Presentations

This is the presentation given CONFER at the conference entitled "Enactments: are these to be welcomed or avoided?" The main aim of the presentation is the following question: If I want the enactment to become transformative of deeply ingrained, unconscious characterological patterns (which, according to one definition, [...]

Whilst psychotherapy integration has been one of the most necessary, creative and productive developments in our field over the last 20 years, 'integrative' is in danger of becoming another meaningless sound-bite. What does our integration include, and what doesn't it? What holds it together? How broad and deep [...]

This is the presentation given at public workshops in Lahore and Islamabad in August 2015, to a mixed group of the general public, psychology students, and helping professionals including psychiatrists. The overall idea is to understand the different kinds of psychological help that clients need, and to take [...]

Whatever therapeutic or philosophical language we use to become aware of, reflect on and articulate our own wounds - developmental, characterological, systemic or archetypal, for example - each tradition we train in and subscribe to has its own wounds. These reach back to our therapeutic ancestors and the [...]

This presentation was prepared as an introduction to a supervision masterclass organised by CONFER in January 2013. Here I spell out how bodymind principles might be applied to supervision, bringing attention to the actual non-verbal messages by which parallel process is communicated and carried from the client-therapist system [...]

Enactments seem to occur suddenly, when we are caught unawares and plunged into them. But from outside the intersubjective entanglement it is apparent that they build up slowly, increasingly, over time. Before we become implicated in an obvious, explicit rupture, there have been implicit, unspoken, subliminal versions of [...]

Embodiment as a paradoxical relational process Since its origins in Freud and the zeitgeist of the late 19th century, psychotherapy has struggled with and against the limitations arising from a mind-over-body paradigm and its traditional bias towards the verbal-reflective mind. The recent fashion in neuroscience and embodiment has [...]

In the psychodynamic tradition we take it for granted that early relational dynamics are being replicated in the transference, often creating binds and dilemmas that in turn have a regressive effect on the therapist. This is such a powerful principle that we often do not stop to wonder: [...]

If the therapist's job is the steady provision of a safe, contained therapeutic framework, then breaks and transgressions of those clear and firm boundaries indicate a failure on the therapist's part - a mistake. However, every broken boundary is accompanied by the emergence of precious unconscious material, intensely [...]

Relational' is in danger of becoming another buzz-word, and this presentation is an attempt to formulate the substance, the essential principles of the relational paradigm shift. Theory is meant to support and enrich our practice rather than directing and legislating for it, by drawing our attention to what [...]

With the government's policy of 'Improving Access to Psychological Therapies' programme being heavily biased towards CBT, counselling is under severe pressure to fit in with 'medical model' thinking. Over the last few months there has been intense discussion in 'therapy today' both for and against the 'medical model'. [...]

Counselling as a profession has come a long way in a few decades, but it is also facing serious threats and limitations, both from within and without. Over the next few years, cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) as the government's treatment of choice will be funded and supported to the [...]

In a joint session with Joe Schwartz, the relational psychoanalyst, we tried to chart the history of relationality in psychotherapy, to set out the basic issues and controversies around it as an introduction to the CABP Conference "The Client and I", intended as a meeting point and dialogue [...]

In this presentation - based upon and similar to "No 'Relating Cure' without Embodiment" - I offered a way of catching up with the still pervasive mind-over-body dualism in counselling and psychotherapy. This becomes especially limiting when the client group brings pain and symptoms into the consulting room [...]

For this inaugural UKCP Supervision Conference I prepared this presentation, extending the established notion of parallel process (how the dynamic between client and therapist is reflected and replicated between therapist and supervisor) by three significant steps: how the dynamic between client and therapist parallels an internal dynamic in [...]

This is some of the content of my presentation at the 2006 BACP conference "It's the relationship that matters" turned into an article, bringing some of the relevant modern neuroscience and bodymind principles to counselling.

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Bringing the full spectrum of bodymind processes to Patrick Casement's notion of the 'internal supervisor', we can formulate a more comprehensive understanding of the vicissitudes of the therapeutic position.

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Character Structure theory is a central aspect of Reichian and neo-Reichian Body Psychotherapy, and its underlying holistic 'functionalism' has stood the test of time. In its expanded and integrated form, as presented by Stephen Johnson ("Character Styles", 1994), it provides a solid diagnostic and clinically relevant developmental model [...]