Confer - continuing professional development, seminars and conferences for psychotherapists, counsellors and psychologists
ARCHIVE 2012 / 2013
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Confer events held to date in 2012, including information and programmes from conferences, seminars and workshops.

Saturday 9 February 2013 - London: ENERGY PSYCHOLOGY - ITS EXPLOSIVE HEALING POTENTIAL
In this seminar, Ruthie Smith and Phil Mollon will be showing how energy psychology work interfaces with all kinds of conventional psychotherapy approaches but also takes it deeper and allows the work to move much more quickly.
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Saturday 2 February 2013 - London: THE RIGHT BRAIN, LEFT BRAIN DIVIDE: WHAT IS ITS RELEVANCE TO THE TASK OF PSYCHOTHERAPY?
In a work of unparalleled depth, Professor Iain McGilchrist has examined a vast body of recent brain research to reveal that the differences between the right and left hemisphere of the brain are complex, specific and profound. This division is offered by the speaker as a way of illustrating some of the core tensions in human behaviour, which if not elucidated, leave us at risk of misjudging the nature of our relationships with others and to the world in which we live.
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Saturday 19 January 2013 - London: RELATEDNESS, UNCERTAINTY AND ANXIETY: THE PRACTICE OF CONTEMPORARY EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPY
Existential therapy assumes a foundational basis of relatedness (or inter-relation) upon all human subjective reflections (be they cognitively, emotionally, behaviourally or feeling focused) of lived experience.
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10 Monday evenings from September - December 2012: AUTUMN SEMINAR SERIES - RUPTURE AND REPAIR
When a well-established psychotherapy relationship starts to show cracks, when bad feelings abound, and enactments threaten to derail the relationship, the psychotherapist is likely to feel anxious and perhaps self-critical, fearing that the therapy is going wrong.
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10 Wednesday evenings from September - December 2012: AUTUMN SEMINAR SERIES - ASSESSMENT AND DIAGNOSIS
This seminar series will introduce approaches and discuss the function of assessment as a skill in the psychotherapeutic repertoire, examining the history of diagnosis, assessment protocols, and the view of mental health implied by various assessment techniques.
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Saturday 1 December 2012: RELATIONAL TURNS IN PSYCHOTHERAPY
This workshop is an opportunity to explore how a relational approach to common challenges in the psychotherapeutic relationship can provide both therapeutic progress and an ethical stance. Professor Andrew Samuels will first consider the issue of professional identity and the complexity of occupying a role that serves the field, the patient and the self in a time of rapid and disquieting change.
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Saturday 10 November 2012: THE CHALLENGES OF WORKING WITH COMPLEX TRAUMA
The seminar will cover diagnostic issues in identifying traumatic experiences that are rooted in childhood and differentiating these from traumas experienced by otherwise healthy adults that may result in PTSD and a disruption of their self-reflective functioning. The seminar will consider implications for planning an appropriate treatment strategy through a staged model of trauma treatment and will be well illustrated with case material.
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Friday 2 till Sunday 4 November 2012: YOGA, THE BRAIN AND MENTAL HEALTH
This historic conference brings the world's leading researchers on yoga and the brain together with renowned yoga teachers to explore how yoga can be used in a therapeutic context to enhance emotion regulation. As science begins to appreciate the power of the mind-body connection yoga is quickly becoming one of the most well recognised practices for reducing stress and enhancing well-being. We will consider yoga's function as a body-based therapeutic intervention, not simply within its own cultural tradition but in contemporary western societies where individuals face exceptional levels of stress, anxiety and depression.
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Friday 12 and Sturday 13 October 2012: THE SCIENCE OF THE ART OF PSYCHOTHERAPY
In this two-day workshop Dr Allan Schore will discuss the essential themes of his recently published book, The Science of the Art of Psychotherapy (Norton 2012).
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Saturday 29 September 2012: INTEGRATIVE PSYCHOTHERAPY A MYTH?
This seminar is for all those interested in the concept of integrative psychotherapy and an exploration of the practice of an integrative relational approach. We will be considering relational themes emerging from child development research, neurobiology, and clinical expertise as a basis for a view of psychotherapy from a co-created, intersubjective, two-person perspective. In addition, the moment-by-moment of the relationship at different levels of experience will be discussed as a key therapeutic process.
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Sunday 1 - Thursday 5 July 2012: SUMMER SCHOOL - THE THERAPIST'S WELL-BEING
This 5-day summer school will be of interest to therapists from all modalities who wish to deepen their understanding of their own processes in undertaking therapeutic work. The programme is based on the assumption that therapists need deep levels of resilience to continuously to meet this challenge, and that the task has profound impact on all levels of the practitioner's mind and body system, especially if we work in a relational way. Balancing openness with self-protective and self-caring practices is an art that is uniquely tested in our profession.
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Monday April 16 - 2 July 2012: THE ART OF THE PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC INTERVENTION
In this series of seminars our speakers have been invited to consider, elaborate and discuss the concept of a good psychotherapeutic intervention. Traditionally within psychoanalysis, this will have been understood to be an accurate interpretation of the unconscious. More recently, we have come to think more about therapeutic ways of relating as equally or more important.
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Friday 29 evening and Saturday 30 June 2012: THE INTUITIVE PSYCHOTHERAPIST
This conference brings together psychotherapists, psychologists and psychiatrists to unpack the concept of intuition and its role in the psychotherapeutic process. Intuition (intueri or 'to look inside') is defined as the ability to understand without the use of reason.
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Tuesday 17 Apri - 26 June 2012: PSYCHONEUROIMMUNOLOGY AND PSYCHOTHERAPY: FINDING THE INTERFACE
This programme of 9 seminars is designed to elaborate the relationship between the mind and the immune system, navigating the interface between the 3 disciplines of immunology, psychoimmunology and psychotherapy. Our speakers will introduce the complex workings of the immune system and unravel the extent to which psychotherapy could be considered instrumental in the patient's regulation of their immunity and other aspects of physiological well-being.
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Saturday 16 June 2012: SHAME - THE UBIQUITOUS YET HIDDEN CORE OF MENTAL PAIN
Dr Phil Mollon has been described as “a cautious revolutionary, one of those rare honourable thinkers and renaissance figures who rises above the milieu he was trained in to seek answers to difficult questions. Psychologist, psychoanalyst, practitioner of energy therapies, writer and thinker, he illuminates the impact of trauma on the human mind and body while making bridges between groups and subjects who have previously had little contact with each other.” (Dr Valerie Sinason).
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Monday 4 June 2012: NEUROPLASTICITY AND EMOTIONAL PROCESSES OF THE BRAIN
Enormous advances have been made in the last few decades in understanding how primal emotions are organized in the brain. This knowledge is changing the scientific foundations of psychiatry and psychotherapy, leading to a revolution in the treatment of emotional disturbances that accompany mental illnesses. This workshop will focus on how an affective neuroscientific understanding of the emotional foundations of human minds heralds a new era of diagnostics and practices and facilitate the development of new affective symptom-based clinical interventions. This knowledge allows us to focus more directly and effectively on the emotional problems of clients, and provides new insights on how to re-establish positive affective balance, using the natural plasticity of the human MindBrain. It will also highlight various new biomedical therapies, from newly developed medicines to those that optimally support psychotherapeutic initiatives.
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Friday 1 and Saturday 2 June 2012: UNFORMULATED EXPERIENCE: NEW POSSIBILITIES FOR WORKING WITH THE UNCONSCIOUS
This is the first opportunity in the UK to work with Dr Donnel Stern, whose innovative theoretical work is described as "powerful and wonderfully accessible". Over these two days he will be elaborating his theories on unformulated experience, dissociation, witnessing, and enactment. Dr. Stern's work concerns the relationship between two fundamental kinds of experience: experience that can be used in living, and experience that remains unformulated, existing only as possibility. We will uncover what this model of the mind means in psychotherapeutic practice for the two 'partners in thought'.
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Saturday 19 May 2012: THE IMPORTANCE OF INFANCY
This seminar has been designed in the light of accruing research evidence of the importance of very early experiences in the development of a core sense of self that is present throughout life. We now have much clearer understanding about how the emotional development of a baby is influenced by parental states of mind and emotional histories. The baby-self that develops during pregnancy and the first year of life resides deeply within us throughout adulthood, and emerges in intimate relationships and challenging situations throughout the life span.
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Saturday 28 April 2012: PRACTISING RELATIONAL PSYCHOANALYSIS
Susie Orbach is a psychoanalyst and writer whose interests have centred around feminism and psychoanalysis, the construction of femininity and gender. This seminar draws together her most recent thinking about these themes through the presentation of several therapeutic relationships, interlaced with theoretical discussion.
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Saturday 14 April 2012: WORKING PSYCHOTHERAPEUTICALLY WITH PEOPLE WHO ARE PHYSICALLY ILL
When working with people who are physically ill or disabled, therapists draw upon their own associated experience, knowledge and beliefs, which may be similar to the clients, but may be very different. A physical illness or disability can challenge not only the client's own view of the world but their therapist's too.
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17 January - 3 April 2012: WORKING WITH BORDERLINE PSYCHOPATHOLOGY
The concept of the borderline personality has undergone significant review in recent years, and is now widely understood to be a constellation of symptoms and behaviours that are the expression of an early attachment disorder. Those who receive the diagnosis of BPD map closely onto those known to have experienced abusive and neglectful early backgrounds. We now have far greater understanding on how such childhoods severely restrict social, relational and emotional development although questions remain about why some people this structure rather than another constellation of defences.
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Saturday 31 March 2012: THE MINDFUL PRACTITIONER
This one-day seminar is designed to support the psychotherapist’s capacity for sustaining a state of presence in the therapeutic relationship, particularly when working with traumatised or challenging clients/patients. The day will combine psychoanalytic theory, attachment and neurobiological research with an exploration of the therapeutic value of mindful atunement. The seminar includes a workshop element to develop our capacity for ‘witness consciousness’ with the purpose of strengthening our capacity to be fully present. .
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Wednesday evenings 18 January - 28 March 2012: TRAUMA SKILLS - LONDON
The aim of this 10-seminar programme is to present some of the most recent developments in the treatment of trauma related disorders.

The programme, taught leading specialists in the field of trauma and dissociation, is designed for psychologists and psychotherapists wishing to develop their knowledge and skills in the treatment of...
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Saturday 24 March 2012: FEEDING OUR MINDS
This one-day seminar will explore how diet is important not only for physical health, but also for optimal mental development and functioning. The programme has been designed specifically for psychotherapists and other practitioners wishing to investigate the possibility that their patients or clients may have psychological symptoms arising from a dietary deficiency.
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Saturday 25 February 2012: THE IMPORTANCE OF INFANCY
This seminar has been designed in the light of accruing research evidence of the importance of very early experiences in the development of a core sense of self that is present throughout life. We now have much clearer understanding about how the emotional development of a baby is influenced by parental states of mind and emotional histories. The baby-self that develops during pregnancy and the first year of life resides deeply within us throughout adulthood, and emerges in intimate relationships and challenging situations throughout the life span.
Further information >>

28 January 2012: THE NEUROSCIENCE AND TREATMENT OF CHILDHOOD TRAUMA
This day of accessible presentations will empower professionals with the latest research on the long-term effects of trauma on the child’s developing brain, the effects of post-traumatic stress and attachment disorders. Dr Sunderland will explore the reasons for disturbed behaviour, traumatic enactment and psychosomatisation in childhood.
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