This unique reading group is now entering its 17th year and is still going strong. We are delighted to be able to offer an opportunity to explore, examine and enjoy the books below. Our presenters have been stimulating and challenging, and have introduced us to new delights or opened up fresh vistas onto pre-loved favourites.

Although many participants have been trainees and practising counsellors or psychotherapists, everyone is welcome to attend. If you are thinking of attending for the first time or have enjoyed one of the previous sessions, why not tell a friend and encourage them to come along too. Please read the book before attending.

All are welcome to attend this event.

Friday 29th October 2021  7-8.30pm A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro
Led by Stephen Crawford

‘A Pale View of Hills’ was Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel published in 1982. Partly set in Nagasaki in the aftermath of the atomic bomb and the Second World War, and partly in England, it concerns the life of Etsuko, a Japanese widow, who has also been bereaved by her daughter’s suicide. The novel is understated, enigmatic and haunting, and leaves much unsaid, but touches on profound, and sometimes disturbing, questions about being human in the modern world.

Please book your ticket for the October Reading Group via Eventbrite here.

After 17 very successful years of running the WPF Therapy Reading Group, we have decided that it is time to refresh the format and we are announcing that this will be our last reading group at WPF Therapy. We want to thank all of those that attended and those who made the reading group possible in the past 17 years.   We hope that you will be able to attend future events and enjoy our new formats as they are announced.

Please note that by booking a ticket for this event, you are agreeing to our Terms and Conditions for CPD events, so please read through them carefully before making your purchase.

If you experience any problems during the application process then please contact events@wpf.org.uk.

Join WPF Therapy ‘Meet the Author’ monthly events for a time of reflection and conversation. This programme will be delivered online via Zoom. What’s really special is that the authors will join us live, read from their books and take part in our discussion.

Anyone with a love of reading, an interest in considering psychoanalytic perspectives in books and lively discussion is very welcome to come along. We ask only that you read the book before attending.

All are welcome to attend this event.

Friday 26th November 2021  7-8.30pm A Grief Companion and Languages of Loss by Sasha Bates

Led by Sasha Bates

We are delighted that the author Sasha Bates will host this reading group.

Sasha Bates, MA, MBACP, is an integrative psychotherapist, yoga teacher and author.

Her first book “Languages of Loss: a psychotherapist’s journey through grief” was published in April 2020. In it, she describes her experience of losing her husband from two perspectives – that of a confused, grieving widow, and that of a psychotherapist truly understanding for the first time what psychotherapeutic theory can offer the bereaved. She explores the usefulness, and otherwise, of some of the grief theories, and looks more broadly at different approaches – psychodynamic, body, transpersonal, attachment and more – investigating how each may be useful when working with one’s own and a client’s grief.

Her latest book “A Grief Companion” was published in June 2021 and was, largely, a response to the many requests she received for a more practical ‘guidebook’ or ‘manual’ that could help people through the early months of grieving. With more people than ever before encountering loss due to the Covid pandemic, A Grief Companion offers reflections and suggestions on how mind, body and spirit can affect, and be affected by, loss of all kinds.

Please book your ticket for the October Reading Group via Eventbrite here

Friday 28th January 2022,  7-8.30pm Attachment, Relationships and Food: From Cradle to Kitchen edited by Linda Cundy

Led by Linda Cundy

We are delighted that the editor Linda Cundy will host this reading group.

Where there is food, there is attachment. This book explores relationships with other people, with oneself, and between client and therapist through our connection with food. We comfort, nurture, numb, neglect or attack ourselves through what we consume; food metaphors spice up a therapy session or, more concretely, clients may bring breakfast or edible gifts into the consulting room. Preparing meals and sharing them are therapeutic activities in themselves, helping to bring together couples, groups, and communities. The aim of this book is twofold: to examine the nature of attachment through narratives of feeding, and to enrich psychotherapy practice by encouraging exploration of clients’ food-related memories and associations. Like individual courses of a feast, every chapter has its own distinct flavour, but each author addresses the complex connection between what we eat and how we relate from an attachment perspective.

Please book your ticket for the October Reading Group via Eventbrite here.

Friday 25th February 2022,  7-8.30pm, Yoga Saved My Life by Sasha Bates

Led by Sasha Bates

We are delighted that the author Sasha Bates will host this reading group.

Sasha Bates, MA, MBACP, is an integrative psychotherapist, yoga teacher and author.

Sasha’s latest book, “Yoga Saved My Life”, will be published in March. In it she explores the parallels between yoga and psychotherapy, investigating how working with the mind body connection can help all manner of presentations such as anxiety, depression, a lack of balance or self awareness, anger management, ingrained, unhelpful internal working models and so much more. It includes personal testimonies from a myriad of yogis who have themselves made the claim that yoga has saved their lives – lives of addiction, suicidality and misery.

Yoga Saved My Life questions how and why yoga is so transformational. It explores what it is that takes it beyond being merely a physical exercise, effectuating deep and lasting changes. It posits the idea that, albeit via a different medium, yoga is doing what therapy does – providing a safe, containing, reflective space in which to access the unconscious, learn about ourselves and find ways to relate to ourselves better. This new relationship with the self can offer ways to work with the automatic habits we do without thinking but which are holding us back, practically and emotionally. The world of psychotherapy has lately been opening itself to the multidisciplinary worlds of neuroscience, psychoneuroimmunology and more, and benefiting hugely from this inclusive welcoming of new discoveries. By also looking behind to the ancient Eastern practice of yoga, it can incorporate a similarly broad and integrative approach to help it grow holistically, further benefitting us and our clients.

Please book your ticket for the October Reading Group via Eventbrite here.

Before booking please read our Terms and Conditions for CPD events here.

There are opportunities to facilitate reading groups in the 2021/2022 programme, so please e-mail events@wpf.org.uk if you are interested.

This event will be delivered via Zoom online.

If you are interested in WPF Therapy upcoming events, please check our Eventbrite page.

This lecture will touch on: 

• Do you want to increase your understanding of the issues facing gender non-conforming & Trans clients?
• How to work therapeutically with a client questioning their gender identity?
• Would you like to learn more about Conversion therapy and why it is harmful and damaging? 

By attending this lecture you can expect: 

1. Have a better understanding of the needs and challenges facing gender non-conforming clients.
2. Have a basic understanding of how to work with gender non-conforming & Trans clients and not assuming gender is the ‘problem’.
3.  Working with young trans clients. 
4. Understanding gender identity and intersectionality. Is gender identity fixed, primal or constructed?

Outline  

The debate on gender identity has become very toxic. The recent High Court ruling on medical treatment, the constant trans-phobic comments in some elements of the media and the debate around conversion therapy have all made working with gender non-conforming and trans clients a minefield for Psychotherapists and Counsellors. This lecture will demystify the issues and provide attendees with some basic tools to work with. 

Lecturer

Michelle Bridgman is an experienced Gestalt Psychotherapist, Hypnotherapist and Keynote Conference Speaker with over twenty-five years of experience in Private Practice and in hospital settings.  

Michelle have been working with adults and young people presenting with Gender Dysphoria for over twenty years and co-authored the ‘Standards of Care’ for professionals working with Gender Dysphoria published in 2007. Recently completed a research project and thesis on “The Role of Psychotherapy in the clinical treatment of Gender Dysphoria”.

Chair

Lynsey Hotchkies, Director of Studies at WPF Therapy.

Target Audience:

This event should be interesting and accessible for anyone interested in psychoanalysis, including qualified counsellors and psychotherapists as well as those in training.  Please note that by booking on this event you agree to keep all discussion confidential.

Applications must be received by Thursday, 23 September 2021.

Please note that by booking a ticket for this event, you are agreeing to our Terms and Conditions for CPD events, so please read through them carefully before making your purchase.

If you experience any problems please contact events@wpf.org.uk.

This event will be delivered via Zoom online.

If you are interested in WPF Therapy upcoming events, please check our Eventbrite page.

• How can we work with the internalised experience of privilege and otherness and of internalised racism, sexism and homophobia, etc. in the consulting room? 
• Are you interested in working with issues of privilege and otherness? 
• How privilege and otherness factors in the therapy room? 
• How does a therapist’s identity impact upon their own privilege? 

This lecture presents the key ideas from Dr Dwight Turner’s new book and it will provide clinical examples of how power appears in therapy with the other. This workshop also encourages participants to explore their own sense of privilege and otherness. 

By attending this lecture you can expect: 

1. To have a greater intellectual understanding of privilege and otherness.
2. To begin to develop a felt unconscious understanding of this for themselves.
3. To begin to demystify these concepts as they are so common.
4. To start developing the skills to better work with difference in practice. 

Outline  

The presentation will be provided using Powerpoint and discussion.  

In Dr Dwight Turner’s latest book Intersections of Privilege and Otherness in Counselling and Psychotherapy (Routledge, 2021), the aim is to actually explore the internalised experience of privilege and otherness and of internalised racism, sexism and homophobia, etc.  The last chapter though, looks at how we can actually work with these internalised experiences, especially through the language of dreams.  Borrowing from Carl Jung’s ideas around free association and active imagination, the dreams explored in chapter five of the book involve an uncovering of these internalised objects and how they play themselves out in the dreamscape, and also this looks at just how devastating some of these internalised symbols can be for the psychology of those persons of colour who endure racism.  The third part to this exploration is actually how through working this often dark, shadowy and destructive material, those persons of otherness, in this case based around race, can actually find themselves on a route towards individuation towards a separation from the internalised impact of white supremacy, colonialism, etc. 

Lecturer

Dr Dwight Turner is Senior Lecturer within the School of Applied Social Sciences at the University of Brighton, lecturing on their PG Dip and MSc courses in Counselling and Psychotherapy, a PhD Supervisor at their Doctoral College, a psychotherapist and supervisor in private practice.   

His latest book Intersections of Privilege and Otherness in Counselling and Psychotherapy was released in February 2021 and is published by Routledge. An activist, writer, and public speaker on issues of race, difference and intersectionality in counselling and psychotherapy.  

Here is an article about Dr Dwight Turner, check it here. 

Chair

Alexa Walker trained as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist at WPF Therapy.  She has worked in private practice and taught and supervised at WPF Therapy at all levels, including leading seminars on Diversity.  She has a particular interest in promoting diversity, which has been informed by her earlier experiences of management and communication in multi-cultural environments, and in thinking about difference in all its facets.

Target Audience:

This event should be interesting and accessible for anyone interested in the topic, including qualified counsellors and psychotherapists and the general public. This event is open to all.  

Applications must be received by Thursday, 14th October 2021. 

Please note that by booking a ticket for this event, you are agreeing to our Terms and Conditions for CPD events, so please read through them carefully before making your purchase.

If you experience any problems please contact events@wpf.org.uk.

This event will be delivered via Zoom online.

If you are interested in WPF Therapy upcoming events, please check our Eventbrite page.

• What is the sublime and how do we understand it as immanent in our everyday life, a source of energy and inspiration? 
• How can it be invoked to support our mental health and well-being? 
• Are encounters with the sublime loving and caring?  Or can they also be hateful, traumatic, and destructive? 
• How do these encounters with the sublime overflow and destabilise our psychological and social structures by exposing their fictional and constructed nature? 

Notions of the sublime are most often associated with the extraordinary, and include the intrapsychic, high-cultural, and exceptional occurrences of elation and exaltation as part of its experience.  

In this lecture, Dr Gaitanidis will use ordinary encounters and case presentations in order to make a plea that the existing philosophical and psychoanalytical perspectives on the sublime acknowledge their rootedness in the same world that we all engage in our everyday lives. For all their theoretical and clinical refinements, the various philosophical and psychoanalytic explanations of the sublime remain an expression of, and hence must be guided by, the world of our common human experience. 

He will begin by turning to the emergence and development of the notion of the sublime in philosophy and psychoanalysis in order to show how we can take up this legacy and transform it in a manner that could endow us with a particular power and relevance for the personal, interpersonal, therapeutic, cultural and political questions that confront us in the 21st century. By proposing a more ‘grounding’, ‘ordinary’ way of speaking and thinking about the sublime, we hope that we will be able to reinvigorate the sensuous, mysterious, and ‘sacred’ ways we experience our everyday encounters with the world, therapy, and each other. 

This lecture will be an opportunity to substantiate the existing psychoanalytic and aesthetic, theoretical and clinical knowledge of the sublime by placing it within the context of everyday life using examples of it in art, film, theatre, literature as well as in work, education, relationships, and the clinic.  

By attending this lecture you can expect: 

• To restore and revive the world of our ordinary sensorial, interpersonal, therapeutic experiences by introducing the sublime as part of its mysterious, irreducible, and open-ended texture. 
• To be able to use psychoanalytic and aesthetic theories as well as clinical presentations, to revitalise the sublime by re-evaluating its significance for contemporary life and psychotherapy and, in a unique and fascinating endeavour, open a space that will explore the sublime in the ordinary, everyday, and quotidian. 
• Through the exploration of familiar and unfamiliar threads of the sublime experience, to posit the sublime as invoking an ordinary human response which contains minute, inter-psychic, inclusive cultural and clinical elements, and thus carries within it therapeutic and political potential.

Dr Anastasios Gaitanidis is a Relational Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, Director of Studies, Author, Theory Editor and Supervisor.  In addition to his clinical work as a psychoanalytic therapist, Anastasios held appointments as a Senior Lecturer and provided clinical and research supervision to counselling psychologists and psychotherapists at Regent’s University London and University of Roehampton. He currently holds the position of Director of Studies for the Professional Doctorate in Psychotherapy at Metanoia training Institute.  

Anastasios is the Theory Editor of the European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling (EJPC) and an author who published a substantial body of academic work including journal articles and edited books over the years, with a recent book publication entitled The Sublime in Everyday Life: Psychoanalytic and Aesthetic Perspectives. (Routledge: 2020)

Target Audience:

This course should be interesting and accessible for anyone interested in psychoanalysis, including qualified counsellors and psychotherapists as well as those in training.  Please note that by booking on this event you agree to keep all discussion confidential.

This event will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and art and drama therapists, as well as scholars and students of philosophy, literature, art and popular culture.   

Applications must be received by Thursday, 2nd December 2021. 

Please note that by booking a ticket for this event, you are agreeing to our Terms and Conditions for CPD events, so please read through them carefully before making your purchase.

If you experience any problems please contact events@wpf.org.uk.

This event will be delivered via Zoom online.

If you are interested in WPF Therapy upcoming events, please check our Eventbrite page.

‘Anna O’, or Bertha Pappenheim, is famously credited with coining the phrase ‘the talking cure’. What gave her the idea that talking helped? And was it the talking or the listening? While her analyst, Josef Breuer’s, naivety about the explosive potential of listening led to an abrupt, catastrophic end to the treatment, together they opened the way to Freudian analysis, the plethora of modern talking cures and, most recently, therapy bots. 

So, what makes a good listener? We will look at some of the most commonsensical ideas — patience, tolerance, availability, responsiveness, lack of moral judgement — and ask whether it’s really so simple. In the early 1960s, Jozeph Weizenbaum developed a robot therapist, christened Eliza after the parroting protagonist of George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion’. Eliza was designed to respond like a Rogerian, human-centred therapist, mainly repeating people’s words back to them, slightly differently inflected. Weizenbaum was horrified that his creation was so well-received — people really seemed to like talking to it — and went on to become a forceful critic of A.I. 

If Josef Breuer’s listening was somehow ‘too much’ — his patient fell madly in love with him, causing him to run away in panic — and Eliza’s listening risked being ‘too little’ — the software just offered a vapid semblance of a human response — what would be ‘just right’?  

Lecturer
Anouchka Grose is a psychoanalyst and writer practising in London. She is a member of The Centre for Freudian Research, where she regularly lectures. She has written non-fiction: No More Silly Love Songs: a realist’s guide to romance (Portobello, 2010), Are you Considering Therapy (Karnac, 2011), From Anxiety to Zoolander: notes on psychoanalysis (Karnac, 2018), A Guide to Eco-Anxiety: how to protect the planet and your mental health (Watkins, 2020) as well as writing fiction: Ringing for You (Harper Collins, 1999) and Darling Daisy (Harper Collins, 2000). She also writes about art and fashion, and contributes to The Guardian, Radio 4, and Resonance FM. 

Chair

Judith Chamberlain is a psychodynamic psychotherapist in private practice and clinical supervisor at Centre70 in South London, which is an organisation supporting adults with social, mental, financial and other difficulties. Judith is a seminar leader and Training Development Tutor at WPF Therapy and is a member of BPC, UKCP and FPC.

Within these roles, Judith has particular interests in perinatal psychotherapy, forensic setting psychotherapy and working with people who are neurodiverse (ADD/ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, OCD).

Target Audience:
This event should be interesting and accessible for anyone interested in the topic, including qualified counsellors and psychotherapists and the general public. This event is open to all.  

Applications must be received by Thursday, 10th March 2022. 

Please note that by booking a ticket for this event, you are agreeing to our Terms and Conditions for CPD events, so please read through them carefully before making your purchase.

If you experience any problems please contact events@wpf.org.uk.

This event will be delivered via Zoom.

If you are interested in WPF Therapy upcoming events, please check our Eventbrite page.

During this online talk Stephen will use musical illustrations from the 10th to the 20th century, to show how music as well as language is able to express the unconscious mind. With both language and music functioning as modes of communication mediating between the material of the unconscious and the listener.

A major focus will be on the fact that Sigmund Freud’s attitude to music tells us as much about the personal psychology of the man, as it does about the character of music itself. We shall see how Freud’s general mistrust and actual hostility to most music, with the exception  of a couple of 19th century operas, was founded on two differing anxieties. The first being its power to penetrate to, and then activate, the dark forces and phantasies of the personal unconscious against which Freud was personally so resolutely defended. The other being that three of the major thinkers of the 19th century; the philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, the former especially, and composer Richard Wagner all wrote significantly about music. In doing so they expressed ideas which could be understood as anticipating Freud’s own ideas about the unconscious and even psychoanalysis itself. Freud’s immense narcissism could not tolerate such possibilities.

With regard to the power of music we shall consider the degree to which the personal psychological life especially that of the unconscious is expressed in the music itself; as well as perhaps a collective unconscious and how that musical communication may be experienced by the listener. The combination of words with music will also be addressed.

Participants will leave this presentation, not only with some new insights into Freud himself as a result of his complex relationship to music, but also able to consider more fully the role that modes of art forms,  particularly music, may have in expressing and communicating unconscious material. In addition, how for the listener, music might be seen as being as much of a mediator between the unconscious and the conscious mind as language itself.

Target Audience
This course is open to qualified and training psychotherapists and counsellors. The theoretical orientation of the workshop will be psychodynamic but practitioners of other modalities are welcome to attend.

Speaker
Stephen Gross is a psychodynamic psychotherapist in private practice who qualified at the BAP in 1986. For over 30 years he has been working at WPF Therapy principally as supervisor and tutor. For the last 15 years has been facilitating the Ontology seminars.  His play Freud’s Night Visitors was performed at The Freud Museum in 2012 and at WPF Therapy. In 2018 his book Living in Language: Poetry and Prose was launched at WPF Therapy. He is particularly interested in the relationship between language and music.

Chair

Kate Trench

Kate Trench is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and music lover.

Applications must be received by Thursday,31st March 2022.

Please note that by booking a ticket for this event, you are agreeing to our Terms and Conditions for CPD events, so please read through them carefully before making your purchase.

If you experience any problems please contact events@wpf.org.uk.

This event will be delivered via Zoom online.

If you are interested in WPF Therapy upcoming events, please check our Eventbrite page.

In psychoanalytic literature fashion appears again and again as something ambiguous, both good and evil; something that shares with the psychological symptom a structure of enjoyment and suffering, pleasure and pain, irritation and relief. On the one hand clothes can supposedly help you out with embodied life, conceal the bits you feel ashamed of and accentuate the bits you’re proud of. But then again, fashion isn’t really about clothes in any practical sense, but about the endless replacement of clothes by other clothes — and especially the vilification of certain styles and the elevation of others. Fashion is therefore a system that’s perfect for producing the kind of anxiety that keeps people captivated — you have to stay constantly attuned or risk committing a shameful faux pas.   

This talk will focus on the phenomenon of fashion, the clothing of psychoanalysts, and the kinds of behaviours around fashion you might come across in the consulting room. 

Lecturer

Anouchka Grose is a psychoanalyst and writer practising in London. She is a member of The Centre for Freudian Research, where she regularly lectures. She has written non-fiction: No More Silly Love Songs: a realist’s guide to romance (Portobello, 2010), Are you Considering Therapy (Karnac, 2011), From Anxiety to Zoolander: notes on psychoanalysis (Karnac, 2018), A Guide to Eco-Anxiety: how to protect the planet and your mental health (Watkins, 2020) as well as writing fiction: Ringing for You (Harper Collins, 1999) and Darling Daisy (Harper Collins, 2000). She also writes about art and fashion, and contributes to The Guardian, Radio 4, and Resonance FM. 

Chair

Patsy Fauré is a psychodynamic Couples and Relationships Counsellor, Trainer and Clinical Supervisor. 

She teaches and runs workshops from Foundation through to Masters level, at two leading psychotherapeutic training organisations in London, with a focus on family perspectives and couple theory.  She also supervises groups in different clinical settings which include therapists who work with couples, languages, and art therapists.  She believes that training and supervision are important creative spaces for clinicians to hone their skills as well as being challenged and developed professionally. 

She has a thriving private practice where she works with individuals and couples with relationship issues, from diverse backgrounds, economically and culturally. Patsy is a member of the British Association of Psychodynamic Psychoanalytic Supervisors. Patsy previously worked in Human Resources departments within large international organisations. 

Home

Target Audience:

This event should be interesting and accessible for anyone interested in the topic, including qualified counsellors and psychotherapists and the general public. This event is open to all.  

Applications must be received by Thursday, 12th May 2022. 

Please note that by booking a ticket for this event, you are agreeing to our Terms and Conditions for CPD events, so please read through them carefully before making your purchase.

If you experience any problems please contact events@wpf.org.uk.

This workshop will be delivered via Zoom.

This lecture will not be recorded due to the confidentiality of the clinical material.

• Do you want to learn useful approaches to work with cases of psychosis? 

• In what ways does it benefit us to understand the fundamental concepts of Lacanian theory? 

• What does Lacan have to tell us about the Big Other? And how can this abstraction be of help in clinical work? 

Psychosis – to what use can we put this weighty signifier? Lacanian analysis starts by binning the notion of psychosis as disorder or illness, reframing it as a commonplace subjective position in language. This talk explores how analytic treatment can offer a way beyond the deadlock of medication and risk management that defines current mental health services.  

Rather than working through a checklist of symptoms and behaviours leading to generalised forms of treatment, the Lacanian clinician listens out for an analysand’s singular relation with language, law and lack – thereby discerning what might be helpful and safe in the analytic work.  

Workshop Aims

This lecture will give you: 

1. An overview of the Lacanian metapsychology of psychosis. 
2. An understanding of what is a diagnosis and how does a clinician work towards making one?  
3. Development of approaches to working psychoanalytically with psychosis.

Outline 

This will be a talk about clinical work with people with psychotic structures. As often as not psychosis is a low-key thing, discerned through attentive listening over time. But what does one listen out for?  And how does an idea of diagnosis determine the direction of the treatment? The speaker will use a visual presentation and clinical examples to elaborate on a Lacanian approach to working with psychosis.

Lecturer

Conor McCormack is a Lacanian psychoanalyst and a member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research. He works in Bristol in private practice and has extensive experience working as a psychotherapist in the NHS. Conor is also a director and writer known for his powerful, socially engaged filmmaking, including the BIFA nominated documentary Christmas with Dad and the acclaimed voice-hearing documentary In the Real.

https://parkstreetanalysis.co.uk/

Target Audience:

This course should be interesting and accessible for anyone interested in psychoanalysis, including qualified counsellors and psychotherapists as well as those in training.  Please note that by booking this event you agree to keep all discussions confidential.   

Applications must be received by Thursday, 23rd June 2022. 

Please note that by booking a ticket for this event, you are agreeing to our Terms and Conditions for CPD events, so please read through them carefully before making your purchase.

If you experience any problems please contact events@wpf.org.uk.

This event will be delivered via Zoom online.

If you are interested in WPF Therapy upcoming events, please check our Eventbrite page.

• How can we take the climate crisis seriously without succumbing to depression, anxiety and pre-emptive grief?  
• How can we best respond to our analysands’ climate-related suffering? 

Treatments for ‘eco-anxiety’ tend to follow a loose pattern that goes something like, ‘meditate, talk to your friends and get involved in activism’. While these are all perfectly good ideas they can sometimes seem merely to skim the surface of the psychic pain caused by species loss, global heating, and the threat of societal breakdown — not to mention the idea that our planet is no longer a viable habitat for new life.  

This talk will discuss the ways in which the climate crisis may affect our mental health, as well as offering some alternative thinking around how we might be able work with and respond to ‘eco-anxiety’ in our practice, taking ideas from eco-psychoanalysis in order to propose a kind of ‘psychoactivism’.  

Lecturer

Anouchka Grose is a psychoanalyst and writer practising in London. She is a member of The Centre for Freudian Research, where she regularly lectures. She has written non-fiction: No More Silly Love Songs: a realist’s guide to romance (Portobello, 2010), Are you Considering Therapy (Karnac, 2011), From Anxiety to Zoolander: notes on psychoanalysis (Karnac, 2018), A Guide to Eco-Anxiety: how to protect the planet and your mental health (Watkins, 2020) as well as writing fiction: Ringing for You (Harper Collins, 1999) and Darling Daisy (Harper Collins, 2000). She also writes about art and fashion, and contributes to The Guardian, Radio 4, and Resonance FM. 

Target Audience:

This event should be interesting and accessible for anyone interested in the topic, including qualified counsellors and psychotherapists and the general public. This event is open to all.  

Applications must be received by Thursday, 1st September 2022. 

Please note that by booking a ticket for this event, you are agreeing to our Terms and Conditions for CPD events, so please read through them carefully before making your purchase.

If you experience any problems please contact events@wpf.org.uk.