The Guild’s Commitment to Equality

The Guild is committed to making psychoanalytic psychotherapy accessible to all. It is committed to challenging inequality and systemic racism within the psychoanalytic psychotherapies. These commitments are reflected in our training, in the practice our members develop through that training, in the functioning of the Guild as an organisation, and our low cost clinic. The Guild recognises that institutions may engage in structural discrimination. As an institution, we seek to challenge and overcome any structural barriers inherent to the Guild. 

Training

The Guild recognises that trainees from minority ethnic communities are less likely to train in psychoanalytic practice, and once on a training may not find their own experiences of discrimination recognised. We recognise that psychoanalytic theory has a long and complex history in relation to sex, sexuality and gender, and that theory and practice adapts as society changes.

We understand that all institutional actions, however well meaning, need to be thought about, implemented, and monitored in ways that avoid reproducing racist structures, unconsciously, or otherwise, e.g. through stereotyping or tokenism. So, we will continually review the scholarship programme with these concerns in mind.

All our training courses at the Guild aim to openly discuss the cultural assumptions and constructions of difference  existing in psychoanalytic theory from its inception at the end of the 19th Century through to today.