We normally have 10 events per year running from September. The NWRPA does not meet in January or August. You can join at any time your membership entitles you to attend all events for a year from the date you join. Please see Membership page for details. All events are held on the second Monday of the month commencing at 19:00 BST/GMT. Events typically last for 60 to 90 minutes and are followed by a networking meeting for Members.
Our programme of events for 2025-26 is taking shape, although later events have yet to be finalised. If you would like to make a presentation, or give a talk on a topic of interest to our membership, please contact the Association Secretary Mr Frank Kelley.
Events during Previous season from September 2024 to July 2025 are shown below.
Shakespeare, Freud and their Birth Conjunction Events
Kevin Power
Monday, September 9
A Birth Conjunction Event is the conjunction of parents’ ages at their children’s birth dates with events in later life. Kevin has researched and uncovered such events in the biographies of publicly known figures; in particular how Freud and Shakespeare’s BCE’s resonate across their lives and work, and perhaps surprisingly our own. He will offera recent example of how this number appears to affect people’s lives.
Kevin Power qualified with the London Centre for Psychotherapy in Group-analytic psychotherapy in the 1980’s after a 14 year career as a teacher. He has maintained employment as a group consultant and conductor since then, as well as running a private practice. He was Course Coordinator at Goldsmiths College’s professional course in group-analytic psychotherapy for a period of 13 years. For 20 years up to 2019 He was employed in his local NHS Trust as a psychotherapist for individuals, groups and for supervision. Kevin maintained a long association with the Group-Analytic Society , undertaking long stints as Honorary Secretary and Hon. Treasurer. Cappy organised the group’ s 2011 symposium which attracted 650 attendees from across the world. Kevin’s writing output includes about 20 published papers and responses, the latest of which was the this is for the2024 S H Foulkes’ lecture titled, ‘On the Impulse to Impart’, which explores the role of language and communication in group-analysis, to be published in December 2024.
Moral Injury among psychological therapists working in NHS Talking Therapies
Craig Abex
Monday, October 14
Craig will discuss his Doctoral research on the experience of Moral Injury among psychological therapists working in NHS Talking Therapies (formally known as IAPT). Moral Injury, a trauma theory, is a betrayal of what is right leading to the transgression or violation of one’s morals that can lead to feelings of anger, shame, guilt, and loss of trust in self and/or others. As a theory, it was originally conceptualised in the early 1990s to understand the experiences of military veterans that were not sufficiently captured by the diagnosis of PTSD. However, over the years it has been increasingly applied to other domains, such as healthcare. Craig explores the relationship between Moral Injury and psychological therapists working in NHS Talking Therapies, where the clinician’s sense of what is right can come into conflict with the clinical expectations of their organisation. He will introduce his findings along with a consideration of the possible social-political forces that underpin why frontline therapists within these settings are increasingly having to negotiate moral tensions. Following this synthesis, Craig will also outline the implications of his research and recommendations going forward.
Craig is a UKCP Registered Integrative Psychotherapist in the final stages of his Doctoral training in Counselling Psychology. He has a wide range of clinical experience working across primary, secondary, and charity sectors, and currently works in an NHS acute psychiatric hospital as a Psychotherapist and trainee Psychologist. In addition to this, he also works as an Academic Lecturer on the Counselling Psychology doctoral training programme at the Metanoia Institute, along with having a small private practice.
Unpacking the Inner Critic – A closer look at self-criticism in young women
Christina Zintro
Monday, November 11, 2024
In this presentation Christina explores the experiences of women aged 18–30 who identify with a strong inner critic, a demographic shown to be particularly vulnerable to self-criticism compared to men, who genera
lly exhibit lower levels of self-criticism. While existing literature on self-criticism often adopts a pathology-focused lens, her research shifts the focus, examining the inner critic’s intricate role through in-depth qualitative interviews. Her findings reveal that the inner critic is a much more complex phenomenon than commonly perceived, with many different manifestations. Christina’s findings provide an in-depth understanding of the inner critic from the perspective of the experiencer, equipping mental health professionals to adopt a more nuanced approach, with interventions tailored to these different types of manifestations.
Christina Zintro is a trainee counselling psychologist at City St. George’s University of London, currently awaiting her viva examination. She works within the NHS secondary care system, where she has supported clients facing a range of severe and enduring mental health challenges. She has worked in various clinical settings, including psycho-oncology, eating disorders, university counselling, and primary care. A particular interest of Christina’s is compassion-focused therapy (CFT) and women’s health, which were combined in her thesis
“Are you talking to me?” Compassionate self-talk in the mirror
Howard Winfield
Monday, February 10, 2025 at 7pm GMT
Mirrors have long been considered to have particular significance and even spiritual implications in the realm of psychology and psychotherapy. Consider for example the concept of the “mirror self” in which a person seeks to act in a way consistent with their perception of how other people see them, or Lacan’s “mirror self” as a stage in the formation of the “I-self.” Indeed, the very beginnings of an autobiographical sense of self can be detected in infants aged between 18 and 24 months by use of the mirror (Amsterdam, 1972). Athough not formally trained as a psychologist and psychotherapist, author Louise Hay’s self-help book “Mirror Work: 21 Days to Heal Your Life” became an international bestseller when it was published in 2016, leading to a surge of interest from professionals about the potential role of mirrors in client work. Many therapists came to believe that using mirrors with clients could be valuable, yet with scant if any, evidence of efficacy other than an investigation into heart rate variability when mirrors were utilised in compassionate self talk (Petrocchi et al., 2016). Intuitively perhaps, mirrors seem to enable us to meet perhaps or even confront ourselves, but is this necessarily “a good thing?”
Howard is a newly-qualified Counselling Psychologist at City St. George’s, University of London with ties to Devon Partnership NHS Trust. He is an early-career researcher with an interest in identity, meditation and Buddhist psychology, the philosophy of pragmatism, and narrative methods in research. His clinical interests are broadly in relational therapies, early childhood trauma, neurodiversity and identity issues. He currently works as a Specialist Mentor across UK universities for students with ADHD, ASD and mental health difficulties in receipt of DSA, and is developing a private practice. Outside all of this, he is a keen musician and writer.
References
Amsterdam, B. (1972). Mirror self‐image reactions before age two. Developmental Psychobiology: The journal of the international society for developmental psychobiology, 5(4), 297-305.
Hay, L. (2016). Mirror Work: 21 Days to Heal Your Life. Hay House, Inc.Hay, L. (2016). Mirror Work: 21 Days to Heal Your Life. Hay House, Inc.
Lacan, J. (2006b). “The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I,” in Écrits [1949], eds J. Lacan and J. A. Miller, pp. 75–81. (W. W. Norton).
Petrocchi, N., Ottaviani, C., & Couyoumdjian, A. (2017). Compassion at the mirror: Exposure to a mirror increases the efficacy of a self-compassion manipulation in enhancing soothing positive affect and heart rate variability. The Journal of positive psychology, 12(6), 525-536.
Working with clients who experienced conflicts regarding the risk of ‘enabling’ loved ones who are addicted
Monday 9 June 2025, 7.00pm BST
Group Discussion introduced by Frank Kelley
Many therapists will perhaps havevivid memories of counselling sessions with clients who were family or close friends of people who were addicted. A common experience is that they were advised by professionals and support organisations not to ‘enable’their loved one’s addiction .
For example Al Anon, who support family and friends of addicts, offer the following signs of enabling.
- Providing them with money to support their habit
- Providing them with shelter
- Downplaying the severity of the problem
- Providing emotional support
- Lying on their behalf to shield them from consequences
- Rationalising their behaviour or making excuses for them
This can be hard in practice when you love and care for the addicted person, leading to client situations feeling a range of emotions from conflict, self blame and guilt, to shame but finding themselves in this situation. How do we support clients who are trying hard to do the right thing in such situation, when they really may not know what the “right thing” is, at least emotionally and instinctively speaking.
Inviting sharing and discussion from all members present, the talk will be start with a brief introduction on the topic by our secretary Frank Kelley. The hope is that all us, no matter what the amount of our experience, can benefit as we share our varied experiences in a confidential and protected space, supported by other members, without judgement. Note, this is not a supervision session per se, although similar benefits might be felt, if you happen to be working with someone in this situation. Rather, it is more a general discussion on the topic, sharing experiences, ideas and perhaps even if you have yet to encounter working therapeutically with a client who is in this or a similar type of situation.
Frank Kelley has been retired for some time and enjoys his long association with the NWRPA.
He was a Psychodynamic Counsellor in the NHS in North Manchester.
Monday 14 July 2025, 7.00pm BST
Backward in Coming Forward? Experiences of Working with Passive Narcissists
Group Discussion introduced by Dr Alan Priest
Feedback from some members about the June meeting has encouraged us to organise a similar discussion but on a different topic. Alan will provide a short intro on passive narcissism before opening up the topic for discussion in the group.
It’s likely all of us will have encountered passive or covert narcissists, if not professionally then personally. How do we recognise it? How do we work with this type of presentation? And what are the challenges to making contact and establishing a therapeutic relationship?
Passive narcissism, also known as covert narcissism, describes a form of narcissism where individuals crave admiration and a sense of importance, but express these desires in a less overt and more subtle, often passive-aggressive, way. They may appear vulnerable, self-deprecating, or even victimised. Are they driven ultimately by the same narcissistic wounds as those with more overt forms of narcissism? Or what distinguishes them from grandiose narcissists? These are examples of the issues we hope to address in the participatory meeting.
Alan is a visiting lecturer at City St. George’s, University of London and a Trustee of Huddersfield-based counselling charity The Tree of Life Centre, which provides low-cost or free counselling, often to those who have been deemed unsuitable following an assessment for short-term intervention at NHS Talking Therapies. He is also one of the members involved in organising guest speakers for our monthly seminars at NWRPA.