Decolonising Psychotherapy as an Ethic of Disillusionment
2024-07-06 15:00 - 17:00 (Europe/London)
Decolonising Psychotherapy as an Ethic of Disillusionment
This is the latest in a series of seminars on Decolonising Psychoanalysis, organised by the Race and Culture Committee of the Guild of Psychotherapists. The series is intended to open up conversations about psychoanalysis and psychotherapy by initiating Psycho-Philosophical Dialogues between academic philosophers and psychotherapists, bringing clinical responses to the academic decolonial work.
A recording of the seminar will be available to ticket-holders for a month after the event.
Decolonising Psychotherapy as an Ethic of Disillusionment
Nini Kerr
with Dr. Tarun Pamneja (respondent)
Saturday 6 July 2024
3:00pm – 5:00pm BST
Online seminar £12 – £24
Abstract – Dr. Nini Kerr
“Susie looks unsettled as she enters the room. Planting herself down in the chair, she holds onto the armrests as if preparing for a thunderstorm in the therapeutic terrain. Her subdued smile and offhand comments about the weather do little to disguise her agitation…”
This presentation explores what it means to contest the Eurocentric system of therapeutic practice, and the demands it places on non-white practitioners. It delves into the challenges of decolonising psychotherapy in action, addressing crucial questions not at all easy to answer, surrounding what it means, what it takes, and, most importantly, how we are set back in navigating a decolonial approach to therapeutic care. Rather than assuming a linear progression towards a more equitable therapeutic future, it focuses instead on psychoanalysis’ ancient preoccupation with whiteness, which bears upon the practice. I invite the audience into my consulting room to witness the often palpable yet unspoken tension surrounding ‘race’. I stage a series of therapeutic encounters between myself (as the practitioner) and Susie (the client, pseudonym) as two women of colour, showing how the intersectional workings of oppression from ‘outside’ can be reproduced in the consulting room. I offer my reflections on these ‘failings’ and connect them with Layton’s (2019) concept of the ‘ethic of disillusionment’. Through this, I highlight the tension between conceptual relations and social relations: how our ‘devotion’ to a theory recreates within the therapeutic relationships the pervasive differential relations in psychoanalytic syntax.

Speakers’ Biographies
Nini Kerr has engaged in extensive research critically exploring the lived experiences of marginalised communities. Her research delves into the intricate and nuanced connections between identity, psychological experiences, and social reality, providing actionable insights into the impact of various forms of inequality. She is a Lecturer in Counselling, Psychotherapy, and Applied Social Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, and an accredited trainer and practitioner. She has published extensively in the field of psychosocial studies and recently won the Good Practice Research Award in the Positive Disruptor category in 2022, in recognition of her sustained achievements in innovating and revitalising research practices that promote social justice and equality. She has been awarded the Principal’s Teaching Award Scheme for her project on decolonising counselling and psychotherapy (2023-2024). She is a Scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Council and serves on the Executive Board for the Association for Psychosocial Studies and the Editorial Board for Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society.
Tarun Pamneja is a Doctor of Integrative Psychotherapy and Counselling Psychology and now works in private practice as a psychotherapist and supervisor. He has three decades of professional experience in the mental health arena, with extensive experience of working in the NHS and charities supporting people diagnosed with severe mental illness and emotional distress. For his doctoral research, he investigated Conflict Within Psychosis Treatment in the English NHS: Investigating the Experiences of Patients and Psychiatrists. His main interests are the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, disability and morality.
Bursary tickets A limited number of bursary tickets are available on a pay-what-you-can basis to anyone who would not be able to attend the event without financial assistance. To apply for a bursary ticket please email ivan_talks@guildofpsychotherapists.org.uk. Thank you.
CPD certificates available on request.
Organised by the Race and Culture Committee of the Guild of Psychotherapists.
Caption: Image above from the Jardim Miriam Arte Club (JAMAC), a therapeutic group in São Paulo, Brazil. Photo: Ana Minozzo

Outrageous Reason: Madness and Race in Britain and Empire, 1780-2020
2024-06-22 14:00 - 16:00
OUTRAGEOUS REASON: MADNESS AND RACE IN BRITAIN AND EMPIRE, 1780–2020
Peter Barham with a foreword by Dwight Turner
Book Reading with Peter Barham followed by a discussion between Peter Barham and Marion Gow
Saturday 22nd June 2024, 2:00-4.00pm BST
Online via zoom
This powerful and disturbing book draws direct comparisons between the plight and fates of African slaves, dehumanised and discarded to sanitise Britain’s trade in human lives and imperial ambitions, and the systemic ‘othering’ of people designated ‘mad’ throughout Western history. Drawing on contemporary historical records, Peter Barham recounts, often in their own words, the stories of black people incarcerated in the lunatic asylum at Kingston Jamaica, poor white women similarly ejected into the British psychiatric system in the early 20th century for failing to live up to class and gender norms, and most shockingly, black men who have died at the hands of the police and mental health nurses in state custody and psychiatric detention. Endemic racism, greed, cruelty, exploitation and social control are writ large across this account that demands to be read by all those concerned for human rights, mad rights, Black lives and truth-telling about Britain’s shameful colonial past and racist present.
Peter Barham has been working, writing and engaging critically in the mental health field for more than 50 years. His work straddles clinical research, psychoanalysis, practical initiative, historical inquiry, mental health activism and film making. He has a PhD in abnormal psychology from the University of Durham and in modern history from the University of Cambridge. He is a chartered psychologist and was elected a fellow of the British Psychological Society for his ‘outstanding contribution to psychological approaches to the understanding of psychosis’. He is the founder of the Hamlet Trust, which pioneered grassroots mental health reform in Central and Eastern Europe, supported by George Soros’ Open Society Institute. His books include Schizophrenia and Human Value (1995), first published in 1984, Forgotten Lunatics of the Great War (2004, 2007) and Closing the Asylum: The mental patient in modern society, first published in 1992 and reissued in 2020.
Marion Gow Psychoanalytic psychotherapist. Member of the Guild of Psychotherapists and UKCP
She has worked both privately and in the voluntary sector including Women’s Aid, Family Welfare Association, The Women’s Therapy Centre, The Guild Clinic as Chair, The Guild training committee. She is a pluralist by persuasion with special interest in Laplanche and all contemporary theories that can assist in interrogating all forms of psychological difficulties including Race Class Gender and Sexuality and all matters critical to understanding oneself and others .
As a psychotherapist, feminist and now older woman she has a critical interest in the social, political, racial and gendered dimensions of the human condition and how they too enigmatically present themselves.
Donations for The Guild of Psychotherapists reduced fee clinic would be welcome
A recording will be available for ticket buyers for a month after the event.
CPD certificates available on request.
For your copy of Outrageous Reason £21.50 p&p inc bit.ly/outrageousreason
Image credit ‘All Hands on Decks’ (2003) by Denzil Forrester
Organised by the Race and Culture Committee of the Guild of Psychotherapists.The Race and Culture Committee (RCC) was set up to provide a forum for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic members of The Guild of Psychotherapists to discuss issues of common concern, address ‘racial’ and cultural ques
tions from a psychoanalytic and analytical psychology perspective, and promote anti-racist practice and racial equity within psychotherapy and the wider community. It embodies the values and purposes of The Guild in establishing ‘a pluralistic professional body to foster independence of thought, a spirit of inquiry, and freedom to develop creatively for the benefit of the profession and the public seeking psychological help.’

The Enemy Within the White Mind: Analyzing the Role of Misandric Caricatures in Psychological Assessments of Black Males
2024-03-09 15:00 - 17:00
This is the latest in a series of seminars on Decolonising Psychoanalysis, organised by the Race and Culture Committee of the Guild of Psychotherapists. The series is intended to open up conversations about psychoanalysis by initiating Psycho-Philosophical Dialogues between academic philosophers and psychotherapists, bringing clinical responses to their academic decolonial work.
Decolonising Psychoanalysis Seminars
The Enemy Within the white Mind: Psychological Assessments of Black Males.

Prof. Tommy Curry and Charles Brown
Saturday 9th March 2024, 3:00pm – 5:00pm BST
Online seminar £12 – £24
Efforts to decolonize various disciplines and institutions have led to an interrogation of white clinical and institutional engagements with Black communities in the United Kingdom. However, many of these attempts to decolonize have only reified white liberal perspectives of diversity and inclusion without a serious interrogation of the racist paradigms, white supremacist history, and anti-Black sentiments involved in cross-racial diagnoses of Black males within long-established disciplines and practices. Pathologizing Black men and boys as deviants through dissidence has a long history in the U.S. and U.K. Drawing from the extensive literature in Black psychology and emerging fields such as Black Male Studies, this presentation will show how societal racism and norms dictate psychological theories of Black deviance and maladjustment as well as outcomes in the diagnoses and institutionalization of Black males as a mechanism of social control.
Tommy Curry is a professor, activist and public intellectual based in the School of Philosophy at The University of Edinburgh, where he is Personal Chair of Africana Philosophy & Black Male Studies. He is the author of The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood (Temple University Press 2017), which won the 2018 American Book Award. He is also the editor of the first book series dedicated to the study of Black males, entitled Black Male Studies: A Series Exploring the Paradoxes of Racially Subjugated Males(Temple University Press). His book Another white Man’s Burden: Josiah Royce’s Quest for a Philosophy of white Racial Empire (2018) won the Josiah Royce Award in American Idealist Thought (2020). In 2016 he re-published the forgotten philosophical works of William Ferris as The Philosophical Treatise of William H. Ferris: Selected Readings from The African Abroad or, His Evolution in Western Civilization. Much of Curry’s writing is based on combining social science research with philosophy and theory. He claims that many of the theories offered to explain the lives of Black Americans are not only incorrect but rely on outdated racist modes of thinking. As a scholar of Critical Race Theory, Curry’s work focuses on the theories developed by racial realists like Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado, Jean Stefancic, and Kenneth Nunn. He argues that idealist strands of critical race theory are unable to account for the brutal realities of Black death and dying, poverty, and de facto segregation.
Charles Brown is a member of The Guild of Psychotherapists, a UKCP Fellow, Honorary Associate member of AGIP (Association of Individual and Group Psychotherapists) and a practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapist and supervisor. He is a training psychotherapist and supervisor at The Bowlby Centre, a psychodynamic counsellor and an addiction therapist. He is a visiting lecturer at The University of East London, where he lectures on the MA Social Work course. He teaches on several psychoanalytic trainings and has a particular interest in identity.
He is the Chair of the CPJA (Council for Psychoanalysis and Jungian Analysis) Race and Culture Committee and Chair of BAPPS (British Association for Psychodynamic and Psychoanalytic Supervisors). He has published articles and book chapters.
Bursary tickets
A limited number of bursary tickets are available on a pay-what-you-can basis to anyone who would not be able to attend the event without financial assistance. To apply for a bursary ticket please email ivan_talks@guildofpsychotherapists.org.uk. Thank you.
A recording will be available for ticket buyers for a month after the event.
CPD certificates available on request.
Organised by the Race and Culture Committee of the Guild of Psychotherapists.
The Race and Culture Committee (RCC) was set up to provide a forum for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic members of The Guild of Psychotherapists to discuss issues of common concern, address ‘racial’ and cultural questions from a psychoanalytic and analytical psychology perspective, and promote anti-racist practice and racial equity within psychotherapy and the wider community. It embodies the values and purposes of The Guild in establishing ‘a pluralistic professional body to foster independence of thought, a spirit of inquiry, and freedom to develop creatively for the benefit of the profession and the public seeking psychological help.’

Psycho-Philosophical Dialogues
2023-12-16 15:00 - 17:00
Epistemic Injustices: Effects of Prejudice and Marginalization
Prof. Miranda Fricker
Epistemic Injustices: Effects of Prejudice and Marginalization
and in discussion with Sandra Thompson
Saturday 16 December 2023
3:00pm – 5:00pm GMT
Online seminar £12 – £24
Following the seminars on Decolonising Psychoanalysis, this is the first in a series of Psycho-Philosophical Dialogues organised by the Race and Culture Committee of the Guild of Psychotherapists. The series is intended to open up conversations about psychoanalysis by initiating dialogues between psychotherapists and contemporary philosophers whose work has a direct bearing on issues of racial injustice, prejudice and marginalisation. We will explore how this work can be applied to the clinical setting, for both therapist and client alike.
For an abstract of Prof. Miranda Fricker’s paper, event details, speakers’ biographies and booking options please see the Event Listing.
Bursaries available for those who would not be able to attend without financial support.
CPD certificates available on request.
Organised by the Race and Culture Committee of the Guild of Psychotherapists, London.
Image: John La Rose of the Black Education Movement at a supplementary school in the 1960s. Image copyright: George Padmore Institute. From ‘How the Black Education Movement took on the racist schools system’ by Emmanuel Onapa.

Psychoanalysis and Colonialism Revisited
2023-12-10 15:00 - 17:00
This is the latest in a series of seminars on Decolonising Psychoanalysis, organised by the Race and Culture Committee of the Guild of Psychotherapists. The series is intended to open up conversations about psychoanalysis by initiating Transatlantic Dialogues between academic research and clinical practice.
In this seminar, Ranjana Khanna reconsiders some of the theories and observations of her pathbreaking book Dark Continents: Psychoanalysis and Colonialism (2003), and we will discuss the clinical and social implications of these still-relevant ideas. She will consider the demands made on psychoanalysis from the outside and from within psychoanalytic theory.
Ranjana Khanna
Dark Continents: Psychoanalysis and Colonialism Revisited
and in discussion with Anshu Srivastava
Ranjana Khanna’s work is wide-ranging and engages in particular questions of sexual difference and colonial legacies, looking to conceptualise a psychoanalysis which is genuinely ‘postcolonial’ and emancipatory. Her book Dark Continents (2003) was one of the first to investigate comprehensively the influence of colonialism and racialisation on the theory and practice of psychoanalysis and related therapies. How do these ideas strike us today, when we consider ourselves more conversant with the issues raised by post-colonial thinking? More broadly, can they help psychoanalysis and other talking therapies embody an anti-racist approach in their clinical practice and theorising?
Saturday 10 December 2022, 3:00pm – 5:00pm GMT
Online seminar
£12-£24

For further event details, speakers’ biographies and booking options please see the event listing.
Bursaries available for young people under 18, those receiving benefits, and NHS mental health service users.
CPD certificates available on request.
Organised by the Race and Culture Committee of the Guild of Psychotherapists, London.

Preventing Suicide
2023-12-02 10:00 - 16:00
An all-day, in-person only workshop open to counsellors and psychotherapists who have completed their training
10 – 4pm Saturday 2nd December 2023 (with an hour for lunch).
£80 (£60 for Guild Members and Guild Student Members).
At The Guild of Psychotherapists, 47 Nelson Square, London SE1 0QA.
This will be an all-day, in-person only workshop open to councillors and psychotherapists who have completed their training. Places are limited to 15 so please book early to avoid disappointment. To book your tickets and find out more please follow the link.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/preventing-suicide-tickets-681760793887
Dan Bracken is Head of James’ Place London, a therapy centre designed to work with men in suicidal crisis. Dan and his team work closely with psychiatric liaison teams and mental health crisis teams in Camden, Islington, City and Hackney and Haringey. He is a Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist and a member of The Guild of Psychotherapists.

Psychoanalysis and the Prison System
2023-11-04 14:00 - 17:00
We are pleased to announce the next event in our Psychoanalysis at the Margins series, Psychoanalysis and the Prison System, which will take place Sat 4th Nov, 2-5pm, online via Zoom.
Please see attached flyer for full details.
Booking link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/psychoanalysis-and-the-prison-system-tickets-719770050597
We are excited to welcome three distinguished speakers for the event:

Stephanie Swales (Psychoanalyst, licensed clinical psychologist in and Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Dallas)
Andrea Fassolas (Psychoanalyst, Guild of Psychotherapists)
Derek Hook (Associate Professor of Psychology at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, USA)

We look forward to seeing you there.

The Psychological Effects of Racism
2023-09-23 15:00 - 17:00
Decolonising Psychoanalysis Seminars
The Psychological Effects of Racism
Ivan Ward
The Psychological Effects of Racism
and in discussion with Anshu Srivastava
Saturday 23 September 2023, 3:00pm – 5:00pm BST
Online seminar £12 – £24
This is the latest instalment in the series of seminars on Decolonising Psychoanalysis, organised by the Race and Culture Committee of the Guild of Psychotherapists.
In this highly personal talk, first given for the Freud Museum in October 2020, Ivan Ward uses his own experience and that of others to show how psychoanalytic theories can help us understand the significant psychological effects of low-level ‘everyday’ racism in white-majority societies. A shorter version of the talk is available on the Tavistock Clinic YouTube channel, but this will be the last public presentation of a full and updated text, with additional theoretical comments and a new section on ‘affective injustice’.
For further event details, speakers’ biographies and booking options please see the Event Listing.
Bursaries available for those who would not be able to attend without financial support.
CPD certificates available on request.
Organised by the Race and Culture Committee of the Guild of Psychotherapists, London.
The images above show the locations of two incidents of everyday racism discussed in the paper.

Reverie and Internalized Colonizers: A South African Perspective
2023-06-03 14:00 - 16:00
Decolonising Psychoanalysis Seminars
Reverie and Internalized Colonizers: A South African Perspective

Sally Swartz

Reverie and Internalized Colonizers: A South African Perspective.
and in discussion with Fakhry Davids

Saturday 3 June 2023, 2:00pm – 4:00pm BST
Online seminar £12 – £24

This paper is about colonial states of mind that live on in distortions of subjectivity today. It suggests that developing a decolonial psychoanalytic practice has three substantial areas of activity. Firstly, we must grapple with the colonial legacies of our theories and strive for epistemic justice. Secondly, we must engage in social and political activism that challenges racist institutional practices. Finally, we need to find ways to think freely in every psychoanalytic session, everywhere. It is with this last condition that the paper is primarily concerned.

This is the last in the current series of seminars on Decolonising Psychoanalysis, organised by the Race and Culture Committee of the Guild of Psychotherapists. This seminar focuses on the clinical encounter, and how the legacy of colonialism affects the dynamics of the therapeutic relationship. Is it possible to ‘decolonise psychoanalysis’?

For further event details, speakers’ biographies and booking options please see the Event Listing.
Bursaries available for those who would not be able to attend without financial support.
CPD certificates available on request.
Organised by the Race and Culture Committee of the Guild of Psychotherapists, London.
The image above by Anastasya Eliseeva is a painting of the South African novelist K Sello Duiker (1974-2005)

Radical Roots v Today’s Hubris
2022-11-19 11:00 - 15:00
The Race and Culture Committee at The Guild of Psychotherapists has been looking back into its own history, a history which has been challenging the issues of race and racism within our organisation and the wider profession since the 1980’s. Through this process of introspection, it became clear that it was time to look outward and bring colleagues together, so together we can move this work forward. We are inviting you to a gathering of people from different organisations who are all involved in this endeavour.
The Guild has always credited itself as having radical roots forging a route away from exclusive elite psychoanalysis. Its pluralism has been a central tenet of this stance as stated on the website “The Guild of Psychotherapists was founded in 1974 by a group of practitioners from Freudian, Jungian and Phenomenological backgrounds. Their aim was to establish a pluralistic professional body to foster independence of thought, a spirit of inquiry, and freedom to develop creatively for the benefit of the profession and the public seeking psychological help.”
Where are we now? The attached podcast (see links below) outlines the history of the R&C which we would like to share as a springboard for further discussion. One dominant theme is the seeming deja-vu of things never seeming to change with regard to full equality, diversity and inclusiveness within our profession. The intention is to not only share our respective and often painful experiences, but to move forward with a thought through plan as to how to return to radical roots and ensure a culturally informed and nuanced profession that is inclusive to all.
11am to 1pm – Panel Discussion with Q&A
We will start the event with a panel from the Podcast participants – Charles Brown, Marie Maguire, Marion Gow and Dr Stuart Stevenson, with Fiona Yarron-Field in the Chair – raising current issues and responding to questions.
1pm a light lunch will be provided
1.30pm to 3pm – Group Session
The latter part of the event will be a large group experience co-facilitated by Dr Stuart Stevenson and Jane Dudley.
Please note, the event will be recorded.
Organised by the Race and Culture Committee of the Guild of Psychotherapists.
Race & Culture Committee Podcast – The Reunion
Saturday 19 November 2022, 11:00am – 3:00pm BST
Spotify Link to Podcast
Apple Link to Podcast

Psychoanalysis at the Margins: Care and Clinics for All: Welcoming Marginalized People to Psychoanalytic Treatment
2022-11-05 14:00 - 17:00
Elizabeth Ann Danto, Kristen Hennessy and Chris Vanderwees.

Elizabeth Ann Danto
Elizabeth Ann Danto, PhD, is professor emeritus, Hunter College of the City University of New York. She is an international lecturer and prize-winning author of Freud’s Free Clinics – Psychoanalysis & Social Justice, 1918-1938 (Columbia University Press 2005), Historical Research (Oxford University Press, 2008), and co-editor of Freud/Tiffany – Anna Freud, Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham and the ‘Best Possible School’ (Routledge, 2018).
Kristen Hennessy
Kristen Hennessy, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist in private practice in rural Pennsylvania where she treats traumatized children from a Lacanian framework. She is co-editor of Psychoanalysis, Politics, Oppression and Resistance (Routledge, 2022) and her work appears in Lacanian Psychoanalysis with Babies, Children, and Adolescents: Further Notes on the Child (Routledge, 2017).
Chris Vanderwees
Chris Vanderwees, PhD, RP is a psychoanalyst and registered psychotherapist at St. John the Compassionate Mission where he treats people who are struggling with homelessness, addictions, psychosis, and other extreme states. He is the co-editor of Psychoanalysis, Politics, Oppression and Resistance (Routledge, 2022) and co-author of Psychoanalysis and the New Rhetoric (Routledge, 2023). He is also an affiliate and research guest of the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society and a member of the Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis.
Saturday 5 November 2022, 2:00pm – 5:00pm GMT
Online seminar £12 – £36

Questioning 'Diversity' in Psychoanalysis
2022-07-02 15:00 - 17:00
This is the third in a series of seminars on Decolonising Psychoanalysis, organised by the Race and Culture Committee of the Guild of Psychotherapists. The series is intended to open up conversations about psychoanalysis by initiating Transatlantic Dialogues between academic research and clinical practice. In this instance, both speakers are clinicians, researchers, teachers and activists, and their talks will address the seemingly intractable problem of ‘diversity’ in psychoanalysis.
Lara Sheehi and Foluke Taylor
Saturday 2nd July 2022, 3:00pm – 5:00pm BST
Online seminar £12 – £24
Lara Sheehi Representation, not liberation: “Diversity” and stabilizing coloniality
Foluke Taylor Following Broken Water: Decolonising Psychoanalytics and Therapeutic Emergent-cy

How might we explore layers of diversity, within and without the psychoanalytic encounter?
How can we rethink notions of diversity in an ‘anti-colonial’ way?
Must clinicians learn a language of diversity to ethically address their patients?

And how can these ideas contribute to the task of ‘decolonising psychoanalysis’ and lessening the psychic price of everyday racism and discrimination?
For further event details, speakers’ biographies and booking options please see the event listing.

Ticket-holders will have access to a recording of the seminar for a month after the event.

Lara Sheehi PsyD (she/hers), is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at the George Washington University’s Professional Psychology Program. She teaches decolonial, liberatory and anti-oppressive theories and approaches to clinical treatment, case conceptualization, and community consultation. She is the president-elect of the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology (APA Division 39), and the chair of the Teachers’ Academy of the American Psychoanalytic Association. She is co-editor of Studies in Gender and Sexuality and co-editor of CounterSpace in Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society. Lara is on the advisory board to the USA–Palestine Mental Health Network and Psychoanalysis for Pride. She is co-author with Stephen Sheehi of Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine (Routledge, 2022).

Foluke Taylor is a *therapist and writer currently teaching at the Metanoia Institute in London. She is interested in therapeutic practices that hold open space for thinking (from and into) the position of Blackness, which in the development of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, has most frequently occupied the position of the unthought. Following the work of Christina Sharpe, the asterisk before the therapist functions as both wildcard and placeholder. As an (asterisked) *therapist, she practices without prefix to signal both excess, and a black feminist mode of attention to the emergent and yet-to-be. She accredited with BACP, is a member of the Editorial Board at Lapidus International Research and Innovation Community Journal (LIRIC), and a trustee at Mslexia. Published work includes How the Hiding Seek (2018); As Much Space as We Can Imagine: Black Presence in Counselling and Psychotherapy (2019); Black Paranormal: A Playlist (in ‘What is Normal?’ Confer Books 2020); Reimagining the Space for a Therapeutic Curriculum – a Sketch, (co-authored with Robert Downes in Black Identities and White Therapies: Race Respect and Diversity. PCCS 2021) and Otherwise: Writing Unbearable Encounters Through the Register of Race (LIRIC 2021). Her forthcoming book Unruly Therapeutic: Black Feminist Writings and Practices in Living Room will be published by W.W. Norton in 2023.
Organised by the Race and Culture Committee of the Guild of Psychotherapists.
The Race and Culture Committee (RCC) was set up to provide a forum for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic members of The Guild of Psychotherapists to discuss issues of common concern, address ‘racial’ and cultural questions from a psychoanalytic and analytical psychology perspective, and promote anti-racist practice and racial equity within psychotherapy and the wider community. It embodies the values and purposes of The Guild in establishing ‘a pluralistic professional body to foster independence of thought, a spirit of inquiry, and freedom to develop creatively for the benefit of the profession and the public seeking psychological help.’

Decolonising Psychoanalysis Seminars
2022-04-23 15:00 - 17:00
Occupying Psychoanalysis in a Post-Colonial World: Fanon’s ‘zone of nonbeing’ and the subject of racism.
Gautam Basu Thakur (Speaker) with Sharon Numa (respondent)
Saturday 23rd April 2022, 3:00pm – 5:00pm GMT
Online seminar £12 – £24
This is the second in a series of seminars on Decolonising Psychoanalysis, organised by the Race and Culture Committee of the Guild of Psychotherapists. The series is intended to open up conversations about psychoanalysis by initiating Transatlantic Dialogues between academics and psychotherapists, bringing clinical responses to their academic decolonial work. How will clinicians speak to those concepts from the standpoint of their practice? And how can we use these ideas to think about subjectivity, development, inter-generational trauma and so on.

Gautam Basu Thakur is associate professor of English and the director of the Critical Theory Minor at Boise State University, Idaho. He is the author of two books, Postcolonial Theory and Avatar (Bloomsbury, 2015) and Postcolonial Lack: Identity, Culture, Surplus (State University NY, 2020); and two co-edited books, Lacan and the Nonhuman (2018) and Reading Lacan’s Seminar VII: Transference (2020). His interests are wide-ranging and his current research focuses on examining racism and racial identity through and at the intersections of psychoanalytic theory, subaltern theory, and queer studies.

Dr Sharon Numa is a Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society, having originally trained as a Clinical Psychologist in the NHS. She works in private practice and is a training supervisor and therapist for The British Psychoanalytical Society, and The Association of Child Psychotherapist. She has recently edited a book on the early building blocks of identity called On Being Oneself: Clinical Explorations on Identity from John Steiner’s Workshop. (The New Library of Psychoanalysis/Routledge)
Organised by the Race and Culture Committee of the Guild of Psychotherapists.The Race and Culture Committee (RCC) was set up to provide a forum for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic members of The Guild of Psychotherapists to discuss issues of common concern, address ‘racial’ and cultural questions from a psychoanalytic and analytical psychology perspective, and promote anti-racist practice and racial equity within psychotherapy and the wider community. It embodies the values and purposes of The Guild in establishing ‘a pluralistic professional body to foster independence of thought, a spirit of inquiry, and freedom to develop creatively for the benefit of the profession and the public seeking psychological help.’
Image credit
Illustrator: Anastasya Eliseeva
With permission from New Frame Media (Johannesburg, South Africa)
https://www.newframe.com/frantz-fanon-and-the-question-of-praxis/

Decolonising Psychoanalysis Seminars
2022-02-19 15:00 - 17:00
The Psychoanalysis of Racism and the Racism of Psychoanalysis
Robert Beshara (speaker) with Fakhry Davids (respondent)
Saturday 19 February 2022, 3:00pm – 5:00pm GMT
Online seminar £12 – £24
This is the first in a series of seminars on Decolonising Psychoanalysis, organised by the Race and Culture Committee of the Guild of Psychotherapists. The series is intended to open up conversations about psychoanalysis by initiating Transatlantic Dialogues between academics and psychotherapists, bringing clinical responses to their academic decolonial work. How will clinicians speak to those concepts from the standpoint of their practice? And how can we use these ideas to think about subjectivity, development, racial trauma and so on.

Robert K. Beshara teaches at Northern New Mexico College in the Unites States, where he is Director of the Integrated Studies Program. He is the author of Decolonial Psychoanalysis: Towards Critical Islamophobia Studies (Routledge, 2019) as well as Freud and Said: Contrapuntal Psychoanalysis as Liberation Praxis (Palgrave, 2021). For more information, please visit www.robertbeshara.com.

Fakhry Davids is a training analyst of the British Psychoanalytical Society and a member of the Tavistock Society of Psychotherapists. His book Internal Racism: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Race and Difference (2011) presented an original theory of the psychology of racism and was a major contribution to how we understand what happens in the mind of those engaged in or experiencing racism, both in the consulting room and the ‘outside world’.
Organised by the Race and Culture Committee of the Guild of Psychotherapists
The Race and Culture Committee (RCC) was set up to provide a forum for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic members of The Guild of Psychotherapists to discuss issues of common concern, address ‘racial’ and cultural questions from a psychoanalytic and analytical psychology perspective, and promote anti-racist practice and racial equity within psychotherapy and the wider community. It embodies the values and purposes of The Guild in establishing ‘a pluralistic professional body to foster independence of thought, a spirit of inquiry, and freedom to develop creatively for the benefit of the profession and the public seeking psychological help.’
Image caption

The image at the top of this page is available from the internet and described as ‘Black man resting and lying on a cozy sofa’. By ignoring the therapist’s hand with a notebook and pen in the foreground – the most common cultural trope of ‘psychoanalysis’ – we can surmise that the people distributing the image could not conceive of a black man in therapy and were unable to see what was in front of their eyes. What they saw was a black man ‘chilling out’ – that’s what black men do, isn’t it? – rather than a man in psychic pain grappling with the difficult process of psychotherapy.
Photo by Alex Green from Pexels

The Question of Hue in Psychoanalysis: Training, Institutions and Practice
2020-02-29 10:00 - 16:00
VENUE: The Guild of Psychotherapists, 47 Nelson Square, London SE1 0QA
Entry: SOLD OUT!
Lunch: A light lunch will be provided
Bookings: admin@guildofpsychotherapists.org.uk Tel +44(0)20 74013260
Guest Speakers: Narendra Keval and Dr Shona Hunter
Narendra Keval Exploring the Use and Misuse of Race in the Clinical Encounter
Preoccupations about difference in the form of ethnicity, race or racism and their lived experience are always present in subtle ways in the privacy of our daily thoughts and feelings, imagination and dreams. Our clinical encounters are no exception but they need close and sensitive scrutiny to capture the nuances of what is being grappled with and communicated by our patients and to enable clinicians to respond with affective understanding of the unconscious processes present. These deep structures of thought and feeling are universally present in contemporary culture, institutional life as well as the consulting room, where they may come to constitute the passions of the transference.
They can signal a wish to explore the self in relation to others where curiosity and imagination are allowed to prevail or take refuge in the wish to thwart and damage the self and others, closing down any possibilities for intimacy with and learning from others. These preoccupations and their particular use at any given moment tell us something about the quality of thinking present and the particular kinds of predicaments and challenges of engaging with them when the emotional pressures that they exert can risk unhelpful enactments. I will consider how some of these dynamics in the clinical situation has resonance with challenges of engaging with diversity and difference in institutional life.
Dr Shona Hunter The power of whiteness as a mythology of the good
Amidst increasing mainstream recognition that whiteness is an identity position which implies an orientation to power and privilege the way this orientation manifests is highly contested and often misunderstood. One commonly recognised affective mode of whiteness is the fragility and defensiveness through which whiteness protects itself against interrogation. This is largely a defensiveness driven by the desire to resist seeing the white self as violent and violating of others, to resist seeing the ‘darker’ side of the self. It is a defence against the discomfort of recognising whiteness as a manifestation of fear, shame, guilt. When we begin to understand whiteness as a master signifier which works as a form of general protection against the human experience of difference, uncertainty and related anxiety, we have starting point from which to see how it sutures into everyday meanings and practices such as ideals of good professionalism. How whiteness is smuggled into other meanings and practices outside of our everyday awareness.
As people working with emotion, those working with psychoanalytic ideas have an opportunity here to enter into the debate on fragility and defensiveness to help societal understandings of power and its relationship to affect and material reality and personal and social discomfort. And yet, there is evidence of white defence here too in the shape and profile of the psychoanalytic body of ideas, its professional profile and ways of practicing. So; the questions remain what should be done? What can be done? How can community be reinvented? What does that reinvention mean and what shape could it take?

The Dying Patient in Psychotherapy
2019-11-30 10:00 - 12:30
The Dying Patient in Psychotherapy: Desire, Dreams and the Erotic Transference
Professor Joy Schaverien
Saturday 30 November 2019
10:00 am – 12:30 pm
at The Guild of Psychotherapists
47 Nelson Square, London SE1 0QA
This is a story of love and death mediated in psychotherapy. When a patient in psychotherapy is confronted with a life-threatening illness the therapeutic relationship inevitably intensifies. The work becomes time limited but the end date is uncertain. Boundaries of the analytic frame may come under extreme pressure especially when an erotic transference –countertransference dynamic emerges. A series of dreams reveals how, as analysis deepens, the pace of individuation quickens. Theoretical and clinical material will give the back-ground to what is hoped will be a lively discussion.
Professor Joy Schaverien PhD is a Training Analyst of the Society of Analytical Psychology (London) with a private analytic and supervisory practice in the East Midlands. She is Visiting Professor for the Northern Programme for Art Psychotherapy and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Analytical Psychology. She has published extensively on topics relat-ed to art and analytical psychology and her recent books include: The Dying Patient in Psy-chotherapy (which is soon to be republished by Routledge) and Boarding School Syndrome: The Psychological Trauma of the ‘Privileged” Child, (June 2015) which was a Routledge and Amazon bestseller.

Body and Soul - Kenneth Wright
2019-06-14 18:00 - 20:00
Friday 14th June
The Guild of Psychotherapists, 47 Nelson Square London SE1 0QA, 18:00 – 20:00
Entrance fee: £20 (£10 concessionary rate). See booking form for further details
In his famous poem, ‘Sailing to Byzantium’, Yeats deplores the ravages of old age on the body. He tells us that ‘an aged man is but a paltry thing/a tattered coat upon a stick/unless soul clap its hands and sing/and louder sing for every tatter in its mortal dress’. He seems to be saying that the body must be transformed, transmuted, into some more immortal substance if the core of the person is not to be utterly extinguished. And almost in desperation, he calls out to the sages of his imaginary city, Byzantium, to come to his aid: I need you, he says, to ‘be the singing masters of my soul’.
In this paper, I use the ancient and quasi-religious categories of ‘body’ and ‘soul’ to explore the nature of psychic transformations. I discuss how these depend on external media for communicable form, as in artistic creativity (Langer), and how such created forms bestow on the raw material of living experience a protection against the depredations of time. With a minor excursion into Bion’s work on transformations in K and O, I link such transmuting and re-presenting processes to the mirroring, attuning mother delineated by Winnicott and Stern. And finally, I offer a view of psychotherapy in which the psychotherapist can be seen in this maternal guise as a transmuting medium and contemporary singing master of the soul.
Kenneth Wright is a psychoanalyst in Suffolk and a patron of the Squiggle Foundation. He is a well-known commentator on Winnicott and has lectured nationally and internationally. He has published papers on psychoanalysis, the creative arts and religion. He is the author of ‘Mirroring and Attunement, Self -Realisation in Psychoanalysis and Art.’ His book ‘Vision and Separation: Between Mother and Baby’ [1991] was awarded the Margaret Mahler Prize in 1992.

A Psychotherapeutic Approach for Gender Dysphoria - Guild Annual Lecture
2018-12-01 08:00 - 17:00
The Guild Annual Lecture, Saturday 1st December @ The Guild Hall
Specialist Psychotherapy for Transgender, Gender Dysphoria & Other Gender Identity Conditions
Cost, including lunch: £45 for members and guests; £35 for trainees.

Since 2000, Dr Az Hakeem has run a national Specialist Psychotherapy Service for persons with transgender and other gender identity conditions. Whilst gender reassignment procedures of cross-sex hormones and sex-reassignment surgery are certainly useful options for people with a fixed gender identity of the to the opposite gender to that of their sex at birth, there are people who have other less fixed, less binary gender identity conditions for whom gender reassignment may not be helpful, and there are also people with gender identity conditions who choose not to pursue physical gender reassignment.
For these people a specialist form of psychotherapy for issues relating to gender may be useful. Such patients may include those with autogynaephilia, those with non-binary gender identification, and those with intermittent fluctuation between gender dysphoria and transvestism. Other patients may have previously had physical gender reassignment procedures and have since changed their mind and once again find themselves with a gender identity incongruent with their physical body. If a person is assessed and is clearly seeking physical gender reassignment and has no uncertainty about this then they are referred to the appropriate gender clinic. For other patients who may have more atypical gender presentations such as those described above they may be suitable for a specially tailored psychotherapeutic intervention aimed at further clarifying and establishing an understanding and certainty of their sense of gender which may or may not correlate with their biological sex.
The aims of the specially adapted psychotherapy are two-fold: firstly to reduce the degree of distress or preoccupation a person may have in relation to gender in their day to day lives, and secondly to promote a sense of stability and confidence in their own uniquely tailored gender identity, whatever that may be, irrespective of whether that corresponds to their biological sex at birth, a ‘trans’ gender identity or a non-binary gender identity. The therapy utilises Mentalisation Based Therapy in a group setting although some people may be seen in an individual therapy setting. The aim of the specialist psychotherapy for transgender is not to persuade or dissuade anyone with regards physical gender solutions. There is not any problem with therapy patients ‘cross dressing’ or accessing physical gender treatments such as hormones or surgery from gender clinics whilst they are in therapy. Traditionally, psychotherapists have had very little experience of working with transgender and speculative hypotheses have been constructed based on only a few cases. Having been involved in therapeutic work with over a hundred patients with transgender and other gender identities for over a decade; Dr Az Hakeem’s own understanding and attitudes to this field have been moulded and informed by his patients over this time.
“My early published papers were reflective of a far more psychoanalytic approach to transgender which I have since moved away from having refined my understanding from both my transgender patients and also advances in our understanding of transgender from the areas of psychiatry, psychotherapy, psychology, social sciences, feminism, queer theory and other areas. Patients who have had professional contact with me will be familiar with my aim for them to explore what gender means to them and my encouragement for them to challenge and subvert normative binary frameworks of gender interpretation in themselves or which they perceive within society and replace this with an individually tailored authentic gender identity which they feel suits them irrespective of whether this fits in with a conventional binary gender framework.” – Dr Az Hakeem, 2015

John Heaton Memorial Symposium
2018-11-10 14:00 - 18:00
Saturday 10 November 2018, 14.00 – 17.45
Dr William’s Library, 14 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0AR
A discussion of the last works of John Heaton, Guild founder. Four speakers will take chapters from The Talking Cure or Wittgenstein and Psychotherapy and briefly speak of their relevance (15 mins). Luke Heaton will introduce John’s unfinished book, which he is completing.
The intention is to encourage discussion, with time in smaller groups, and a question and answer session with the panel.
Please apply to Lucy King at office@philadelphia-association.org.uk or telephone 020 7794 2652
Places are strictly limited. Abstracts will be available one month before the meeting.

Aesthetic Conflict and Counterdreaming
2018-07-21 10:00 - 12:30
The Guild of Psychotherapists Lecture
Speaker: Meg Harris Williams
Saturday 21 July 2018, 10.00 – 12.30 pm
Drawing on literary sources and on the psychoanalytic theory of Bion and Meltzer, Meg will discuss the concept of ‘aesthetic conflict’ (first formulated for psychoanalysis by Meltzer in 1988) which has sometimes been found both interesting and puzzling. She will relate this to the nature of ‘counterdreaming’ (Meltzer’s term for the psychoanalytic reverie that is the basis for interior observation) and to the parallel example, in the arts, of life drawing.
Meg Harris Williams has published many articles in psychoanalytic and literary journals on the relation between psychoanalysis, art and literature. Her books include The Apprehension of Beauty (with Donald Meltzer; 1988), The Vale of Soulmaking (2005), The Aesthetic Development (2010), Bion’s Dream (2010), and The Becoming Room: Filming Bion’s Memoir of the Future (2016), and The Art of Personality in Literature and Psychoanalysis (2018).
Tickets for this fund-raising lecture cost £35 (£20 for Trainees, Students and retired members). A light lunch will be included after the talk. To purchase your tickets or book a place please contact the Guild Office.

Something About Our Bodies - Two Lectures on FGM
2018-07-14 09:30 - 13:00
Saturday, 14 July 2018, 9.30 – 1pm, 2018.
The Guild of Psychotherapists, 47 Nelson Square SE1
Free of Charge. Please RSVP to admin@guildofpsychotherapists.org.uk by the 30th June.
Female genital mutilation is a centuries old practice carried out in some parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Female genital mutilation is a collective term for cultural or other non-therapeutic procedures. These are typically performed on girls aged between 4 and 13, but in some cases, it is performed on new-born infants or on young women before marriage or pregnancy.
Speakers
Fatuma’s presentation “Female Genital Mutilation: Psychotherapy for survivors” will look at the practice that is known as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Why and where it is practiced and how it is viewed among the affected communities. The paper asks psychotherapists who encounter this practice that has been portrayed in the media as barbaric; how can therapists hold judgement and be present with the patient in the room. She also explores ways psychotherapy can support women who have gone through this practice.
Fatuma Farah a psychotherapist, clinical supervisor, FGM consultant and campaigner. Fatuma has worked for the United Nations in her native country Somalia, where she was attached to the Ministry of Health. She is currently doing her PhD research that examines perspectives on FGM among affected communities in the UK.

Supported by City Bridge Trust

Jacqueline’s paper, Female Genital Mutilation: Practice tensions in legal landscapes.
FGM has been a criminal offence in the UK since 1985. In 2003 it became a criminal offence for UK nationals or permanent UK residents to take their child abroad to have female genital mutilation. However, FGM continues to occur both in the UK and through children being taken abroad. In her role as a children’s guardian, Jacqueline has worked with families where concerns have been raised about FGM. This presentation will use case studies to explore the tensions inherent in assessing risk while engaging families to effectively safeguard children.
Jacqueline Harry has a legal background and has been a qualified social worker for over 18 years. Jacqueline’s social work practice included 10 years as a children’s guardian for cases in the Family Division of the High Court, during which time she worked directly with many children who were subject to professional concerns about the risk of FGM. Jacqueline is now a senior lecturer at a London University and has research interest in relation to honour related violence.

CFAR Annual Conference: Desire and Jouissance
2018-07-13 08:00 - 17:30
CFAR Annual Conference: Desire and Jouissance
Saturday 13 July 2018
Time:10.00 am – 5.15pm (registration from 9.30 am)
Venue: University College London (UCL), Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way London WC1H 0AL
Speakers include Jorge Banos Orellana, Anouchka Grose and Anne Worthington
Desire and jouissance are key terms in Lacanian psychoanalysis, with desire often equated with a search for some unattainable object and jouissance with an excess that both disturbs and excites us. Where desire tends to be seen as a positive term, and its emergence marked with approval, jouissance has to be jouissance has to be banished, reduced, drained, limited and localized. But how valid are these terms today? Are they real advances from Freud’s own concepts or have they become mere descriptive terms, used with the same lack of rigour as the concepts of modern psychiatry? This conference hopes to encourage an exploration of the notions of desire and jouissance, tracing their emergence in Lacan’s work and examining their status today.
Entrance fee: £60
Concessions: £40

The Incarcerated Voice: Adventures in Censorship
2017-11-18 09:30 - 12:30
Guild Annual Lecture
Saturday 18 November 2017
Registration from 9.30, lecture 10 – 12.30 followed by a light lunch.
This year’s Guild of Psychotherapists Annual Lecture, titled The Incarcerated Voice: Adventures in Censorship, will be given by Carol Topolski. She will explore the nature and meaning of censorship, from the intrapsychic to the institutional to the state – who or what is the censor and what does it need to silence?
Carol will draw on her wide experience, including as a psychotherapist, as a teacher in prisons, and as a senior film and video censor for the British Board of Film Classification.
Tickets are available from the office: £45, and £35 for trainees. This lecture is being held in aid of the Guild Clinic.
