The provisional programme for the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy NOW conference has now been finalised. We are excited to now be able to release the complete list of speakers, chairs and workshop facilitators.
PP NOW takes place. It's preceded by our special Friday evening lecture, presented by Iain McGilchrist. Bookings are now open, and registration and venue details can be found here:
Provisional Programme
Welcome and introduction: Gary Fereday, Chief Executive, BPC
Keynote Session: The Mental Pain of Minorities
The discord between the subjectivity of minorities and their ecological and cultural ‘holding environment’ causes them chronic mental pain, arising from their being used as dehumanized targets of the majority’s projections, as well as the figure-ground discord in their subjectivity. Minorities may retreat from social participation, idealize times and places where they were not the minority, and, at times, discharge impotent rage via acts of ‘terrorism'. Societal measures that assure their presence in history and in embodied communal narratives help diminish their distress.This is not only good for them; it is beneficial for society at large and raises all sections of society to a higher humanitarian ground.
Keynote speaker: Salman Akhtar, Jefferson University
Respondents: Matthew Taylor, CE RSA
Chair: Helen Morgan
Coffee break (tea and coffee available all day)
Breakout Sessions:
1. Living without history: identity and fixed-term contracts
Exploring the impact of short-termism and the loss of collective memory on therapeutic, social and work relations.
Andrew Cooper
Tim Dartington
2. Families and Young People Resilience and Relationships: What now for the modern family?
Thoughts and debate on children and families in times of austerity.
Susanna Abse Through Thick and Thin - family resilience, austerity and the obsession with change
Biddy Youell The impact of austerity on the next generation as seen through infant observation in two European countries.
3. The assault on human values in a consumer society: the marginalization of vulnerability, compassion and relationships
Society increasingly rewards the pursuit of ruthless self-interest and seeks to marginalize vulnerability, emotional need and relationships. This session explores the consequences of the relentlessness of working life and the need for possession of the crucial material ‘objects of desire’ that reassure us of our value in society, and the contribution of these issues to the riots.
Jean Knox The success agenda and the shaming society
Frank Lowe The riots: Them and Us
Chair Matthew Patrick
4. Governance, perversion, politics: what’s going on in the public sector?
This session will consider the public sector’s state of flux.
Rosemary Rizq Perverting the course of therapy: the audit culture
in mental health services
Paul Hoggett The ‘fairness agenda’ and the politics of resentment
Chair James Johnston
5. Entrepreneurs of the Self
Psychoanalytic reflections on the psychic and social functions of reality TV makeover shows.
Alessandra Lemma
Chair Richard Graham
Lunch
Breakout Sessions:
1. ‘Major Tom, Bion, Lucy and the Psychotic Vacuum’: making sense of drug misuse
Trying to make sense of the way in which drug misuse becomes a psychotic ‘concentration for annihilation’.
Gary Winship
Chair David Vincent
2. Psychodynamic interventions with staff in prisons and probation: impacts on staff, offenders and organisational culture
This session looks at supervision and training of staff in Psychologically Informed Planned Environments, which work to change the culture of prison environments; and at work with London Probation Trust providing clinical supervision to frontline Probation Officers, which aims to support staff development and so to improve engagement and outcomes with service users.
Marion Brown
Heather Wood
3. Beyond the rhetoric of ‘biopsychosocial’: finding common ground
‘Biopsychosocial’ has become a cliché for integrative or holistic mental health care that neither addresses deeper individual experience, nor societal determinants of ‘health’ adequately.
Nick Benefield
Rex Haigh
Gary McKnight
4. Thinking psychoanalytically about dementia: from exploration to intervention
This workshop will discussing dementia from a psychoanalytic point of view, and will describe the development of a new intervention for couples where one partner has a dementia.
Andrew Balfour
Sandra Evans
5. Family Values and Patterns of Male and Female Violence
This session will discuss the origins, functions and treatment of violent behaviour from a psychoanalytic perspective, highlighting the different manifestations in men and women. Clinical material and criminological data will be presented.
Anna Motz
Jessica Yakeley
Closing Plenary: Panel discussion reflecting on the key themes of the day and dialogue with the audience
Panel Salman Akhtar Patrick Pietroni Mary Target
Chair Julian Lousada
Reception and Awards Ceremony
Presentation of the PP NOW Awards
- Innovative Excellence Award
- Outstanding Professional Leadership Award
- Bernard Ratigan Award for Psychoanalysis and Diversity