Confer - continuing professional development, seminars and conferences for psychotherapists, counsellors and psychologists
Cultral identities and phychological therapies
CULTURAL IDENTITIES AND PSYCHOLOGICAL THERAPIES
Two-day conference and workshops
 
FULL CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
FRIDAY 4 APRIL 2008
17.15 Registration, bookstall and tea
18.00 Mapping the territory: mental health services and ethnic equality reviewed
Professor S P Sashidharan
Ethnic inequalities in mental health services are persisting and, if anything, they are getting worse. The reasons for this are explored. Current strategies and thinking in this area are reviewed. There is relatively much less attention being paid to the mental health of people from black and minority ethnic communities. In this presentation the salient themes in this area will be identifi ed and the importances of social, cultural and psychological factors that have a bearing on mental health of cultural minorities are discussed. The implications for clinical practice and the need for social action are addressed briefly.

19.00 Choice of Workshops
  • W1 Psychotherapeutic work within the Muslim community in London
    Shahnawaz Haque
    What specific factors and considerations exist in working psychotherapeutically with Muslim clients? This workshop is an exploration of this and other questions concerning the Muslim community in London through the experience of a practising Muslim who is a trained psychoanalytic psychotherapist and an honorary Imam.

  • W2 Developing guidelines for good cross-cultural therapeutic practice
    Zack Eleftheriadou
    This workshop will look at some of the important ingredients of good cross-cultural therapeutic practice, and how our clients can be made to feel safe to explore their most private worlds alongside their cultural context. We will look at issues of training and supervision and what recommendations are necessary for potential training organisations.

  • W3 Trauma, resilience, creativity and psychoanalysis; the experience of refugees or lack of it
    Aida Alayarian
    Working with refugees who experienced trauma, we inevitably encounter their resilience or lack of it. Some individuals are able to build a safe intra-psychic space in which they live and talk to themselves internally to regulate pain. This unbreakable part of the self protects one from emotional collapse when the external world is dangerous, unpredictable and life-threatening. Looking at psychoanalytical ideas this workshop aims to address characteristics commonly associated with trauma and with resilience: creation of an intra-psychic and secure state of mind; relevance between being resilient and psychological health or lack of it.

  • W4 The inhabiting of identity
    Carmen Joanne Ablack
    This workshop offers opportunity to explore - through breath, movement and words - your social and functional identities, your relational habits and the narratives you use to express to yourself and others. The questions posed are: when I inhabit an identity who do I become and how do I relate to another from that place? How does this engage or inhibit my ability to relate to myself? If you are willing to explore how you use your body and your senses, and have the imagination to go beyond habit, this is the workshop for you.

  • W5 Inside Out or Outside In
    Nadina Al-Jarrah
    To what extent does our external cultural and racial experience of the world help to develop and determine the internal language we use to think about and understand ourselves? And how big a part do these concepts play in the way that we perceive our own inclusion or exclusion? In this experiential discussion group, workshop participants will share their own experiences and perceptions of their cultural selves and have an opportunity to think about the impact that cultural and racial experience plays in our sense of well-being and mental health.

  • W6 Present day manifestations of internalised racial oppression
    Dr Aileen Alleyne
    In this workshop we will identify aspects of this cultural phenomenon and its impact, and discuss effective psychotherapeutic interventions that can be made in reframing this negative internal process.

  • W7 Reluctant clients
    Bernadette Hawkes
    The workshop will explore the issues involved in helping people who have suffered trauma to look at their experiences when their cultural background does not use the concept of counselling/psychotherapy and considers it a treatment option for those who are 'mad' or 'bad'. The workshop is based on the experience of two psychotherapists who offered a therapeutic space for Somali women.

  • W8 Engaging Black and Asian people in thinking about their mental health in ways they have not done before
    Eugene Ellis
    The stories we tell ourselves around our mental health and self development are vitally important. Ben Okri, in his book A Way of Being Free says, "It is easy to forget how mysterious and mighty stories are. They do their work in silence, invisibly... Beware the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness they are altering our world." What are the stories being told about our mental heath and well being? How can we tell more of the stories that inspire and heal? There will be some participation.

  • W9 Film and discussion - Altered Egos
    Two half-brothers - one black, one white - struggle to individuate after a girlfriend declares they are indistinguishable. This playful film, which explores where we locate our sense of identity, will be used as a basis for discussion on 'what exactly gives us our sense of self'.

  • W10 Developing pre-linguistic, bodily modes of communication and empathy with clients from other cultures
    Rika Higashikaze
    This workshop will explore how language is attached to both cultural and spiritual traditions and presents complex and subtle meanings. We will consider the therapist's need to create pre-linguistic, bodily modes of communication and empathy with clients from other cultures and languages in order to be fully aware the communications that occur. We will consider whether non-verbal communications offer a universal language that can transcend cultural barriers and biases. The presentation will be illustrated with examples from case studies.
20.30 Reception and live music from Basistry, an eclectic mix of world music
SATURDAY 5 APRIL 2008
09.30 Registration and Coffee
Small groups to hang up posters from previous evening meetings.
10.00 Negative and positive constructions of identity and self: a developmental model
Dr Phil Mollon
In furthering our discussion on how the sense of self can be undermined or restricted in a socio-cultural climate that offers a very limited range of positive identities for the individual, we will examine how identity is constructed in the psyche. In the light of a developmental perspective we will consider possible therapeutic approaches that allow recognition of society's constraints on the core self, and effective psychotherapeutic interventions that can help social impingements to be worked through. This paper offers a theory of construction of identity that is not specific to any particular cultural group but common to all.

10.45 Effects of ethnic matching/mismatching on process and outcome of therapy and the need to deal with difference
Dr Farkondeh Farsimadan, Dr Addila Khan and Dr Riccardo Draghi-Lorenz
We present quantitative and qualitative data from four UK studies indicating that the process of therapy, and as a result its outcome, can be significantly better in ethnically matched than in non-matched therapist-client dyads. It appears in particular that the effects of ethnic mismatching can be difficult to deal with as they affect the therapeutic alliance and therapist perceived credibility from the beginning. Our results also suggest that in ethnically mismatched therapy positive outcome may still be achieved by paying special attention to the therapeutic alliance, culture-specific values/differences, and both own and clients' assumptions and projections. Age, gender and length of therapy appear un-influential, but consideration of the political context may be paramount. We conclude that whilst there is hope for ethnically mismatched therapy more matching needs to be on offer.

11.40 Coffee
12.10 The Migration experience: psychological journeys and meanings
Zack Eleftheriadou
Through psychotherapeutic case examples, this talk will examine the psychological experience of migration and the meanings constructed out of these experiences. The whole psychological journey will be discussed, from the initial stages of thinking of moving to a new country, to the actual 'settling experience'. All migrants report profound emotional experiences during the different stages of the migration process, but often need the appropriate setting to make sense of them.

13.00 Lunch Programme
14.00 The internal oppressor and black identity wounding
Dr. Aileen Alleyne
A set of key recommendations outlining 'multicultural counselling competencies' was published in 1992 in the United States (Sue et al, 1992). The political and symbolic significance of this paper was made evident by its simultaneous publication in two of the principle therapy journals within that country, thus communicating the urgency and seriousness of the challenges facing the whole psychotherapy profession in relation to working with clients who were culturally, racially and ethnically 'different'. Inspired by the foresight, integrity and commitment of this original paper, I hope to offer some ideas on how we, in the therapy profession within the U.K., might seek to improve our therapeutic capacity with those with whom we don't share common origins, beliefs, affiliations.

15.30 Tea
16.00 Relational dilemmas and endeavours in working with diversity
Carmen Joanne Ablack
"Recognizing the Other as an Equivalent Centre of Experience" (Benjamin 1988).
The multiplicity we each embody holds meaning, conflict and resonance for our intra- and inter-psychic relationships. How can we understand our body-mind as the key resource to our sense of identification and dis-identification in relationship? The dilemmas and endeavours to inhabit an appreciation of self, other and of self and other, are a dance full of tension, anxiety, withdrawal or over-engagement and with glimpses of the places beyond all this. By drawing on client material I will explore the challenges arising from recognising and working with the other as an equivalent centre of experience with a specific emphasis on working with diversity in the psychotherapeutic relationship.

16.45 Panel discussion
17.15 Summing up and Vote of Thanks
Lennox Thomas
17.30 End of conference
SPEAKERS' BIOGRAPHIES
CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
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BOOKING CLOSED
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