Events

The NWRPA hold talks, seminars and workshops by Zoom on the second Friday of the month. Book your place by email here.

Talks, seminars and workshops are free to members and £7.50 to non-members. You can become a member of the NWRPA for as little as £30 a year, see our membership page.

A networking meeting for members only usually follows each Zoom talk and both events qualify as Continuing Professional Development.

The NWRPA‘s online art exhibition, The Interpretation of Dreams Painted, can be accessed free of charge here.

The Impossibility of Goodness in an Impossible Profession

Robin Hobbes
Friday 11 February 2022, 6.30pm – 8.00pm

What constitutes goodness in our work as therapists? In this Zoom talk Robin invites us to reconsider the ethics of psychotherapy and counselling. He’ll present some familiar ethical frameworks for evaluating goodness before engaging with the work of the contemporary French philosopher Jacques Derrida and considering the implications for our work.

Robin Hobbes spends his professional life teaching, supervising and practicing Transactional Analysis psychotherapy and counselling. He is Ethical Advisor to the European Transactional Analysis Association and writes a regular column on Ethics for the EATA Newsletter. He co-founded Elan Training and Development in 1982.

The NWRPA does not meet in January

New Writings on the Psychoses

Dr Mark Fisher
Friday 10 December 2021, 6.30pm – 8.00pm

In this Zoom talk Mark will present an overview of new writings on the psychoses including schizophrenia, paranoia and melancholia.

For many years Mark Fisher was professional lead in the NHS’ psychotherapy service. In 2013 he entered private practice as both a supervisor and psychoanalyst working in Liverpool and online. His website is,
https://rodneystpsychoanalyticpractice.blogspot.com/

Special Event – Meet the Author

The Autistic Subject: On the Threshold of Language
Dr Leon S. Brenner
Friday 12 November 2021, 6.30pm – 8.00pm

In this Zoom talk Leon S. Brenner describes autism as a singular mode of being that is fundamentally linked to one’s identity and basic practices of existence, offering a rigorous alternative to the prevailing treatment of autism as a mental or physical disorder. Brenner outlines the unique features of the autistic subjective structure and provides a comprehensive synthesis of contemporary work on the psychoanalysis of autism. The Autistic Subject: On the Threshold of Language was published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2020.

Leon is a founder of Lacanian Affinities Berlin (laLAB) and Unconscious Berlin, and a lecturer at the International Psychoanalytic University in Berlin. His website is,
https://leonbrenner.com/

Enjoy Your Suffering!

Philip Hill
Friday 8 October 2021, 6.30pm – 8.30pm

In this extended two-hour Zoom event Philip Hill provides a clinically-orientated workshop on the place of need, demand, desire and love in and out of the psychoanalytic clinic.

Philip is a psychoanalyst in London and author of Lacan for Beginners and Using Lacanian Clinical Technique: An Introduction. His website is,
https://philiphill.com/

Making Assessments: Psychiatry

Dr Andrew Shepherd
Friday 10 September 2021, 6.30pm – 8.00pm

A psychiatric assessment is influential and spans many fields in terms of its impact. In this Zoom talk Dr Andrew Shepherd explores the nature and purpose of psychiatric assessment – drawing on forensic work as an illustrative example – and seeks to identify some of the limitations and issues that can arise.

Andrew is a consultant forensic psychiatrist, working in secure hospital and prison settings, he also carries out work as an expert witness, aiding the courts in relation to criminal legal proceedings. He is an honorary lecturer in the University of Manchester and his research interests focus on the psychosocial dynamics that influence care provision in secure settings.

The NWRPA does not meet in August

Dissolutions

Dr Mark Fisher
Friday 9 July 2021, 6.30pm – 7.45pm

In this Zoom talk Mark reflects on the end of psychotherapy and analysis as a dissolution/de-solution/desolation.

You do not need to have heard Mark’s earlier talks to attend this event.

Some Hauntologies

Dr Mark Fisher
Friday 11 June 2021, 6.30pm – 7.45pm

In this Zoom talk Mark asks about “endings” in analysis and psychotherapy. Are endings absolute or are they partial, ambivalent, presences? If endings are achieved, what happens next?

You do not need to have heard Mark’s earlier talks to attend this event.

Mourning, Separations, and Losses

Dr Mark Fisher
Friday 14 May 2021, 6.30pm – 7.45pm

After exploring transference and comedy in a series of NWRPA talks during the Autumn of 2020, Mark uses three new talks to consider the tragic dimensions of transference. You do not need to have heard Mark’s earlier talks to attend any of the talks in this new series.

An individual’s fantasies about love and loss are like quanta, little round objects for love and distress. Can psychotherapy help reconfigure one’s love-loss fantasies along with the delights and anguishes they bring?

In this evening’s talk Mark shows how, in Freud’s writings, love, sexuality and loss implicate each other asymmetrically. Here transference becomes less of a comedy and more tragic. Mark explores this by drawing on examples from culture.

Mark Fisher’s introduction to psychoanalysis took place during the 1970s while a research fellow at Oxford University. Following an individual analysis there was group analysis and then a Lacanian analysis. For many years Mark worked within the NHS. He now runs a clinical and supervisory practice in Liverpool and online.

My Heart Aches: Therapy and an Ode to a Nightingale

Meg Harris Williams
Friday 9 April 2021, 6.30pm – 7.45pm

In this Zoom talk Meg will provide a close reading of a poem – Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale – to help make vivid and imaginable the progression towards self-knowledge that therapy can facilitate.

Meg Harris Williams is a writer and artist with a particular interest in the relationship between therapy and aesthetic experience. She is editor of the Harris Meltzer Trust, an educational charity publishing books that promote psychoanalytic understanding of children and young people. Her website is, http://www.artlit.info/

Feelings, Truth and Clinical Technique in Freud, Lacan and other Schools

Philip Hill
Friday 12 March 2021, 6.30pm – 8.30pm

In this extended, two-hour event, Philip Hill provides a clinically-orientated workshop on the place of feelings and truth in different schools of therapy.

Philip is a psychoanalyst in London and author of Lacan for Beginners and Using Lacanian Clinical Technique: An Introduction.

Unknowing in Psychotherapy

David Henderson
Friday 12 February 2021, 6.30pm – 7.45pm

Therapists are often at a loss. They do not understand what is happening in the session, what their clients are talking about, or what to make of their own thoughts and feelings. In this Zoom talk we will discuss some of the ways in which ‘not knowing’ is thought of in psychoanalysis and what resources there might be in philosophy and theology to support the therapist’s capacity to remain present.

David Henderson, PhD, is a lecturer in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex and a psychotherapist in private practice. He is a member of the British Jungian Analytic Association (BJAA) and the British Psychotherapy Foundation (BPF). His website is https://davidhendersonpsychotherapy.com/

January 2021: the NWPRA does not meet in January.

Transference and Love

An online study group with Dr Mark Fisher
Four monthly meetings, September-December 2020

What is the difference between love, desire and sexual libido? What has transference to do with love? Are there many transferences or just one, and is it present fully formed or only partial? Is transference ever dangerous? An engaging online study group for students, counsellors and therapists of all persuasions.

11 September 2020, 6.30-7.45pm
What is Transference?
Further reading here

9 October 2020, 6.30-7.45pm
Tell me the Truth about Love
Further reading here

13 November 2020, 6.30-7.45pm
The Artist and Model
Further reading here

11 December 2020, 6.30-7.45pm
The Comedies of Transference

Reading
Freud’s paper Observations on Love in Transference
and the case history Anna O.
Lacan’s Seminar VIII: Transference
Plato’s Symposium

About Dr Mark Fisher
Mark Fisher’s introduction to psychoanalysis took place during the 1970s while a research fellow at Oxford University. Following an individual analysis there was group analysis and then a Lacanian analysis. For many years Mark worked within the NHS. He now runs a clinical and supervisory practice in Liverpool and online.

To Join this online Study Group
Meetings are held on the Zoom app
Places are limited and you are asked to attend all four sessions
Free to NWRPA members although members will need to book a place
£30 for non-members to join this study group

Members’ Network Meetings
Each study group meeting is followed by a networking event for members, 7.45pm-8.30pm.
Free to NWRPA members although members will need to book a place

For more information about either event and to book your place contact Frank Kelley, NWRPA Secretary
E-mail: info@nwrpa.org.uk
Phone: 07508 119025

Before Covid-19 the NWRPA held talks, seminars and workshops on the second Friday of each month in Chorlton, South Manchester.

Meetings lasted from 6.30pm – 8.30pm, addressed our shared interest in theory and practice, and qualified as two hours of continuing professional development.

Light refreshments were provided.

Generational Transmission: The Psychotherapy of Legacy and its Legacy in Psychotherapy

Owen Hewitson
Friday 14 February 2020, 6.30pm – 8.30pm

Psychotherapy can be thought of as the exploration of transmission between generations. We will examine how an experience in one generation is transmitted to a later generation, how it is manifested in that generation psychologically, and the effects that this transmission produces.

The history of this idea will be traced from nineteenth century preoccupations with hereditary degeneracy, through Freud and the Freudians’ focus on the Oedipus complex, up to current approaches to dealing with ‘traumatic’ generational transmission.

Owen Hewitson is a PhD candidate in Psychoanalysis at the University of Middlesex and runs LacanOnline.com

Denial, Fatalism and Psychological Health in a Sick Planet

Jim Davis and Kieran Nolan
Friday 10 January 2020, 6.30pm – 8.30pm

Like many other social and political issues, global warming raises challenges in relation to our focus remaining solely at the individual level. There is a growing need to account how cultural and political factors create collective ‘dis-ease’, and for a return to the early days when Transactional Analysis psychotherapy was seen as a social psychiatry. The recent past has been characterised by a fundamental retreat into social isolation, cynicism, loss of meaning, and a pervasive passivity that cultivates denial and discounting in relation to the safety of our planet.

Jim Davis has been a psychotherapist for 30 years and views the personal as fundamentally political. Dr Kieran Nolan has been a psychotherapist for 18 years. He has been reading about climate change for many years and is a member of Extinction Rebellion.

Behind Bars: therapeutic aspects of clinical work in prison settings

Andrew Shepherd
Friday 13 December 2019, 6.30pm – 8.30pm

Prisons represent significant sites of complex suffering and distress – as represented by high estimated prevalence rates of mental disorder. In this talk I will attempt to consider some of the pertinent psychosocial and existential dynamics apparent within this population.

Andrew Shepherd is a clinical lecturer in forensic psychiatry at the University of Manchester and visiting psychiatrist within HMP Liverpool.

Bodies and Books: An Art Therapist’s Reading of Lacan

Jo Rostron
Friday 8 November 2019, 6.30pm – 8.30pm

The body is the longest serving medium for the storage, retrieval and transmission of human knowledge. Touching upon the history of the book and manuscript we will explore what kind of text it is that Lacan suggested can be inscribed into our bodies to create a knowledge which has the potential to be rewritten and renewed.

Jo Rostron has a background in Fine Art and is a Member of the School of the Freudian Letter and the London Society of the New Lacanian School.

On Interpretation

Julia Evans
Friday 11 October 2019, 6.30pm – 8.30pm

Julia is a practising Lacanian Psychoanalyst and member of the London Society of the New Lacanian School. Her website is Lacanian Works.

Where Does it Hurt? Pain and its Killing

Mark Fisher
Friday 13 September 2019, 6.30pm – 8.30pm

It has been estimated that within a recent two-year period, more Americans died from prescribed opioids and various other pain killers than in the entire Vietnam War. The Sunday Times included the diagram below in their report on Britain’s opioid crisis: we are sleepwalking towards carnage in our communities (24 February 2019). This discussion addresses: what is pain and why does it need killing?

Mark Fisher’s introduction to psychoanalysis took place during the 1970s when he worked at Oxford University for eight years. After many years of teaching and practice, Mark resigned as NHS professional lead in psychotherapy during November 2013. In July 2014 he became a member of a new analytic grouping, The School of the Freudian Letter. He has a private practice in Liverpool.

Opioid Deaths by Region

August 2019: the NWPRA does not meet in August.

Are we too attached to normality and too invested in change?

Steff Oates
Friday 12 July 2019, 6.30pm – 8.30pm

In this workshop we will discuss whether therapists impose standards of ok-ness and normality, and thereby marginalise those who may think differently and may not conform to our ideas of health and change.

Steff Oates qualified as a Transactional Analyst in 1997. She runs a private practice in Cheshire, provides supervision and training, and regularly writes and speaks on TA theory and practice. She is Vice President of Research and Innovation for the International Transactional Analysis Association.

Lifespan Integration: a neurological tool for working with trauma

Humera Quddoos
Friday 14 June 2019, 6.30pm – 8.30pm

As scientific advances uncover the complex relationship between our brain, emotions and body, new approaches to integrating the neurological with psychotherapy are also developing. Just as your brain is changed in response to your past experiences with the world (attachments, deprivations, and traumas, for example), it will also change in response to future experiences. Lifespan Integration is one of these neurological change tools. Today’s presentation will provide an introduction to Lifespan Integration and show how this neurological approach can be integrated into the psychotherapeutic relationship.

Humera Quddoos is a Transpersonal Psychotherapist who has been working in private practice for over 15 years with a particular focus on trauma, sexual abuse, and complex PTSD. Humera discovered Lifespan Integration five years ago, and has been integrating it successfully into her client work since then.

Ageing and ageism in the therapy room

Alessandra Merizzi
Friday 10 May 2019, 6.30pm – 8.30pm

The scientific literature provides many studies showing the powerful influence of ageing stereotypes on the attitudes, decisions, actions and holistic health of older people. Ageing stereotypes can be internalised during youth, be part of our belief system, and have an influence outside of our awareness. The aim of the workshop is to explore our own beliefs on ageing and how this may influence the way we perceive an ‘older’ client, our attitude towards them and the therapeutic relationship.

Alessandra is Gestalt Psychotherapist at the Manchester Gestalt Centre and a Clinical Psychologist at the Memory Assessment and Treatment Service in Oldham. For further information please see her website here.

Beyond Doubt: Alfred Hitchcock’s Lina

Paul Melia
Friday 12 April 2019, 6.30pm – 8.30pm

This clinically orientated workshop facilitated by Paul Melia (Practising Analyst with the School of the Freudian Letter) is organised around clips from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1941 thriller, Suspicion.

Following a ‘passage to the act’ – not an ‘acting out’ – Lina McLaidlaw marries Johnny Aysgarth. She compares him to the celebrated Rialto Footbridge in Venice. After their honeymoon Lina reluctantly realises her husband does not observe the moral law. Questions then begin to arise for her: What am I to him? Why has he married me? The image of a broken footbridge recurs repetitively as Lina’s questions give way to doubts and then to suspicions and then to certainties. In a radical move, a 1931 work by Picasso is introduced – Pitcher and Bowl of Fruit – in which the image is produced by a line wandering over the canvas. The film climaxes as Johnny submits to the law, enabling Lina – a keen horse rider – to ‘get the bit between his teeth’ and to recognise her folly. What are we to make of all this?

Picasso Pitcher with Bowl of Fruit, 1931

A Psychotherapist Reads the Newspaper: we live in turbulent times

Frank Kelley
Friday 8 March 2019, 6.30pm – 8.30pm

Some time last year Frank was reading his newspaper, The Observer. A number of articles claimed there is evidence that for most of us in this country and around the world life has been improving over the last two decades. The newspaper also carried stories warning of various impending Apocalypses that are epitomised by the title of this talk. Frank will explore the ways uncontained and escalating apocalyptic anxieties can affect the mental health of individuals and their political impact at the societal level. He will use Kleinian ideas of paranoid anxiety – as well as the related defence of splitting and projection – to understand these contradictory views of our world.

Frank Kelley was a psychodynamic counsellor in the NHS and is now retired.

What makes a trauma traumatic?

Owen Hewitson
Friday 8 February 2019, 6.30pm – 8.30pm

Trauma often appears to be a very broadly-spread notion in psychotherapy, leading ‘trauma’ to have been ascribed to all kinds of experience, from birth, to sex, to war, and even to love. Often we find ourselves trying to locate a single event, and one of a specific magnitude, at the aetiology of a trauma. And yet we know that this choice is always somewhat arbitrary if we cannot account for how that event was inscribed, metabolised, or worked-through by the individual. This talk will argue that trauma is never simply about a single event, and that talking therapies reach a limit if they attempt to deal with trauma through speech alone. We will consider what the conditions for a ‘traumatic’ experience might be, the mechanism behind its action, and the most effective techniques for its handling in clinical settings.