summer school will consider the effects of various kinds of traumatic experience on the life of the couple, and the capacity or otherwise for these ruptures to be survived.

Catastrophic experiences such as illness, bereavement, affairs and loss of employment, as well as experiences triggered by the social or political environment, may challenge a couple’s projective system as well as their capacity for thinking. Ruptures from the past may also overshadow the relationship in the here and now.

The summer school will explore how a couple can be helped in analytic couple psychotherapy to think about the meaning of the traumatic event.

Theoretical and clinical presentations will explore this thinking in terms of the couple relationship, and consider potential ways forward.

The advanced summer school is for couple-trained therapists already working in the field and provides a unique opportunity to immerse yourself in cutting-edge thinking with a world-leading couple psychoanalytic psychotherapy institute.

You will learn and grow as a couple therapist through lectures and twice-daily intensive clinical discussion groups and will study alongside like-minded people from the UK and around the world. Seminars and clinical discussion groups will be led by Tavistock Relationships staff members, all experienced couple therapists, including David Hewison and Andrew Balfour.

About the trainers

Seminars and clinical discussion groups will be led by Tavistock Relationships staff members, all experienced couple therapists, including Dr David Hewison and Andrew Balfour.

Dr David Hewison is Head of Research and Ethics at Tavistock Relationships. He joined in 1996 with a background in adult mental health social work and training. A Jungian analyst and consultant couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist, he has been involved in all aspects of Tavistock Relationships work over the years including being part of the senior management team. He is currently leading the Centre's research and publication functions.

Andrew Balfour is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist trained to work with couples and individuals and is also qualified as a clinical psychologist. He has many years’ experience of working psychotherapeutically with couples, developing new projects and conducting research.  He has published many papers in the field and has taught and lectured widely both in Britain and abroad. Andrew was appointed CEO in May 2016.

Key information

Date: Saturday, 12 June 2021
Time: 10am to 2pm
Speaker: Philip Stokoe, Psychoanalyst
Venue: This is an online event which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

In this four-hour online CPD, Philip Stokoe will expand on the thinking in his new book, The Curiosity Drive: Our Need for Inquisitive Thinking (Phoenix Publishing House), and will outline his groundbreaking work on curiosity over many decades with individuals, couples and groups.

After Bion, Britton and James Fisher, he views curiosity as being of vital importance in human interaction and the development of consciousness, and of crucial interest to clinicians of all kinds.

In this online workshop, he will address the way in which curiosity is key to the development of the conscious mind, and the implications of impediments to this process. And he will look at various therapeutic applications of this thinking, focusing on work in the consulting room, including with borderline patients, and the particular challenges the therapist can face in keeping curiosity alive.

There will be the opportunity to engage in group discussion, and for attendees to bring relevant clinical work or clinical difficulties in this area.

About the speaker

Philip Stokoe is a psychoanalyst in private practice working with adults and couples, and an organisational consultant, providing consultation to a wide range of organisations since he qualified in 1983 at the Tavistock Centre.

He was Honorary Visiting Professor, Mental Health for three years at City University, where he helped to set up a radically new way to train mental health nurses based on psychoanalytic principles. He worked as a Consultant Social Worker in the Adult Department of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust between 1994 and 2012, where he was the Clinical Director of the Adult Department from 2007 to 2011.

While at the Tavistock, he developed a model for understanding organisational dynamics, which has come to be called the Healthy Organisation Model. With his wife, Mary Morgan, he has developed a theory about a stage of human development that they call the Creative Couple stage of development, which links to Mary's concept of a couple state of mind. He has a particular interest in human creativity as it relates to the development of the mind and the central role of curiosity and interest. His early experience as an actor has left him with an abiding interest in theatre, art and cinema.

Key information

Date: Friday, 7 May 2021
Time: 2pm to 5pm
Speaker: Dr Reenee Singh is a Consultant Family and Couples Systemic Psychotherapist
Venue: This is an Online event which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

In this half-day webinar, Dr Reenee Singh will address the political context(s) of Black Lives Matter and Covid-19, in which the lives of interracial/intercultural couples are embedded. She will present an overview of systemic theoretical ideas for couples therapy, with an emphasis on those ideas, techniques and interventions that have particular salience for couples from different cultural, racial and religious backgrounds.

The focus for the workshop will be on case vignettes and experiential exercises, and Reenee will demonstrate the use of clinical interventions such as the culturegram, cultural genogram and internalized other interviewing. Participants will be encouraged to present cases from their own practice for discussion.

About the speaker

Dr Reenee Singh is a Consultant Family and Couples Systemic Psychotherapist, with more than 25 years of clinical experience with couples, children, young people and their families. She is the Founding Director of the London Intercultural Couples Centre at the Child and Family Practice, the past Editor of the Journal of Family Therapy and the past Chief Executive of the Association of Family Therapy and Systemic Practice in the UK. Reenee is Visiting Professor at the University of Bergamo and Associate Faculty member at the Singapore University of Social Sciences. She is the author of four books and numerous academic publications in the areas of 'race', culture, qualitative research and intercultural couples. She presents her work at national and international conferences and teaches all over the world. You can find out more about her and her work at www.reeneesingh.com.

Key information

Date: Saturday, 27 March 2021
Time: 10am to 1pm
Speaker: Leezah Hertzmann, Senior Couple and Individual Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist at Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, and Juliet Newbigin, Senior Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Member of the BPF
Venue: This is an Online event which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

In this half-day CPD Leezah Hertzmann and Juliet Newbigin, editors of the recent book Sexuality and Gender Now: Moving Beyond Heteronormativity, will briefly talk about how today’s social environment, where forms of sexual and gender expression are becoming increasingly diverse, can challenge traditional psychoanalytic thinking. They will describe some of the main points raised by chapters in the book, which is a collection of work by British and American psychoanalysts, Jungian analysts and psychotherapists.

Using case studies, they will invite participants to explore their reactions to clinical situations that they may be presented with that can arouse uncertainty or even disapproval. As they suggest in their book, they encourage therapists to examine their own countertransference responses to their clients, including those which feel uncomfortable, rather than take refuge in ‘politically correct’ positions. They suggest that recognising their own feelings honestly and exploring these within themselves will enable clinicians to survive better the dilemmas they are confronted with in treatment, and be more able to help those they work with. Participants will be welcomed to contribute examples from their own experience to the discussion.

The numbers have been limited to ensure a fruitful discussion in the group.

About the speakers

Leezah Hertzmann
Leezah Hertzmann is a senior couple and individual psychoanalytic psychotherapist at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, where she works both as clinician and course lead for two training courses. She has a career-long interest in sexual and gender diversity and is a member of the BPCs Advisory Group on Sexual and Gender Diversity.

Juliet Newbigin
Juliet Newbigin is a senior psychoanalytic psychotherapy member of the BPF, who has a long-standing interest in the impact of diversity on clinical work. She is in private practice and currently chairs the BPCs Advisory Group on Sexual and Gender Diversity.

Key information

Date: Saturday, 13 March 2021
Time: 10am to 4pm
Speaker: Dr Jan McGregor Hepburn, Registrar of the British Psychoanalytic Council and trainer for the North of England Association for Training in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
Venue: This is an Online event which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

Understanding echoism in relation to narcissism is an important starting point for work with couples in particular. The concept of echoism in psychoanalytic thinking is much less explored than is narcissism. Narcissism’s counterpart has much more often been understood as masochism or as the projection of one person’s disavowed narcissism into the other. Whilst both of these processes may be in operation, clinicians often note that neither of these insights explain the dynamics they see in work with people who appear to be in relation to someone narcissistic.

Once the narcissistic/echoistic dynamic is understood, the purpose of it requires further exploration. As well as it being a repeat of previous patterns, the dynamic also enacts specific unconscious imperatives. In particular, these include issues related to containment. Containment in this context is a vital component of the developmental process; it is a mental activity on the part of one person in which the other is enabled to grow and change. The narcissism/echoism dynamic can be understood, at least in part, as an endeavour to achieve containment for both parties.

In this CPD day, the morning will look at theories about narcissism and echoism and how these dynamics may be manifest in clinical work. The afternoon will focus on containment in this context. There will be opportunities for participants to have some discussion time in smaller groups and to bring their own clinical material.

About the speaker

Dr Jan McGregor Hepburn has a background in Social Work management and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. She has presented papers at conferences and devised and facilitated both seminars and workshops on a variety of subjects related to both management dynamics and clinical topics. She is the author of a book chapter and journal articles. She is a registrant of the British Psychoanalytic Council and a trainer for the North of England Association for Training in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. She has been the Registrar of the British Psychoanalytic Council since 2005, and chairs the Professional Standards Committee. She is part of the ScopEd project which is the collaboration between BACP, UKCP and BPC to map the core competencies for clinical work. She is on the Reading Panel of the British Journal of Psychotherapy and has a doctorate in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from the University of Northumbria.

Key information

Date: Friday, 5 March 2021
Time: 2pm to 5pm
Speaker: Professor Brett Kahr, psychotherapist and author, Senior Fellow at the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology and Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis and Mental Health at Regent’s University London
Venue: This is an Online event which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

The psychotherapist has the potential to save lives. Often, we will prevent people from killing themselves. We can also help to restore broken marriages and mend shattered families. But the burdens of working psychotherapeutically can be immense, not only emotionally but, also, medically, across the life cycle.

In this three-hour online workshop, Professor Brett Kahr, one of the United Kingdom’s most distinguished psychotherapists, will share his extensive 40-plus years of experience, investigating both the pitfalls and the pleasures of this unusual, but vital, profession. He will also speak about the very unique pressures, even terrors, of undertaking psychotherapeutic work in the midst of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Moreover, Kahr will reflect on the particular challenges for newly qualified colleagues and how those might be addressed.

Kahr will expand upon his widely regarded book, How to Flourish as a Psychotherapist (Phoenix Publishing House, 2019), which jumped to the top of the Karnac Books bestseller list upon publication and has since been translated into many languages. This frank guidebook to our profession provides a first-hand glimpse into the life cycle of the psychotherapist from the early years of training to the preparation for retirement and death.

This special masterclass will offer participants a privileged glimpse into Professor Kahr’s thoughts about the factors which either facilitate or inhibit creative growth across our working lives and will provide registrants with an opportunity to reflect upon their own careers with direct supervisory input from Kahr. We will consider how to maximise our creative capacities, how to find a voice outside the consulting room, how to flourish as a teacher, writer, lecturer and supervisor, and how to minimise the potentiality of burnout and despair. We shall also consider unconscious factors such as the fear of being envied and the terror of success, which prevent us from maximising our potentialities as psychotherapy practitioners.

About the speaker

Professor Brett Kahr has worked in the mental health field for more than 40 years. He is Senior Fellow at the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology in London and, also, Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis and Mental Health in the Regent’s School of Psychotherapy and Psychology at Regent’s University London. Kahr has contributed to many branches of the mental health profession, as a clinician, researcher, teacher, supervisor, author, editor and broadcaster, having held posts ranging from Trustee of the Freud Museum London to Resident Psychotherapist for the British Broadcasting Corporation. A Trustee of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy and, also, the Chair of the Scholars Committee of the British Psychoanalytic Council, Kahr has authored 15 books and has served as series editor for more than 65 further titles. His most recent books include: Bombs in the Consulting Room: Surviving Psychological Shrapnel (Routledge/Taylor and Francis Group, 2020), Celebrity Mad: Why Otherwise Intelligent People Worship Fame (Routledge/Taylor and Francis Group, 2020) and Dangerous Lunatics: Trauma, Criminality, and Forensic Psychotherapy (Confer Books, 2020). His next book, due shortly for publication, is entitled Freud’s Pandemics: Surviving Global War, Spanish Flu, and the Nazis. A Consultant Psychotherapist at The Balint Consultancy, he works with individuals and couples in Central London.

Key information

Date: Friday, 5 February 2021
Time: 2pm to 5pm
Speaker: Narendra Keval, Psychoanalyst, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist and a Consultant Clinical Psychologist
Venue: This is an online event which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

Our preoccupations about difference in the form of ethnicity or race and their lived experience are always present in subtle ways in the privacy of our daily thoughts and feelings, imagination and dreams.

This is sometimes overlooked by an assumption that such matters are to do with being a person of colour when the reality is that we are all ethnically located and speak from that cultural positioning regardless of our skin colour or background.

However, engaging with the significance of these deep structures of thought and feeling in the consulting room often evokes excessive anxiety that can obstruct thoughtful and sensitive scrutiny about the nuances of these preoccupations in the unconscious, what is being grappled with and communicated by the patient.

In this CPD afternoon, Narendra Keval will present his thinking in this area, before opening up into a discussion. He will explore how race emerges in the patient’s mind and the psychic functions of these preoccupations that differ from one moment to the next.

These movements can flow from a sense of curiosity that signals a wish to explore and deepen the relationship to the self and others, through the creative use of the analytic setting, to a misuse which involves a retreat into a racist state of mind where destructive impulses aim to thwart and damage the self and others.

Discerning what state of mind is at play is a fluid matter that becomes particularly challenging as it will depend on the content and emotional atmosphere of the clinical situation, and what feelings are provoked and evoked at any given moment.

Keval argues that these states of mind can co-exist to varying degrees in individuals, groups and organisational/societal life, creating particular kinds of predicaments and challenges in how we engage with them.

About the speaker

Narendra Keval is a Psychoanalyst, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist and a Consultant Clinical Psychologist. He has specialised in clinical work with patients suffering from complex personality disorders in a range of settings in the NHS and currently works in full-time private practice. He is a visiting lecturer at the Tavistock Clinic, London and has been a visiting speaker at Psychoanalytic training institutes in the UK, Cape Town, South Africa, Washington and New York.

He is a member of the British Psychoanalytic Society, Tavistock Society of Psychotherapists, British Psychoanalytic Council and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. His book Racist States of Mind: Understanding the Perversion of Curiosity and Concern was published by Karnac Books in 2016.

Key information

Date: Friday, 26 February 2021
Time: 6.30pm to 8.30pm
Speaker: Michael Parsons, Fellow and Training Analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society and a member of the French Psychoanalytic Association
Respondent: Andrew Balfour, Chief Executive of Tavistock Relationships
Venue: This is an Online event which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

Before I Was I, the collection of Enid Balint’s papers edited by Michael Parsons and Juliet Mitchell, was published in 1993. In this year’s Enid Balint Lecture, Michael Parsons will look back at this book and reflect on the experience of rereading it almost 30 years later.

What does it tell us about Enid as a clinician and as a theorist? How individual is she, and how much does she represent an analytic tradition? Looked at from today’s perspective, do her ideas stand the test of time, or have they taken on fresh and deeper meaning than when she wrote her book?

The speaker for the 26th Enid Balint Lecture will be Michael Parsons, a Fellow and Training Analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society and a member of the French Psychoanalytic Association.

The respondent will be Andrew Balfour, chief executive of Tavistock Relationships, and a psychoanalytic psychotherapist trained to work with couples and individuals.

The Enid Balint Lecture will be of interest to individual, group, family and couple psychotherapists and counsellors. It memorialises the celebrated psychoanalyst and founder of the Family Discussion Bureau, which was the first incarnation of the institution now known as Tavistock Relationships and has been one of the highlights of the year at Tavistock Relationships for more than two decades. It will be taking place for the first time this year on Zoom.

About the speaker and respondent

Michael Parsons

Michael Parsons is a Fellow and Training Analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society and a member of the French Psychoanalytic Association.

Following a first degree in classics and philosophy, he became a doctor and specialised in psychiatry. After training at the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London he worked in private analytic practice. Now retired from clinical work, he is well known in the United Kingdom and internationally as a lecturer and teacher. He has a particular interest in links between psychoanalysis and other fields such as art, literature and religion.

As well as being co-editor of Before I Was I (Free Association Books, 1993), he is the author of The Dove that Returns, The Dove that Vanishes: Paradox and Creativity in Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2000) and Living Psychoanalysis: From Theory to Experience (Routledge, 2014).

Andrew Balfour

Andrew Balfour is the CEO of Tavistock Relationships. He is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist trained to work with couples and individuals and is also qualified as a clinical psychologist. He has many years’ experience of working psychotherapeutically with couples, developing new projects and conducting research. He has published many papers in the field. He has taught and lectured widely both in Britain and abroad. He was appointed CEO in May 2016.

Key information

Time: 10am to 4pm 15 to 19 Febuary 2021
Trainers: Tavistock Relationships Staff
Venue: This is an Online School which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

This course is open to those interested in learning more about couple relationships and about working with couples from a psychodynamic perspective. It will be useful to individual counsellors and individual, child, family and group psychotherapists, and to those in the helping professions, such as clinical psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers.

The course aims to:

• introduce the central concepts used in understanding unconscious processes in couple interaction
• offer a framework for understanding conscious and unconscious communication in couples that is grounded in theory, clinical case examples and seminar discussion
• enable you to begin to make use of psychodynamic concepts in formulating and understanding the relationship aspect of your work with couples or individuals
• give each participant the opportunity to present some work and learn from the work of others.

Two lectures each day will include:

• transference and countertransference in couple therapy
• working with the sexual relationship
• unconscious processes in the couple relationship
• thinking about the couple in individual work.

There will also be two participant clinical presentations each day, providing an opportunity for attendees to discuss their own material in small groups led by experienced couple therapists.

About the speaker

This Winter School will be delivered by Tavistock Relationships staff.

Key information

Date: Friday, 29 January 2021
Time: 5.30pm to 7pm
Speaker: Luke Jennings, Author (Killing Eve Novels) and Journalist
Venue: This is an Online event which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

In the first of a new Tavistock Relationships series, Luke Jennings will discuss his fictional creations, including the characters from Killing Eve for which he is now perhaps best known: Villanelle, the psychopathic assassin hired by a global corporation, and Eve, the intelligence officer charged with hunting her down.

Jennings’s Killing Eve novellas, on which the cult television series is based, have turned the spy thriller genre on its head. Transgressive and slick, they are driven by the increasingly desperate power struggle between these two women, mutually obsessed and sexually ambiguous. One is a sadistic killer, the product of a traumatic childhood in post-Soviet Russia. The other is more apparently ordinary, with a desk job and a steady married life, but both are prepared to risk it all in in pursuit of their obsession.

This online event, held using Zoom, will feature Luke Jennings in discussion with Lorna Robinson, psychotherapist and head of CPD events at Tavistock Relationships. There will also be the opportunity for attendees to ask questions, and for a group discussion to take place.

About the speaker

Luke Jennings is the author of the Killing Eve novels, the basis for the hit television series starring Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh. The third book of the trilogy, Killing Eve: Die For Me, was released in April this year. The novels follow the thrilling, obsessive duel between Villanelle, an elite assassin, and Eve Polastri, the MI6 agent tasked with hunting her down.

Jennings is a London-based former journalist who has written for The Observer, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker. He is the author of Blood Knots, shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson and William Hill prizes, and the Booker Prize-nominated Atlantic, among other titles. With his daughter Laura, he wrote the teenage stage-school novels Stars and Stars: Stealing the Show.

Key information

Date: Saturday, 12 December 2020
Time: 10am to 4pm
Speakers: Mary Morgan, Psychoanalyst and Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist; and Catriona Wrottesley, Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist
Venue: This is an Online CPD Course which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

This full-day CPD will examine the technique of interpretation in couple psychotherapy, and consider the range of interpretative possibilities available to the therapist at any given moment.

Interpretations can address various areas of the couple’s relationship, including their projective system, transference relationship, shared phantasy, conflicts, anxieties, defences and beliefs. They attempt to make conscious aspects of the couple relationship that are unconscious, or partially so, in order that a couple can deepen their understanding of their shared internal world.

Mary Morgan will present her views on interpretation, drawn in part from her authoritative new book on couple psychoanalytic psychotherapy, ‘A Couple State of Mind’ (Routledge, 2019).

Catriona Wrottesley will present a series of clinical vignettes to bring this material to life. A range of potential interpretations will be considered, with Mary responding to Catriona’s clinical material with thoughts about what might have been said.

The day is suitable for couple psychoanalytic psychotherapists and couple counsellors. There will be the opportunity for small-group discussion throughout the day.

About the trainers

Mary Morgan

Mary Morgan is a psychoanalyst and couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist, Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society. She was formerly Reader in Couple Psychoanalysis at Tavistock Relationships. She has published many papers on psychoanalytic work with couples and is the author of ‘A Couple State of Mind’ (Routledge, 2019). She is a member of the IPA’s Family and Couple Psychoanalysis Committee, Board member of the International Association for Couple and Family Psychoanalysis, on the international advisory board of the journals ‘Couple and Family Psychoanalysis’ and ‘Interatzioni’. She has developed and led couple psychotherapy trainings in several countries, lectures internationally and has a private individual and couple analytic practice.

Catriona Wrottesley

Catriona Wrottesley is a couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist and head of the psychoanalytic training at Tavistock Relationships. Catriona is also qualified as an individual psychodynamic psychotherapist with WPF Therapy.

Key information

Date: Saturday, 12 December 2020
Date: Friday, 3 July 2020
Time: 5pm to 6.30pm
Trainer: Andrew Balfour, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, Clinical Psychologiest and Chief Executive of Tavistock Relationships
Venue: This is a repeat of the 5th June online presentation and discussion group which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

In this early evening online discussion group, a repeat of 5th June event, first in a new series offered by Tavistock Relationships, Andrew Balfour will present a new paper which explores the link between parenting difficulties and couple relationship issues in psychotherapeutic work with parental couples.

He will examine the social policy context of couple psychotherapy and the resistances it can evoke, which has led to an emphasis on ‘parenting’ rather than ‘couple’ interventions in the historic development of family service provision in the UK. And he will present a clinical case, drawing on the concepts of shared unconscious phantasy and enactment in the analytic session to elucidate defensive and developmental possibilities of working at the interface between ‘parenting’ and ‘partnering’.

This event will be held using the video conferencing application Zoom. In the first half of the 90-minute session, Andrew Balfour will present his paper; the second half will be taken up with an audience discussion of the issues raised.

About the trainer

Andrew Balfour is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist trained to work with couples and individuals and is also qualified as a clinical psychologist. He has many years’ experience of working psychotherapeutically with couples, developing new projects and conducting research. He has published many papers in the field and has taught and lectured widely both in Britain and abroad. Andrew was appointed CEO in May 2016.

Key information

Date: Friday, 26 June 2020
Time: 5pm to 6.30pm
Trainer: Amanda Cuthbert, Couple and Individual Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist 
Venue: This is an online discussion group which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

In this early evening online discussion group, part of a new series offered by Tavistock Relationships, Amanda Cuthbert will address the therapist’s use of the countertransference in online work.

Online work, especially in these heightened times, can throw up challenges for the therapist, especially those of us who are new to the medium. This event aims to open up some space to think about the therapist’s experience, and the particular challenges we might face during self-isolation.

The first part of the event will be a presentation from Amanda Cuthbert on the countertransference in online work, based on her experience of work in the Tavistock Relationships online service. Attendees are then encouraged to bring clinical dilemmas and challenges to explore confidentially in the group.

About the speaker

Amanda Cuthbert is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist trained to work with couples and individuals. She has many years of experience working psychotherapeutically with couples and, as a visiting clinician, participating in developing new projects at Tavistock Relationships including the Online Therapy Service. Amanda brings her background as a critical care nurse and a linguistics training to inform her developmentally-oriented approach. Since her training with Tavistock Relationships, she now lives in the Southwest of England and works in Devon in private practice where she sees adult individuals in brief-term, intensive and couple psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

Key information

Date: Friday, 12 June 2020
Time: 5pm to 6.30pm
Trainer: Marian O'Connor, Psychoanalytic Couple Psychotherapist and Psychosexual Therapist
Venue: This is an online presentation and discussion group which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

In this early evening online discussion group, part of a new series offered by Tavistock Relationships, Marian O’Connor will consider the effect of self-isolation on clinical work.

These unprecedented times are hitting us all hard – but this can be particularly true of couples and individuals already in distress. Consideration will be given to the effects of current external pressures on our internal worlds, and to the way in which this material can play out in the consulting room. Themes of loss or grief, in a variety of forms, may be a crucial part of the picture.

The event will be held using the video conferencing application Zoom. In the first half of the 90-minute session, Marian O’Connor will present material based on her clinical experience; the second half will be taken up with an audience discussion of the issues raised. There will be an opportunity for attendees to bring clinical observations, or questions, for confidential discussion.

About the speaker

Marian O'Connor is a Psychoanalytic Couple Psychotherapist, a Psychosexual Therapist and Head of Psychosexual Training at Tavistock Relationships. She has written and lectured widely on psychosexual and couple issues. Her most recent article 'Polyamory - a romantic solution to Wanderlust' will be published by Routledge this autumn in 'Love, Sex and Psychotherapy in a Post-Romantic Era'.

Key information

Date: Friday, 5 June 2020 - THIS DATE IS FULLY BOOKED click here to book 3 July repeat of this course. 
Time: 5pm to 6.30pm
Trainer: Andrew Balfour, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, Clinical Psychologiest and Chief Executive of Tavistock Relationships
Venue: This is an online presentation and discussion group which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

In this early evening online discussion group, the first in a new series offered by Tavistock Relationships, Andrew Balfour will present a new paper which explores the link between parenting difficulties and couple relationship issues in psychotherapeutic work with parental couples.

He will examine the social policy context of couple psychotherapy and the resistances it can evoke, which has led to an emphasis on ‘parenting’ rather than ‘couple’ interventions in the historic development of family service provision in the UK. And he will present a clinical case, drawing on the concepts of shared unconscious phantasy and enactment in the analytic session to elucidate defensive and developmental possibilities of working at the interface between ‘parenting’ and ‘partnering’.

This event will be held using the video conferencing application Zoom. In the first half of the 90-minute session, Andrew Balfour will present his paper; the second half will be taken up with an audience discussion of the issues raised.

About the trainer

Andrew Balfour is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist trained to work with couples and individuals and is also qualified as a clinical psychologist. He has many years’ experience of working psychotherapeutically with couples, developing new projects and conducting research. He has published many papers in the field and has taught and lectured widely both in Britain and abroad. Andrew was appointed CEO in May 2016.

Key information

Dates: 9-10 July 2020
Time: 10am to 3pm

Description

A two-day, in-depth training in supporting couples with dementia, delivered remotely. 

The aim of this two-day course is to train experts in working with couples living with dementia, who are sufficiently skilled to then embed the approach in their local setting. 

The training will be delivered by Andrew Balfour, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, experienced trainer, researcher and writer in the field of later life (both days); Liz Salter, Registered Mental Nurse and experienced researcher (previously with Academic Department of Psychiatry University of Bristol), and Beth Winter, Counselling Psychologist.

About the trainer

Andrew Balfour is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist trained to work with couples and individuals and is also qualified as a clinical psychologist. He has many years’ experience of working psychotherapeutically with couples, developing new projects and conducting research. He has published many papers in the field and has taught and lectured widely both in Britain and abroad. Andrew was appointed CEO in May 2016.

Key information

Date: Saturday, 26 September 2020
Time: 10am to 4pm
Trainer: Dr Jan McGregor Hepburn, BPC Registrar and Author
Venue: This is an Online CPD Course which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

A considerable amount of individual psychoanalytic work involves the person describing and struggling with someone in their lives, frequently a partner. How to work with this is complex. These are significant external realities and to routinely bring the material back into the room and the relationship with the clinician can be experienced as irrelevant, attacking or as the clinician’s own narcissism. However, entering too far into the external reality – as seen of course through the lens of the individual – is rarely clinically useful.

This can be a particular feature where the person not in the room appears to be narcissistic. Clinicians rarely see florid narcissists for help and treatment; they are more likely to see their children, spouses and close relatives. The experience of being in close proximity to someone with a narcissistic defence is very painful. The clinician has to find a balance between being alongside the individual and finding a way to help them to see what they need to understand about themselves to effect change.

The day will involve a theoretical presentation on narcissism as a defence, and will look at defences which can be evoked in the other. We will then look at some clinical material in the light of these defences, and consider what interventions might be appropriate and useful. Participants will be invited to bring their own clinical struggles in this area and how these might be worked with will be a confidential group discussion.

About the trainer

Dr Jan McGregor Hepburn has a background in Social Work management and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. She has presented papers at conferences and devised and facilitated both seminars and workshops on a variety of subjects related to both management dynamics and clinical topics. She is the author of a book chapter and journal articles. She is a registrant of the British Psychoanalytic Council and a trainer for the North of England Association for Training in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. She has been the Registrar of the British Psychoanalytic Council since 2005, and chairs the Professional Standards Committee. She is part of the ScopEd project which is the collaboration between BACP, UKCP and BPC to map the core competencies for clinical work. She is on the Reading Panel of the British Journal of Psychotherapy and has a doctorate in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from the University of Northumbria.

Key information

Date: Saturday, 18 July 2020. 
Time: 10am to 4pm
Trainer: Dr Jan McGregor Hepburn, BPC Registrar and Author
Venue: This is an Online CPD Course which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

The concept of narcissism has entered popular culture; however, it has always featured heavily in psychoanalytic writing. How to understand and work with narcissism in the clinical context is multi-layered. Healthy narcissism is vital for self-esteem and engagement with life. Unhealthy narcissism, which tends to be the picture of narcissism generally, can be seen in different ways – usually as a defence, as a developmental problem or as a characterological issue. It is always, however, offensive to others on some level. How we understand the individual’s narcissism in the light of these possibilities will be central to the clinical process.

Echoism has been much less written about and discussed; it has just begun to enter popular culture as a concept. Consideration of echoism is part of the endeavour to understand what is happening to the other in relation to someone who is narcissistic. Rather than the clinician examining the other’s projection of their own narcissism, echoism seeks to understand the range of possible dynamics which may be at work where the clinical problems appear to centre around a narcissist and another. This will be relevant to work with couples as well as individuals.

Drawing on theories about narcissism and echoism, and from the presenter’s research, the day will begin with a theoretical presentation and a discussion. We will then look at some clinical material and consider how we might understand the dynamics in the light of the previous discussions. In the following confidential group discussion participants will be invited to bring their own clinical material and we will look at what interventions might be appropriate and useful.

About the trainer

Dr Jan McGregor Hepburn has a background in Social Work management and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. She has presented papers at conferences and devised and facilitated both seminars and workshops on a variety of subjects related to both management dynamics and clinical topics. She is the author of a book chapter and journal articles. She is a registrant of the British Psychoanalytic Council and a trainer for the North of England Association for Training in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. She has been the Registrar of the British Psychoanalytic Council since 2005, and chairs the Professional Standards Committee. She is part of the ScopEd project which is the collaboration between BACP, UKCP and BPC to map the core competencies for clinical work. She is on the Reading Panel of the British Journal of Psychotherapy and has a doctorate in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from the University of Northumbria.

Key information

Date: Saturday, 4 July 2020
Time: 10am to 4pm
Trainer: Liz Hamlin, Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist
Venue: This is an Online CPD Course which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

This full-day course will explore the impact of alcohol and substance misuse on the couple relationship. The function of the substance in the relationship will be considered using psychodynamic principles, as will the couple’s interaction and collusive patterns of relating.

Addiction in one or both members of a couple can exacerbate problematic dynamics, and can lead to difficulties in the couple’s sexual relationship. One partner may be identified as the patient, holding the destructive aspects of the relationship. Hostility and aggression can become more evident, leading to alienation, and acting as a barrier to emotional closeness.

Liz Hamlin, an experienced psychotherapist and trainer, will draw on couple psychoanalytic theory to illuminate clinical examples. Consideration will be given to the kinds of questions that might be asked in an assessment. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own clinical experience in working with couples with addiction for discussion during the day.

About the trainer

Liz Hamlin is a Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist registered with the British Psychoanalytic Council and a member of TR’s Alumni body as well as a member of the BPC’s Professional Standards Committee. She has worked with couples since 1990 and qualified as a couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist in 2008. Liz has been a Visiting Clinician at Tavistock Relationships for many years, working with couples, supervising practitioners and delivering training. In 2010 Liz took up the role of Clinical Lead in an IAPT Service managing a team of therapists delivering therapy in 15 GP surgeries in Ashford, Kent. Liz has a special interest in working with couples and individuals facing divorce and separation and is a member of the Divorce and Separation Consultation Service. She is a student on TR’s Professional Doctorate Programme looking to research the experience of older couples going through the process of divorce. Liz has been an IAPT Couple Therapy for Depression Trainer and Supervisor having been involved in TR’s development of the training since its inception in 2010. She is now Joint Head of Clinical Service at TR, and is involved in allocations, consultation on complex cases and has a specific role in quality assurance, dealing with client feedback, informal complaints, outcome monitoring, policies and procedures.

Key information

Date: Monday 13 to Friday 17 July 2020
Time: 10am to 4pm
Trainers: Tavistock Relationships Staff
Venue: This is an Online School which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

This course is open to those interested in learning more about couple relationships and about working with couples from a psychodynamic perspective. It will be useful to individual counsellors and individual, child, family and group psychotherapists, and to those in the helping professions, such as clinical psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers.

The course aims to:

• introduce the central concepts used in understanding unconscious processes in couple interaction
• offer a framework for understanding conscious and unconscious communication in couples that is grounded in theory, clinical case examples and seminar discussion
• enable you to begin to make use of psychodynamic concepts in formulating and understanding the relationship aspect of your work with couples or individuals
• give each participant the opportunity to present some work and learn from the work of others.

Two lectures each day will include:

• transference and countertransference in couple therapy
• working with the sexual relationship
• unconscious processes in the couple relationship
• thinking about the couple in individual work.

There will also be two participant clinical presentations each day, providing an opportunity for attendees to discuss their own material in small groups led by experienced couple therapists.

About the trainer

This summer school will be delivered by Tavistock Relationships staff.

Key information

Date: Saturday, 5 December 2020
Time: 10am to 4pm
Speakers: Perrine Moran and Judith Jamieson
Venue: This is an Online CPD Course which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

This day-long workshop, run by the leaders of the Mentalization-Based Therapy for Couples workshop at Tavistock Relationships, is running for the second time due to popular demand.

It will focus on the fundamental theoretical concepts of Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT), as well as the practical application of elements of this approach to the therapeutic encounter. The goal of MBT is to help clients to develop the ability to understand and communicate states of mind and intentions, and to see oneself from the outside and the other from the inside.

Couple work will receive particular attention; however, the material under discussion will be applicable to a range of therapeutic settings. Use will be made of clinical illustrations, film clips and experiential exercises.

About the trainer

Judith Jamieson

Judith Jamieson is Clinical Lead at Tavistock Relationships and is trained as a psychodynamic couple therapist and psychosexual therapist. She has worked in the NHS as a Psychosexual Therapist. In addition to co-leading the Mentalization-Based Therapy for Couples workshop with Perrine Moran, she works as a supervisor, tutor and clinical lecturer at Tavistock Relationships. Judith is also a training supervisor on Couple Therapy for Depression, for NHS practitioners within IAPT services. She also works in the Parenting consultation service at TR, offering support to parents who are having difficulties with their children and in the past has worked on the Adopting Together programme, offering relationship support for parents who have adopted.

Perrine Moran

Perrine Moran is an individual and couple psychodynamic psychotherapist and couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist (BPC, MBACP accred.). She is a Visiting Clinician and Lecturer at Tavistock Relationships, where she teaches Couple Theory, works in the Parenting Together service, and co-leads the Mentalization-Based Therapy for Couples workshop with Judith Jamieson. She is a board member of the International Association for Couple and Family Psychoanalysis, and a member of the Editorial Board of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis as well as its arts editor. She is bilingual, works in English and in French, and has a private practice in Stoke Newington.

Key information

Date: Friday, 2 October 2020
Time: 10am to 4pm
Trainer: Josh Cohen
Venue: This is an Online CPD Course which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform.

Description

We are living in a culture that demands constant productivity and purpose, while bombarding us with an unending flow of information and distraction. The art of doing nothing is disappearing. Little wonder so many of us are burning out.

This workshop, developing some of the ideas in Josh Cohen’s latest book, Not Working: Why We Have to Stop, will begin by exploring this nervously overactive culture and its implications for the way we shape ourselves and conduct our relationships. It will go on to think about its clinical implications for psychotherapy and related disciplines and practices.

We will also take up some ideas about art developed in the book, as a place for preserving a space for ‘being’ against ‘doing’, before thinking about the value of aimlessness and internal drift. As well as Not Working, Josh will draw on material from his forthcoming book, How To Live. What To Do, on the uses of literature for life. How might we cultivate the private, ‘non-productive’ self in a culture that equates our meaning and worth with our visible activity?

About the trainer

Josh Cohen is a psychoanalyst in private practice, and Professor of Modern Literary Theory at Goldsmiths University of London. He teaches clinical and theoretical seminars on various psychoanalytic trainings in London. He is the author of numerous books and articles on psychoanalysis, cultural theory and modern literature, including How to Read Freud, The Private Life: Why We Remain in the Dark and Not Working: Why We Have to Stop. His new book, How To Live. What To Do: Life Lessons from Literature, will be published in July 2020.

Key information

Date: 15 May 2020 (online learning) 
Time: 10am to 3pm
Fee: FREE

Description

A free, online training course for people working in the care sector (e.g. care home staff and managers, voluntary sector dementia/memory services) in supporting couples relationships within the area of dementia. 

This training is available to people working in the private, voluntary and statutory sectors.

The training seeks to equip care staff to support people with dementia and their partners to sustain the quality of their relationships. It will improve the participants’ ability to act confidently with the couple relationship in mind, using techniques that support and strengthen the bond between partners, in order to sustain attachments. It will provide participants with learning and skills in:

• Understanding the impact of dementia on the couple relationship
• Understanding the importance of preserving the couple bond to increase closeness between the couple and their resilience to cope better and for longer
• Skills and techniques to guide conversations and confidence to act as a resource to other colleagues in the clinical field of dementia care with couples
• Knowledge and understanding of how dementia may disrupt the couple relationship and how we can think about dependency and loss in this context
• Knowledge and understanding of how to intervene with partners in ways that support relationships and that promote closeness and sensitivity
• Attachment issues in dementia
• Holding a ‘couple in mind’ in dementia care settings.

On completion of the one-day training, participants will receive a certificate of Continuous Professional Development (CPD).

Who this course is for?

People working in the care sector (e.g. care home staff and managers, voluntary sector dementia/memory services) in statutory, voluntary and independent sectors. 

Fees

This training is free. 

It has been funded by a generous donation from The Rayne Foundation. While we are happy for you/your staff to attend the training free of change, we would very much welcome any contribution you can make towards the cost of the training.

Please could you indicate by reply to the confirmation email whether you would be happy for us to approach your manager to ask for a small donation. Any donation your organisation makes will enable the funding from the Rayne Foundation to go that bit further. However, please be assured we will not turn anyone away who chooses for whatever reason not to make a contribution. 

Key information

Date: Friday, 28 February 2020
Time: 10am to 1pm
Trainer: Dr Amita Sehgal
Venue: Hallam House, 56-60 Hallam Street, London W1W 6JL

Description

Voyeuristic sadism as a form of entertainment is on the rise, with contemporary popular culture steeped in stories of good against evil, in which evil tends towards extreme forms of sadism. Think of the films of Quentin Tarantino, or of the Scandinavian noir detective series The Killing, or of the fantasy series Game of Thrones.

In this half-day event, Dr Amita Sehgal will examine the corresponding increase in public appetites for sadomasochism and will outline some of the ideas in her recent edited book, Sadism: Psychoanalytic Developmental Perspectives (Routledge, 2018), which participants are encouraged to read.

She will consider a psychoanalytic understanding of sadism, and the phenomenon of sadomasochism at different stages of the human life cycle: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and in later life.

The clinical implications of working with couples in which sadism features will be considered, and there will be the opportunity for attendees to present a case for discussion.

About the trainer

Dr Amita Sehgal, MA, PhD, is a psychoanalytic couple psychotherapist.  She is a Visiting Lecturer at Tavistock Relationships, and a Consultant Psychotherapist at The Balint Consultancy.  She has a private practice in central London where she offers supervision, and works with couples and with individuals struggling with relational difficulties.  

She is especially interested in the neurobiology of contemporary attachment perspectives in couple psychotherapy, and her interest in the psychological process of separation and divorce informs her commitment to a non-confrontational resolution of family disputes.  

She is published in the field of psychoanalytic couple psychotherapy. Her most recent publication is an edited book, Sadism: Psychoanalytic Developmental Perspectives (Routledge, 2018).

Key information

Date: Friday, 28 February 2020
Time: 6.30pm to 8.30pm
Speaker: Dr Jonathan Sklar, Independent Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society
Respondent: Dr David Hewison, a Jungian training analyst of the Society of Analytical Psychology, Consultant Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, and Head of Research and Ethics at Tavistock Relationships
Venue: Hallam House, 56-60 Hallam Street, London W1W 6JL

Description

In states of severe attack, the mind needs protection from the impact of massive affect, and moves from psyche to soma. The body can take over and become detached from a mental capacity to free associate and emotionally feel, keeping a distance from what can threaten as some terrible knowing. The patient in his psychosomatic place is alone and does not expect, nor often wish for, the intervention of the other.

Michael Balint conceptualised an ‘area of basic fault’ where the patient is silent, lifeless and hopeless, and which Enid Balint said could be overcome only when the patient allows himself to feel alone in the analyst’s presence and enter the area of creativity.

The Enid Balint Lecture 2020 will explore the concept of basic fault as a way of thinking about the analytic journey, and the analyst’s capacity to listen, hold and find meaning in language, especially with patients with a history of early trauma.

The speaker will be Dr Jonathan Sklar, an Independent training and supervising psychoanalyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and the author of three books, Landscapes of the Dark: History, Trauma, Psychoanalysis (Karnac, 2011), Balint Matters: Psychosomatics and the Art of Assessment (Karnac, 2017) and Dark Times: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Politics, History and Mourning (Phoenix, 2018).

The respondent will be Dr David Hewison, a Jungian training analyst of the Society of Analytical Psychology and consultant couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist and Head of Research and Ethics at Tavistock Relationships, where he is also programme leader of the Professional Doctorate in Couple Psychotherapy.

About the speaker and respondent

Dr Jonathan Sklar, MBBS, FRCPsych is an Independent training and supervising psychoanalyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society. Originally trained in psychiatry at Friern and the Royal Free Hospitals, he later trained in adult psychotherapy at the Tavistock Clinic, London. For many years, he was consultant psychotherapist and head of the psychotherapy department at Addenbrooke’s and Fulbourn hospitals in Cambridge.

He now works in full-time analytic practice in London. As well as lecturing widely across the world, he has taught psychoanalysis annually in South Africa for over ten years, termly in Chicago for ten years until 2018, as well as regularly across Eastern Europe. From 2007 to 2011, he was vice president of the European Psychoanalytic Federation, with special responsibility for seminars for recently qualified analysts as well as new analytic groups in East Europe. He was a board member of the International Psychoanalytical Association 2015-19.

He is the author of three books: Landscapes of the Dark: History, Trauma, Psychoanalysis (Karnac, 2011), Balint Matters: Psychosomatics and the Art of Assessment (Karnac, 2017) and Dark Times: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Politics, History and Mourning (Phoenix, 2018).

Dr David Hewison, DCplPsychPsych is a Jungian training analyst of the Society of Analytical Psychology and consultant couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist. He joined Tavistock Relationships in 1996 with a background in adult mental health social work and training. He has been involved in all aspects of Tavistock Relationships’ work over the years and is part of the senior management team. He is currently Head of Research and Ethics and programme leader of the Professional Doctorate in Couple Psychotherapy.

He developed couple therapy as a treatment for depression in the NHS and was the lead author of Couple Therapy for Depression: A Clinician’s Guide to Integrative Practice in 2014. He was a member of NICE’s Depression Guideline Development Group 2015-2019. He is a member of the International Advisory Board of Couple And Family Psychoanalysis and was previously book reviews editor of the Journal of Analytical Psychology. The author of some 60 book chapters, journal articles, research papers and reviews, he teaches and lectures internationally. He has a particular interest in creativity and imagination, and is currently working on developing greater understanding of diversity in analytic work with individuals and couples. In his spare time he tries to improve his Japanese woodblock printmaking skills.

Key information

Date: Saturday, 7 November 2020
Time: 10am to 4pm
Speakers: Mary Morgan, Psychoanalyst and Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist; and Catriona Wrottesley, Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist
Venue: This is an Online CPD Course which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

This full-day CPD will examine the technique of interpretation in couple psychotherapy, and consider the range of interpretative possibilities available to the therapist at any given moment.

Interpretations can address various areas of the couple’s relationship, including their projective system, transference relationship, shared phantasy, conflicts, anxieties, defences and beliefs. They attempt to make conscious aspects of the couple relationship that are unconscious, or partially so, in order that a couple can deepen their understanding of their shared internal world.

Mary Morgan will present her views on interpretation, drawn in part from her authoritative new book on couple psychoanalytic psychotherapy, ‘A Couple State of Mind’ (Routledge, 2019).

Catriona Wrottesley will present a series of clinical vignettes to bring this material to life. A range of potential interpretations will be considered, with Mary responding to Catriona’s clinical material with thoughts about what might have been said.

The day is suitable for couple psychoanalytic psychotherapists and couple counsellors. There will be the opportunity for small-group discussion throughout the day.

About the trainers

Mary Morgan

Mary Morgan is a psychoanalyst and couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist, Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society. She was formerly Reader in Couple Psychoanalysis at Tavistock Relationships. She has published many papers on psychoanalytic work with couples and is the author of ‘A Couple State of Mind’ (Routledge, 2019). She is a member of the IPA’s Family and Couple Psychoanalysis Committee, Board member of the International Association for Couple and Family Psychoanalysis, on the international advisory board of the journals ‘Couple and Family Psychoanalysis’ and ‘Interatzioni’. She has developed and led couple psychotherapy trainings in several countries, lectures internationally and has a private individual and couple analytic practice.

Catriona Wrottesley

Catriona Wrottesley is a couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist and head of the psychoanalytic training at Tavistock Relationships. Catriona is also qualified as an individual psychodynamic psychotherapist with WPF Therapy.

Key information

Date: Saturday, 3 October 2020
Time: 10am to 4pm
Trainers: Martha Doniach, couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist; and Perrine Moran couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist
Venue: This is an Online CPD Course which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

This CPD study day for individual, couple and group therapists and counsellors will consider the ways in which mourning can play out in the couple relationship, and ways of working therapeutically in this area. Consideration will be given to helping couples move from denial, destructiveness and a preoccupation with the events of loss towards reparation and a shared future encompassing their loss.

Martha Doniach and Perrine Moran, both couple psychoanalytic psychotherapists and experienced trainers, will focus on clinical material as well as draw on couple psychoanalytic theory to illustrate their thinking.

Freud’s key paper ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ will be discussed and reworked within a couple context.

The day will include sources from a wide range of the arts, including feature films ‘Ordinary People’ (1980) and ‘Manchester by the Sea’ (2016) in order to help the group to think creatively about mourning and loss. There will be the opportunity for attendees to bring their own relevant cases for small group discussion.

About the trainers

Martha Doniach BSc MA

Martha Doniach is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist trained to work with individuals and couples. She is a full member of the Foundation for Psychotherapy and Counselling (Fpc-Wpf) and of the graduate body of Tavistock Relationships, Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology. She has worked for several years in East London NHS Foundation trust in a tier 2, Specialist Psychotherapy Adult outpatient service where she currently holds the position of Principal Psychotherapist and Honorary Psychotherapy Lead. At Tavistock Relationships she is a visiting lecturer and was previously a visiting clinician and worked as a tutor on the MA in psychodynamic counselling and psychotherapy. She also teaches and supervises at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. She maintains a private practice in central London. Before qualifying as a psychotherapist she was a social worker working within Children and Families, Child Protection and CAMHS. She is an accredited member of BPC and UKCP.

Perrine Moran

Perrine Moran is an individual and couple psychodynamic psychotherapist and couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist (BPC, MBACP accred.). She is a Visiting Clinician and Lecturer at Tavistock Relationships, where she teaches Couple Theory, works in the Parenting Together service, and co-leads the Mentalization Based Therapy for Couples training and workshop. She also supervises students at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, is a Board member of the International Association for Couple and Family Psychoanalysis, and a member of the Editorial Board of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis as well as its arts editor. She is bilingual, works in English and in French, and has a private practice in Stoke Newington.

Key information

Date: Saturday, 18 January 2020
Time: 10am to 4pm
Speaker: Dr Avi Shmueli
Venue: Hallam House, 56-60 Hallam Street, London W1W 6JL

Description

Couple therapists are trained to work consistently with the relationship as the ‘patient’ in the room. The situation of divorce and separation places this therapeutic position under enormous strain.

In this full-day CPD, Dr Avi Shmueli, Head of the Tavistock Relationships Divorce and Separation service, will consider the couple therapist’s clinical state of mind and the impact on the therapist of working in the context of divorce and separation.

He will consider the different demands of working with divorce and separation and the particular states of mind the couple therapist is invited to experience and work with.

The study day will consider relevant theory and clinical examples, and participants are encouraged to bring clinical material for discussion.

The day is suitable for couple psychoanalytic psychotherapists and counsellors, couple counsellors and all professionals working in the field of family justice.

About the trainer

After qualifying as a clinical psychologist and working in the NHS (Adult Psychiatry and Psychology) for a number of years, Dr Shmueli moved to Tavistock Relationships where he qualified as a Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist and worked as a staff member for 10 years. During this time, he also completed his PhD at University College London and trained and qualified as a Psychoanalyst. He then ran the MSc in Psychoanalytic Development Psychology at the Anna Freud Centre before moving into full time private practice. At present he also supervises the work of the Divorce and Separation Consultation Service at Tavistock Relationships and is an assessor on the MSc in Psychoanalytic Theory at University College London.

Key information

Date: Friday, 24 January 2020
Time: 10am to 1pm
Speaker: Dr Susan Pacey, Sexual and Relationship Psychotherapist
Venue: Hallam House, 56-60 Hallam Street, London W1W 6JL

Description

In this study morning, Dr Susan Pacey will question the continuing split in psychotherapy between psychodynamic approaches that focus on the emotional-relational arena and psychosexual approaches that focus on the body, behaviour and sexual technique. Why is a ‘dual’ approach, integrating mind, body and relationship, such a challenge? Why are there so few practitioners publicising an integrated approach?

The seminar is based on Susan’s recent doctoral research at Tavistock Relationships on ‘sensate focus’, an enduring and widely used tool in psychosexual therapy. Her paper on sensate focus and couple psychotherapy is in the most recent issue of the journal Couple and Family Psychoanalysis (Autumn 2019).

The presenter will consider possible unconscious dynamics generated by the introduction of this intervention in couple work and its possible impact on partners, the therapist and the couple-therapist relationship. She will also consider the arguments for and against the use of this ‘concrete’ intervention in couple psychotherapy.

Susan will propose an integrated model based on some of Winnicott’s most celebrated concepts and will think about the value and limitations of applying Winnicottian theory to sexuality in couple work, and how integrated ‘dual’ couple therapists go beyond a purely Winnicottian approach.

Relevant clinical material will be discussed during the morning.

About the trainer

Dr Susan Pacey has been a sexual and relationship psychotherapist for the past 25 years with a private practice in London W1 and formerly working in the NHS.

In September 2018 Susan successfully completed the Doctor of Couple Psychotherapy programme at Tavistock Relationships (TR), having gained an MA in Psychoanalysis, Attachment and the Couple Relationship at TR in 2010. She is a registered member of the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) and an accredited member of the College of Sexual and Relationship Therapists (COSRT).

Susan is the author of published papers on the medicalisation of sex, the impact of pregnancy and childbirth on sexual relationships, circumcision, female genital mutilation, step-parenting and other aspects of sexuality. She was on the editorial board of the journal Sexual and Relationship Therapy for several years and is a teacher, speaker and organiser for national and international professional conferences concerned with sexual relationships and sexuality.

Key information

Date: Friday, 16 October 2020. THIS CPD IS NOW FULLY BOOKED - NEW BOOKINGS ARE WAITING LIST ONLY.
Time: 5pm to 8pm
Trainer: Dr Graham Music, Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist, and Adult Psychotherapist
Venue: This is an Online CPD Course which will be held using the Zoom teleconferencing app/web platform

Description

In this evening talk Dr Graham Music will look closely at the complex challenges of working with more shut-down states of mind.

Many clients can present as quiet, cut-off, dampened down, and even hard to remain interested in. We will see how often they are out of touch with their own body-states, with little drive, physical energy, libido and dampened down seeking systems. Such cases require a different kind of therapeutic approach.

These patients might be highly neglected ones whose developmental potential was never triggered, more depressed in their flatness, or more dissociative ‘deadened’ ones who have shut down after trauma, each requiring different approaches.

We will examine the early and later roots of such experiences, and use neurobiological and psychodynamic approaches alongside an awareness of autonomic states, including our own embodied countertransference reactions to such clients. The lecture will outline key theoretical ideas and also make use of clinical material, video clips and audience discussion.

About the trainer

Graham Music works with adults and parents in private practice and with children and adolescents primarily in the NHS. He has worked at the Tavistock and Portman Clinics in London for more than two decades, where he also teaches on the child psychotherapy and other psychological therapy courses, and supervises therapists. He is a leading figure on training in child development, neuroscience and attachment theory, and has a particular interest in linking cutting-edge developmental findings with therapeutic practice. His clinical work in the NHS is currently primarily with forensic cases, and he has specialised in issues of trauma and the effect of maltreatment. He is the author of Nurturing Natures (2010), The Good Life (2014) and, most recently, Nurturing Children (2019), as well as many journal articles and book chapters. For more information about Graham, please go to his website, nurturingnatures.co.uk.

Key information

Date: Friday, 31 January 2020
Time: 10am to 4pm
Speaker: Susanna Abse, Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist
Venue: Hallam House, 56-60 Hallam Street, London W1W 6JL

Description

But tell me does she kiss
Like I used to kiss you
Does it feel the same
When…..

Infidelity is a common presenting problem in couple therapy and is often the precipitating factor in a referral. Dissatisfaction with the relationship may have been on low boil for years but an affair catapults the couple into a crisis.

Affairs present particular ethical and technical challenges to the therapist and this practical seminar will examine these, together with the underlying unconscious processes which may be at the heart of the difficulties.

Affairs can have myriad meanings and purposes and can represent developmental hope as well as destructive wishes both for the individual and the relationship. Some affairs end quickly, but at other times one partner finds it almost impossible to give up the relationship which can present a considerable dilemma to the therapist.

The workshop will include an examination about the wider evidence for successful therapy with affairs, along with clinical vignettes from both couple and individual work, video material and group discussion.

About the trainer

Susanna Abse is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and organisational consultant who has worked in private practice with couples and individuals for over 25 years. She is the current Chair of the British Psychoanalytic Council and was Chief Executive of Tavistock Relationships from 2006 until 2016. She is a is a Series Co-Editor of “The Library of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis” for Routledge and has written several papers on couple psychoanalytic psychotherapy focussing particularly on technical issues and is currently preparing a paper on infidelity. She has also written and lectured widely on relationships, parenting, leadership and social policy. She is a Senior Fellow of the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology and from 2017-18 she was a member of the University of Birmingham’s Mental Health Policy Commission.