The NWRPA hold talks, seminars and workshops by Zoom each month. From September 2022 this will be on the second Monday of each month.
You can book your place by email here.
Events 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 follows each Zoom talk and both events qualify as Continuing Professional Development (CPD).
Images and Words in the Clinic of Autism
Dr Leon S. Brenner
Monday 12 September 2022, 7.00pm – 8.00pm
In this Zoom talk Leon considers some of the marked differences in the autistic subject’s acquisition of language and speech development. Drawing on clinical examples from art therapy he outlines what may be described as ‘visual supplements’ supporting the representation of both ambiguous and abstract concepts.
(No prior knowledge of Lacan or psychoanalysis is assumed.)
Leon is research fellow at the International Psychoanalytic University Berlin and author of The Autistic Subject: On the Threshold of Language published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2020. His website is https://leonbrenner.com/
The NWRPA does not meet in August
Talking to a Brick Wall
Dr Mark Fisher
Friday 8 July 2022, 6.30pm – 8.00pm
On the joys and necessities of not hearing and misunderstandings. “I like talking to a brick wall – it’s the only thing in the world that never contradicts me!” Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan
Mark Fisher’s interest in psychoanalysis began whilst a research fellow at Oxford in the 1970s and 1980s. In 2000, after two decades working in the NHS Merseyside as professional lead in psychotherapy, he founded the Rodney Street Counselling and Psychoanalytic Practice, a clinical and supervisory practice in Liverpool and online.
This talk is on Zoom
Displacement, Disguise and Two Paintings by Hockney
Paul Melia
Friday 10 June 2022, 6.30pm – 8.00pm
In this Zoom talk art historian and psychotherapist Paul Melia will use paintings by the contemporary artist David Hockney to consider the processes of condensation and displacement, processes which also structure neurotic symptoms, parapraxes and other formations of the unconscious. Examples from the clinical literature will also be considered.
Paul Melia is an art historian and psychotherapist in Manchester. He founded Therapy in Manchester in 2011. His curatorial work includes the retrospective exhibition of David Hockney’s drawings shown in Los Angeles, Hamburg and at The Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Acrylic paint on canvas, 183x183cm / 6ftx6ft
Private collection © David Hockney
Head First – Stories of Mind and Body
Dr Alastair Santhouse
Friday 13 May 2022, 6.30pm – 8.00pm
In secondary care, an organic explanation for the patient’s symptoms is made in only about 50% of consultations. For common presentations in primary care, the figure is far less. The costs of this – financial, clinical and societal – are huge and include altruistic kidney donation, bariatric surgery, chronic pain, capacity and end of life care. This Zoom talk sets out some of the issues and explores how we ended up here in 21st century medicine.
Dr Alastair Santhouse is a Consultant Neuropsychiatrist at The Maudsley Hospital. After graduating, he trained in internal medicine, before switching to psychiatry and for most of his clinical career has been a Consultant in Liaison Psychiatry at Guy’s Hospital in London. He is the author of Head First: A Psychiatrist’s Stories of Mind and Body (Atlantic Books, 2021).
15 years of neuroscientific research into appetite control: from restrictive eating to addiction
Dr Samantha Brooks
Friday 8 April 2022, 6.30pm – 8.00pm
In this Zoom talk Samantha provides an overview of her research over the past 15 years at a number of medical campuses including the The Maudsley Hospital, King’s College London, and the Faculty of Health, Liverpool John Moores University. She will consider the neural processes of appetite control as well as the unconscious functions associated with anorexia and bulimia.
Samantha is Reader of Cognitive Neuroscience at Liverpool John Moores University, a Chartered Member of the British Psychological Society and a member of the Neuro-Psychoanalytic Society. She is developing an intervention in Liverpool – Curb Your Addiction (C-Ya).
Negotiating Consent and Dissent: respect for autonomy and resistance in clinical practice
Adrian Sutton
Friday 11 March 2022, 6.30pm – 8.00pm
In a change to our advertised Zoom event we welcome Adrian Sutton, Director of the Squiggle Foundation, a registered charity which aims to study and disseminate the work of Winnicott. Adrian was Consultant in Child & Family Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the Winnicott Centre, Manchester, and a Director of Studies at Manchester Medical School. He is author of Paediatrics, Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis: through countertransference to case management.
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 its 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
The Interpretation of Dreams Painted, an online art exhibition of work by Paul Melia, can be viewed here
