How To Flourish as a Psychotherapist: a Masterclass with Professor Brett Kahr

Date: Saturday 29 June 2019
Time: 10am – 4pm
Trainer: Professor Brett Kahr
Fees: £118 (£108 if booked and paid for by 18 May 2019)
Venue: Tavistock Relationships, Central London
CPD hours: 6

The psychotherapist has the potential to save people from killing themselves. The psychotherapist can help to restore broken marriages and mend shattered families.

But the burdens of working psychotherapeutically can be immense, not only emotionally but, also, medically, across the life cycle.

In this specially constructed one-day workshop, Professor Brett Kahr, one of the United Kingdom’s most distinguished psychotherapists, will share his extensive 40 years of experience with participants, investigating both the pitfalls and the pleasures of this unusual, but vital, profession.

You may book this masterclass at Tavistock Relationships.

Recent News from Professor Brett Kahr

Posted by Thomas Greally on Nov 6, 2018 in News and Events

November, 2018.

During the last several months, Professor Brett Kahr has delivered a number of presentations, including a lecture on ‘ “Slashing the Teddy Bear’s Tummy with a Carving Knife”:  The Infanticidal Roots of Schizophrenia’, at the conference on “Psychosis and Psychoanalysis:  Politics, Theory, History, Technique”, held at the Anna Freud Centre in London under the joint sponsorship of the Freud Museum London and of the Psychosis Therapy Project – a new, pioneering venture based in Islington, North London, designed to provide psychoanalytical treatment for patients suffering from long-standing psychoses.  Kahr will develop his work on the role of death wishes in the aetiology of states of extreme psychopathology in his forthcoming Keynote Address to the Annual Conference of the Foundation for Psychotherapy and Counselling in London on the topic, ‘ “I Hope You Die and I Hope it’s Soon”:  Can Infanticidal Wishes Be Survived?”.

Additionally, Kahr participated in a panel discussion about “Psychoanalysis and Autobiography” at the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing, at Wolfson College in the University of Oxford.  He had the pleasure of speaking alongside Professor Laura Marcus of the University of Oxford and Dr. Joanna Morra of Central St. Martins, University of the Arts London.  Dr. Kate Kennedy, the centre’s Weinrebe Research Fellow in Life-Writing, chaired this most interesting event about the importance of life-writing and about the potential for collaboration between mental health clinicians and academics.

He also hosted an “in conversation” at the Freud Museum London with Gabrielle Rifkind, the group analyst and political activist, discussing her excellent new book on The Psychology of Political Extremism:  What Would Sigmund Freud Have Thought About Islamic State?  Additionally, he spoke at the twentieth anniversary party for Confer, the leading mental health conference organisation, at Lauderdale House, in Highgate, London, paying tribute to the more than one thousand events that Jane Ryan, Director of Confer, and her team have organised on behalf of British psychological professionals over the last two decades.  Additionally, Kahr shared a panel with Professor Iain MacRury and Professor Candida Yates – two very distinguished psychosocial scholars – at Bournemouth University at a Symposium on “Communicating Empathy in a Post-Brexit Landscape”, part of the Economic and Social Research Council-sponsored “Festival of Social Science”.

Later this term, he will speak at the Confer event on “What is Normal?”, discussing “Flourishing:  The “Normal” Therapist Versus the “Healthy” Therapist”.  He will also be speaking at 70^th anniversary conference of Tavistock Relationships entitled “When We Talk About Love:  Celebrating the First 70 Years”, held at King’s College London.  Kahr will lecture on his archival research on the early history of couple psychoanalysis in Great Britain, focusing, in particular, upon the contributions of Enid Eichholz and the Family Discussion Bureau, which developed in the wake of the destruction of family life during the Second World War.  He will expand upon this historical research in a presentation at another conference on “The Balints and Their World:  Object Relations and Beyond”, sponsored by the Freud Museum London and co-organised by Birkbeck, University of London, as well as by Imago International, the British Psychoanalytical Society, the Wellcome Trust, and the U.K. Balint Society.

Finally, just before Christmas, 2018, he will appear on a panel on “Criminal Minds” at the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London, sponsored jointly by The International Journal of Psychoanalysis and by Media and the Inner World, exploring the role of castration anxiety and consequent traumata in the genesis of male murderers.

In terms of institutional work, Professor Kahr continues to serve as a Trustee for the Freud Museum London.  He has recently become a member of the museum’s Research Working Group to help promote original research on psychoanalytical topics.  He has also become Chair of the Academic Membership Committee of the British Psychoanalytic Council, and with colleagues will help to establish greater links among psychoanalytical clinicians and psychoanalytical scholars in universities.

In terms of his work in the media, he appeared on one of the very first ever Iranian television programmes about the life and work of Sigmund Freud.  Additionally, he had the privilege of being interviewed by Professor Sarah Niblock, Chief Executive of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy, about the psychotherapeutic treatment of anxiety, as part of a podcast series sponsored jointly by the U.K.C.P. and by Psychologies magazine.  Additionally, both he and Dr. Susie Orbach participated in a series of interviews on psychotherapy for the Science Museum in London, which will form part of the museum’s new, upcoming permanent exhibition on the history of medicine, due to launch in 2020.

Kahr has continued to publish books and papers.  In the last several months, his latest book, How to Flourish as a Psychotherapist, appeared from Phoenix Publishing House (www.phoenixpublishinghouse.co.uk), founded by Kate Pearce and Fernando Marques.  The publishers launched this event at Waterstones in Hampstead, North London.  Kahr has written this book for psychotherapists of all ages, from those contemplating training to those at the end of their careers, exploring how colleagues can engage maximally with this challenging but, potentially transformative career.

His book Coffee with Freud (Routledge / Taylor and Francis Group) has now appeared in Turkish translation from Sfenks Kitap, the Istanbul publishers, under the title Freud’la Bir Fincan Kahve, translated by Sehnaz Layikel; and his book Tea with Winnicott (Routledge / Taylor and Francis Group) has appeared in a Farsi translation from the Tehran publishers Binesh No, under the title Chãy Bã Winnicott, translated by Mahyar Alinaghi.  A profile of Kahr appeared in Therapy Today, and his article on “Freud’s Death Bed:  Notes on the “Invalid Couch” at Maresfield Gardens”, appeared in New Associations.  He also wrote a foreword to the English translation of Dr. Ulrike May’s new book on Freud at Work:  On the History of Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice, with an Analysis of Freud’s Patient Record Books (Routledge / Taylor and Francis Group) which has appeared in the “History of Psychoanalysis Series” which Kahr co-edits with fellow psychoanalytical historian Professor Peter Rudnytsky.

Publications:

What has come to be known as the ‘Tavistock model’ of couple psychotherapy is described in a recently published book to which Christopher Clulow contributed a chapter. Taking Frédéric Fonteyne’s film, Une Liaison Pornographique, he explores how attachment patterns might influence sexual behaviour and the genesis of desire (Couples on the Couch, edited by Shelley Nathans and Milton Schaeffer, published by Routledge in 2017). This chapter was used in May 2018 for the annual Spring online paper discussion of the International Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology. The evolution of the Tavistock model is described by him and co-authors in a paper to be published by Psychoanalytic Inquiry later this year, coinciding with the 70^th anniversary of Tavistock Relationships (Clulow, C., Hertzmann, E. & Nyberg, V., Couple psychoanalysis in the United Kingdom: Past, present and future). Marking this anniversary will be a substantial new book to be published by Routledge in the autumn to which Christopher has contributed a chapter on couples becoming parents and of which he is a co-editor: Engaging Couples: New Directions in Therapeutic Work with Families. Brett Kahr contributed a Foreword to the book, and Susanna Abse an Introduction. He, Brett Kahr and Susanna Abse provided clinical commentaries for another Tavistock related book Couple Stories. Application of Psychoanalytic Ideas in Thinking about Couple Interaction, edited by Aleksandra Novakovic and Marguerite Reid, and published by Routledge in 2018 in their Library of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis.

Training:

On the home front Christopher Clulow chaired the sold out Spring Conference held by Tavistock Relationships entitled Couple Attachments. Relationships that Change Us. Speakers included Dr Amanda Jones, Professor Jeremy Holmes, Dr Mary Target and current CEO of Tavistock Relationships, Andrew Balfour. Later this year he will be joining Professors Jeremy Holmes and Peter Fonagy on the platform of a two-day conference on insecure and disorganised attachment to be held in London under the auspices of NScience. He and Susanna Abse ran a day’s training for NScience in May on interparental conflict and its consequences, attended by over 70 mental health practitioners.

On the international front he runs an ongoing virtual clinical seminar for psychotherapists in New York and will be speaking at the bi-annual conference of the International Association of Couple and Family Psychoanalysts to be held in Lyons in July. In September he joins analysts David Scharff and Janine Wanlass in Beijing to deliver a six day training course to 80 psychotherapists there.

Jane Haberlin has been appointed to the Steering Committee of Understanding Conversion to Islam in Prison, a research programme run in partnership with

• SOAS, the University of London
• McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics & Public Life, University of Oxford
• Christ Church, University of Oxford
• University of Salford
• University of Fribourg, Switzerland.

The programme is guided by an interdisciplinary team of internationally renowned criminologists, theologians, scholars of Islam and legal professionals and aims to bring about an enduring improvement in the way that Muslims are understood in British and continental European prisons to the benefit of prisoners’ lives and of British and continental European society more widely.

The Balint Consultancy is delighted to announce that at the recent annual conference of The British Psychoanalytic Council, two of our Consultant Psychotherapists received very special awards in recognition of their outstanding contributions to the mental health professions.

Susanna Abse, Consultant Psychotherapist and former CEO of Tavistock Relationships, received the British Psychoanalytic Council’s award for “Outstanding Leadership”.

Susie Orbach, Consultant Psychotherapist and founder of the Women’s Therapy Centre and the Women’s Therapy Centre Institute, received the first ever “Lifetime Achievement Award” from the British Psychoanalytic Council.

Helen Morgan, the Chair of the British Psychoanalytic Council, paid special tribute to Susanna Abse and Susie Orbach, and thanked them for their unique contributions to the psychoanalytical profession. The BPC. particularly singled out Abse’s achievement in developing the training, research department, and clinical projects for Tavistock Relationships, as well as her unique work in spearheading the All Party Parliamentary Group for Strengthening Couple Relationships.

The British Psychoanalytic Council saluted Susie Orbach for her forty years as a leader and innovator in the field of psychological therapies. The BPC congratulated Orbach especially for her best-selling books such as Fat is a Feminist Issue and Bodies, which have helped to transform our understanding of eating problems and other psychological struggles, and for her pioneering work as a mental health broadcaster and theoretician of relational psychoanalysis.

Full copies of the testimonials and tributes to Susanna Abse and Susie Orbach will be posted on the website of the British Psychoanalytic Council.

Susanna Abse, Consultant Psychotherapist and Dr. Maeve Hurley, CEO and Co-founder of Ag ƒEisteacht

It’s been a busy few months for us at the Balint Consultancy. We now have a lively programme of internal seminars and we are offering increasing numbers of consultations which has led to us welcome two new associates into the practice; Thomas Greally and Jane Wynn Owen.

As usual, our therapists have been busy with speaking engagements, events and with writing projects.

Susie particularly enjoyed speaking with novelist and playwright Gillian Slovo and short story writer, Danielle McClaughlin on Why We Write at the International Festival of Literature in Dublin this summer.  Commenting on the event, Susie said “Writing and psychotherapy seem to me to intersect as practices as one searches for le mot juste to express ideas and feelings we  may not have found words for before”

Susie also gave talks given at Rabbi Birk’s synagogue in Finchley and at therapy venues outside of London.

Susie is now preparing for some theatrical events for next year at The National Theatre based on her highly successful In Therapy radio 4 programmes. Susie says “It has been interesting working with actors and with the director Ian Rickson on some improvisations. We workshopped two performances at the NT Rehearsal studio, one in which I did live therapy with an unknown ‘patient’ who arrived for two sessions and one in which the actor Diana Kent played me from improvised scripts. It is a challenging and fascinating project.”

This month Susie is off to the Edinburgh Festival to do a live psychotherapy ‘interview’ Laura Alberts aka JT LeRoy.

Chris Clulow will also have a busy Autumn teaching and in October he travels to New York to give a two-day seminar to members of the Contemporary Psychoanalytic Couple Psychotherapy Program of New York (CPCPNYC)  on ‘The Look of Love: Attachment and Intimacy’.

In July, Susanna was honoured with a senior fellowship appointment of The Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology.  The honour given for her services to the organisation and her contribution to the field of couple psychotherapy means she now joins Dr Christopher Clulow and Professor Brett Kahr on this illustrious list.

Susanna has been busy too with a trip to Cork in June to give a keynote speech on relationships for Ag Eisteacht and with a teaching and development project for adoption social workers for Tavistock Relationships and CoramBAAF.

Susanna has designed and is trialling a new assessment manual which will give adoption social workers the capacity to think more in depth about couple relationships.  Conversations with Adoptive Couples: A Handbook for Assessing and Supporting Adult Relationships for Adoption Social Workers will be revised, following practice feedback, and then published later in the year.

Susanna has also been busy co-organising the British Psychoanalytic Council’s bi-annual conference – PPNow.   The conference which sold out almost immediately takes place on November 4^th and both Susie and Susanna will be speaking.  Details are here https://www.bpc.org.uk/PP-NOW-2017

On Saturday 22 April, under the auspices of Confer, Susie Orbach’s outstanding contribution to psychotherapy was celebrated in a sold out event at Foyles bookstore in London.

Entitled: ‘Psychotherapy is a Cultural Issue: The influence of Susie Orbach’s work on theory, practice and values’  the event was chaired by The Balint Consultancy’s Amita Sehgal.  Presentations by Sarah Benamer, Jane Haberlin, Brett Kahr, Andrew Samuels, Valerie Sinason and Kate White explored Susie’s work and its contemporary clinical and public relevance. Susie Orbach’s work has been translated into many languages; her seminal work Fat is a Feminist Issue has sold over a million copies; her radio programmes ‘In Therapy’  have drawn over 3 million listeners. She has influenced public policy, the arts, psychotherapeutic practice and has transformed the lives of countless individuals. Susie was described during the event as a ‘National Treasure’ and, at the end of an extremely stimulating and emotionally rich day, 160 of her colleagues rose to give her a standing ovation.  It is our great good fortune, and a source of enormous pride, to have Susie Orbach as part of The Balint Consultancy.

Spring 2017 has been a very busy time for us; here is a summary of our news.

Susie Orbach:

I very much enjoyed talking with the BACP (the largest organisation of therapists in the UK) at the Guildhall recently;  500 people in the room were joined by another 2000 on a closed webcast. After a paper, I was joined by the Chair, Andrew Reeves and the President, David Weaver, for a Q&A which worked very well with questions and comments coming in from the web as well as from the people in the concert hall.

I also participated in the Bowlby Conference, an important annual event at which scholars, researchers and psychotherapists came together to discuss the knotty clinical issue of an individual who is driven to repeat negative and damaging experiences, following severe emotional trauma. The talks were excellent and as usual, at this conference, I learnt a great deal.

I felt my age when I joined the BBC Radio 1 presenter, Gemma Cairney, the YouTube blogger, Estee Lalonde and many, many others when we spoke at Conway Hall in a joint venture with The Pool and 5 x15. Our topic was anxiety because so many young women between 25 and 35 can be plagued by it. It was both a painful, a funny and a frank evening which came the day before International Women’s Day and issues of mental health, pressures on young women and human rights were skilfully linked.

This month I am preparing the British Library Lecture for The Listening Project to celebrate – Radio 4’s treasure of 1000 conversations. It has been a delight to listen to some of them and they are now archived by the British Library and are available from their website while the shorter version is available from the BBC. All very fascinating. Take the plunge and listen to a few. They are so interesting.

Christopher Clulow

Chris Clulow presented to the Alumni members of Tavistock Relationships on ‘Interpreting Attachment’; contributed to a Confer conference on ‘Love Sickness’ with a paper on ‘Love, Narcissism and Sexual Fantasy’.

In Manchester, under the auspices of NScience, ran a day seminar for mental health practitioners on ‘Attachment and Intimacy’.

In Helsinki, ran a two day event for psychotherapists entitled ‘Attachment and Intimacy: Developing Love Relationships’.

Brett Kahr

In March 2017, Brett Kahr was appointed as Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Media and Communication at Bournemouth University.

Brett has had the privilege – albeit a deeply sad one – of writing several obituary tributes for Dr. Alan Corbett (1963-2016), a much cherished colleague from the field of disability psychotherapy, which can be found in The Psychotherapist magazine, and, also, on the websites of Confer (www.confer.uk.com/blogs/blog-corbett.html) and Karnac Books (Hall of Fame) (www.karnacbooks.com/blog/post-alan-corbett/202), with a further obituary forthcoming from the British Journal of Psychotherapy.  A great admirer of the work of Dr. Michael Balint, Alan Corbett taught Balintian theory to his students at the Guild of Psychotherapists.

Wearing his historian’s hat, Brett has also served as a consultant to the recent exhibition on “Attachment:  Our Enduring Need for Others”, organised by Kate White of The Bowlby Centre and by Robert Greenwood of the Royal Society of Medicine (R.S.M.).  The exhibition, housed at the R.S.M. headquarters on Wimpole Street in Central London, opened on 6th February,2017, and will run until 29th April, 2017 (https://www.rsm.ac.uk/library/exhibitions.aspx).  Admission is free.

Finally, Brett contributed a video-lecture on “What Constitutes the Forensic State of Mind?” to the on-line lecture series “Forensic Psychotherapy: Pathologies and Treatment Strategies for Working with Violence”, organised by the psychotherapy continuing education provider Confer.

Amita Sehgal discussed a paper at the Second International Congress on Couple and Family Psychoanalysis held in Madrid, Spain, in February 2017.  The meeting was co-sponsored by the International Psychotherapy Institute, The International Association of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis, and the Spanish Federations of Psychotherapy Associations.

The conference drew psychotherapists working with couples and families from around the world, to think together and exchange ideas about the complex and creative field of interpretation in psychoanalysis.

The Balint Consultancy launched in October and we are very pleased to share that since that time we have been very busy.  Enquires have come in from many different sources and have included requests for therapy for individuals, couples and parents as well as interest in our Executive Coaching and Consultancy services.  As a result of this interest, The Balint Consultancy will be taking on two associates in the New Year to help us meet the demand.

Naomi Mwamba

Becky Walker, our wonderful Practice Manager, is going to take a break for a few months and we are very sorry to lose her.  In her place we have been able to make an excellent appointment and Naomi Mwamba will begin work in late December.

Back in 2009 Karnac Books published a collection of papers containing psychoanalytic perspectives on sex, attachment and couple psychotherapy. Indeed, ‘Sex, Attachment and Couple Psychotherapy’ was the title chosen by the editor, Christopher Clulow, for this first book in the Library of Couple Psychoanalysis, which marked the sixtieth anniversary of the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships (now called Tavistock Relationships).

In selecting a cover for the book Christopher went to great lengths to track down a Polish sculptor, Piotr Woroniec, who was living in a remote part of Poland and had produced a series of sculptures entitled ‘Adam and Eve’. With the help of a native Polish speaker he was able to correspond with Piotr and arrange for a black and white photo to be taken of a particularly apposite sculpture: that of a couple hewn out of the same piece of roughly carved wood, intimate yet apart, whose shadow fell on the rustic  floorboard that supported it. With his permission that photo appeared on the cover.

This month, somewhat to Christopher’s surprise, two copies of the book translated into Polish arrived by post. Sadly, the original carving on the cover had been replaced by a more conventional photo of couple intimacy.