Susanna Abse, Consultant Psychotherapist and Dr. Maeve Hurley, CEO and Co-founder of Ag Eisteacht
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 4th and both Susie and Susanna will be speaking. Details are here https://www.bpc.org.uk/PP-NOW-2017